I started playing Industrial Tycoon a little more than three years ago. It took about 4 months to figure out what was going on and develop a plan to win the game. I knew it would take years, but when I had finished the plan, I thought that nobody would have a better chance of winning except if they had the ability to hang out with the game all the time. This was the first round I tried almost exclusively for high score and... my plan worked!
In other posts people have lamented about how new players have no chance to win. This is true sometimes, and not true others, and is the nature of the game. If the old players who have schemed for years, and done their math carefully, and aren't on vacation show up to play their A game, then no, new players don't stand much chance to win. On the other hand, if the old players are concentrating on best-eventmanager, or research, or are on vacation, or just distracted then the game becomes more wide open. Last round Red Viper won despite having much less research than the old guys.
This round Oakville played an awesome game and will get best manufacturer from it. But he really had no chance for overall high score. I for one was nudged into going for high score by the thought of Tycoon World coming to an end. I love to prepare, scheme and plan and probably would have continued doing so if not for the prospect of all the scheming and planning coming to nothing due to a possible early demise of the game.
The new guys do have things to shoot for though while they develop their plans for overall high score. There's event manager - everybody has roughly equal chances to get high score on this one regardless of quality researched. The same is true for best vendor and best manufacturer. In this way the game is well designed to give goals for new players to shoot for right away, and goals that are attainable only with planning, execution, and the passage of time.
So, TW is a game of planning, a game where it could take a year or two (or in my case 3 years) for a plan to come to fruition. Of course, that's just the way I like it.