Transportation across empires

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Ddude97

Ddude97

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So I was thinking, pehaps their is a way to allow lots of units to move across a large empire without too much hassle, and I came up with the idea of wagons/trucks. These wagons (in early eras) and trucks (later eras) would have a movement penalty on terrain without roads/RR and would move faster than average on roads/RR. These would be able to store a few units (3?) and then move across to another side and unload 1 at a time to an adjacent tile to avoid overpowering them.

So what do you guys think, is it practical/worth it?
 
So we would have naval embarkation for simplicity, and on the land we would have transports?
And do you think the AI would be able to handle this?
 
And do you think the AI would be able to handle this?
Click to expand...
Nope.

Sounds like annoying MM too.

The right fix is some kind of UI improvement that allows you to band-box select a group and right click on a target point, and improved pathfinding AI so that units don't keep stepping off the road when the road tile in front of the is occupied by a friendly unit.
 
Why not? why wouldn't the AI be able to put units in, move them, then take them out? or are you saying it would be hard to teach the AI to use this strategically?
 
Not at all?
Click to expand...
Not at all.

Maybe with a ton of custom AI code you could fudge something together, but it still wouldn't be very smooth, unless you're a brilliant AI guy.

The AI has enough trouble with the existing mechanics without adding new ones.
 
What could help, though, would be to establish something like transport via railroad.

Needed for this would be a railroad station in the sending and in the receiving city, and you could "beam" one unit at a time from A to B. The unit would lose its movement points then due to embarking/disembarking the train.
 
@Ahriman: Yeah, you're probably right, the AI still has problems with existing 1UPT and doesn't need more complexity
@Isnarch: I thought about that, but I belevied it might be something of an exploit/overpowered like RRs from civ 3
 
Ddude97 said:
@Isnarch: I thought about that, but I belevied it might be something of an exploit/overpowered like RRs from civ 3
Click to expand...

An exploit? No, since it would be a new game feature.
Overpowered? Don't know. One would have to put more thoughts into it. It was just an idea which popped up.

Possible problems would be:
what happens if there's already a unit in the receiving city?
Would the AI be able to priorize it correctly?
Would workers occupy the trains, while the grunts have to do the marching?
 
Best solution is to not create the problem. In this case, not to put a mechanic into the game until the AI has proven a competance to use such mechanic.
It was not necessary, in a version 5 of a long standing game, to add in a new problem that is so AI breaking.
 
lschnarch said:
An exploit? No, since it would be a new game feature.
Overpowered? Don't know. One would have to put more thoughts into it. It was just an idea which popped up.

Possible problems would be:
what happens if there's already a unit in the receiving city?
Would the AI be able to priorize it correctly?
Would workers occupy the trains, while the grunts have to do the marching?
Click to expand...

I like your idea, but it would have to be limited, perhaps a station within only a certain range or maybe you would have to build RR between the two cities?
Q1. It is either displaced automatically if it has movement points or it has to be moved next turn if it doesn't/you dont like it moving automatically
Q2. I really don't know, I know very little programming and AI such (although I'm starting to learn some)
Q3. If their on autpomate yes, if the AI is not specifically told no to put workers on trains or to prioritize military then yes. This could of course be avoided since in Civ 5's 1UPT, a civilian and a military unit can stack, though this might be a problem for GGs.

@Lay_Lay: You're most likely right, but then how does it prove it can use this mechanic if we don't allow it too?
 
Ddude97 said:
I like your idea, but it would have to be limited, perhaps a station within only a certain range or maybe you would have to build RR between the two cities?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I forgot to mention this.
The prerequisite of course would be an existing railroad connection between the respective cities.

So, you would have to have the railroad (which gives you the production bonus if connected to your capital) AND railroad stations in both cities concerned.

To make things easier for the AI, one could even add a minimum distance between every two railroad stations to avoid having the AI place them in any city, although such a city could be reached by marching in the same time.
 
In this case, not to put a mechanic into the game until the AI has proven a competance to use such mechanic.
Click to expand...
Precisely.
They deliberately took airlift capability *out* for Civ5, and my guess is that this is in part because the AI never used it very well, so it was a large human player advantage.
 
This would work I think :), though I think it boils down to what shot down my idea, will the AI be able to handle the mechanic, adding a min distance would be fine and might help the AI prioritize to building something useful; but RR stations would be still confusing, you'd have to remember everywhere you built an RR for it to be effective and as Ahriman pointed out, this might be overpowered for the human as it does sound much like airlifting. I like the idea immensely though :)
 
Ahriman said:
Precisely.
They deliberately took airlift capability *out* for Civ5, and my guess is that this is in part because the AI never used it very well, so it was a large human player advantage.
Click to expand...

The AI *can* use airlift in cIV... at least it did so in FFH, so it can be coded... now whether it can do it "well" may be an issue
 
I'll go out on a limb and say that something like this would never be implemented, except maybe in a mod. Like lschnarch said, it would make zero sense to remove naval transports, only to then implement ground transports.

What I think would help is to have an option for "go to - always use roads." Or maybe have the unit pause on the road when blocked so you have to manually move the unit off the road. Basically, I want to decide whether it's better to leave the road or not, not the pathfinding logic.
 
The AI *can* use airlift in cIV... at least it did so in FFH, so it can be coded... now whether it can do it "well" may be an issue
Click to expand...
I didn't say they didn't use it, I said they didn't use it well.
So what's your point?
 
Now I have to have a point? :lol:

I was writing a much longer post... then I realized it was a huge tl;dr situation... so I pared in down.... too far it seems.... D'Oh!!
 
Ahriman said:
I didn't say they didn't use it, I said they didn't use it well.
Click to expand...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC, you can only airlift 1 unit to a particular city per turn; the city would be unable to accept more "landings" even from other cities. So you don't know if AI uses it well, because there is nothing in particular that can be exploited.

And with railroads, it's not even really necessary to airlift units into cities in defense. Airlifting makes me lose further movement points.

In overseas expansion, airlifting one unit at a time into cities is only good when you already have a strong foothold, AI does this. If in defense, you're better off using your transports, one unit is not going to change the tide by much, you'll need your SoDs.
 
Ddude97 said:
So I was thinking, pehaps their is a way to allow lots of units to move across a large empire without too much hassle, and I came up with the idea of wagons/trucks. These wagons (in early eras) and trucks (later eras) would have a movement penalty on terrain without roads/RR and would move faster than average on roads/RR. These would be able to store a few units (3?) and then move across to another side and unload 1 at a time to an adjacent tile to avoid overpowering them.

So what do you guys think, is it practical/worth it?
Click to expand...

I don't see the point. Don't roads sorta represent transportation and railroads represent bloody traincars transporting troops and equipment? Its abstract and it works.
 
Sonereal said:
I don't see the point. Don't roads sorta represent transportation and railroads represent bloody traincars transporting troops and equipment? Its abstract and it works.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth.

A better way would be to increase the movement on roads/railroads as technology improves. A hypothetical "Automobiles" technology once researched could increase road movements for all units by +1, for instance.
 
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