With over twenty games to his name (the Civilization series, Alpha Centauri, Pirates, Gettysburg, SimGolf, etc.), Sid Meier is "The Man" when it comes to creating premiere strategy/simulation games. His latest, Railroads!, is based on his hit series, Railroad Tycoon. Railroads! is somewhat similar to those Tycoon games, so if you've donned the conductor cap before, you'll feel right at home. Aside from the pumped up graphics, the main difference between these games is the complexity. Where Tycoon succeeded as a complex economic business simulator wrapped in a boxcar, Railroads! is the light beer version aimed at the casual strat-sim gamer. Those who yearned to play with Sid's virtual Tycoon trains but were too afraid to try their hand at conducting them need not worry.

The basic goal is to create the most effective, money-making rail empire you can, done by building railroads across vast expanses of land and running your trains back and forth between cities. Numerous wares, like grain farms, cattle ranches, lumber mills, coal and gold mines, and oil wells are located near most towns. Your job is to lay track to these places, build an annex next to them so you can load them onto your train, and deliver passengers, mail and the above mentioned commodities to cities that require them. The economic law of supply and demand is in full effect here, complete with random world events that can cause a boon or bust at any given moment.

The game comes with 15 different historical and fictional scenarios to play in. Historical scenarios span the entire existence of railroads, beginning with the construction of the first lines in the 1830s and going all the way up to today's bullet trains. These are set in real world locations scattered around the United States (Midwest, Pacific Northwest, Southwest, etc.) as well as global locales like Great Britain, France and Germany. The fictional scenarios are a bit odder. For instance, there's one imaginary continent that resembles the Firaxis logo (a giant red cyclone), while others contain a giant lake, high bluffs and other wildly distorted settings in which you have to build feasible rail systems. These fictional settings are actually more fun then the historical scenarios because they end up being more of a challenge.

In both venues you're given various objectives to complete within a certain time period. This may be as simple as "Connect Flagstaff to San Diego," or make X amount of money in X amount of time. Players can choose to complete these objectives, or totally ignore them and focus on building an empire. In either case, you start with a single train depot... where you take it from there is as open ended as the real world during the early 1800s -- it's completely up to you.

As if those scenarios didn't offer enough gameplay options, an included map-making tool allows you to create your own maps, as well as challenge the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, Charles de Gaul and other historical rail barons in single-player mode.

The user interface features just a handful of easily identifiable icon buttons that open up to reveal an amazing amount of information in an easily digestible form. It would have been nice to have some kind of "undo" feature for new players, but that's a minor quibble because you can delete and re-lay sections of track (even though it will cost you some money). Sid also decided to have the game automate most of the monotony of actually running a railroad so you can concentrate on purchasing industries, outbidding others in the auction house (AI in single player, and real players in multiplayer) for patents, and buying/selling stock.