It’s certainly a bit more challenging - I’m playing with Pikka’s Basic Industries too, on a 512x512 map, and having to haul things up huge mountains especially in the earlier days could be quite ‘interesting’. Also the trees everywhere - have had lots of fun with local authorities who hated me due to building a big old line right next to their towns knocking down loads of trees in the process, oops. I also included two AI competitors, something I don’t usually do, which has also made it a bit different for me.
I now have something like £1.5bn in the bank so if I want to terraform half the mountains to make my network more efficient, I can (and occasionally do), and it can be quite satisfying to gradually optimise things. Though I have quite a few bottlenecks - towns seem to grow more rapidly than I remember, and there are areas where I have tracks threaded between towns that are now huge metropolises of 30,000+, with random industries and stations sandwiched between them too. All rather enjoyable though. I’ll perhaps try to post some screenshots soon.
I am debating going back to temperate for my next game and doing a “old school” game of the built in vehicles, industries etc - something I’ve probably not done in about 20 years! Ever since TTDPatch introduced NewGRF there have been so many interesting sets to try, so I haven’t really played standard TTD in a very long time. Ah, the days of hauling coal around on 400mph maglevs…