How do you prioritise your rail network?

[Cort Haus]

I like to mix my defensive network with focus on the one or two cities to ramp up thru factory, coal plant and wonders - for the Uni Suff, ToE and Hoov.

[vmxa1]

Ususally I am worried about war and go for defensive areas first. Areas bordering others and then tie cities that will be making troops. If it is clear that I have time or I am currently making a wonder I will get to the wonder city quickly.

[DAVOUT]

I answered link all cities, but I see that more from an offensive point of view than for defense, because I am always at war when railroads are build.

[Solver]

The bulk of Workers immediately goes to build an effective transport network, but my 3 or so most important cities have got a few Workers improving area around those. Shortly before Steam Power, I get additional workers out, because I want every square covered in rails ASAP.

[Jamski]

How embarrassing (shift-A) is what I tend to end up using, unless I'm playing a tiny or small map. And it seems to work OK. I just want to get every square RR'ed, and that's what I get (eventually)

-Jam

[GarP2]

I usually link for defense first, as there is almost always war happening or about to happen during this period. There is nothing quite like Railroad guns (cannons then later artillery) to take the wind out of an attack.

GarP

[Agathon]

I link all my big cities out to my borders.

[Dominae]

Key cities get special attention. Then all cities get connected ASAP (in a Minimum Spanning Tree type of way, if you know what I mean).


Dominae

[cumi]

Connect all the cities, then each city gets a worker and CTRL-SHIFT-I. When done, SHIFT-A.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Maybe I'm just not playing in a tough enough world yet (regent), but I find that I don't need to link all my cities right off the bat, to get my troops to the front, which the reason I most often hear cited for doing so.

Instead, I assign two workers per city "fixing them up" with rails and that gets the job done. One worker if the civ is industrious.

I railroad everything. Everything.

[Panzer32]

I work on defensive network, but route the RR through tiles that will give me more production. Then I go for pure production, then RR every tile.

[Catt]

I usually create a transport link among all cities (key defensive / offensive points get priority), then improve specific cites with a goal of either food or shields (food where growth has been constrained, shields in wonder cities and those cities who need a boost to get a regular build a "turn reduction.") Eventually everything is RR'd.

Like Solver I tend to pop out a bunch of workers from size 12 cities (or otherwise growth restrained cities) before Steam Power, and pre-position worker groups in teams to start the rail network right on the discovery of SP (with fingers crossed that I have coal, of course ). Once RRing is done, the excess workers are absorbed back into cities.

Catt

[Fosse]

Half of my worker force railroads production squares in any wonder building cities, the second half starts in the capitol and connects toward the currently active front. Once all cities are connected by one rail line, and once my important cities are maxed in production, it's Shift-A.

[badams52]

Same as Catt

Except while I am linking, I might also get some worker teams to improve production and/or food (railroading irrigated desert tiles).

[Cruddy]

Well, it depends. If I can build hospitals then the extra food is more important to me, but if not then all cities linked is my favourite option. But I rarely bother railroading forests - and I plant a lot of forest, because it helps with global warming later on.

[epics]

First link all my cities, than cover hills and about 2-3 food tiles per city than the rest

[Solver]

Now that Catt raises point of Coal... if you see an enemy that doesn't have it, invade soon! A civ without Coal is pretty soon going to fall behind the other civs growth and production wise, so you can take them out.

[Harovan]

I build a military RR network, which includes a connection to all cities, shipping points and fortresses. When I'm done (assuming the basic tile improvement is done), I split my worker force in 2 equal parts, send one in my capital and the other in my FP city and Shift-A both. I usually keep only 4-6 workers on manual control for "special purposes", like remaking tile improvement, or speeding up a pollution cleaning.

[Cort Haus]

I get my workers all stacked up in anticipation, then hold my breath on getting Steam. I often play with modest-sized civs, so it's not unusual to be without coal. For this reason I no longer pre-build extra workers.

When all tiles are fully developed before RR, I add workers to smaller cities, and often have few workers when Steam arrives. So, if I have coal I set the queue to wrkr, wrkr, colloseum (factory prebuild). The stack of existing workers starts usually by the capital or a border, and builds a spine - not connecting every city - but close to them. As the new workers coming out of the cities link their city to the spine, then join the central stack, some from the stack go to key cities (Cap, FP, Iron Works). Once linked, with key cities given a start, each city gets its two workers back.

Tile priority is flat mines, then food in small cities, then hills. If I'm in a strong position I might CTRL-SHIFT-I then SHIFT-A when a city is done, or manually mine some plains. Hitting A by mistake can be a nuisance. After a while production slows down, then you notice some little bugger has been irrigating all the mines, and your size 12's have a 15-food surplus.

Managing zillions of workers while at war can be distracting.

[ceroomaster]

Link all cities is priority. But have so many workers I'm using some to max production too.

Seems I'm following the trend...

[bongo]

Defence/offence network gets top priority but if things are quiet I may use some workers for city specific improvement.

[rush]

Link all cities first. Then maximise production in Capital & FP. Then improve food production in low growth cities.

But eventually, I will rail everything, which is probably not the most efficient thing to do.

[sgrig]

Usually at first I try to connect as many cities as possible. By the time I'm able to build railroads most of my workers are on the outskirts of my empire, so railroads usually lead from outer cities to the inner cities. Once a railroad (together with a bunch of workers) reaches some of my core cities, some workers remain to build railroad around those cities to maximise production, while the rest continue building railroads to connect other cities.

[peterfharris]

Military network has first priority (because I am paranoid about the AI neighbours ).

Next develope the key production cities then the other core cities. The less productive frontier cities are last priority. I railroad every single square eventually.

A couple of times, I have put a military railroad through a friendly neighbours territory to get at someone else more conveniently.

[HAND]

Link cities for defence first, then its on the irrigation for pop growth/more workers and then hills and mountains for extra production.

[Arrian]

Just before I discover Steam Power, I will move a couple of large stacks of workers to my Palace & FP areas (productive cities). Then I will typically RR the full radii of my best cities (particularly if they are building wonders) asap, while also having a team or two work on connecting the two areas (one long single rail). Then I just RR everything.

I also tend to stick to RR'ing flat land at first. It's faster, and RRing mined normal grassland gives the biggest percentage production boost anyway (+100%).

-Arrian

[Ubergeek]

Like most folks, my priority is connecting up all my cities as fast as I can. Since I'm not a warmonger, this is done for defensive purposes. When I'm finished with that I mine all the flat land, because the speed of railing flats leads to better production bonuses. Of course everything inside a city radius gets RR'd eventually, with important/productive cities getting it first and the lesser cities getting it later. I do not RR spaces that are inside my borders but outside city radii, especially if they are adjacent to enemy civs. In fact, once I have a harbor connection to other civs, I tend to dismantle the road network that crosses my border to slow down an enemy invasion should they manage to sneak attack and capture a border city.

But I for one NEVER automate workers! Even when I'm running a ginormous civ, I control every single worker personally. Anal? Yes. But nothing makes me nuttier than seeing the computer undoing something I did (which is why I haven't bought MOO3).

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Amen to that brother. And the computer moves so damn quick if you accidently press the wrong button and set one of your workers to automate.

When I have too many workers and nothing to do anymore, I just put them in stacks of 8-12 and leave them on "sleep" until I get pollution... then I can just move the whole stack.

That is why the industrial/modern age tends to be a bit dull if you're coming upon a foregone conclusion.

But still satisfying. Just lookit all that rail...

[vulture]

Like most other people, the defensive railroad takes priority for me (with extra workers produced in anticipation of steam power). Since workers have usually finished developing the core, they are all out in the fringes, so tend to start a railroad from a border town to the core, which can usually be done in a few turns. If I have a city building a wonder, and enough workers, I might stick a team or workers to railroad everything around that city.

Once the railroad to the core is finished, cavalry can generally move from any city to any other city and still attack at the end of it. Next priority is to connect up all the cities to the network (another few turns work) prioritising border towns and high production cities, so that defensive units can get to where they're needed in a hurry (BTW a unit that moves purely on railroads and so uses zero movement points gets the bonus immediately when it fortifies, doesn't it?). Once all cities are connected, then I start improving individual cities, usually only one or two cities at a time, starting with the good production centers (and cities that need railroads to get enough food to grow, but they don't need much work done at first).

Eventually, every tile in the empire is railroaded (barring rare tiles which don't fall inside any city radius).

[Don Giovanni]

It's a good idea also to RR important strategic and luxury resources, so that they will be harder to disconnect by pillage/bombardment. You'd better do this sooner rather that later. It's easier (turn-wise) to keep a tile RR'ed than to keep it roaded.