Tips russianrailroads

In Russian Railroads it is really important to have a plan and whilst you need to adapt that plan you need to play in a way that best facilities it.

Broadly speaking there are a few strategies that score more than others because they lean into the bonuses that the tracks can provide. Doing a little of this and a little of that, a so called "balanced" strategy is usually wrong.

A good general rule is that you should almost always try to get at least one of the ? tokens with end game scoring points and an ability as this will get you 20+ points and an ability usually worth even more. If you can get it early you can get the one that will suit your plan best. In fact some of these are fairly critical to doing a particular strategy and without it you are best doing something else.

In base game focusing almost entirely on the top track is very powerful. You need to balance out all different types of track for this and some 2* tiles can be pretty useful later on. You really need to get the black track all the way along to unlock the most valuable track type and utilize the bonus moves. The black bonus worker and the 9 train are both helpful for this strategy. It's also good to have engineers which grant track movement as if 2-3 players go for this strategy it can get pretty clogged up. You sometimes have time to pick up a ? on the 2nd track or industry but really you need to focus on the top track for it to get enough score in time to pay off for the slowish start.

Heavy industry - sometimes you will aim to just get 1 industry marker all the way across and do a few other things to score points (such as the Kiev track). Far too often, people bring in a 2nd industry marker and end up not really using them both that well. If you can go heavy industry with great industry bonuses, have engineers giving industry moves and have industry actions to yourself, this can be very powerful.

Kiev track - good mixed in with other strategies, but if you can get the 9 train and max the track then this is a lot of early round-for-round points and the Kiev medal is a good boost to that. Doesn't have the same last round type scoring as can be earned from the St. Pete track but much less action heavy.

In terms of the actions - Some are strictly better e.g. 2 coins is strictly better than 2 temporary workers. Equally, it's better to move 2 black spaces for a worker than one. Beyond that, priorities revolve around where different player strategies are competing. So often the hierarchy will look like:

Tier 1 - Coins & Engineer - Note that it is often incorrect to take an engineer. An engineer costs 1 coin just to get it and whilst that can be good for endgame points, if you don't get those points and cannot use the action too much then it's just a wasted coin. So engineers are good but not quite as good as people often think. If 3 players are fighting hard over getting the engineer bonuses for end of game and none of the engineers are that great for you it can be better to take the efficient actions or the unique actions ahead of players fighting for coins, turn order and engineers. Still coins and engineers are often the "best" action spaces

Tier 1.5 turn order track - If there is a lot of battle for a future engineer, engineer action space etc. then this can come before the efficient actions - This can drop much lower - particularly if you need the more efficient actions to trigger a round based scoring. But it is still valuable. It is also really valuable if there is a lot of competition for unique action spaces or to make sure you are the player who gets first choice of ? abilities

Tier 2 - "efficient" actions - e.g. 2 black for 1, temporary workers - the comparative value here just depends on what will trigger bonuses or get first dibs at ? abilities etc. The single train/industry action should probably be classed here as other industry actions cost more workers and this is often the most fought over unique action at key points in the game. Usually not in the first turn though.

Tier 3 - unique actions - e.g. brown tracks, industry, trains - These can hop up to tier 1 or better depending on the situation. If you have no competition for the action though then you can often leave these till later in the round. Putting down the first 4 train is often tier 1

Trains/Industry is pretty situational - if you are doing an industry strategy then trains 2 & 3 are great for the industry track but otherwise they are only mildly useful e.g. to unlock the extra worker on the top track etc. If you have the industry track to yourself then it's very good. For instance, in round 1 a single industry move is worth 12 points even if you never use it again.