Introduction to Mayfair's ``Empire Builder'' games

[This article is adapted from a posting I put up on rec.games.board a few years back.]

My opponents and I have often discussed why the Mayfair "crayon" train games, such as Empire Builder, hold such fascination after hundreds and hundreds of games. Here are the things that fascinate me:

• The startup problem. There are virtually no cards that will get you a profit where you have no line, so it is vital to build a line that services multiple contracts. But make it too special-purpose and you will handicap yourself for the rest of the game.
• The building problem. The shortest route and the cheapest route are often very different. How exactly do you trade off time and money? Some games you could have won if you had just a few more movement points. Other games you fall a buck or two short. When do you build through a city, and not around it, if you aren't currently holding a contract for it? When is it justified to build a shortcut? All these questions depend intimately on the contract mix, the victory conditions, and how close you are to winning.
• The routing problem. How do you order your pickups and deliveries so as to maximize the cash flow? We prefer the optional two-train rule, where each player starts with one freight and one fast freight, and four cards. (Because bad starts are so devastating, I even have a house rule that you are dealt six cards initially but must discard two immediately before the first build, continuing the game with four.) Having two trains makes the routing problem even nastier.
• The upgrade problem. The $20 upgrade fee is steep, and many is the time that I have done it a bit too early and later gotten stuck for cash flow. But adding 1/3 to your movement allowance is a strong advantage. In the two-train game, we seldom see a super freight, but I'd say that if one player upgrades the freight to a fast freight significantly sooner than the other, it's a good bet that that player is on the way to a win.
• The hand management problem. Which choice do you use on each card? Those contracts for 40 million and up are so attractive, but often you can make more per movement point paying one under 10. Also, once you have committed to one choice, even to the point of building some line, when do you change your mind? How bad do your cards have to get before you waste a whole turn drawing a new hand? It doesn't take long to learn to play well with good cards. The true test of a good player is what you do when you have one or two very attractive contracts but the rest is useless. This is exacerbated by the two-train game, because you don't want to have one of your trains sitting idle.

I've been playing this system since Empire Builder came out in the early 80s; they're my favorite boardgames. (I have played only two-player games.) Here is my personal ranking of the boards, from best to worst:

• Eurorails
• India Rails
• Empire Builder (5th ed.)
• Australian Rails
• Empire Builder (4th ed.)
• British Rails
• Nippon Rails

The reason I rate Nippon Rails and British Rails lower is that they both have certain strategic corridors, possession of which makes life difficult for the other player. In NR, it's the Fukuoka-Hiroshima corridor. In BR, it is usually vital to secure the Manchester-Lancaster corridor north to the cheap terrain near Carlisle. In either game, the second build costs a lot more and is necessary to fulfill the victory conditions. Even with these problems, though, I still play these games and find them fun and fascinating, and grabbing the critical corridor by no means guarantees a win.

I rate Eurorails and India Rails at the top because they do not have the "corridor" syndrome. One game you'll stomp rump in Eurorails with a Ruhr-Zurich-Milano backbone, another game you'll win with Madrid-Berlin or London-Wien. (Scandinavia seems pretty peripheral, though, and Iberia is a loss unless you have huge combinations from there.)

The other games in the series seem to lead to more lopsided results. I think this is because there are more big contracts, and the siren call of those big cards can put you way over---or leave you way short when the other player goes over.

Strategy

In Australian Rails, how do you handle the connection of the major cities of the southeast? Sometimes a "star" topology seems to work, where you put a hub somewhere around Broken Hill or Bourke or even Charleville and radiate spokes to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne from there. But I think a "ring" topology works better, with one line from the west going to Wagga Wagga-Sydney-Brisbane-Townsville.

In general I prefer a star topography. For example, in the old EB, I almost always start with the same four of the six major cities (LA, KC, Chicago, and NYC), but the choice of Seattle or Atlanta as the fifth major depends on the cards on hand. I prefer a line shaped like ">-<". I build a single backbone from Salt Lake to about St. Louis, then connect LA and NYC, then branch to either the northwest or Atlanta---or both if I have the cards for it. Building twice across the Great Plains is a cost I can seldom amortize, and given the prevalence of big contracts to California, I dislike the Canadian Pacific or Canadian National routes. Similarly, the OKC-Santa Fe-Phoenix route, although cheaper than the Denver route, is just too far from too many contracts for me.

I realize that initial builds are dictated by the cards, but the question is, what is best in the long run for the typical card mix?

Here are some general principles I use in play.

• Stay flexible. Whenever possible, build your backbones in more central locations and use a star topography.
• Optimize total dollars per turn. One opponent of mine did some statistical analysis of a pile of score sheets and estimated the winner typically produced about 5 million per train per turn in BR.
• Be conservative in your startup, picking cards that combine well even if they are near the edge of the map, but preferring more centrally located combinations unless the peripheral option generates significantly more cash flow. Still, though, prefer a poor payer that builds a strong backbone to a lengthy, fragile, staged plan that leads to a big payer.
• Know the contract mix. I have worked up play aids cross-referencing all the contracts, sorted by load, payoff, and destination. This really helps you decide whether to build through a city or not, and what speculative loads to pick up. To be fair, of course, these must be available to all players.
• Don't bunch up your trains. If you're about to pay a contract on the east coast with one train, it's nice if the other train is somewhere in the west, so you can pick up that sugar double to Detroit and Chicago.
• Keep your trains loaded. The optimum situation is where each train is carrying two paying loads all the time. Not so good to deadhead a train all the way across the US and then bring one load back, even if it's a huge payoff. It might be better to be working on three poor loads than one big one.
• Don't be afraid to discard your whole hand. If you are looking at a long period of substandard revenue, look at the position of your trains, the loads they are carrying, the configuration of your line, and your cash on hand. If the trains are not bunched up near one end of the line, and they are carrying some loads that are potentially valuable in the region where they're sitting, and you have enough cash to cover short branchline builds if they are necessary, you should probably discard.

As for Empire Builder, how do Canadians feel about its design? My local opponents and I all agree that, except perhaps for the corridor through Toronto and the occasional Vancouver branch line, building to Canada in this game is seldom a win.

Last updated: 1999/09/06 07:45:30
URL: http://www.nmt.edu/~shipman/games/mayfair.html