The GoTo By Railroad Command

Gastrifitis · February 21, 2001, 17:19

I would love to have this command available in a Civ game. It takes forever, on some larger civs, to move all your units around on the railroads. And you certainly can't rely on the Goto command to take the train.

This may not be as hard to implement as it sounds. What would be needed is for the computer to keep a list of cities that have been joined by railroads, merging them as necessary. Breaks/special breaks in the list would also be needed in case of pillaging railroads, enemy units on the line, or enemy units invoking ZOC. So more than just a simple list of connected cities would be needed, more like a set of hyperlinks. Once this is done, the command could check to see if the two cities/points were connected at the moment. It wouldn't need to show the unit moving all the way there. There could just be a graphic of a train leaving and a train arriving, all the movement points of the unit still intact.

Henrik · February 21, 2001, 17:28

What if the railroad is built and then pillaged, this could be a great way to manipulate the AI.
I do think that AI pathfinding must be improved though.

Edit: Ooops, I saw that you had taken pillaging in acount allready, sorry

[This message has been edited by Henrik (edited February 21, 2001).]

Gastrifitis · February 21, 2001, 17:37

I did find a mention in Related Threads about pathfinding, but it was confusing. It sounded like they were using it for automatically generating trade routes. I hope that means that the Goto by Railroad command will work, and is being implemented as a part of the Goto command. And if the move can be done instantly, even though it's a long distance, I still like my idea of not actually showing the unit moving all the way there.

Thue · February 21, 2001, 18:40

Real Goto Commands will automatically find the shortest route. ie, it will go by railroad if possible.

tmarcl · February 21, 2001, 23:16

quote:

Originally posted by Gastrifitis on 02-21-2001 04:19 PM

This may not be as hard to implement as it sounds. What would be needed is for the computer to keep a list of cities that have been joined by railroads, merging them as necessary.

Better yet, as each railroad joins a city, have the computer automatically offer you a railroad station-then it only needs to keep a list of those cities with a station in it. Assume the goto by railroad command is like the airlift command. The computer checks to make sure that a railroad does in fact exsist between the two cities, then your unit is moved.

Marc

GaryGuanine · February 22, 2001, 01:53

Great idea. It needs it.

Gary

Henrik · February 22, 2001, 16:18

You cant go to another continent by train, you can by air.

Gastrifitis · February 23, 2001, 01:31

I'm not quite sure about automatically offering a train station. Maybe if you had to build it for 40 shields and no maintenance, or something. Other than the palace, we don't usually get city upgrades automatically. But if it worked that way, what would be the point of the Airport, other than to build veteran air units?