Rails across America (beta)

Your network grows at a manageable rate because you can only build lines connecting to your home city, so you grow from a hub and radiate outward, spreading tracks across the map like veins. As you amass cash, you can buy smaller independent routes, called short lines, to allow you to build in distant regions without snaking a rail all the way to Bakersfield from the East Coast. The Eastern Seaboard is certainly a profitable region, but I've seen companies rake in a lot of money by being the sole providers out West, throughout Canada, or down in Mexico. Geography is as powerful a factor in Rails across America as the trains themselves.

True to its moniker, Rails across America isn't about running individual rail line so much as managing a whole network of them. But you do have control over the types and numbers of engines you want to run on each of your lines, which will determine how many carloads you can pull. Rails obviously runs a lot of complex algorithms in the background to determine traffic, but there are plenty of numbers available to get a sense for where you're doing how much business. In fact, Rails has so much detail, it's liable to frighten off casual players. This is a game about digging into a sophisticated system to see how it works. Unfortunately, it looks like it won't ship with an in-game tutorial. So far, Strategy First's record with manuals is good; let's hope for Rails' sake the trend continues.

The broad gameplay gives Rails across America a feel similar to Stardock's Corporate Machine. Both games are epic strategic battles for money instead of blood. Both games play in continuous time, keeping up the pace by combining expansion, management, and competition. There's always something else to do, but the pace is carefully perched on that delicate line between overwhelming and boring.

Both games also borrow from the concept of collectible card games. In Corporate Machine, your cards were like spells. But in Rails across America, cards are almost like mana. Depending on how well you're doing, every month you'll receive a random number of cards that are used to power special actions. Each card, which represents an "extracurricular" asset, has a suite and a face value. For instance the Foreign Terrorists are a Four of Dirty Tricks. A Mayor is a Two of Government. A Bank President is a Four of Money. An Investigative Report is a Three of Public Relations. To perform various underhanded actions, you have to spend a specific value from specific suits. Conducting a Stock Raid to steal some of another player's cash costs Money and/or Dirty Tricks. Calling a safety inspection to shut down a specific length of track costs Public Relations and/or Government. Shutting down all of a player's trains by engineering a strike costs Public Relations and/or Labor.

But these influence attacks aren't automatic. The target of the action will automatically counter your cards with his own cards of the relevant suit. The cards line up and have a mock battle, in which some cards are destroyed. The NSA might block the Foreign Terrorists and an Investigative Reporter might be foiled by a National Celebrity. But if any of the attacker's cards go unblocked, the attack succeeds. This means cheaper cards are useful for running interference or blocking. Your attacks use up your cards, so you have to balance between using them and saving them for defense.

Cont'd