Railway Empire

[SD45]

Some time ago, Kaylpso, the owner of the Tropico series, released a railroad tycoon-esq game called Railway Empire. This year, they released the complete collection, with the base game and all the DLC they made for it for around $40.00

The base game is free on the Epic Games Store till September the 17th, though you need a Epic Games account and the launcher. 

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/product/railway-empire/home

If you don't care too much for anything Epic, it's still a good way to give it a swing and see if you want to buy the complete collection on Steam or GOG.

I'll post my thoughts on it sometime later after playing it a bit more. 
 

Edited September 13, 2020 by SD45

[jeffryfisher]

Looking at the pictures, I had trouble getting a sense of scale. The rail layout looked very tactical (close up), but the text described spanning a continent. Is it a collection of local city/town maps connected by abstract long-distance lines not shown?

[SD45]

There's large regional sections of the United States as maps, and there's also a map encompassing the entire contiguous US. 

It's very much like RT2/RT3, with the maps covering a larger area being a macro view, and the areas covering individual regions being a micro view. 

Even these "micro-maps" are rather large themselves. Here's the South(West) map in sandbox mode, showing a line between a cattle ranch and Albine. The line out of Albine heads to Austin, which then goes onto Houston. 

I should also mention that while one chooses a starting city in this game, one does not actually need to start at said starting city. It's just the city the camera focuses on when you start. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by SD45