http://www.amazon.com/1830-Railroads-Ro ... 710&sr=8-4
I bought mine used. It should come with a hardcopy manual. The manual is 60+ pages in color on high quality stock. There is also a very useful fold out reference chart with all the key facts.
You'll need to use DOSBOX. Copy protection is done via keyword lookup in the manual. However, you only need to pass copy protection once and then it stores that the game is validated.
Seriously, this is the best strategy game ever made. It was a very popular board game before it was ported to the PC. It was ported by one of the key designers about five years after its introduction. Thus, strategies for the game were well understood when it was programmed. These days with games, the game has often gone gold before anyone really knows all the ways it can be played.
The manual will cover the mechanics, but not strategy. You will be amazed that a game with just a few basic rule constructs can lead to such complex strategy and variations.
High lights:
(1) There is only one random element in the game. Initial player seating position. All other variation is due to player action.
(2) I have played hundreds of games and rarely are they similar. And yet it only takes an hour.
(3) The game is incedibly well balanced. Meaning focus on any one thing a little too much and you pay elsewhere. Also, an advantage in one area will be counter-balanced and compensated somewhere else.
(4) The game is totaly transparent. No FOW. You see completely the actions of companies presidents and the trades of other investors.
I would have not had a clue to the many ways to play if not for finding about 9 strategy articles on the Net. They were mainly written for the board game, but they are applicable to the PC game. Here are some links to get you started.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1830_(board_game)
http://www.westpark-gamers.de/en/index. ... /1830.html
I have only be playing one variant with four players (three AI). But you can vary quite a few options which alter the game quite a bit. I haven't even tried them. There are four difficulty levels. They basically affect three things from what I can see:
(1) In the initial auctions how aggressively the AI bids against. Less aggressive bidding means to get an early financial bonus in the game.
(2) The AI uses more sophisticated strategies at each level. So, at higher levels. The AI will dump companies on your or seize companies from you. It will also sell and churn your stock to push share prices down ...
(3) It's like a chess program. At the higher levels, turn computations run longer. So, the AI must be running through deeper decision trees for selecting moves.
Last comment: The game is not about building financial empires and successful companies. It is about using companies as tools (a means to an end) to develop personal wealth either through operating them and/or buying/selling stock and reaping gains from payment of dividends or appreciation of stock certificates. So, it is perfectly valid to totally pillage a company's treasury to put money in your pocket and then unload the worthless shell on some unwary investor.
I hope that helps. I only have one game left installed on this laptop. That is 1830, my trapped on a desert island game.
