Roads and rails

[Explorer579]

Yeah, I don't like infinite RR movement. In a civ World War, I sometimes move the same unit twice from South Africa to Kamashatka in 1 turn! Not realistic. My suggestions:

1) Have RR improve movements three times as much as roads. So a horse movement of 2, becomes 6 on roads and 18 on RR! Still dramatic but not infinite.

2) Do not give commerce bonus for railroads/ Have them cost 1/2 a commerce (roads cost us lot of tax dollars!) I like the game to have little railroads/roads so that fighting can concentrating on controlling strategic intersections. Now this is not possible (railways are all over the map in modern time).

3) If you want to improve commerce of a city after discovering railroads, then create a city improvement (e.g. railway station) and build a railway station to have a 50% increase in commerce.

[Jon Shafer]

One thing that we must plead for from Firaxis in the next patch/XP is that they reduce RR movement... seriously, infinite is waaaay beyond realistic, and should be changed.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Trip
How do you suggest you actually use enemy rails anyways?
You gonna bring along a train with you and all the necassary cars to carry ya around anywhere?

it's happened. there was actually an accident in the Czech Republic a few days ago because an American train was too wide for Czech Tracks.

And in ww2, Germany wade an adjustable wheelbase to go between German and French rails seamlessly.

[Cookie Monster]

Just in case Firaxis is monitoring this thread here goes.


I like infinite railroads, call me crazy and disagree with me if you must, but I like 'em. For one thing I like the fact that if my territory is invaded I can instantly rush troops to protect myself. Whether there is infinite rr or not the AI cheats monstrously anyway so this advantage helps the human out a great deal.

I love the fact that during wartime using enemy rr movement is severly restricted.

Now if a change to rr movement must be made I hope it follows the CTP series treatment of rr's and mag tubes. In those games rr movement was 1/3 the movement cost of the terrain.

Just my 2 pfennigs.

[zulu9812]

I agree with Haupt. Deitrich - i think railroads represent a country having the infrastructure in place in order to move troops about easily. I also think that airports working only once per turn sucks as well.

If infinite rr movement was taken away, i'd want maglevs as an upgrade that do allow infinite movement.

[Jon Shafer]

Okay, say your empire stretches from the tip of South Africa to Siberia... you just got finished wiping out a civ in Africa, and your main army is stationed there. Suddenly Japan invades Siberia... POOF, your entire army in South Africa can be there INSTANTLY. I realize that there should be a big move increase for rails... but don't you see a problem with that situation?

[zulu9812]

Well, then - allow airports to be used more than once a turn!

[Franses]

I for one do not like the infinite movement either. However, some of us seem to like it.

It is currently possible to alter the movement cost for roads using the editor. If this is also made possible for railroads those of us who would like to change it, could do so. The same should IMO be true for the railroad bonus. Having no railroads (=coal) means that you have no chance in a MP game that comes to this stage.

Perhaps they could add a third tile improvement (maglev like) that we could tweak also.

I like CIV III a lot. But building all these roads and railroads does not only result in a bad looking terrain but takes a lot of micromanagement. CTP has a much better solution for this (you only need to point to the place where a railroad should be built, pay for it and you are ready). It would be great if that could be adopted but I realize it is not very realistic to ask that from Firaxis at this stage.

[notyoueither]

Infinite distance could be fine. 100% of all your land forces is not. There are not enough trains.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


Perhaps it also means that you should sabotage your own rail lines in desparation, though at that point, you're probably lost.

I don't think its as easy as just blitzing to the capital in MP, I mean, sure, the AI won't have a preemptive strike against you, bbut if my opponent in MP is very quiet for a while, I will think he's up to something devious and prepare.


at this rate, tuberski, I will soon join you as the only 2002 joiner above 500 posts

And I see that you have!

Congrats!

PS. I never post on weekends, that's why it took so long to reply.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


Tuberski spammed his way up to 500.

I'll have you know every one of my posts was highly informative....including this one.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Tuberski


I'll have you know every one of my posts was highly informative....including this one.

just like all of my posts




on topic: I would accept more limited rr movement in exchange for unlimited airlifting, or perhaps you could have a "cargo fleet" with each able to transport a unit per turn. Or even pay to have a unit transported.

I like the idea mentioned above of tripling the movement of roads.

I would 27 squares is a decent distance for MA in a turn, but of course, I might feel differently in the midst of a battle. Best thing of course woudl be to add this as an editor function.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


just like all of my posts




on topic: I would accept more limited rr movement in exchange for unlimited airlifting, or perhaps you could have a "cargo fleet" with each able to transport a unit per turn. Or even pay to have a unit transported.

I like the idea mentioned above of tripling the movement of roads.

I would 27 squares is a decent distance for MA in a turn, but of course, I might feel differently in the midst of a battle. Best thing of course woudl be to add this as an editor function.

How hard would it be for them to make a cargo air unit, much like a transport?

C-5, C-141 all can carry quite a few troops.

Yes cities have roads ALL over the place in RL. But they don't have RRs everywhere. Somebody posted earlier about rail stations, I think that would give you your commerce bonus for rails.

However, just because you would only need one railline to connect cities, that doesn't mean that any semi-intelligent player won't put rails everywhere anyway.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Tuberski
However, just because you would only need one railline to connect cities, that doesn't mean that any semi-intelligent player won't put rails everywhere anyway.

Not if you gave the railroad an upkeep. Then give the commerce bonus based on how many cities directly connected to, up to a maximum of four (or three, or two, or howevermany - don't hardcode it). Then it would be in the players interest to connect to a few nearby cities, but not put them everywhere.

[Jon Shafer]

I think one (if not both) of two things should happen.

1) You should be charged cash for moving units around... they aren't like roads you know.

2) Infinite movement is absurd. Yes, each turn is "hypothetically" a year long (for most of the game), but as I've stated earlier... a group of Warriors won't take 50 years to get from one tile to another, no matter how big the tiles are. Yes, some people like infinite movement. Because someone likes something does that make it accurate or contain any hint of realism? Of course not. I'm sure any military in the world today would love to be able to instantly zap any units they wanted on the continent for free, instantly, but that kind of thing just isn't realistic. Yes it helps counter some AI cheating, but, is it really all that important to people's strategy to cheat?

[MiloMilo]

Wow, some good posts here, with a lot of intelligent reasons fro restricting RR movement. I hope Firaxis does read this post. As for my $0.02: (didn't there use to be a 'cent' key on the keyboard?!)

The infinite movement thing is definitely a bit screwy. One idea is to restrict it. Maybe a compromise would be to restrict movement for motorized units to double or triple roads, but let infantry troops move at triple roads or infinite. You could still defend your borders, but not with the big heavy mechanized units. This would also give us incentive to keep marines/paratroopers/etc. around. Also, every tile in a city should get a commerce bonus (or give a % bnus like someone suggested), as long as the city is connected by rail to the nation's capital. This would clean up the RR sprawl ugliness.

I also like the idea of replacing the terrain improvement with a city improvement, the Railroad Station. The city with a RR Station would get a commerce bonus, and units could jump to any city within X tiles that's connected by land. BUT moving would take their turn, so they could not attack until the next one. This would reduce the defensive advantage somewhat. Later, when an airport is built the # of tiles that can be traversed would be upped to infinte and overseas cities could also get the commerce bonus.

These ideas would not break the game (a tank would still be plenty useful for defense if it could move 18 or even only 12 tiles). I agree that something like this should definitely be implemented in a patch, the XP, or the sequel.

[Captain]

wrylachlan, after some more thinking, I really like your idea of limiting raillines to four per city, but....

...would it be that the rail line goes immediately from one city to another, shortest path? or do you get to lay the line. if you lay the line, would it not be able to connect to all other cities anyways? I don't connect it out of the first tile radius surrounding the city, I just wait til the second tile. then I RR a ring around each city. wouldn't that just make the countryside full of rails?
does it cost money to upkeep rails on tiles? or just stations in cities?

how do you count "directly connected"? if I have a railline from Berlin to Rome but midway between I intersect with a line to Prague, are all three "directly" connected? this is kindof a cool math question.

also, how does it address infinite movement, or the civ2 style rolling attack?

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Captain
wrylachlan, after some more thinking, I really like your idea of limiting raillines to four per city, but....

...would it be that the rail line goes immediately from one city to another, shortest path? or do you get to lay the line. if you lay the line, would it not be able to connect to all other cities anyways? I don't connect it out of the first tile radius surrounding the city, I just wait til the second tile. then I RR a ring around each city. wouldn't that just make the countryside full of rails?
does it cost money to upkeep rails on tiles? or just stations in cities?

how do you count "directly connected"? if I have a railline from Berlin to Rome but midway between I intersect with a line to Prague, are all three "directly" connected? this is kindof a cool math question.

There are a couple of ways this could be dealt with:

a) Make Railroads only available as a "RR to" command like the Shift-R for roads currently. So workers can't set down individual RR tiles, they must stand on a city and "RR to another city". Once a worker has started it, other automated workers can help but there is no mechanism to lay down single RR tiles, they must be between cities.

b)Allow single tile RR's as they are now, but in order to get the "direct connect" bonus, the RR path must be no greater than say 150% of the optimal path. In your example:
- Having the railroad go from Berlin to Prague, a ring around Prague and then to Rome wouldn't work since the total path would be more than 150% of the optimal path of Berlin to Rome.
- The Y however could work since both branches of the Y would create paths that are less than 150% of the optimal. And since the goal in the first place was to make less railroads each more strategically significant, I see no problem with using Y's.

also, how does it address infinite movement, or the civ2 style rolling attack?

a) It does not address infinite movement specifically, instead it attempts to correct some of the imbalances that infinite movement causes when coupled with having every single tile filled with RR.

b) When you take over an enemy city the adjacent rail tile auto-destructs. You could even make it all rail lines within a radius of 2 (or more, it doesn't need to be hard-coded).So in your example, someone takes over Berlin, and the rail lines to Prague and Rome are cut. Autodestructing doesn't work when RR's are everywhere, but when you cut down to just a few going into and out of each city this becomes a very effective stop to the rolling attack.

One more corrallary to this autodestruct: You could prevent the autodestruct by maning the RR tile with one of your units. This would add to late game strategy as you try to flank the cities and control all of their RR's before you take the city.


Someone else on this forum suggested a turn penalty for using the rail line. Go as far as you want on the rail, but when you get there your turn is over. I kind of like this. It could be as simple as a new command - instead of "Go to" you would have "Ride to". Works just like "Go to" except it has to be on rails and when you get there, no matter how far away it is, your movement points are used up.