Original Empire Builder game, the Eastern USA, cards.
Empire Builder is a tabletop board game. In it, you build a railroad empire across North America, moving loads back and forth for payouts, upgrading the speed and capacity of your trains. You play until the winning conditions are met — for the original version (and most others) $250 million and a six of the seven major cities connected.What makes this game different is that the board is covered with dots in a hexagon pattern. You use special crayons included with the game to draw your rail network which you move your game tokens on. Each player begins with a certain amount of money and three "demand" cards with loads and destinations. Starting from any major city, it costs $1 million to build to a milepost - more if it's to mountains or another city.
You move your token a set number of mileposts each turn. You may run on another player's track by giving them $4 million per turn you are using it.
Even though the blank game map is the same every game, you never know what your demand cards will be from game to game, so every single rail network you make ends up different from the previous game. This adds a huge amount of Replay Value, even while the game mechanics remain exactly the same.
There are many different boards and versions available:
- 1982: Empire Builder (North America)
- Originally this was just Canada and the USA, later editions included Mexico.
- 1984: British Rails (United Kingdom)
- 1990: Eurorails (Europe)
- 1994: Iron Dragon (A generic fantasy world made up for the game.)
- This version has some specific variations, but you don't actually have to use any of them to play the game.
- 1994: Australian Rails (Australia)
- 1998: Nippon Rails (Japan)
- 1998: India Rails (India)
- 2003: Lunar Rails (The Moon)
- 2004: Russian Rails (Russia)
- 2007: China Rails (China)
- 2009: Martian Rails (Mars)
- 2012: Empire Express (The Northeast of the United States)
- This came with beginner-friendly rules.
Collectively these are called "Crayon Rail" games.
The publisher, Mayfair, was bought by Asmodee in 2018 and most of these games are off the market. You can still find them used, and some on Etsy have taken advantage of the lack of availability to print and sell "replacement sets".
There is a video game version called Empire Builder Pronto.
Empire Builder and games in the series provide examples of:
- Artistic License – Geography: Can't be avoided here and there.
- In Lunar Rails, the moon isn't really "round", it's a disc.
- Some rivers and borders aren't quite right.
- Boring, but Practical: Just building to the cities you need loads from and deliver to. There are no bonus points for connecting to extra cities or making cool patterns on the map.
- Chokepoint Geography: The mountains are often laid out with one clear-ish path through them. There's nothing stopping you from going straight THROUGH the mountains, but it costs a lot more.
- In Nippon Rails You see exactly how thin Japan can be.
- Cool Train: Lunar Rails and Martian Rails have trains... IN SPACE! Iron Dragon's backstory is that the trains are powered by dragons.
- Deadly Dust Storm: Event cards can cause these in the deserts in Australia Rails and Iron Dragon.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If something takes your train out, you simply lose a turn and your current load.
- Equipment Upgrade: For a fee in place of all or part of your building turn, you can upgrade your train to go faster and/or carry an extra load.
- Fantasy World Map: Iron Dragon takes place in the fictional world of Darwinia. Your train is indeed a true "Iron Dragon."
- First-Player Advantage Mitigation: Most games insist on "equal turns", meaning that if the first player has reached the goal, every player gets one more shot to try to match or exceed that.
- Giant Wall of Watery Doom: Implied with river flood cards. Every bridge crossing said rivers are washed out, no exceptions.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: In Lunar Rails, Tycho crater offers a load called "Alien Artifacts" which other towns need for... whatever.
- Reference Overdosed: Martian Rails borrows liberally from many works of Mars fiction.
- Oddly Small Organization: You build an entire train network - to run one train. This is for simplicity, as more than one would raise complexity. There game variations in the back of the rulebook if you want to try running more than one train.
- Replay Value: Very high. Every new game you play you will get different demands for different loads, leading you to build a different railroad than the last time.
- Solar Flare Disaster: In Lunar Rails the moon can get hit by solar flares or gamma rays, forcing your train to seek shelter.
- Standard Fantasy Races: In Iron Dragon, you hire a foreman which offers a benefit based on their race. Elves build cheaper through forest, Dwarves build cheaper through mountains, etc.
- Strategy Game: The main point of the game is figuring out how to pick up and deliver loads profitably and spend the least amount on track. You find yourself looking at your rail network and debating spending a little extra money building a connecting line that will save you some movement points per turn.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: Many of the games are pretty much the same, but some introduce new things.
- Eurorails: "Alpine" mileposts cost 5 million to build through, AND ferry routes to England.
- Iron Dragon: Ships, foremen, magic cities...
- Martian and Lunar rails have Wrap Around maps.
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: The Great Lakes in the North America map have dots which technically are close enough to build across to, but the rules specifically forbid this as it is unlikely in reality to build a bridge across Lake Erie. There's actually a page in the rules pointing out where you can and can't build there.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: If a player is very low on cash, a natural disaster like a flood can destroy enough of their railroad that they can't afford to repair it and are cutoff from any city where they could make more money. As a last resort they discard their contract cards and draw a new set of contract cards hoping to get one that will get them the money to proceed. However, this increases the chance that another disaster card will be drawn which only makes things worse. They have legal actions in the game but those actions get them nowhere. The other players now have to deal with the possibility of a natural disaster card every other round instead of every five to six rounds. Also, having one player sit around for another hour or two locked in an unwinnable situation is not a pleasant experience for anyone. Since lending other players money is not allowed, the others players will find a way to pay the stuck player rent money for using their railroad just to get them back into the game.
- The Unpronounceable: As with Ticket to Ride, some foreign cities will be hard to pronounce. This really gets bad in Iron Dragon.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: A good grasp of geography helps in this game, but this game offers an excellent fun way to pick up the skill, too.
- Just like bad spellers in scrabble, people bad with geography may feel intimidated by this game early on.
- Wrap Around: Lunar Rails and Martian Rails both feature an entire planet, letting you connect opposite sides.
