Comment by legitster

There was a Railroad Tycoon 3, made mostly by the same team in the same office in Fenton. The changes to a more free-flowing tracks didn't necessarily make the game better, and were a headache for most of the production.

I was also told that there were attempts to make the economic simulation far more dynamic, simulating that the cargo could leave by other transport methods, as you'd find in a more serious economic simulation. That just made the game worse: The more efficient the market gets, the harder it is to find the profit, and the more likely that an old 'good' route suddenly stops making money, which is just annoying in a single player game.

It's a common problem with market-centric games: Good simulations make everything unfun, as most of the enjoyment comes from easily finding opportunities or getting away with misbehavior that would make real-life barons very difficult. This is IMO why you don't find many spiritual successors: Most steps forward would be steps back when it comes to making the game fun. So you'll find games focusing just on the tracks, but as puzzles (like the Train Valley Series). Optimizing routes trading items (spaceways), or outright market manipulation (Offworld Trading Company). Doing it all at once basically demands copying the game with newer graphics.

> RRT2 is my all time favorite game, and has yet to find a spiritual successor in my heart.

Aside from OpenTTD, the only games that come to mind are more modern in both their looks and how they play, but they might be worth a shot regardless.

Transport Fever (1 and 2) - the first game can be found for cheap, the second game has quite possibly the best UI of any game in the genre, plus you get trains, trucks, boats and planes, large and pretty maps with towns that develop into proper cities over time.

Mashinky - a more grid based game with trains, trucks and planes, as well as an interesting token based economy system, where you unlock new types of resources as you move along within the game world and therefore have to build out your network gradually, ensuring that everything works okay as it scales up.

Train World - a pretty recent game about trains, which has a larger scale than any of the other games I've played in the genre, might need a bit more polish but is pretty promising! It is focused purely on trains though, so is a bit more of a focused experience when it comes to actually laying out the network and setting up lines.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic - a slightly different genre (city builder), but it puts you in charge of both the economy aspect, as well as city building (and utilities like electricity, heating, water and sewage, which can be toggled on/off), production chains of various resources to use or export, transportation for citizens and a bunch more stuff. There's a lot of different mechanisms, but it doesn't feel horribly complex if you have some time to sink into it and it's quite lovely.

Honestly I also liked OpenTTD, but couldn't really get past the UI long term, it has that classic feel sure, but just wasn't quite as pleasant to use as in some of the other games.

Speaking of older games that never had a successor that quite managed to capture what they did well, there's also SimTower, where the main successors are Yoot Tower (which never really made it out of Japan) and Project Highrise, which just doesn't scratch the same itch.

one of my all time favourite games too. for me the best aspect was that I felt I was playing out the story of how railroads helped settle a continent, so its spiritual peers were civilisations and to a lesser extent simcity. the closest modern game I've found that captures that same sort of evolving story + open ended management aspect is stellaris.

Anno 1602 was my favorite game when I was young, I wonder what game type do you usually play? Official single player missons? Community custom missions or multiplayer?

> and has yet to find a spiritual successor in my heart

OpenTTD, Simutrans?

It is a widely different game and theme, but manor lords is very good and has some innovations that reminded me of RRT when it came out. If you like this kind of games I suggest you look at it.

I need to load this one up again and see how it plays. One of my complaints in most of the train and tycoon style games these days is they are too darn easy from a strategy perspective or they require casts amount of micro managing.

I'd suggest trying Railway Empire and it's sequel. It's the closest successor I've found.

it’s super easy though. i had a hard time getting into rrt games.