Line #58 VideoGame/RailroadTycoon


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/railroadtycooniib_5248.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:[[Music/TheClash London calling?]]]]
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4	''Railroad Tycoon'' is a series of [[SimulationGame games simulating]] the operation of railroads/railways. The original game was created by Creator/SidMeier at Creator/MicroProse and released in 1990. Two sequels were created by other developers in 1998 and 2003 respectively, before Meier returned for a fourth installment, ''Sid Meier's Railroads'', in 2006.
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6	[[TropeMaker The original]] "''Tycoon''" game and the one that helped to [[FollowTheLeader popularize the Business Sim genre]]. Conceived as ''Videogame/SimCity'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY meets]] ''[[Creator/AvalonHill 1830]]'', the game was very well received when it first appeared in 1990 since it captured some of the real life challenge and competition of running a large rail company. It was also a classic example of being [[SugarWiki/BetterThanItSounds better than it sounded]], drawing in players who [[PeripheryDemographic weren't the slightest bit interested in]] trains, the stock market or 19th-century history.
7	----
8	!! '''Tropes present in this series:'''
9	* HundredPercentHeroismRating: A "perfect" or 100% score in territorial goodwill implies this, in that the citizens of a given jurisdiction are extremely happy with a company's timely service and economically helpful actions.
10	* ZeroPercentApprovalRating: Conversely, "atrocious" or 0% territorial goodwill conveys deep public antipathy for a company's service and actions, either by leaving loads of passengers, mail and cargo untransported, or other actions such as [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential bulldozing housing or industries]].
11	* AIBreaker:
12	** In the original installment of the game, railway tracks from one company could not cross other companies' tracks. Let's say some [[AIRoulette inconvenient AI player]] decided to start a company with its first city not far from the PlayerCharacter's growing network, threatening to go FromNobodyToNightmare in no time. The answer? ''Immediately'' (or at least very soon) build a spur line over to near the AI company's lone station and encircle it with track completely -- then just leave it. The AI cannot get anywhere, and with no way to make any revenue, their company dies a swift death, with the added insult-to-injury being that the player's company is now easily positioned to take over the same now-vacated city with their ''own'' station.
13	*** It's also possible to "wall off" entire regions with track to prevent an AI player from expanding, for example if they start their company in a place like the Delmarva Peninsula (i.e. Dover and Salisbury) in the Eastern USA scenario. The AI player will never place rails crossing squares of ocean, nor can they cross the PlayerCharacter's track, thus condemning themselves to a slow but inevitable collapse when their shareholders finally get too pissed off with their lack of growth.
14	*** Additionally, an easy defensive solution to aggressive AI players trying to rate-war their way into your connected cities in the original game is to build protective single-track spurs around the exposed sides of stations (and removing any segments no longer needed when later expanding). The AI cannot cross these, as they're your track, and so cannot attack your network except through the stock market.
15	** Furthermore, AI players in the original game [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou could not reconnect stations]] that had been severed by a rate war in an adjacent city. Defeating a rival railway that's three stations long in a rate war for the ''middle'' station of the three would only leave two surviving single stations, so the rival railway's stock crashes and it simply ceases to exist at that point. This also works with an AI railway where multiple single stations all branch off of a single hub.
16	** In ''Tycoon 2'', an AI character like Jim Fisk or George Hudson will be stymied if the difficulty settings prevent them from their usual stock market manipulations, or J. P. Morgan is easier to face if he cannot invest in industries as he tends to do.
17	** In ''Tycoon 3'', some cheap station buildings maliciously placed in the right places can block the AI expansion forever, as they can't evict or bulldoze buildings of rival companies.
18	* AIGeneratedEconomy: ''Railroad Tycoon 3'' has an intricate and well developed economic system:
19	** There are other rivals companies building their own transport networks like in the previous installments, but the game itself implements an alternative new method: Unpicked goods and materials are gradually moved from their production sites to the places where they are needed, following a supply and demand logic and price curves. This process is usually very inefficient, but depending on the relative locations it can actually feed industries on its own, as the cargo moves slowly inland (very slowly and possibly not at all in mountain terrain), but adequately faster via rivers and other bodies of water.
20	** Processing industries tend to spawn in areas with a high concentration of raw resources, simulating private entrepreneurship. These local facilities can outcompete distant ones, as the newly generated demand will be on par with the remote one, making hauling commodities unprofitable, which is not allowed by the game mechanics. Production facilities can also disappear, but the process is very random.
21	* AllianceMeter: In ''Tycoon 2'', you can go into your company's information book and see just where you stand with various territories in terms of their goodwill. Every territory has a default value, but certain things can raise it (manager bonuses, reliable and frequent service) and other things can degrade it (untransported cargo loads, breakdowns, and so forth). The overall effect is that poor goodwill in a territory leads to higher costs to acquire the rights to lay track and to run trains. Once you have the rights to access a territory, though, nothing can take them away (short of a scripted event), which makes goodwill more or less cosmetic once you have them, or if all territories on a map are open by default. It can also be advantageous to buy territorial rights earlier, when goodwill has less chance to degrade, than later on, even if not immediately entering that country and saving it for later in the scenario.
22	* AllYourPowersCombined: In the original ''Railroad Tycoon'', the "[=PowerPlant=]" that appears on the various maps is a case of this. In North American maps, for instance, contrary to its name it actually combines the functions of a Steel Mill (processing coal into steel), a Paper Mill (processing wood into paper) and a Refinery (processing petroleum into manufactured goods) all in the same location. This would be a ViolationOfCommonSense as it appears to be one facility -- basically a PaletteSwap of the Food Processor -- on the map, but it may be rationalized as being multiple industries [[ActuallyFourMooks clustering together to take advantage of cheap electricity]]. Averted in the sequels, as the various power plant industries that exist in those versions just demand their specific fuel (coal, diesel, uranium) and generate waste instead.
23	* AnachronismStew:
24	** A minor but still noticeable case in ''Tycoon 2''. While train cars will change appearance through different eras, the world map does not, and thus a meat packing plant or a steel mill will look the same in 1855 as they do in 2055, despite advances in technology and architecture.
25	** Additionally, managers are not confined to specific eras, so in the 1800s you could potentially hire a manager that gives discounts on diesel or electrical expenses, which at that point do not even exist yet. And of course, all these managers you're hiring, or the company chairmen hiring them, variably haven't been born yet or already died years ago.
26	** None of the games have a mechanic of altering the political map, so it will forever be stuck in whatever state it was at the beginning of any given scenario.
27	** Caboose cars, the American ones, never go out of fashion. In real life, advances in technology rendered them completely obsolete by the 1960s and they've been retired soon after in any other configuration than in push-trains (where the locomotive is in the back, and the caboose in front) -- something that's impossible to do in-game.
28	* AnEntrepreneurIsYou: Start with 1,000,000 units of your local money, an empty region of a country, and cities demanding goods. Goal: Provide the best service, make money, defeat rivals.
29	* ApocalypseHow:
30	** Class 1 halfway to Class 2 in the [[ExpansionPack expansions]] of ''Tycoon 2''. [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer No, really]]: [[spoiler:TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture, the Strait of Gibraltar is dammed and a futuristic geothermal power plant is built in Spain while the drained Mediterranean Sea becomes free land for European development. However, [[BombThrowingAnarchists protesters and activists bomb the plant]], turning a third of Spain into a cratered wasteland, and the resulting eruption of volcanic greenhouse gases causes [[GiantWallOfWateryDoom world sea levels to rise rapidly]]. In the chaos, [[DividedStatesOfAmerica North America descends into anarchy]], Africa becomes an island and a haven for displaced civilians, the Mediterranean re-fills as [[FloodedFutureWorld Europe is flooded out]], and [[CursedWithAwesome Antarctica melts and is settled]].]]
31	** There is also the famous ''[[http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt2/rt2_north-america.htm Cascadia]]'' map made by Nick Bennett, which can be best described as a SpiritualSuccessor of ''Literature/ThePostman''.
32	* ArtificialStupidity:
33	** The AI in the original game occasionally starts a railway but only ever builds a single station/terminal, or connects a small handful of cities (say two, three or four) and then just spontaneously stops expanding. Sometimes this is because they spend all their money [[DidntThinkThisThrough buying up their own stock or paying back their initial $500,000 bond(s) too soon]], or they take on too much debt and [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome the interest charges sink them]], but sometimes there is [[TooDumbToLive no apparent reason]], and in either case it stops growing or can't make any revenue period, and so the company's stock price just declines until it [[CriticalExistenceFailure is dissolved and liquidated]] and a new one is started elsewhere (sometimes [[WhyWontYouDie by the same AI chairman]]).
34	** The AI in ''Tycoon 2 and 3'' is generally competent, but sometimes they start their company between two mediocre cities in mountainous terrain with track so convoluted, or excessively direct over ridiculous grades, that their rolling stock can do no better than crawl. The AI is also typically unable to choose a suitable locomotive for pulling, going instead for the most modern one in all situations. This then leads to a stunted and minimally profitable railway that you can easily outcompete.
35	** The AI is extremely good at finding routes with the most absolute profit at the moment and will constantly change routes accordingly, but if and when they connect to a rival's network, they will usually run routes where most of the profit goes to the owner of the tracks, while the AI player doing it still has to pay fuel and maintenance for their trains on top of it all.
36	** The AI also only builds stations in named cities, never in rural production centers or at primary industries, and are incapable of any real strategic thinking, choosing the routes with the most immediate profit but not ones that might create added value, like routes that fuel industries with little short-term margin but end up introducing unrivalled new wealth into the economy. This is the reason that the AI usually does poorly in maps with limited resources that require some puzzle-like connections to get ahead.
37	* AwesomeButImpractical:
38	** The [=MagLev=] in ''Tycoon 2'' is rated as having a top speed of 280 miles per hour, but it [[ShockinglyExpensiveBill costs a boatload of money to buy, fuel and maintain]], and [[FragileSpeedster performs very badly on grades]]. It's pretty much only useful on high-value passenger runs between large cities on flat ground.
39	** In the same game, any industry that requires steel. Steel is only produced from a steel mill, and needs coal and iron supplied at the same time to do so, two resources which you will likely never find close together near a major town or city, and thus the cost of the two or three trains needed to produce and move the iron, coal and steel around will likely outweigh the profits you make doing so. In later time periods, some industries switch to aluminum for their production, and the only industries that still accept steel are Tool and Die Factories and Automobile Factories, the latter of which needs ''another'' resource, tires, to actually produce automobiles, and tires in turn need to be manufactured from rubber[[note]]on the upside, [[DevelopersForesight the developers were usually helpful]] and made rubber available from ports in areas like North America rather than having rubber plantations where they don't geographically belong[[/note]]. Good luck finding any profitable and practical route with all these factories and resources in close proximity.
40	** In a similar though downplayed vein from ''Tycoon 2'', canneries. In the earlier going, they require steel -- made from both coal and iron themselves -- as well as fresh contents like produce or coffee to make food, which ''all'' has to arrive at the same time in the city with the cannery for the conversion to happen. Later on, they get ''slightly'' better in that they take aluminum which only takes bauxite to produce, in place of the steel. But, if you want to supply food to a town or city, which is not an exceedingly valuable freight cargo (ironic in the light of 2020s-era food inflation), you ''could'' go through all that trouble to feed the cannery with everything it wants ... ''or'' you could just [[BoringButPractical haul grain to a bakery, or livestock to a meatpacking plant]], both of which ''also'' then produce food to carry onwards with no other inputs, and do it a ''lot'' more simply in terms of sourcing and routing the cargo involved.
41	** In ''Tycoon 2'' and ''3'', you can build suspension bridges across really long distances such as the Great Lakes, or in the original game or ''3'', you can construct tunnels through the entire length of a mountain chain. Understandably, this is highly expensive, and your board of directors will scream bloody murder at the capital costs if your company isn't already making a decent profit.
42	* BeyondTheImpossible: In ''Tycoon 2'', pushing up the throttle on trains, especially if they're older engines and/or have poor reliability, can result in sufficiently ExplosiveOverclocking that their annual breakdown probability goes ''over 100%''. Statistics being what they are, most likely this simply means that the breakdown chance is ''so'' high that the locomotive is liable to give out more than once per in-game year.
43	* BlandNameProduct: A few trains in the third game appear with names changed from their real-life counterparts. The AMD 103 Genesis becomes "USA 103" and the [=SD90MAC=] becomes "NA-90D". The "unofficial" 1.06 patch includes the proper names for these 2 locomotives as part of its changes. And then some are entirely made up, like the [[CoolTrain MagLev]] in ''Railroad Tycoon 2''.
44	* BlessedWithSuck:
45	** In the original game, playing on "Basic Economy" means that any station with enough village and/or city squares in range will demand and pay for any and all cargoes delivered (instead of just those demanded by what's specifically within range). However, these are then the ''only'' places that will cause freight to be converted at local industries, and other stations will not. This isn't a problem on the North American maps, where all processing industries there tend to show up in range of a named city, but on the England and Europe maps, textile mills only ever show up in foothills areas, for whatever programming reason. If that means the mill is outside of a "demands all cargoes" station's range, it simply will not convert cotton or wool into textiles ''at all'', instead complicating supply chains despite the allegedly lower difficulty level.
46	** In ''Tycoon 2'', the "Basic" industrial and financial difficulty levels are this, oversimplifying game mechanics to the point that they will hinder your attempts to play.
47	*** On the Basic financial model, AI opponents cannot buy stock in your company, but you cannot buy into theirs either, putting mergers and takeovers off the table and forcing you to choke off their railroad instead. The Advanced financial model allows buying and selling competitors' stock (not just your own), and the Expert level in turn allows margin buying and short-selling for further CorruptCorporateExecutive shenanigans.
48	*** On the Basic industrial model, ''every'' industry in range of a station generates its respective product regardless of whether it is supplied with any required input resources, meaning that if you actually incorporate the primary industries (mines, farms, etc.) into your system, you can easily end up with way more cargo than your railroad can handle (and having untransported carloads steadily tanks local goodwill towards your company). The Advanced model actually requires cargoes to be delivered before industries will convert them, and the Expert model does the same with stricter demand parameters ''and'' allows you to buy industrial buildings to take a cut of their profits.
49	* BombThrowingAnarchists: ''Tycoon 2'' introduces the People Against Humanity (P.A.H.) in the ''Second Century'' expansion, who are protesting against the development of the dammed and drained Mediterranean as well as the construction of the Geocore Plant. [[spoiler:They eventually bomb the plant, with the resulting global warming causing a Class 1-2 ApocalypseHow, depending on how the player handles the aftermath.]]
50	* BoringButPractical:
51	** Want to climb that wall of mountains to get at the mines you see just out of your reach? The Shay ("Three-Truck" in ''Tycoon 2'' and "Two-Truck" in ''3'') has a horrible top speed (about 25 mph) but is, as in real-life, one of the best steep-grade haulers in the game (definitely the best among steam engines) and is rather cheap to boot.
52	** Industry investments. For a few thousand bucks, capping at a million for the ''really'' profitable industries, you get a cut of the profits if that industry supplies any trains. The more trains supplied, the more money made. Production facilities like mines and farms can earn you tens of thousands a year for an initial investment of only a few thousand to buy them, if you happen to be running trains to them over and over. If it's a production faciliy that needs to be supplied to produce something (and it therefore has no cap on how much it could produce every year, as long as you keep running supply shipments to it), you can make back your investment into it in just a few years.
53	** Station enhancements. They're invisible and you'll probably not think about them much, but many of them reduce the penalty for goods sitting at the station not being moved yet, which will only save you a few pennies at a time but it will add up over many years. Much more practical are the Saloon, Restaurants, and Hotels, which boost the profit gained from passenger routes; the latter two have a hefty price tag, but will more than make back the money invested into building them. Also useful are Telegraph/Telephone Poles, which reduce station turnaround time, because every second a train spends unloading and loading cargo is time it isn't spending transporting that cargo to make you money.
54	* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: The last three scenarios of the ''Second Century'' campaign see the player return to old steam locomotives despite being set in the 21st century.
55	* CaliforniaCollapse: The very last scenario of ''Railroad Tycoon 3'' is set in California after an earthquake sank parts of the state, creating a string of islands south of Santa Rosa.
56	* {{Cap}}: 30,000,000 money units in the original game.
57	* CaptainErsatz: ''Second Century'' in ''Tycoon 2'' includes a mission where you're contacted by a small Redmond software company called "[[{{UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows}} Macrosquish]]" who want a connection for their workers. Depending on your success in the mission, the ending message of congratulations will comment that their CEO gives you a few thousand shares as thanks, but the narration snarks "[[TemptingFate Like those will be worth anything …]]"
58	* CardSharp: The difficulty selection screen in the original game is highlighted by the number of aces a character has in their hand at the card table depicted. The Investor has one ace in his hand, the Financier has two in his suit, the Mogul has a [[SerialEscalation four-of-a-kind]] (plus one more card), and the Tycoon has [[BeyondTheImpossible thirteen]] in his sleeve. Similarly, in the same order, their [[SharpDressedMan suits get progressively sharper]] and their ManlyFacialHair gets bushier as the difficulty represented by the character increases.
59	* CattleBaron: The player can build (in the original game) or buy (in ''Tycoon 2'') local industries to make two sets of money. In ''Tycoon 3'', both are possible.
60	* CompetitiveBalance:
61	** In ''Tycoon 2'', this is achieved for all trains via their speed versus the cars they're hauling and their grade performance. Trains get exponentially slower the more cars you attach and the steeper the grade they struggle with, but attaching fewer cars means less profit. Thus any train can be a FragileSpeedster that moves quickly between stations but makes little profit for having only a couple cars, or a MightyGlacier with a full load and high profits but sluggish speed. Naturally if you plan your routes properly and choose trains suited to the route though, you can still make any train a LightningBruiser, moving between stations quickly and still being highly profitable.
62	** The same game also gives this regarding the three train types -- steam engines, diesel, and electric. In general, steam trains have higher fuel costs and need more station facilities to keep them running properly, diesel trains have a higher initial price tag and middling speeds, and electric trains are cheap and fast but need expensive electrified rails to run on.
63	* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Specifically MyRulesAreNotYourRules:
64	** In the original game, the AI can build track in ways the player cannot, like several bridges ''along'' the length of a river, or up to eight tracks coming out of a station in all directions (rather than the usual two).
65	** By the time it gets to ''Tycoon 2'', things are [[AvertedTrope much more even]], though the computer players still seem to be able to afford things that the human player cannot (like stock in the human player's company). And if you buy out an opponent's company, you're going to find yourself wondering how their steam engines managed to run properly for years when none of their stations have roundhouses or water towers, which are vital for steam engines to run smoothly for more than a year. Additionally, the AI is able to go into debt to buy things it doesn't actually have the money for at the time, whereas you either have the money or you don't.
66	** In ''3'', AI companies can do business in territories in which they don't have access rights, and will issue bonds despite having an appallingly low debt classification, postponing a liquidation for a long time.
67	** The purchasing power of AI rivals is more sturdy than possible. Their debt is magically reduced when they are put in a margin call situation and they will conjure money out of thin air.
68	* TheComputerIsALyingBastard: The scenario briefing to "Which Way to the Coast?" from ''Tycoon 2'' says that the player is required to generate a personal net worth of at least 10 million before 1958. However, this is not all, as it has to be done ''before the AI players''.
69	* CoolTrain: Take a wild guess. From ''Railroad Tycoon 2'', for instance:
70	** Many of the older classic steam engines, like the 4-4-0 American or the 2-8-0 Consolidation.
71	** Several of the late-game electric "bullet train" models, culminating in the futuristic [=MagLev=], rated as having "instant" acceleration and a top speed of ''280 miles per hour''.
72	* CopyProtection: The first game requires identifying a train from the manual, and an incorrect entry restricts you to two trains.
73	* CorruptCorporateExecutive: You! The player can engage in activities such as running trusts or insider trading, transport illegal goods to make some extra cash, and make shady deals with dubious figures to get a leg up on competitors.
74	** Try this in ''Tycoon 2'': use a majority share of a rival company to elect yourself chairman, sell off or destroy all their trains, railroad and industry investments, then re-elect yourself chairman of your original company and buy out the rival company for a bargain price (again using your majority share to ensure the buy-out goes through), since their stock price will have plummeted as a result of losing all their assets. You'll not only get your rival out of the way, but the profit other players would have made off a "normal" merger is reduced to pennies since at the time of the merger the stock price was so low.
75	** Alternatively, after selling all their assets, start selling your participation in the company while using the cash and bonds they might have to buy back stock and keep the price of the shares high. Resign, short-sell their stock and wait a month to "buy" it back when it hits the minimum. You can now merge with the hollow company left or wait until it dies.
76	** Here is a route if you're trying to improve your personal net worth. Acquire a 50+1% share of your main company, which gives you full ownership and neutralizes the company board of directors. Resign your chairmanship and found a new company which you also control the majority of shares (which doesn't need to have any tangible assets). Re-take the chairmanship of your original company, and then buy out the new company for maximum share price (if you want you can take out bonds to increase your first company's cash on hand to afford an even higher price per share). The result is all of your company's money that goes into the buyout slides into your own pocket. Your board of directors will be furious with you for treating the company like an ATM, but there is nothing they can do about it since you hold majority ownership. In real life, this would result in lawsuits and possibly jail time.
77	** A few maps have the objective of [[GottaKillThemAll being the only railroad in operation]], encouraging this sort of play to drive the competition into the ground as ruthlessly as possible.
78	** The last few missions of the Second Century campaign in ''Tycoon 2'' have you as this trope in the storyline. [[spoiler:Sure, [[CrapsackWorld the world is flooding, anarchy is rampant, and food is in short supply]]. That just means a cunning railroad baron can make a killing supplying the people in their time of greatest need! The narrator even says on one such mission, "In chaos lies profit".]]
79	** A pesky rival is buying too much into your company and is eating away your dividends? Wait until boom times, then issue stock several times to lower the price of the share. He'll find it a bargain below market price and will go into debt to seize the chance. Cancel the dividend and wait him out, as the economy can only go down. When the downward cycle hits, issue stock, sell some of your own and short-sell any other he may have to invoke a margin call. You can now buy back those shares in your company, but cheaper.
80	* CriticalExistenceFailure:
81	** Industries can and will change or just disappear at any time. It can seriously [[IncrediblyLamePun derail]] any intended industrial chain if the extracted material source or processing point just ceases to exist. This can and ''will'' happen at any level of the in-game economic climate.
82	** Trains that get into a crash or go off of a washed-out bridge in the original game, or that crash (not just temporarily break down) in ''Tycoon 2'' will immediately vanish, along with their cargoes, even if they were running perfectly fine beforehand. Averted in ''3'', where the wreckage stays for a while, giving the player the chance to copy the train.
83	* CrutchCharacter:
84	** In ''Tycoon 2'', the Iron Duke far and away has better stats than any other train to be available before it, and a few after it too. It'll be your go-to engine for several decades, but eventually its high purchase price, fuel costs, and terrible grade performance gradually make it outclassed by more modern engines.
85	** Also in ''Tycoon 2'', Thomas Crampton gives hefty bonuses to speed and acceleration for all steam engines, and despite this, he can be hired and employed for a virtual pittance, and he tends to show up a lot earlier than top-tier managers like [[InfinityPlusOneSword George Pullman]]. In fact, if you [[LuckBasedMission really luck out]] in the steam era, you can start a scenario with Crampton assigned to your new company right off the bat.
86	* CutscenePowerToTheMax: The opening title sequence for the original game had multiple early-era steam engines, such as the 0-4-0 Grasshopper and the 4-2-0 Norris, at the head of eight- or nine-car-long trains which they were utterly incapable of hauling in actual gameplay.
87	* DamageIsFire: When a train crashes, its locomotive bursts into fire. The train will remain on the map for a while before disappearing.
88	** ImmuneToFire: Try this in ''Tycoon 3'': pause the game and sever a single cell of track both before and after a crashed train, leaving it isolated on a stretch of track. Rebuild the track cells, then unpause. You now have a cool Ghost Rider-esque train that spurts flames but functions just like any other train in the game.
89	* DatedHistory: The first few games were made starting in TheNineties, so sometimes the geopolitical situation in the game doesn't necessarily reflect more recent history (unless a player-made map or mod takes it into account). For example, the Canadian Pacific Railway campaign scenario in ''Tycoon 2'' includes the ten Canadian provinces and two territories that existed when the game was made, though not their extents in the actual late 19th century[[note]]the scenario starts in 1868, at which point only Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec even existed at all, while the Northwest Territory wasn't transferred to Canada and Manitoba wasn't created until 1870, and British Columbia only joined Canada in 1871[[/note]] -- except today, {{UsefulNotes/Canada}} includes a third territory, Nunavut, which came into being in 1999 when it was split from the Northwest Territories, so the "present" map that ''Tycoon 2'' uses isn't accurate anymore.
90	* DecompositeCharacter: Certain industrial chains got desimplified between the original game and the sequels for greater realism.
91	** Lumber camps only generated wood in the original game to be processed into paper. Come the sequels, they generate both logs for conversion into lumber, ''and'' pulpwood to be made into paper.
92	** Originally, only coal was needed at a steel mill to produce steel; in later versions, this required both iron ore ''and'' coal.
93	** Petroleum initially is taken to refineries to produce manufactured goods; instead, it gets termed as oil in sequels and hauled to refineries to create diesel, which is then shipped to power plants and other destinations.
94	** The food processing plants of the original get split up in the sequels to involve bakeries to process grain into food, and canneries to process produce and steel (and later, aluminum) into food. Stockyards, meanwhile, are replaced with meatpacking plants to handle livestock.
95	* {{Determinator}}:
96	** Isolated industries and producers of undemanded raw materials can and will endure years and years operating at a loss, hoping someday transportation will come to their door and save them from being in the red.
97	** Some AI rivals keep founding new companies after you buy them out. This subsequent firms should be easy to encroach, as they don't start on even terms like in the beginning of the game and have to compete against a monopolistic adversary already dominating the market.
98	* DiagonalSpeedBoost: Not in the direct, literal sense, as trains moving diagonally on the map are subject to the same speed limits that they are in east-west and north-south directions. However:
99	** The square grid of the original ''Railroad Tycoon'', for instance, is exploitable in that track grades going from square to square diagonally are lower than taking the same height difference east-west or north-south as the distance is increased diagonally relative to horizontally or vertically. The lower grade of the track, in turn, allows the trains passing over them to proceed and accelerate faster than higher grades would.
100	** Also, in ''2'', due to the way how the grid is mapped, actual diagonal lines on the grid don't create crossings, meaning two trains can pass the same space in the same time (rather than one of them stopping), as technically, they aren't in the same plane.
101	* DiscOneNuke:
102	** Several maps include deals to get you early access to higher-tier engines than what would otherwise be available by default.
103	** In ''3'', buying a new and well placed industry or agricultural building will bring solid, constant profits in the struggling early years when setting up rail infrastructure is expensive, the haulage limited and the regional demand quickly met. In some scenarios, focusing on industries and not running trains at all brings much better returns than transporting stuff. This is a huge change from ''2'', where industrial incomes are marginal at best.
104	* DividedStatesOfAmerica:
105	** The flooded eastern United States scenario in ''Tycoon 2'' is somewhere between this and FallenStatesOfAmerica. Flooding is bad enough that the ''entire'' Mississippi valley is gone almost up to Chicago and Lake Michigan, along with most of the major cities of the eastern seaboard and the Gulf Coast (Florida and Louisiana, for instance, are [[KillItWithWater nothing but open ocean]]), the St. Lawrence River and Hudson River valleys are open straits leading up to a visibly enlarged Lake Ontario, and even Hudson Bay can be seen encroaching southwards along the north edge of the map. The governments of the USA and Canada have collapsed into several successor states, while everything from about Nebraska westwards to beyond the map's edge is just called "the Troubled Lands", implying that the western half of what used to be the USA has collapsed into an anarchic CrapsackWorld.
106	** ''Tycoon 3'''s "Alternate USA" scenario exists in a timeline wherein a single Revolutionary War never occurred and instead a number of independent nations emerged over time.
107	** One [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200629004435/http://hawkdawg.com/rrt/rrt3/map_arch/rt3_north-america.htm#AmericanCivilWar fan-made map]] allows the player to pick sides in the American Civil War, with the success of the chosen side being dependent on the player's performance in special shipping missions.
108	* DoWellButNotPerfect: In ''3'', if you oversupply an industry, chances are a new one will appear in the zone, which will act as unwanted competition if you owned the established facility.
109	* {{Eagleland}}:
110	** Probably the only reason why the campaign in ''Tycoon 2'' starts off with the Baltimore & Ohio Railway (B&O) on the USA's eastern seaboard, instead of starting in the actual birthplace of the steam locomotive (i.e. Great Britain).
111	** Also, there is the omnipresent bluegrass background music causing SoundtrackDissonance, depending on the geographical setting of the scenario.
112	* EarlyGameHell:
113	** Generally, ''Tycoon 2 and 3'' are hardest in the first 10 years or so of play: you have few stock holdings, your company probably only has enough money to lay down track for one route and run one or two trains on it, the starting managers (''Tycoon 2'' only) to help you out suck, and you'll probably have to take out bonds to help finance it all. As the game continues and you begin to rack up profits, however, you can expand your network, pay off your debts, buy up more stock, and so forth. The AIs usually go bankrupt if their first connection between two cities is not an optimal chain, but will usually do fine if they are able to connect a third.
114	** The original game is no slouch at this trope either. You start off with a hard cap of a million currency units to connect two cities (or more) and pay for the track, stations, engines and rolling stock to do anything. The starting locomotives in any scenario before about 1850 are downright ''terrible'' and take a near eternity to crawl anywhere with a car or two to start generating tiny bits of revenue for your company to get anywhere else. Meanwhile, three computer players start up their own firms within months and happily connect multiple cities and generate a steady profit with no problems at all (and no visible trains), and more than likely one or more (or possibly all) of the AI companies crop up in nearby locations that are likely to heavily impact the human player's ability to expand in intended directions.
115	* EasyLevelTrick: Choosing the "Stocks and Bonds" bonus in ''3'''s scenario "Orient Express" will allow you to quickly get up to 5 million in liquid cash thanks to repayable, low interest bonds, which can be invested wisely to bypass the EarlyGameHell problems presented in this scenario due to the initial low amount of cargo and the speed requirements with express cargo.
116	* ExpansionPack:
117	** The Gold and Platinum editions of ''Railroad Tycoon 2'' add the [[NintendoHard even harder]] "Second Century" campaign along with a whole bunch of new stand-alone scenario maps.
118	** ''Railroad Tycoon 3: Coast to Coast'' adds maps such as Ireland, Spain, Western Russia, Eastern China, and the whole continental USA.
119	* ExplosiveOverclocking: In ''Tycoon 2'', pushing a train's throttle setting above 85% (represented by a red zone on the throttle gauge) drastically increases the risk of a breakdown. At 100%, that risk is ''quadrupled''. New trains can handle 100% fine, but don't try to push it with any trains that are over a year or two old. Averted in the original ''Railroad Tycoon'' and in ''Tycoon 3'', where no throttles are present.
120	* ExponentialPotential: You need money (and/or a good credit rating) to make money. By midgame, growth typically snowballs, as profit begets even more profit.
121	* FakeDifficulty: Some missions in ''Tycoon 2's'' "Second Century" expansion and in ''3'' have the objective for the company to have an average lifetime speed of all trains of a particular speed. This is actually a ''massive'' restriction, forcing you to be more careful with which types of engine you buy, how many cars they haul at a time, and the layout of your train routes, to ensure your network meets the demand. This also means any particularly twisting routes or track over mountains is probably out of the question because they slow trains down too much, and you'll want to take it easy when running multiple trains on the same track so they don't get in each other's way. And all of this is done to achieve a very pointless and insignificant statistic you would never care about if the scenario didn't make you care.
122	* FanSequel: What ''Railroad Tycoon 2'' technically is. Phil Steinmeyer, the founder of [=PopTop=] Software, was a huge fan of the first game. Upon realising that it was the only huge success of Creator/MicroProse that wasn't going to get any sequel[[note]]especially after Creator/SidMeier and Brian Reynolds left and started their own company, Creator/FiraxisGames, in 1996[[/note]], Steinmeyer arranged to buy the copyrights for ''Railroad Tycoon'' and started working on the game with his own tiny company. The rest is the legend.
123	* FloodedFutureWorld: Both ''Second Century'' and ''Railroad Tycoon 3'' feature futuristic levels with land being lost to the flooding oceans. The former has three levels ("Hell and High Water", "Island of Hope" and "Remember America") with said premise, while the latter only has one ("Dutchlantis").
124	* FragileSpeedster:
125	** Some of the fastest steam engines, such as the No. 999, cannot climb very well. In addition, some similarly fast engines have alarmingly low reliability ratings.
126	** In many early missions in ''Tycoon 2'', the Iron Duke has speed a good ten miles or more faster than other trains of the time, making it your go-to engine for those missions ... unless you're facing a route with steep grade, because the Duke moves like a snail over anything steeper than a gentle incline.
127	** Passenger-oriented locomotives tend to fall into this in general, with high top speeds and acceleration, but drastic fall-offs in speed with heavy loads or when travelling on anything above a moderate grade. Plus, that high top speed tends to come with a [[ShockinglyExpensiveBill hefty fuel bill]].
128	* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: While its adherence to historical fact is laughable, occasionally the story rears its head to shake things up, such as wars affecting train route access or cargo available at the time they would be expected to start.
129	* GottaKillThemAll: In a non-lethal sense, a lot of scenarios in ''Tycoon 2'' and beyond have eliminating all other companies on the map as a victory condition. Depending on the quantity and quality of the [[AIRoulette AI opponent(s)]] as well as the [[LuckBasedMission starting geography]], this can be anywhere from [[CurbStompBattle trivially easy]] to [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu virtually impossible]].
130	* GuideDangIt: The concept of delayed pick-ups isn't explained anywhere in the game and barely hinted in the manual, while having massive impact on the game. Cargo remains in the station for specific amount of time, and then it "decays", while the station owner is penalized for poor shipping. Doesn't sound like much? Certain maps can end up unwinnable because of it, as the public goodwill tanks so hard that you will be unable to buy access rights -- after all, your railroad service is perceived as being terrible. If that wasn't enough, town and city growth is affected not only by how much you feed into them, but also how much of the local goods are shipped away. Thus delivering as much cargo as feasible will have a compound positive effect, since it means more and bigger towns, opening new markets and providing more passengers.
131	* HarderThanHard: In ''Railroad Tycoon 3'' the difficulty settings for the campaign are "Easy", "Normal" and "Hard". Scenarios have an additional one; "Expert". At this level, your trains are significantly less profitable, and your expenses for track laying, maintenance and fuel are increased from normal. Opposing A.I. companies have a noticeably easier time at this level.
132	* HeartwarmingOrphan: The kid from the intro of ''Railroad Tycoon 3''.
133	* HistoricalInJoke[=/=]AlternateHistory:
134	** Several historical scenarios have the player as a major driving force behind the events, for instance in the third game the [[UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany German Second Reich]] can be based on UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}}, Bavaria or Hannover as the core power, depending on the business choices. A DividedStatesOfAmerica scenario also exists. Or how about the victory screen of the "Cape to Cairo" scenario, which says "[[TemptingFate Have you considered colonizing Europe?]]" In a very literal sense, here, you can take history itself OffTheRails.
135	** The large cast in ''Tycoon 2'' can result in some amusing corporate showdowns, including people who were on the same side historically (like the Central Pacific Railway's "Big Four") ending up at each other's throats by gameplay necessity.
136	* IWantMyJetpack: The [=MagLev=] was said to come out in 2008. Well in 2008, the only such train in commercial service was the [[AwesomeButImpractical arguable white elephant]] known as [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train the Shanghai Maglev Train]]. Even more unfortunately, the German equivalent [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid Transrapid]] was dismantled in 2012. The closest we will have to a proper commercial long-distance high-speed Maglev is the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuo_Shinkansen Chuo Shinkansen]] in Japan, which was planned to open in 2027, but as of 2023 it seems it will miss said deadline.
137	* IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: Investor, Financier, Mogul and Tycoon in the original. Changed to a more flexible system for ''Railroad Tycoon 2'' and beyond.
138	* InCaseYouForgotWhoWroteIt: ''Sid Meier's'' Railroad Tycoon, and ''Sid Meier's'' Railroads.
139	* InfinityMinusOneSword:
140	** That [=MagLev=] mentioned above under AwesomeButImpractical? Enter the Brenner -- half as much to purchase, less to maintain, lower fuel cost, top speed with a full load of six cars just 20 [=MPH=] slower, significantly higher grade performance and better reliability. The drawback compared to the [=MagLev=] is slower acceleration. Okay, so your trains take a bit longer to get there and thus you make a bit less money off them, but you'll end up saving a lot more money than you lose since the Brenner's fuel cost is $70,000 a year compared to the [=MagLev's=] ''[[ShockinglyExpensiveBill $305,000]]''.
141	** ''Tycoon 2'''s [=GG1=]. Highest reliability in the game, great acceleration and speed, does well on slopes, and isn't too far out of line for cost compared to other trains of its time. However, up until you get this train, the other electric trains have not been anything special and so you'll probably have to spend a fair amount of money electrifying any track you'll want to run this train on.
142	* InNameOnly: The Poptop sequels and ''Railroads'' didn't have much of the freedom, scope or open-endedness of the original game (and ''Deluxe''). At least in ''Tycoon 2'', however, a user can go into the single-player maps using the LevelEditor and remove the objectives and triggers that force victory conditions and time limits on scenarios.
143	* JustTrainWrong: ''Railroads'' is full of locomotives missing their tenders.
144	* LevelEditor: They are both available in ''Tycoon 3'' and ''Tycoon 2''.
145	* LighterAndSofter: The apparent fourth installment, ''Sid Meier's Railroads'' departs from the serious business, hard-simulation approach and has a more toyish and simplified design. Appropriately, it lacks the ''Tycoon'' surname and breaks the NumberedSequels custom.
146	* LightningBruiser: The Big Boy. Also, the less iconic [=GG1, GP18, E111=] and Dash-9 also count.
147	* LoopholeAbuse:
148	** [[CaptainObvious Two railroads crossing each other will obviously create a crossing]]... but only if they cross each following the grid of the map. If you lay down your rails in what the game considers to be "diagonal" direction, [[https://forum.dune2k.com/uploads/monthly_2018_07/1056568362_Noconflictdiagonalcrossing.jpg.47b91fb4c9672a04fd312f59953a5b42.jpg and then cross it diagonally, too]], the game won't recognise the connection as a crossing, thus eliminating the standard problem of who goes first and which train has to stop.
149	** Unless it's a mission where taking over other companies is not allowed at all, there is no rule that states you have to stick with your starting company to win a scenario. In fact, in a lot of missions, it's easier to take control of a rival's company to run it as your own, since AI companies tend to start with open access to foreign territories while you typically need to buy the access rights. Start a company and purposefully run it just to pump up your share portfolio enough to buy a majority sharehold in another company, then elect yourself chairman and play normally with your new company while your original one falls into decline.[[note]]And for further exploitation, you can later buy up all the stock in your old company (it's doubtful anyone will want it, without an owner to run it it'll fall apart) and buy it out to give yourself a nice payday.[[/note]]
150	** Scenarios that want to force the player to start from a certain location do so by having a station already built there and disabling the capacity to build unconnected track. This can be circumvented by bulldozing the station and any existing track and then starting wherever you want, trading just a few dollars for a new, premium place.
151	** Scenarios that put a limit of how much rail cells you can lay down carefully take into account the existing stock of rails, how many new are used, and how many are gained down the line. What it doesn't take into account is the fact that each station built, by default, provides you with a cell of laid-down tracks. Sure, it costs fifty thousand currency units to build the smallest station and then another ten thousand to bulldoze it, but when you are a few cells short from making some super-important connection, this is much better than waiting for the next shipment of "real" rails.
152	** At least in the original game, the PlayerCharacter's companies are given a base amount of 1 million of currency (dollars or pounds) based on the region of the map. You would ''think'' that you need to fit all of your new railroad's infrastructure into that million ... except the only thing you can't create with negative cash is track and bridges, meaning that the entirety of that seed money can go into making a longer track before going into the red to actually place all the stations and purchase the trains to run on the network and generate revenue. Combined with taking out several bonds (another half a million currency each), this can allow you to connect several cities right off the bat and have a ''substantial'' leg up on the AI competition, which will only grow one city at a time. It will be painful as you pay the interest on and eventually chip away at the debt for a while, but in the long run it's worth it due to being able to raise revenue many times as fast as your competitors.
153	* LuckBasedMission:
154	** Most maps have randomly generated buildings, so it's in your interest to restart missions over and over to see what you could get. One such map, if you're lucky, might give you two populous cities, one with Coal and Iron Mines and the other with a Steel Mill, creating a very lucrative route for you ... or you might end up with a Bakery at one and a Produce Farm at the other. This is especially pronounced in ''3'', in scenarios designed with scarce resources. If the randomly generated industries are of the type that have to share their inputs with stuff demanded by houses, nothing new will be produced in the critical early game because the towns will have a greater pull until the zone is saturated.
155	** The same goes in ''Tycoon 2'' for the manager assigned to your company when you first form your railroad corporation. It could be someone like [[DiscOneNuke Thomas Crampton]], who is cheap to employ and gives sizable bonuses to steam engines' speed and all engines' acceleration. Or it could be [[EpicFail somebody who gives your railroad a +10% bonus to territorial goodwill]].
156	* MightyGlacier:
157	** The Three-Truck Shay in ''2'', as well as ''3'''s two-truck variant. It has awful top speed, likely being even slower alone than other trains with full cargo, but its grade performance and speed loss with cars is amazing, so while it is very slow it can easily power over hills and mountains ''while'' towing six cars of bauxite ore or gravel (the heaviest cargo types), when most other trains would slow to an absolute crawl.
158	** Freight-oriented locomotives tend to fall into this in general. They don't have the high top speeds that are crucial to success on passenger and mail routes, but they hold up better when hauling heavier loads, moving over higher grades, and remaining generally more reliable.
159	* NoFairCheating: When using a cheat code to win a scenario in ''3'', the dialog box that normally shows a cutscene and a scenario-specific congratulatory message will instead read "You win, cheater …"
160	* NPCBoomVillage: You don't directly affect cities and towns in any way other than delivering various resources to and from them via stations, in accordance with the pre-existing map buildings, including housing (for passengers and mail) and industries (for any freight). However, once the player gets particularly efficient at this, with minimal delays and the majority of needs covered, a given city or town will steadily expand on its own, offering additional businesses or growing additional (or new) housing. Mess up, however, and structures can and will disappear on their own[[note]]though usually only industries do this, and not housing, which is typically permanent unless you [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential bulldoze it]] for some reason[[/note]].
161	* NumberTwo: The managers introduced in ''Tycoon 2'', who act as subordinates to the PlayerCharacter and their AI opponents in running the day-to-day operations of their railroad companies. For varying signing bonuses and annual salaries, they impart a range of possible bonuses to train speed, acceleration, safety, security, revenue, track and station building costs, while occasionally incurring minor penalties (e.g. maintenance costs, overhead costs, lowered stock price, etc.) for balance.
162	* ObviousRulePatch: A mission in ''Tycoon 2'' has you develop a downtown rail system for Seattle, transporting only passengers of four classifications (depending on their destination). The rule patch is that the game treats these special cars as freight instead of passengers[[note]]a stealthy TakeThat, perhaps?[[/note]] for tracking profit, resulting in the managers that give massive profit boosts to passenger travel being useless, when otherwise they would make the mission [[GameBreaker much easier]].
163	* QuestToTheWest:
164	** The Western USA scenario of the original ''Railroad Tycoon'' grants a $1,000,000 bonus to the first company that completes a transcontinental railroad connecting the east and west sides of the map. Where this occurs within the map, or if it does at all, depends on the player. Also enforced by the same scenario, which grants a revenue bonus to east-west routes but a penalty for north-south routes, to encourage that exact sort of building.
165	** Several of the early campaign scenarios in ''Tycoon 2'' deal with this.
166	*** First, the player has to lead the New York Central in connecting New York City with Chicago.
167	*** Next, the player has to pick between connecting New Orleans and Los Angeles[[note]]the route of the Southern Pacific Railway[[/note]], St. Louis and Sacramento[[note]]as per Union Pacific and Central Pacific[[/note]], or [[NintendoHard St. Paul and Seattle]][[note]]the Northern Pacific[[/note]].
168	*** And after that, the player takes control of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as they connect Halifax, Nova Scotia to Vancouver, British Columbia.
169	** The campaign of the third game starts with the scenario "Go West", and requires the player to connect Boston and Buffalo. The next mission connects Cleveland and St. Louis, and the third one finally connects Salt Lake City with Sacramento and San Francisco before 1875.
170	* RailroadBaron: The player, of course, and some [[HistoricalDomainCharacter real life examples from history]] such as [[MagnificentBastard Cornelius Vanderbilt]], [[ManipulativeBastard Jay Gould]], [[ManipulativeBastard Jim Fisk]], as well as engineers like [[TheEngineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel]] and megalomaniac rail-building world leaders such as [[UsefulNotes/FascistItaly Benito Mussolini]].
171	* RealTimeWithPause: You can pause in single-player but not in multiplayer.
172	* RecycledSoundtrack: Most themes from ''[=RRT2=]'' return in the third game.
173	* RefiningResources: The purpose of the industries served by the railroads; converting raw materials into elaborated and more expensive goods, usually with an added value.
174	* RichesToRags: If you overleverage yourself in the stock market, getting caught with a margin call means you can likely kiss your net worth goodbye, and end up possibly several figures into the red for your troubles with no way to bounce back in a lifetime. You can stay the chairman of the company you run and collect a salary or even bonuses accordingly, but you have to continue to pay debt interest that will put you even further down the financial hole.
175	** Playing on the "Basic" or "Advanced" financial model in ''Tycoon 2'', or "Investor" in the original, helps avert this as you can't overextend yourself by buying on margin or short-selling stock, and there are also specific scenarios where rules bar players (human or AI) from engaging in financial shenanigans. However, it still doesn't stop [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard AI players from going into the red]] to afford stock in the human player's company even if they can't actually buy on margin or short-sell.
176	* RidiculouslyFastConstruction: Assuming one's company has the funds on hand, continent-spanning rail lines complete with stations and trains can be built virtually overnight, especially if the game is paused while doing so. Then again, in-game time does run in ''months'', so it's partially justified, and the game mechanics generally lead to expanding one's rail network in a gradual fashion, rather than building it all at once.
177	* SandboxMode: ''Tycoon 2'' has "sandbox mode" as one of its options; in sandbox mode, the player has unlimited funds, can access every train ever made (regardless of the in-game year), and can also edit terrain.
178	* SchmuckBait: A few for the A.I.:
179	** In the original game, the Europe scenario includes Great Britain, and computer-controlled companies ''can'' indeed decide to start there ... and then will be [[DidntThinkThisThrough restricted to Britain's six named cities]] for the entire playthrough, as the A.I.'s rails cannot cross open ocean (unlike rails laid by the human player) and therefore they cannot grow beyond England's shores and become a serious threat.
180	** The same original Europe scenario includes Copenhagen in Denmark, which is likewise isolated on its own small island at the north edge of the map and is impossible for the A.I. to grow beyond if it starts there.
181	** The China scenario in ''Tycoon 2'' and its expansions includes the island of Taiwan, with exactly two named (though decently-sized) cities on it. Guess [[EpicFail how far the A.I. player gets]] if they start their company there.
182	* ShoutOut: In the third game, the [[SpinningPaper newspaper]] includes occasional references to the island of ''VideoGame/{{Tropico}}''. Both games were created by [=PopTop=]. (The engine of ''[=RRT2=]'' would be later improved in Tropico and ''Tropico 2'')
183	* ShownTheirWork:
184	** The locomotives in the game tend to be recognizable as real-life engines with performance ratings similar to the real things, and historical scenarios tend to be at least somewhat grounded in reality.
185	** The benefits offered by [[NumberTwo managers]] line up pretty well with their real-world careers. For instance, George Pullman gives +25% passenger revenue and +20% car maintenance costs. Pullman is credited with the invention and widespread adoption of Pullman sleeper cars, passenger cars with fold-out beds so customers could sleep on overnight rides, and his "Pullman Porter" workers provided top quality service on trains. Presumably the addition of such luxury elements means your passenger fees are higher, and the sleeper cars are more expensive to maintain than normal passenger cars.
186	** Also, the tycoon characters, at least when under the control of the AI, are programmed to act somewhat like their real-life counterparts, focusing to different degrees on railway expansion, stock market manipulation and/or industry investments.
187	* SnowcloneTitle: Oh, Lord, yes. Every single game with "Tycoon" in its name can be traced back to this one.
188	* SoundtrackDissonance: Soft bluegrass pervades the game in all maps in ''Tycoon 2'', which is weird when you are not in the USA, or when it's AfterTheEnd.
189	* TheseusShipParadox: A train setting a speed record will become famous, get premium passenger revenues, a customizable name (usually in the default format "[Town/City Name] [Noun[[note]]Rocket, Cannonball, Meteor, Zephyr, etc.[[/note]]]") if it hasn't got one already, and a star or other emblem to single it out in the train list. This status persists even if you change the line or route, change or upgrade the locomotive, or replace the engine in time in the event of a crash or fatal breakdown.
190	* TimedMission: Scenarios in the second game and onwards usually span two or three decades in length. A sense of urgency is often kept until late in the game because it takes a lot of time to achieve the [[ExponentialPotential exponential growth]] that drives a Gold victory.
191	* TropeCodifier: For the private business sub-genre of the ConstructionAndManagementGames, compared to ''VideoGame/SimCity'' for the local-government sub-genre.
192	* UnexpectedGameplayChange: The "Second Century" campaign in ''Tycoon 2'' really changes things up. The first segment takes place during World War II, with you running military supplies in Britain during the Blitz (so you have limited supplies to build new track and have to deal with bombing runs destroying track and trains) and run supplies to Russian states during Operation Barbarossa to prevent the Germans from advancing too far. In the second segment, you have to build what's basically a light rail transit system in major cities. The third segment then takes place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture with an actual storyline that unfolds concerning [[spoiler:TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt]].
193	* UnitsNotToScale: The trains seem to be a mile tall when compared to the size of the map, and their travel time spans in-game months or even ''years''.
194	* UpdatedRerelease: ''Railroad Tycoon Deluxe'', released in 1993 with improved graphics, new sound effects, maps and several additions.
195	* UselessUsefulSpell: Using cabooses. On paper, according to ''Tycoon 2'', they decrease the chance for a breakdown by 25% and robbery by 75% -- except they also make your trains longer and heavier. However, the trains you want to decrease the chance of breaking down are those hauling freight, which are already heavily loaded to overloaded. And while, in theory, an "empty" return train can haul a caboose just to be sure, it's still [[TheLoad a load]] that's going to deteriorate and slow down the locomotive in question due to the car even being pulled in the first place. At the end of the day, cabooses are almost more of an aesthetic feature than a gameplay-affecting element when used, and you are generally always better off not using them at all and instead, for example, [[SimpleYetAwesome hiring a security-oriented manager]] like [[TheGunslinger Bat Masterson]] if you want to cut down on robberies, or some safety-boosting manager if you're fed up with breakdowns.
196	* VideoGame3DLeap: ''Railroad Tycoon 3'' features a new three-dimensional presentation. ''Tycoon 2'' does a good job (for its day) of faking it, though; see the page image above. Released in between, the Dreamcast version of ''II'' is fully 3D, and visually feels like ''Tycoon 2.5''.
197	* VideoGameCaringPotential:
198	** In general, fulfilling demands wherever they exist will lead to villages, towns and cities [[NPCBoomVillage growing over time]] and allowing you to supply them with even more things, and in turn providing more passengers and mail (and any freight from local industries) to deliver to other population centres. All of this means that your company and player thus make more revenue and profits as a result.
199	** Thorough and timely rail services also manifest in improved [[AllianceMeter company territorial goodwill]], which in turn makes the track and train rights to other territories cheaper to acquire.
200	* VideoGameCrueltyPotential:
201	** Starting in ''Tycoon 2'', you can bulldoze structures which obstruct the path of your intended rail alignments, which can even include housing or major industries, all so that your trains can run faster and straighter, and so that you and your company can make more money as a result.
202	** This is actually enforced, however, when you're playing a Metro scenario from the Gold and Platinum Edition expansions, since in that case, the structures generated are ''much'' denser than they are in a normal regional or continental map. CrueltyIsTheOnlyOption as the dense buildings ''have'' to be cut through in order not to force track to meander around them or dead-end all over the place -- and especially since the game engine, with its limitations, doesn't allow subway tunnels, so all rail lines must be on the surface.
203	* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: On the other hand, bulldozing structures on the map not only costs a [[ShockinglyExpensiveBill boatload of money]] to do, it also negatively impacts your revenue and thus profits, as it cuts down on payloads that your company can deliver from place to place. Demolishing ''housing'', which demands a whole host of commodities and both supplies and demands passengers and mail -- probably the two most lucrative cargoes in the game -- reaches TooDumbToLive territory, as it's downright idiotic and economically suicidal. Bulldozing things ''also'' appears to [[ZeroPercentApprovalRating tank your goodwill ratings]], which make acquiring track and train rights to new territories that much more expensive as a result.
204	* VideoGameTime: Naturally; it's highly unlikely real life train rides take months or years, even when cross-continental. Aversions exist in ''3'', which has an option in map design to reduce the timescale down to fractions of an hour instead, and several scenarios make use of it.
205	* VillainProtagonist:
206	** Several of the railroad chairpersons and managers in-game were either highly imperialist, deeply corrupt, or occasionally outright dictators in real life; of course, you can play as them however you choose.
207	** The flip side of many of the QuestToTheWest scenarios, particularly those set in UsefulNotes/NorthAmerica, is that the companies you control as the PlayerCharacter were active participants in the [[RapePillageAndBurn displacement and genocide]] of Indigenous peoples and the [[CorruptCorporateExecutive seizure of their lands and territories for sale]] to white settlers and businesses. Again, one can imagine AcceptableBreaksFromReality in a game wherein we now (hopefully) know better than to do that, but that is the [[InjunCountry historical context]] of that part of the world in that era.
208	* WeBuyAnything:
209	** On easier difficulty levels cities and towns will buy any goods. At higher levels commodities are only demanded if a local industry needs them, and small towns must expand into cities before they will buy passengers, mail, and other goods.
210	** You can no longer haul passengers and mail anywhere in ''3'', since they have specific destinations. However they will be accepted in intermediate stations, provided they can work as hubs in the system.
211	** Market saturation happens in ''3'', but only for processed goods. Commodities and intermediate resources will happily pile taller than a mountain as inputs for industries, which have infinite demand.
212	* WhiteMansBurden: The "Cape To Cairo" scenario (and its smaller-scale ''3'' counterpart "Rhodes Unfinished") invokes this by tasking the player to aid in the Colonization of Africa by building rails and running trains [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire between Cape Town and Cairo within 40 years of the start date (1890)]].
213	* WideOpenSandbox: Most scenarios to a somewhat limited extent, but taken literally in the Sandbox Modes of ''2'' and ''3''. Even by default, the North America scenario sets you down in the continent and gives you free rein to build the ultimate rail empire however you choose and however long it takes.

Context VideoGame / RailroadTycoon