So how did you first start working onRailroad Tycoon?
Well, it actually started as
a model railroad game
with none of the eco-
nomic aspects and even
more of the low-level
running the trains. You
would actually switch the
switches and manipulate
the signals in the original
prototype. It kind of grew
from that with a fair
amount of inspiration
from 1830 , an Avalon Hill
board game designed by
Bruce Shelley, who I
worked with onRailroad
Tycoon. So, that inspired a
lot of the economic side, the stock market aspects of the game. As we added that, we
felt that we had too much range, too much in the game, that going all the way from flip-
ping the switches to running the stock market was too much. We also wanted to have
the march of technology with the newer engines over time, all the way up to the diesels.
So there was just too much micro-management involved when you had to do all the
low-level railroading things. So we bumped it up one level where all of the stuff that had
to happen on a routine basis was done for you automatically in terms of switching and
signaling. But if you wanted to, and you had an express or a special cargo or something,
you could go in there and manipulate those if you really wanted to make sure that train
got through on time, or a bridge was out and you had to stop the trains. But the origin of
that was as a model railroading game and we added some of the more strategic ele-
ments over time.
It really was the inspiration forCivilizationin a lot of ways, in terms of combining a
couple of different, interesting systems that interacted continuously. The economic,
the operational, the stock market, all interesting in their own right, but when they
started to interact with each other was when the real magic started to happen. As
opposed toPirates!andCovert Action,where you had individual sub-games that monop-
olized the computer. When you were sword fighting, nothing else was going on. Here
you had sub-games that were going on simultaneously and interacting with each other
and we really thought that worked well both inRailroad Tycoonand later inCivilization,
where we had military, political, and economic considerations all happening at the same
time.
So in a way, you are still using sub-games; they just happen to all be in play all
the time.
It’s not episodic in the way thatPirates!was. Whenever you’re making a decision
you’re really considering all of those aspects at the same time. That’s part of what
24 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier
Railroad Tycoon