Railroads should not offer unlimited movement!

Mr. T · November 22, 2002, 18:20

Railroads offer unlimited intra-territory movement.

That takes away much of the possible game strategy.

Perhaps having railroads be 3 times as fast regular roads would work well.

As if the real world were importatn...railroad transit is not significantly faster than modern internally combusting machines.

As for gameplay, logistics would be more interesting if indeed planes could transport troops faster than they could move.

What are your guys thought on the power given to railroads?

vondrack · November 22, 2002, 18:34

Mr. T, you may wish to have a look at this thread. It is several months old now, but you will find some fine ideas regarding the topic there.

Boris Godunov · November 22, 2002, 20:32

Oy vey, not this **** again...

Simpleton · November 22, 2002, 21:57

Can't you just change the movement rate for railroads in the editor. I thought that was an option.

Jaybe · November 22, 2002, 22:49

No Simpleton, railroad movement is not editable.
Infinite rail movement is a "civ legacy" and might well have been hardcoded in it's early development. To make the changes required to have it editable AND to change AI calculations to account for it would probably be a major endeavor.
And besides, it's a "civ legacy."

Bolt · November 22, 2002, 22:55

Hate this legacy, well unlimited maybe should be default but an option in the editor is must.

Zero · November 23, 2002, 00:23

Just take out coal in ur game. there, no railroad

ChrisiusMaximus · November 23, 2002, 07:21

No need to take out coal, CTP2 had railroads with limited movement bonuses and CIV3 is a far more recent game than that so it should of been possible to incorporate into this game. I am happy that you no longer get the bonuses when in enemy territory at war though so averall the balance is not so bad.

There have been many threads on this and similar subjects ie helos and aircraft carriers etc and limtations compared to rail movement. Hopefully CIV4 will address some of these issues.

Jaybe · November 23, 2002, 14:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Jaybe
...
And besides, it's a "civ legacy."

"Civ legacy" is a paraphrase (or closer) of what a Firaxian said in a chat,
... and in no way represents the favor of this poster.

Patroklos · November 23, 2002, 16:05

I would say since you can't change the infinate movement code, why not just make it twice as hard for workers to build railroads. I am away from school on TG break right now so I can't check if this is a editable feature.

If you increase this value, by the time you can make a complete railroad transport grid, it would reflect the creation of an interstate highway type system.

ChaotikVisions · November 23, 2002, 16:47

This is going to sound like a round-about way to do things, but here goes. Since we've already seen they can allow some things to be edited for # of movement like roads, why not add in the ability to make a custom one? Railroads can be disabled just by removing it from the tech or by other means, so messing with it isn't necessary. Just pretty much copy the code you've got for roads right now and allow custom graphics to be set for it the enable it to be edited. People can set their own sort of railroads, the original railroads aren't change, everyones happy. Admittedly its not the best way to do things, but this isn't all that difficult and is something we could use for scenarios anyway. So how about it Firaxis?(If they're even looking) We keep railroads how they are but get an option to add custom road-types.

Simpleton · November 23, 2002, 18:19

Since it's been confirmed that editing the movement rate of railroads is not possible the obvious answer, is as stated above, for Firaxis to change this to an editable feature. However, I wonder how many people actually dislike having railroads allow unlimited movement. I myself, have no problem with the way railroads operate now but am I in the minority? If the majority of people like it the way it is I would suggest that Firaxis would not likely commit resources to satisfy a few people. They probably would try to improve/modify aspects of the game with which a majority of players had difficulty.

That being said, I do find it strange that the option to edit railroad movement rates was not included. It seems like it would have been an easy thing to do. I guess it's possible that the AI was hard-coded to use roads and railroads as they are so it maybe it causes problems if you change it.

ChaotikVisions · November 23, 2002, 18:57

I don't see how changing it would hurt the AI. I mean coding it just to rely on specific types rather then movement rates seems dumb. Has anyone noticed odd AI behavior with changing road movement? And i'd like being able to make custom road-types, adds more strategy the game. Thats why i'm proposing allowing custom types rather then editing railroads to be non-hardcoded(which it sounds like it is) and editable. I think most people don't care, but some are always looking for more of a challenge and like I said it would help in making scenarios.

Simpleton · November 23, 2002, 20:24

Yah, I don't see why the AI should have trouble with it but I guess I was just speculating out lout as to why they didn't include the ability to modify it. There must have been some reason, no? I mean, it seems like a no-brainer to allow it.

vondrack · November 23, 2002, 20:41

Quote:

Originally posted by Simpleton
Yah, I don't see why the AI should have trouble with it but I guess I was just speculating out lout as to why they didn't include the ability to modify it. There must have been some reason, no? I mean, it seems like a no-brainer to allow it.

As far as I know, it's not that AI would not be able to handle finite RR movement. The problem is that in later stages of the game, there are lots and lots of units... and thus, mucho pathfinding. Large contiguous RR-ed areas may be considered basically one large super-tile, which SPEEDS UP the searching routine SIGNIFICANTLY. 0-cost RR-movement allows for a great optimization (->speed-up) of the pathfinding code. However, once you optimize the code based upon the assumption that RRs introduce 0-cost movement, you have to stick with the infinite movement... the optimized algorithms are no longer capable of handling finite RR-movement, you would have to go back to the unoptimized algorithms, which are MUCH (I mean, MUCH) slower.

ChaotikVisions · November 23, 2002, 21:12

That'd need testing or someone from Firaxis to be sure of though. Since usually the game slows down in the industrial/modern ages. It seems pretty much from all the units, but wether railroads are helping it be faster then it would or not hasn't been shown. Anyone want to volunteer to play a game with railroads disabled into the modern ages and tell us if it goes significantly slower? I don't think it will, the path finding just looks for the shortest route between two places. Them having made it consider all railroaded tiles to be just 1 tile wouldn't make sense, since the AI still plots the best path and doesn't just go in a straight line. In any case, I know this wasn't towards my post, but I think custom road-types would work fine.

Dis · November 24, 2002, 03:48

I agree

'nuff said

ducki · November 24, 2002, 04:53

Since a turn represents a year or longer, why is it so unrealistic to imagine that an army could get from, say, Toronto all the way to, say, Buenos Aires in the course of a year?

I realize that Trains are slow compared to Aircraft, but I could walk from Toronto to Buenos Aires in less than a year.

Dis · November 24, 2002, 05:07

If we say a turn represents a year. Then I say beef up naval movement.

Actually I always support beefing up naval movement. It is pathetic as is.

vondrack · November 24, 2002, 05:11

Quote:

Originally posted by ChaotikVisions
That'd need testing or someone from Firaxis to be sure of though. Since usually the game slows down in the industrial/modern ages. It seems pretty much from all the units, but wether railroads are helping it be faster then it would or not hasn't been shown. Anyone want to volunteer to play a game with railroads disabled into the modern ages and tell us if it goes significantly slower? I don't think it will, the path finding just looks for the shortest route between two places. Them having made it consider all railroaded tiles to be just 1 tile wouldn't make sense, since the AI still plots the best path and doesn't just go in a straight line. In any case, I know this wasn't towards my post, but I think custom road-types would work fine.

There is a lot of pathfinding that you will never notice due to the fog of war and due to the fact that the AI does a lot of "is it possible to move this unit to that tile in 1/2/3... turns?" calculations - these very often never result in an actual move, although they do consume lots of the computing power.

Blake put it nicely in this post.

Even though I cannot be sure, I would bet a fortune on that the pathfinding algorithm speed-up is one of (if not the only) the key reasons for keeping the infinite RR movement.

Bolt · November 24, 2002, 08:59

I would really like add custom road, good to have 2 road types in a ancient/middleage mod. Like a 1/3 pebbled road and 1/9 stonelayed road.

CerberusIV · November 24, 2002, 10:55

This is quite a difficult issue. I didn't really like the ctp approach where roads were 1/3 MP and railroads 1/5 MP. It seemed strange that tanks could go further than infantry on railroads when they take longer to load/unload from trains.

The solution I would like to see is that you have to load (entrain) and unload (detrain) units to take advantage of the unlimited movement. It seems crazy that it is quicker to rail from one side of a large continent to the other than it is to airlift! This way you could use a unit, load it onto a train and then move it anywhere you have track and that would be all. On a train it would have no attack and maybe half normal defence. On the next turn you could unload off the rail and move normally. That would slow down teleporting units around a continent. For short distances it would be better to move normally.

The problem is getting an AI to use this effectively. I can see a couple of human exploits in this (cos we're smart) but getting the AI to cope with different movement modes could be difficult. For that reason I suspect we are stuck with what we have.

alva · November 24, 2002, 12:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Calc II
Just take out coal in ur game. there, no railroad

No need to do that (allthough I did it myself once),
just un-flag the railroad ability from the worker;

Much easier

Panag · November 24, 2002, 13:34

hi ,

it cant be that hard to trow a solution in a patch , ......

firaxis

have a nice day