Rails Across America (Strategy First) is a strategy type rail game where you start off with an amount of cash and you build a railroad. You can start anywhere from the early 1800’s up to the 1960’s and you can vary the gameplay from basic buying and building to quite interactive with other players or the computer. The map consists of the USA, Canada, and Mexico and is displayed from a top down view that can be zoomed in or out.
The interface is easy to manage, laid out quite well, and is colourful. The game timing is a real time ticker of days, weeks, months and years and can be adjusted speed wise to suit your taste. The basic game is easy to play; you start off with money, buy a track between 2 cities, then decide what engines you are going to run for passengers and freight. You are looking here for the most efficient use of the engines to make money. Sometimes the engines will be the same for both, sometimes not. It is important to note that that the engines will become obsolete and you will need to purchase new ones every so often. You should hire managers
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to manage the lines but you still have to watch the engines and signal upgrades. It is also a good idea to remove unused tracks that otherwise costs you in overhead. One thing you will notice is the gold dollar signs next to cities, especially the further west you go. They have an amount listed next to them that tells you what your bonus will be if you are the first to build a line to that city. Be careful as these have expiration dates.
Take Over Everything; try to build a railroad, expand it locally, then cross the continent and build the most profitable lines you can, eventually getting all of the cities connected.
Take Over a Section; Try to get every city in a section connected and then keep your railroad updated, save money to weather the financial storms that WILL come.
Connect the Dots; Try to go from coast to coast, Canada to Mexico, etc.
Bottom line; This is a railroad ownership game and is more of a business strategy and operations simulation than anything else. It is easy to make money early and fast but becomes difficult as time goes on when you have created a large railroad company (millions to upgrade engines, etc). You can of course “cheat” and start off with a lot of cash, and of course you can borrow money to keep going or for new rail investments.
