Naturelich Games

Discussing game features
The computer game graphics are much better than the online game. Since the full screen size may be used, there is much more details and it's much much easier to use. If you play a lot of online sessions you will definitely want to get the computer game. Believe me, it is worth it. For casual players this is not a major argument, so don't buy the game.

Moving to the second argument: new music, sound effects and animations are nice-to-haves. Fullstop. They look professional but not spectacular. Oh, and computer screens have seen more spectacular game graphics (since the 1990s) but the game has a certain boardgame vibe to it. The user interface is certainly very easy to use and very intuitive. The CD comes with several tutorials, explaining each map, the online gaming features, plus some application handling. Nice for newbies and "low-techs". The pro-player might have liked several more advanced features but I believe the implementers made a conscious decision to keep it very simple. Well done.

Languages
The game is available in English, French and German. Switching languages requires a game restart.

Single-player game
The single-player game allows you to play original Ticket to Ride (USA), Ticket to Ride Europe and the new map of Switzerland (see below). You may add as many as four different bots to play against.

• Longbot: prefers to play long routes, totally ignores the destination tickets and will try to end the game quickly before other players are able to complete the game. A very viable strategy on *any* map


• Directbot: prefers to take the most direct route between destinations.


• Nebulousbot: nebulous strategy and difficult to guess what Mr. Fog will be doing


• Dumbbot: Yeah, guess. These guys come in handy once you have lost a series of online games and need to re-establish your gamer's self-esteem. Then they are fun.

Online game
The online gaming feature is basically using the same technology as the existing online games. However, the Swiss map may only be played against other players using the computer game.

The new official map of Switzerland
The Swiss map was designed by Alan R. Moon specifically for this computer game and is not available as a stand-alone game or printed expansion. The map is designed for 2-3 players only and contains a lot of tunnels. The huge amount of tunnels has caused a "small" design change: locomotives (jokers) are not available. Instead, they are replaced by tunnel cards. The map contains several long routes and plenty of routes having a length of one. Combined with the other novelties, this generates a variant requiring players to go for new strategies.

Tunnel cards
Picking a tunnel card counts like drawing any other regular waggon card. Other than locomotives, players may therefore pick two tunnel cards per turn. The tunnel cards can be used to replace or complement the colored cards required to claim a tunnel route. However, they may *never* be used on a regular route. The rules to claim a tunnel are unchanged from TtR Europe.

New routes and destination tickets
On the game board some of the routes no longer link cities to cities, but cities to neighboring countries (France, Italy, Austria and Germany). As a complement, the game also contains new types of destination tickets. The well-known city-to-city tickets are supplemented by city-to-country tickets (linking a city to all of Switzerland's neighboring countries) and country-to-country tickets (2 from each country to all of Switzerland's other neighboring countries). These new types make use of a new scoring mechanism: The points gained at game's end are those of the highest connection completed, from among the list of possible country destinations marked on the ticket. If none of the possible connections was made, the only points lost are those corresponding to the lowest value on the ticket.

Naturelich my opinion
The highlight of the computer game is the new map which is playable both online and in the single-player setting. The Swiss map allows players to go for different strategies. After the first couple of games, no single strategy seemed superior. Depending on the combination of destination tickets different strategies need to be applied to be successful. Something which worked well in TtR USA or Europe may be applied in Switzerland as well: focussing on the longest routes, blocking, drawing plenty of tickets. However there are some new strategies, e.g.: creating a shortage in tunnel cards or in colored cards in combination with blocking.

I have often encountered the following tactical challenge: because the map has such a high number of short routes it gets pretty obvious where the players are headed. This makes it easier to block the opponent. Detours are more expensive as they might require players to go through one or more tunnels. They also slow you down: you need the appropriate colors first and then you possibly need one or more turns to claim (the short) routes. Probably due to the lacking locomotives it gets much trickier on this map to collect the right waggon colors. In TtR Europe this sometimes posed a problem during endgame. In TtR Switzerland it is a common problem to occur throughout the entire game. To counterbalance the blocking strategy the new destination tickets help. If you can't reach Germany across the boarder in Basel, you might want to use the connection from St. Gallen or elsewhere. The new tickets also allow you to secure a short 5 point connect between Germany and France and later expanding this to a big 13-pointer by also connecting Italy. Feel very lucky, if your first draw of destination tickets contains multiple city-to-country of country-to-coutnry tickets. It leaves you with a lot of strategic options to accomplish your "missions".

To sum it up: the new map adds new spice to a popular game. Altogether, if you like playing the online version and if your Web Card is about to expire you may as well pay an additional (€ 24.95 - € 18.00 = ) € 6.95 for the Swiss map. If you don't play TtR online you probably don't need the computer game either. It's as simple as that.

Oh, one more thing. So far I still seem to be the only one to own the computer game as I was unable to play the Switzerland game online. There is one player who actually has the game installed but we were only able to initiate rather unstable sessions. Let's hope these things get ironed out soon...