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one-way streets
avenues with tram tracks in the center.
tunnels for pedestrians. They are in the way for the trams at intersections.
traffic lights that shift between green and red.
bridge building tool. + ability to build passenger only walk way bridges.
all bridges need not support pillars all the way underneath. And if two much is in the way underneath the bridge you build a susoension bridge. We need more bridge types in train fewer.
Also it seems pop is not very interested in moving sideways in the city. A very big part of all the motion in the city gravitates towards the central station where most connections to most other destionations are. So most motion is allready in a star shaped pattern going in and out from a central point in the town.
If you have several train stations, short ones. Then maybe they can attract and lure pop from jamming in the center. And if that trick works, then maybe one of can figure out the optimum spacing, how many cityblocks between each station.
I had am idea, if you going to get a mega city. You know largest passenger station is 5 tracks,
single – double – double – station entrance or I type like this
T – TT – TT- E
If you dont build you station against a road as guide. you rotate with n / m and the station rotates in snaps. This allows you to place two 5 track stations back to back lik so
E – TT – TT – T|T – TT – TT – E
you can then use the left most single track near the entrance to do a circular loop to the left containing say 3 short 2 track passenger stations along the loop. trains travel in both directions in these loops and since the loops is so tight need not be fast, they need to be fuel efficient cheap and maintenance free and might only be pullin 1 or two cars.
And the right most single track does a loop to the right. All other tracks are the main line going out of the city.
If you can sink these stations down into the ground the loop tracks could actually be a tunneled railroad / simulated subway. Cause if it is tunneled then TF can build houses on the ground above the tracks. Making the city even more compact. The advantage with railway loops is the more people in the city you just hook up more cars to the loco.
So we have this
E – TT – TT – T|T – TT – TT – E
two tracks are loop tracks so it becomes
E – LT – TT – T|T – TT – TL – E
you need to make new double tracks with the remaining tracks.
– – – TT – TT -|- TT – TT – – –
And so this allows 4 double track lines to pass through the city.
You then need to tunnel under the two stations in two places and have trams circulating under the stations between the two entrances.
The railway loop tracks then server the central station(s) with passengers who only need to jump off the loop train walk on the platform and jump on the long distance train.
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I been reading your horror stories about 4000 pop cities and total gridlock. So I beeen thinking about nothing else then how to avoid that.
I have a succesful game now with TGV trains and lots of trams in the cities. And almost no cars. Seems 95% of the population uses public transportation. May city is only 1100. But I can already see the trams will not work they are already too many and they are full.
So for a 4000 pop city rail is probably the only way. I lived in Stockholm for 15 years and they have little room to expand the railway, rail comes in from 4 directions, 2 are national mainlines the other regional. But as you approach , on the way in there are many stations on the way in to thie central hub. And the railline is in a star shape and on each spoke the rail line is shared between short distance shuttle trains, intercity trains, and long distance trains.
To have so many different line types on the same spoke, then if you do it like that in this game all stations along the spoke probably all need to be 5 track stations. And they have a large footprint.
Doing a star shape sounds simpler then tunelled loop tracks. I already tried tunneled loop track but dicovered you my not sink a train track or station below the water level. If you do the game start to build railway bridges when you try lay a track.
And this was because my city was beside a river. So the only chance was to raise all ground around me, and then sink the loop track stations into the raised ground. I think that operation costed 160 – 200 million. So it is impractical near water.
star shape is probably better.
So I will start all over again. If will try a medium map since it seems my puter can handle the load. And I will reroll and reroll till I get one where I can test TGVs top speed,
Or how about that wonderful german yellow electric loco capable of 200 km/h pulling “standard passenger car version 1” that has a max speed of 140 kmh. ou have to wait several years before you get the “standards passenger car version 2” then you can do 200 km/h.
Also I am very dissapointed at the TGV.
It would be better to if I could just keep buying those german electric locos. And then just adjust how many cars I want to exactly match the demand.
After some years pass you can still buy that car version 2 capable of 200 km/h but the only electric locos you can buy to pull that car only 125 km/h – 145 km/h. Your only option is the TGV at the end. And I don’t like that it possibly never can reach 300 km/h unless you play on a large map and have an absolutely straight track and bypass cities. If you go city to city TGV may top 215 km/h but then the driver slam the breakes as he near next city.
I found that TGV ( short ) seem to have more hp / ton then the other TGVs, if the track turns just a little they hardly get up to 160 or so. Also the TGVs must be filled to last seat or they loose money.
I have a successful map now with trams in the cities and only TGVs and it is possible to ewarn money but I been studying how they perform and on my current map I have several track straight out from the station and then further out a nice bend slowly towards next city. TGV don’t like that. You make a turn to the next city immediately where TGV is accelerating or breaking anyway.
You will have to pay to demolish ANYTHING in your way. You ease the curve more and more where TGV has higher speed but very soon you need to be pointing straight at the next city and the track better be traight. Tunnels, bridges, whatver it takes.
The problem is , as I understand it, there are old tracks where the rails are nailed to wood. And then there are modern tracks where the wood has been replaced with concrete. But that just makes it a modern more high quality rail. A real high speed track is banked in the curves. Therefore the train can continue at a much higher speed right through the curve.
And that what I thought TF mean by high speed track, now I just think they mean a high quality track. Cause if the high speed track really was one then all trains could drive faster. And then TGV could keep the pedal to the metal.
The city grows towards the available inter city stations you put down. They want to live near their connection. If you make a road tunnel under the station which I always do I make say 5 or 6 tunnels under the station and its tracks they will start building on the other side of the station too.
The game willl not make roads over rail. So you can just put down a single rail to stop the AI from building in that direction.
(((( I don’t use the games random seed , I call each game something so I remember the seed, then I give the maps save files the same file name. I just make up a name before I start playing.
“Washington”, “Paris”, “IronValley” Sweden” and then I look at the map and see if it is anything good, if not I make up another name “Berlin” “Germany”, oooh Germany looks like a good map … then the save files are called Germany too. Better then to have a map called “4fGh52 öIOHF<s-hklblabla ebola ebola” ))))
Maybe one can use those small rail busses, get high frequency, and teach them to use the rail and not the road.
When the time is right maybe one can sell all those rail busses and buy a big train when the poplation fot the point of trains. Maybe I could change the fare, or offer free newspapers in the morning.
Long distance trains should need a dining car with coffee, otherwise the travelers get grumpy.
I played 30 hours straight now, but I am ready to do it again, but a but different, scrap the trams buy rail busses. I will have to pepper the rail line with signals to create a million tiny tiny blocks to squeeze them all in , so they dont say waiting for free path.
then you remove them when you start running big trains that you want propers spacing on.
I give this game 5 more tries and then I will try a medium map. I use all the tricks I figured, and all tricks you have written on the forum … except trams. I think they are a trap that will result in total gridlock.
Also remember that you can tunnel under the old city so you can warp from one end of the city to the other. beep beep! 5 more tries. Got to get the trains working, at the same time the entore map looks realistic and the AI have multiple choices.
Have you noticed another weird thing in the end game you get a 34 ton modern truck, it can load more then a railway car? huh?
The first paragraph, I mean if you build the road network between cities then you are toast it seems. Never give that AI a choice. But I and I guess you want to create something realistic, and so you build big roads across contryside that connects the cities.
If you don’t give the AI any choice then it is easy.
It seems we are not supposed to start rail lines immediately and the population go Yipee and start riding trains just so I can make profit.
You have to build up the towns to create demand. When you start nothing much happens at the fitst town you are working on. It doesn’t grow much, And you start hauling goods to feed the town, But it still doesn’t grow much. Two things make the citizens build new big houses in a frenzy:
1) demolishing houses and building the biggest streets available, When you unpause after spending 10 million in begining or 30 million in midgame on a town, kaboom here comes the multi story buildings, These are good cause the town now demand more goods. You try find avenues that you can upgrade, but if you want and effiient road network only the biggest roads all with buss lanes for your vehicles to use. So you want to do this first before you
2) connecting with another city now they start building houses. And if you haven already made the skelleton road networj it will now cost 30 million instead of 10 to correct the town.
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After that it is just as you people say, you earn money by hauling goods with trucks, and you haul passengers between cities using trams. If you have done 1) then 2) the city will grow fast almost even if it does not have a supply of goods. It just magically grows. So soon you can not add more trams on the lines cause the streets are packed with them,
Warning about using the games tram stations, when you get the longest tram called “Cobra” at the end of the game they can get entangled and cause a grid lock. So I have a tip for you, I build my own tram stations, using medium city road, one lane in each direction, and it is a buss lane so no cars can enter my home made tram station.
You have big road. And at two points you have a crossing so the trams can get off the road turning in on another big road Betwern these two big roads you pack medium roads as tight as you can so that the game can not put any buildings there. I usually make this tram station where the train station is going to be. When they get off the train they will see a myriad of roads and tons of tram stops. You can have any number of tram and buss lines coming in you just build more roads. And it is fun the see the AI running around like ants jumping from tram line to tram line , trams to bus etc.
If you want to be artistic you can put the medium roads on the diagonal as it is done here and there IRL.
The goal I had was to lure the AI into building the biggest houses veeery close to the train station. Which the AI did. So then I add my first train a diesel, and a few carriages. I say it is darn difficult to attract travelers, even if I beat the trams in speed.
IRL there is a time table. People know when the train comes. You can relax watch TV or do something useful. Then you get to train station when the train comes. Who cares if the is a tram every 20 minutes with a travel time of 60 minutes if there is a train coming every 40 minutes with a traveltime if 30 minutes.
I think it is hard to make the passengers like the train. Or stop liking trams and start shoocing train. I remember when I just got the game I just slamed down a railway between a couple of cities and hoppla they started to ride them when there were not other choice. And after a couple of minutes a full game speed I had 9 trains between 5 cities.
It seems that if they get used to taking the tram it takes forever for them to change if at all.
Give them a train and nothing else and hopefully they stick with trains until end game.
I also have another wish, that I could buy land without building anything on it. I dont like AI to build houses that costs millions to tear down just because you could not stop them.
I put some pieces if track there instead to try control the automatic building.
I do not mix any lines anymore. It can not be done. It might work for awhile then you wish you had built separate lines to begind with when you are sitting there teáring down what you build and killing lines and rebuild.
Efterthing needs to be thought through and you need the end game in sight even as you build your first little cargo route.
yes I guess we all seen how railways are done.
We see this new game called TrainFewer. And we go “Yeaah!” and buys it.
I am going to build a fantastic railway. This game looks much better the Sid Miers Railroads!
You start to build and the game go error error error …… and every player becomes confused about … well … everything about the game. You can not recreate what you seen in real life. So you yet again have to develop absurd solutions that does not look like the real thing.
So that is I guess what most of us are doing. “We are wrestling with this obstinate game”.
What I am worried about is if the devs will take the money and run! Some small fixes then develop trainfewer 2 and charge us money on more time.
I think it be cool if we could build marshalling yards. Loco comes in with all you train cars and decouple.
A small loco has prepared a a set of cars it should take with it back. So you big expensive enginees only haul long distance. And you small locos gather the wagons from the area around that city.
In this game though the cities are so tightly placed that when you design you line you only have room to add a few switches and a turn and then it is already the approach to next city. So this is just one wish I have. But there be no room to have a lot of indrustry tracks and sidings.
I guess that is why all the factories are out in mother nature. 😀 To give us some room.
