somatablet.com

My SimCity4 addiction was relatively short-lived. Economics-minded, as always, I quickly learned that the only way I was comfortable building a city was to run it like a business. That means one thing: profit maximization. In true tycoon style, I start my cities with minimal services and a moderate tax rate. My basic equation was revenue = service expenses + expansion expenses, where service expenses = expansion expenses. In other words, spend no more than half my income on existing services, which I would build in the following order: power, water, fire protection, police, schools and parks, healthcare. The rest was for expansion. Don’t go too far into debt, because it’s not easy to recover from. This proved to be a rather fool-proof method for building expansive cities in which most residents were happy, and I would have continued to play this game for a long time like that with delight.

But then, a couple of weeks ago, I bought Railroad Tycoon on a whim. I can’t tell you how much of my day is spent thinking about how I’m going to cross the Appalachians to connect Pittsburgh to my main rail network on the East Coast, or whether laying double track is worth it, or which routes aren’t being served with enough trains. Yeah, I’m something of a dork. I don’t care–this game is positively addicting. The railroad tycoon is responsible for building a profitable network, buying out competing rail companies on the stock market to please shareholders, and maximizing his own personal wealth, independent of the company’s finances. So, if you know you’re about to connect your network to a competitor, you can buy their stock while the price is low, connect the cities, and watch their stock price jump as new markets open to their network of cities. Low on cash? Issue bonds or stock and keep on building! And most of the maps start from scratch. Don’t like how the hub-and-spoke system favored Chicago in real life? Make St. Louis or Detroit or Columbus your central city back in the 1800s, and watch how the cities develop in your own hypothetical world. I wish I could a take the afternoon off and play it for the rest of the day.

I’ve been playing mostly in the US so far as I’m familiar with its geography, but I look forward to building through Europe and Asia, too. This game is seriously too good for only $20.

I’ve been working for six weeks. Six to go.