Removing Railroads?

Is it possible to remove railroads from the game without taking away the AI's ability to teraform workers?

I removed the check mark next to worker actions, build railroad, to only realize 4 hours into my game (UGH!) that the AI doesn't recognize workers as workers if they do not have the build railroad order checked and they sit thier workers on thier arse and do nothing with them.

Anyway, I hate railroads for long term multiplayer games as they remove all strategy of placement of your units and defending your empire.

So I am looking for a way to remove them from the game using the editor. I know I could put the railroad advance tied in with integrated defense, but if my games go that long then I see the dumb railroads and as I said all strategy goes out the window when that comes along. And under worker actions, thier is no delete buttom for these actions.

Can anyone else think of a way to remove them? I must be missing an easy way to do this but can't figure one out.

well railroads historically led to offensive movements, but if you don't like it thats fine. I quite simply disagree that strategy is nonexistent with them.

However, it was found out a while back that any unit that does not have ALL the worker actions will not be treated like a worker by the A.I.

To completely remove them I would suggest giving them to one of the final techs (like you did) and make them take a long time to build. You might even want to make your own tech in the modern that requires Integrated Defense, Robotics, Genetics, and Stealth, (I believe you can require 4 techs with PTW), and have that final tech cost ungodly amounts of beakers.

Aye I thought of upping the turns a ton, but basically me and my budy play over a LAN and we play starting with like 6 other civs most times, and if a civ does end up making it to the end with us, then it would be doomed for sure, as its workers would sit there working on a railraod for 50 turns or whatever and no clean pollution or fix other stuff.

But thanks for advice, I guess this is what I will have to do.

The main reason I don't like the railroads, is lets say me and my buddy are on different continents, and he lands like 20 MA on my southern shore, and so I react moving like all my units instantly to that shore to destroy his incursion. Well, what I didn't know is that his real invasion force is the stack of 150 MA now landing on my northern shore.

Well with railroads, my mistake of commiting all my forces to the south is very simply corrected, not only can I move as many units as I need to back to my northern shore in the blink of an eye, but I can attack when I get there, and then even have movement left to retrat to my city to heal to full.

I find that utterly ridiculous, regardless if it is realistic, not realistic, whatever, I just don't like how it plays out, but its fine as long as I can change it somehow.

Hygro didn't mean to increse the time one worker uses to build a railroad, but rather to move the ability of building railroads from steam power to a much later tech (that probably will never be reached), and maybe even to a newly created tech that costs insanely much to research.

I agree that a MP game with railroads in place looses out much of the strategy since you can reinforce and attack from everywhere in your land in one turn. This would be similar to Germany being able to move forces from the eastern front and attack the D-Day invasion in one day.

If you really get rid of railroad : give the worker the railroad ability, and make a tech, put "NONE" in its "era" and make it the prerequisite for railroad.
Then, nobody would ever be able to research it, hence no RR for the whole game.
And worker will still have the ability ^^

Thanks Akka, Done and Done. Now why didn't I think of that...

I totally agree that instant movement ruins the basics of the game and I have also found that rr slow ai movement times as they examine every possible move each turn (which are alot on rail). Ive been making rail available with the last tech as I see it as a sort of future tech.......

I have to agree with the railroad thing. Its much too OTT. It should double road movement at most!

I find defending any territory very easy with RR's as overwhelming force can be brought to bear on any attacking force so quickly unless the RR's have been destroyed by Bombards and Aerial Bombing using offshore Carriers.

Personally I would love to see a decoupling of the resource bonuses and road/rail. The two should be critical to transportation and that is ALL.

And I agree that the movement bonus of rail is impossibly godly.

The RR's don't remove all strategy at all. Rather you have to adapt you're strategy to fit.
You already know that any force that enters an enemies RRed land are going to be subject to ferocious counter attack, so why haven't you prepared for that by taking out the RR's? It seems more like a lack of strategy instead of a removal. Send in a squadron of bombers, battery of arty, fleet of battleships to isolate the attack point, or a few points to confuse the enemy.
Also if you can take the city you are attacking then the previous owner can't counter attack with everything instantaneously as they now have the movement penalty applied to them.
It seems that you just need to think it thru some more. I think pulling off a successful invasion after the advent of RR's needs more strategy than one before.

Originally posted by Rellin


Can anyone else think of a way to remove them? I must be missing an easy way to do this but can't figure one out.

Click to expand...

The easiest way of removing them is to create a strategic resource that doesn't appear on any terrain type, then replace either Iron or Coal with it. Since the new resource will never appear on the map, railroads can't be built.

i too wish you could remove the economic benefits from RR. As it is, almost every tile is covered in RR so that disrupting transportation to a landing area is extremely time consuming.

Another negative is that I havent seen the AI rush all their forces against one of my invasions. Its so disheartening to see the AI inner cities garrisoned with 8+ modern units while they lose city after city to much smaller but concentrated invasions by me.

I doubled the cost of RR and moved them to Corporation.

Quokka, I have played that way many times, after all I have just removed railroads from games I play, and understand that strategy fine.

Now I just will use it on roads and not insta-teleport beam me up scotty railroads, and eliminate the excessive resource bonuses from railroads that will also make those stacks of 100 MA much harder to come by, at least I hope so.

Originally posted by Greyhawk1
I have to agree with the railroad thing. Its much too OTT. It should double road movement at most!

I find defending any territory very easy with RR's as overwhelming force can be brought to bear on any attacking force so quickly unless the RR's have been destroyed by Bombards and Aerial Bombing using offshore Carriers.

Click to expand...

Yes thats it exactly and only human players use this well......

I'm usually a builder rather than a warmonger, so I need railroads to move my workers around to clean up pollution. If I don't have coal in my area or can't grab it quickly and easily, I quit the game.

Originally posted by YNCS
I'm usually a builder rather than a warmonger, so I need railroads to move my workers around to clean up pollution. If I don't have coal in my area or can't grab it quickly and easily, I quit the game.

Click to expand...

I tone down pollution some as the ai cant handle it anyway but I would add a little movement to your workers instead.....

I like the instant movement because it simply changes the strategy.

As for the economic bonuses, I think it would be stupid to remove them because they are far more accurate then adding infinite movement. Railraods bolstered economies in just about every possible way from what I've learned.

Originally posted by Quokka
The RR's don't remove all strategy at all. Rather you have to adapt you're strategy to fit.

Click to expand...

Yes. Adapt your attacking strategy to deal with instant reinforcements when you have none.

As opposed to, say, him actually distributing defensive forces around his homeland, NOT relying on godly instant railroad teleport?

I would really, really love to see a mod that removed the bonuses of road and railroad and made railroad impossible to build. But I looked in the editor and couldn't find any place that modified the bonuses added by roads, or the movement factor attributed to railroads.

I see roads and railroads as "major freeways" sortof. Like the appian way. Not as every single back road swarming around a town.

I guess i'd just like my maps (and roads) to be cleaner

Originally posted by Raz
I would really, really love to see a mod that removed the bonuses of road and railroad and made railroad impossible to build. But I looked in the editor and couldn't find any place that modified the bonuses added by roads, or the movement factor attributed to railroads.

Click to expand...

You can't change the "unlimited movement" of RR.
Though, you CAN change the bonuses that road gives : go into the "Terrain" part of the editor, then change the bonus given by a road

I'm in favor of limiting movement on a railroad or at least creating a new unit (train) that could be build by a city that is at least connected to another city by RR.

Then the first train generation have a transport capacity of 3 units, and can move 6 tiles over RR, then the next generation loads 5 units and moves 9 tiles over RR, the last generation loads 6 units and moves 12 tiles over RR. (the figures here are just an example, could be more)

That would surely be fun and strategic, and make diversion much more effective, as your units might still be half way through the continent, heading to repel what turns out to be a diversion, when the major enemy forces land on the other side...

Other things that could be developped, highway and trucks, that use the same principle than RR and trains, but have less movement and less capacity, but compensate at least for the lack of iron and coal that are needed for the RR.
Trucks could be then upgraded to Mechanized Infantry, and MI will have a transport capacity (footsoldiers are always needed)

I know all of the above sounds crazy but why not?