Railroads are just ****

[PeteBDawg]

I disagree; I think that the railroads are fine the way they are. It would completely unrealistic for a nation with a rail network to have soldiers on one side of the country who can't get to the other side in a year, regardless of the number. Without railroads, you actually have a huge, huge disadvantage in war. Just ask the French and the Prussians.

Perhaps you could make railroads much slower to build; it does seem a little too much that a worker in an industrious democracy can put one down over a road in one turn. Building and maintaining railroads over large areas of land really isn't all that easy. Still, even now, there is a lag between when you get steam power and when you cover every square on your continent, so it isn't so bad. And the production bonus is a great way to represent the full economic power of industrialization. There's no reason to get rid of it.

I do agree that naval units are way too slow. Once railroads show up, they seem awfully silly, but it is also important to note that, historically, wind-powered navies were capable of holding together far-flung empires, which would be impossible in this game. It would take the British thirty years to get reinforcements to North Amerca, and that's ridiculous.

Perhaps certain technologies should add multipliers to the movement points of ships. Magnetism, then combustion, then nuclear power should multiply the movement points of all ships by 2, 3, and 4, respectively, so ships can actually get across the ocean. Magellan's Expedition could add movement points before the multiplier.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by PeteBDawg
I disagree; I think that the railroads are fine the way they are. It would completely unrealistic for a nation with a rail network to have soldiers on one side of the country who can't get to the other side in a year, regardless of the number. Without railroads, you actually have a huge, huge disadvantage in war. Just ask the French and the Prussians.

Pete,
IMHO, this issue is NOT about realism. Nobody complains of that railroads are able to transport dozens of units in a short period of time. That is completely realistic. What the discussion is about is the impact this has on the gameplay. You probably do realize that once you secure your continent and lay RRs everywhere (as it is now, it is a no brainer - they MUST be everywhere), you are almost invincible - any invasion force will face ALL of your military power, as you instantly start attacking from the adjacent RR tiles with everything you have and keep doing so until the invasion force is dust. This forces the use of such "unrealistic" approaches like landing invasion forces on mountains, to give them at least some chance of surviving the onslaught right after their landing...

As I understand this discussion, there is a wish to tone down this feature and give better chances to attackers, so as the late stages of the game become less static and so as there is more strategy involved in laying RRs. Although using RRs to their full potential has alwys been crucial to my Civ strategy, I do agree that limiting the usability of RRs in a reasonable way would definitely add much to the strategy involved in building one's empires.

I believe that one possible solution would be to allow units either move along RRs, or attack, but not both in a given turn (reflecting the fact that units being moved by railroads suffer certain logistic delays and cannot be deployed right after leaving trains). This way, the defender would still has a significant advantage of being able to (re)deploy troops wherever he'd need to respond to the invasion properly, while at the same time the attacker would at least be granted one chance to do something (fortify, regroup, actually attack etc.)

Another possible approach might be to make units get on and off trains only in cities and/or special outposts (RR stations, similar to airstrips planned for PtW). This would also be realistic in a way - I guess it is rather difficult for a tank to get off a train somewhere in a forest or field... without seriously damaging the train, that is... this way, RRs would become pretty much like airports... allowing to "RR-lift" land-based troops.

As for the "overrailroaded" landscape... what about giving production bonuses not only to the tiles having the RR laid directly on them, but also to the ones adjacent to RRed ones? And, at the same time, introducing a reasonable upkeep cost for every RRed tile...

[NeoStar]

So much support!

This all said I'm fairly sure that if Civ3 had come out without infinite railroads there would be a thread complaining about that.

Well, at least from those who played Civ2.

Its Civ strategy, not CTP. Of course, we can't have infinite movement when MP comes along...

[David Murray]

NOOOOOOO!!!!

Leave railroads alone, damn you!

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by David Murray
NOOOOOOO!!!!

Leave railroads alone, damn you!

It seems that Firaxis wants guys like you to be able to cheat too.

[HazieDaVampire]

i'd like to see a train unit, it could be the only unit to take advantage of RR's but can only move like 12. This way you cam bomb the trains!

[HazieDaVampire]

Oh, and unlimited mps means you cant trick people into thinking your gunna attack from another direction!
so you end up with
"Haha, i've spotted his fleet of transporters, lets drop half my army onto the coast of where they're gunna invade!"
"Oh wait, it was all a trick, those transporters are empty!"
"Oh well lets just teliport my army to where they are really attacking!"

[NeoStar]

Originally posted by HazieDaVampire
...This way you cam bomb the trains...

Now that I entirely agree with. Unlike civ2 the AI goes gangbusters with railroads and builds them everywhere. Hard to destroy them

Solution - once again we go back to the neeed for longer ranged/better bombarding aircraft

[Fosse]

HazieDaVampire's solution is the best I've heard so far... a Train unit that is able to load units and travel a great distance on the railroads. All other units will treat them as roads.

The railroad should be able to carry a large number of units... eight seems reasonable, and something like ten tiles of movement on rails (this way it is a great boon to non-moblie units, and still edges out a three move unit on roads). It should also come with a heavy cost per turn, both to represent the resources need to maintain railways and to transport armies, and second to discourage the player from simply building so many that they can teleport their entire military anyway.

Units should attack with a penalty on the turn that they unload. They should be able to unload anywhere (regular people can only get on and off at stations in the real world, but the military can stop a train wherever the darn well please).

This fixes the tactical problems of infinite railroad.

Removing production bonus, and adding farms and better mines (as suggested above) helps to get rid of the "cover my continent wih iron tracks" syndrome... but doesn't give a reason not to. I also suggest adding a cost for railroad, something like 1 gold for every five tiles, or possibly making railroads add pollution to cities nearby (1 pollution for every five tiles). Possibly both. This forces the player to smartly plan his rail network, keeping an eye on effective military deployment, but preventing him from just blanketing the continent.

[miccofl]

You might also want to make the unit upgradeable; say from steam to diesel or electric etc. altering movement and capacity to reflect the more advanced technology.

[Irving]

The Rail Unit is a good idea, with upgrades available to Mag-Lev. I also like the slower construction idea. Making rails through the mountains much more difficult would introduce strategic positioning as a result of terrain. Cities surrounded by mountains would introduce a Hannible over the Alps kind of effect. I'd require railroad "tunnels" to be built for mountain squares that would take one engineer 30 turns to build. Knowing this ahead of time would greatly impact city placement for future considerations.

[Blake]

The solutions I like:
Bring back Farms. This is definetely a good idea. Actually, so far as resources goes it should just be returned to Civ2. Mines can only be built on hills/mountains. Farms can be built to increase irrigation. Railroad increases production only (you wont need to build it on farms, leading to less infinite-railroad sprawl). The Civ2 system has many advantages over Civ3's.

Altough making railroads cost more, making them give production bonus to adjacant tiles too, and making them pollute or cost upkeep would also improve things.
I would also remove the iron requirement. Railroads need so much iron that the original mines supplying iron for swords and shields would never supply enough. (ie by the time of steam new mining techniques are being used)

In terms of military: The "realism" aspect of being able to move troops across a country in one year can be safely disregarded , exactly the same should be possible with roads .

The most important requirement is to make it so units cant both move on railroads and attack in the same turn. This is much too powerfull. The "rail stations" idea is good. Another way would be:
If a unit moves less than movement*3 tiles on RR, it is allowed to attack (ie it used the roads). Otherwise it is not allowed to attack.

A partial solution would be allow units unloaded from transports to only lose some of their movement. That would allow unloaded units to atleast do something before being clobbered. But prehaps they should have a 33% attack penalty or something. This isn't changing the RR's, but is helping to fix the problem.

If you look carefully at the solutions, many are already in Civ2. In fact you could summarise that with Civ3 Firaxis used the following concept liberally "If it aint broken, break it."

[Krayzeenbk]

Originally posted by vondrack

You probably do realize that once you secure your continent and lay RRs everywhere (as it is now, it is a no brainer - they MUST be everywhere), you are almost invincible - any invasion force will face ALL of your military power, as you instantly start attacking from the adjacent RR tiles with everything you have and keep doing so until the invasion force is dust.

Enter the bombard ability of ships and airplanes, useful as support for an invasion force if you're attacking that determined and advanced an enemy. Some might say that this isn't powerful enough to destroy the railroads, but I modded my ships with blitz and higher ROF a long time ago, so this is a very effective strategy.

Actually, I do agree that railroads give too much of an advantage to the defender in the coastal invasion case. But I think the main culprit is that forces are stuck with sitting on the beach for one turn, which allows the defender to use all his forces to defend in the first place.

If Marines had 2 movement points or treat all terrain as roads and workers could build fortresses the same turn that they landed, I think the advantage provided by railroads against a sea-borne invasion force wouldn't seem nearly as great.

(Mines could also be built in the desert, but that's minor )

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I agree that RR's should have either a FLAT movement rate of 15 or 20 squares for any unit that travels on them, or a 1/10MP cost for units travelling on them. I also feel that roads should have a 1/4MP cost for units and enemy roads AND rail should have a 1MP cost, regardless of underlying terrain! Above all, however, this should be EDITABLE!!!!!!!
I also love the idea, posted earlier, of giving cities a production and food bonus based on the number of cities connected up via a road or rail network! Perhaps we could have +1 food/8 cities and +1 production/12 cities for roads and +1 food/5 cities and +1 production/8 cities for RR's. This would more accurately reflect the movement and non-resource based goods through the internal trade system! You could even have improvements, like railyards and superhighways, which grant a +50% bonus to the above effects!!!
Anyway, just my $0.02c worth.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[KenderBane]

I have an idea that might make people content (screw making you happy ... you don't need to be happy to produce). We could introduce a new unit with some new abilities.

Based on the model of the "Army" unit, we could make a "Train" unit that can load and unload ground units, but be limited to moving ONLY on Railroads.
The train unit itself has no combat stats and can be captured like workers can be (or traded to other nations, if they ever put that into a patch).

Most ground units would then be limited to x3 bonus on RRs (service roads/ flat rail beds); while the Train could then enjoy the umlimited move on the rails ONLY. To prevent the players from abusing the train to badly, you could simply say that any train that is has units loaded or unloaded ends its movement for the turn.

I feel this would more accurately reflect strategy in that cutting railines becomes a viable strategy (whether thru ground units Pillage-ing, Naval Bombardment, or Air Interdiction). And re-introduces some strategy to the late Industrial and Modern eras.

It would even allow for extra Techs (to increase train size) or Small Wonders (like the Chunnel or what not).

[hexagonian]

Why is it so hard to accept what should be a simple solution - a 1/5 to 1/8 MP for all land units, and introduction of a second tier of tile improvements at the same time, so that RRs do not clutter up the map. Plus a player has to make a decision - construct a network of rails for movement or boost food/production/gold with tile improvements.

And create a city improvement called 'Railyards' to boost a city connected with rails with production/food/gold bonuses.

All he does now is slap down rails on every tile - voila, his butt is covered.

And for those who scream about the lack of realism this may create (geeez, my units have to take 2-3 years to cross my empire using limited MPs) there's enough abuses of realism in civ3 anyhow, so having another one shouldn't be such a big deal.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Why is it so hard to accept what should be a simple solution - a 1/5 to 1/8 MP for all land units, and introduction of a second tier of tile improvements at the same time, so that RRs do not clutter up the map. Plus a player has to make a decision - construct a network of rails for movement or boost food/production/gold with tile improvements.

Bingo! The problem isn't unlimited movement along rails, its universal railroad coverage. Railroads simply don't cover everything; even in smaller European countries where rails go almost anywhere, they don't go everywhere. In larger countries such as the US, Russia and Canada, sometimes you're lucky if a single rail line runs across a state or territory.

The solution, once proposed by Venger I believe, is to create two city upgrades, an early one to boost the commerce of each worked square and a later one to boost commerce and production. Remove the bonuses from roads and rails and have them simply multiply a unit's movement by 3 and 10 (or 15, 25 whatever). This would eliminate the actual value in spreading roads and rails over every square. Plus, if you really wanted to boost the Commercial trait, you could make these improvements cheaper for commercial civs.

Also, as mentioned before, I think there should be some sort of cost for roads and RRs, 1 gp for every X squares of road and 2 gp for every X squares of RRs. It's just not credible that you can build roads and rails all over the place and never have to spend a dime on maintenance. You have to pay every turn for temples and whatnot, so why not roads?

[Conqueror]

What about a "Train" unit where you could load some amount of units, maybe 6-10, and then move the "Train" to its destination using the railroads and then unload units from it. A bit like transport on the sea, but with bit more movement, maybe around 12 tiles of movement for the "Train" unit.

This way railroads wouldnt be such a game killer in late game, and not free movement, because you would pay upkeep from the Trains, just as from other units, and you would have to build the trains, such spending shields to them too.

And ofcourse the Train unit would be the only one to benefit from the railroads, all other units would treat them as roads, something like this would be a nice mod to see

[YC4B4U]

I don't think Firaxis will be interested in adding too much complexity. But hopefully they will add something to improve the gameplay of Railroads.

I do like the idea of creating railroad stations and allowing movement off of railways only at these points. This would mean that you could bomb the railroads to stop reinforcement - however, what would I do to ensure a good defence, build more railroads for redundancy. Therefore a railroad maintenance cost should be included as suggested. More complexity - less chance of inclusion.

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by YC4B4U
I don't think Firaxis will be interested in adding too much complexity. But hopefully they will add something to improve the gameplay of Railroads.

I do like the idea of creating railroad stations and allowing movement off of railways only at these points. This would mean that you could bomb the railroads to stop reinforcement - however, what would I do to ensure a good defence, build more railroads for redundancy. Therefore a railroad maintenance cost should be included as suggested. More complexity - less chance of inclusion.

Yes, the idea of Railroad Stations is also very good, maybe implemented so that RR Station would be a city improvement, and only allowing units to transport between cities that have RR stations using some kind of RailMove key, like Airlift/Airport thing, otherwise RR would not increase movement, just the normal production/money/food bonus.

[The Pioneer]

Well, I totally agree with RRs being to powerful but I am not sure if Firaxis would try to change it because of the complexity of the issue. One thing that would improve things IMHO would be that the AI should "learn" how to use RRs strategically and efficiently in order to balance the game and make it more interesting. in my experience the AI's lack of using the AI is what makes me lean back once I start building railroads since it's now only a questioon of time!


So long...

[alva]

railroad unit =

loading/unloading, click...click..click

Can't say I like this idea.
Best one i ' ve seen so fare is flat movement points IMO

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Optimizer
You're right. Any suggestions of how to create a better model for railroads?

Concerning sea transport, I would really like a "sealift" which would automatically transport one unit from one port to another.

I like this idea

[Zylka]

Railroads are not what needs changing, but sea needs it according to RR

[kettyo]

In one year (1 turn is a year in civ3) you actually could travel the world around by rail. (though also by ship )

But i'm pretty sure that there'll be some other solution for multiplayer.

[The Puny Celt]

Well, now the developers know that railroads' unlimited movement is a feature that the human player exploits, I guess there's a good chance it will disappear from the next version of the game, just as a lot of the Civ2 exploits were gone from Civ3.

I hope they don't change it though, because the main users of railroads, even for the wargamers, are the Worker units. To me, it's a real relief to build railroads because it lessens the micromanagement nightmare of shifting workers from one place to another. Imagine restricted railway movement in any new version: there's a hill you want your workers to mine 20 spaces away, a railroad connects your workers to the hill but under the movement restriction it takes 2-3 moves to get there (move your half a dozen workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move your workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move...getting tedious?). Then when you get to the hill, pollution has sprung up back where the workers started from, it's causing a food shortage in that city so back your workers go again).

As for the idea of a train unit: imagine loading all those workers in and out fo trains all the time. My mouse finger joints are getting RSI just thinking about it!

[The Pioneer]

Maybe we should do a poll on this question and see what the general concensus is about the issue maybe that could pursue our Firaxis people to something about it in an upcoming patch or PTW?!

So long...

[vondrack]

Originally posted by The Puny Celt
I hope they don't change it though, because the main users of railroads, even for the wargamers, are the Worker units. To me, it's a real relief to build railroads because it lessens the micromanagement nightmare of shifting workers from one place to another. Imagine restricted railway movement in any new version: there's a hill you want your workers to mine 20 spaces away, a railroad connects your workers to the hill but under the movement restriction it takes 2-3 moves to get there (move your half a dozen workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move your workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move...getting tedious?). Then when you get to the hill, pollution has sprung up back where the workers started from, it's causing a food shortage in that city so back your workers go again).

As for the idea of a train unit: imagine loading all those workers in and out fo trains all the time. My mouse finger joints are getting RSI just thinking about it!

Good point, Celt. The limitations of RR transport as proposed by several posters (me included) should perhaps not apply to workers and other non-combat units... even though it might then be a bit difficult to imagine, why... But your are right that it would make the game unbearably tedious in later stages.

BTW - one of the changes proposed (allowing a unit to move any distance along RRs OR attack, but NOT BOTH on the same turn) woud have no impact on this worker movement issue...

[Blake]

I agree a train unit would be awful. We should encourage Firaxis to make less MM rather than more.

[M. le Comte]

Why not a train unit ?

I can't understand why you can't benefit of roads abroad. There is no reason forbidenning your footsoldiers to use the macadam of opponents' engineers. However I understand why you can't use railroad inside the borders of your enemy. You don't have trains to go on it (perhaps the reglementation about the height of tracks is not the same ?)

A train unit would be a hudge improvement. I think its movement should be limited, but not to much. In the reality, you cross Russia in a few weeks by train. Theoretically, you could go round earth by train in a few months. That is to say less than a year. That is to say less than a turn. So movement points must be significative.

But it would add an "infrastructural dimension" that lacks in civilization. In every modern war since the first Worls War in Europe and perhaps before elsewhere in the world (i just don't know), train, that is to say the ability to quickly move units from a front to another, as been at the core of every strategies.

The unit "train" wouldn't be too expensive. There could be several versions of trains, from "boiling water" (i don't know how to say that in english) trains to high speed electric trains, just as there are several types of transports, from sails to troop transports, including galions.

That's all folk.