General Tips • Managing Your Tracks • Financial • Handy Keys • In Depth Strategy Guides
New York, Chicago, and New Orleans are good cities to start from.
When you're out West, you may be able to get land grants for building between two cities. Check the switchboard (the wooden panel on the right) when you're considering a city to connect. The grant amount will be paid to you as soon as you finish the track.
Don't build redundant track (track that connects the same two cities as a competitor's track) unless the route is extremely lucrative. You'll have to fight much harder for the traffic.
Try to stay away from the other players. If you're at a city all by yourself, you'll be able to charge 150% of the usual rate to transport cargo. If someone joins you at that city, it'll drop to 100.
Prestige is how you win the game. You get it from doing a lot of things, such as dominating a region, building the Transcontinental railroad, or paying dividends. The Transcontinental is expensive, but it gives you a lot of points if you build it early enough.
If you're going to go Transcontinental, start in Chicago and build out to the west coast. It's expensive, though, and there's not much traffic in the West, so be sure to watch your money and don't over-extend yourself lest you go bankrupt. Another good strategy is to try and go where no one's competing much, and dominate that area. Two players fighting over a rich area may split it so equally that they don't get any points from dominating the area.
If you voluntarily go into bankruptcy (Special tab on the Financial screen) you'll lose prestige, but you will become debt-free and pay reduced maintenance costs. You cannot build track while in Bankruptcy. If you don't voluntarily go into bankruptcy, you may be forced into it by your creditors. They will sell off your tracks until they've recovered 30% of their loans. It often pays to go into bankruptcy voluntarily!
You can see how well you're doing by clicking anywhere on the map that's not a city or a track. The switchboard will show you a general overview of how you're doing, including who the top three players are and how much prestige and cash they have. Another good way of seeing how you're doing is to go into the Financial screen, and go to the first tab.
Try using the mouse wheel whenever you would normally use arrow keys!
General Tips • Managing Your Tracks • Financial • Handy Keys • In Depth Strategy Guides • Next >