General thread : road, RR sytem

LouLong

LouLong

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Trying to help organize the various ideas around here (thanks for Ybbor for his own organization) and gathering them in some threads dedicated to specific aspects of the game. New ideas in latter posts will be organized/summarized in the first post.

Here the topic is the road system (including RR, etc...) and other ideas.


Roads

* Make roads upgrade, change with time/techs
*


Railroads

* Make railroads a multiplier of movement or give it an absolute number rather than absolute one.
* Make railroads give a malus to food production (to avoid complete railroading of the world and therefore increase their strategic importance) : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1774073#post1774073


Other networks

- RIVERS
* Make river (or special rivers, such as the lower part) act as roads for trading resources and a movement multiplier (ex X2 when road is X3).
* Make river less easy to cross, especially for some unit classes. Necessity to make bridges or capture bridge cities : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1776520#post1776520

Foreign Roads

* Make all road, even foreign and no ROP, grant a bonus, even though limited in case of enemy roads (ie X 2 instead of X 3) : http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1776439#post1776439


Techs and Roads

* make roads and road effects on movement increase with techs (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?postid=1774289#post1774289)


!!!! MAKE THESE BONUS/MALUS.... EDITABLE !!!!
 
In civ 4 there should be a tech called asphalting of something like that and will increase the speed of mouvement from 3 to 6 or greater
 
Well, my overall suggestion would be:

-Base movement: different per unit type (mounted, motorized, etc...)
-Road: 3x multiplier of base movement, +1 trade.
-Railroad: all units (regardless of type) move 12 spaces per turn. +50% shield and -50% food on occupied tile, +50% food on non-railed adjacent tiles.
-Superhighways: Generally ignored, but definitely a civilization-changing development in city growth, trade, and military movement. All units enjoy infinite movement. +100% trade and -50% food on occupied tile. +50% trade on non-highwayed adjacent tile. Does not necessarily need railroad under it. If it does, then effects are cumulative and square produces no food but enjoys both the trade and production bonus as an "urbanized" square.

<edit> the negative bonuses for the tile and bonuses for adjacent tiles are my way of making sure the entire map doesn't get railroaded! Ugly!!
 
I think the movement costs should depend from technical advances...

1.ancient road +3
2.roman road +4 Consturction or Engineering
3.paved road +5 Metallurgy
4.railroads +8 Steam Power or a possible tech Railroads
5.asphalt roads +9 possible Steel
6.highways +10 or 12 Ecology

What do you think?
 
Originally posted by Vizurok
I think the movement costs should depend from technical advances...

1.ancient road +3
2.roman road +4 Consturction or Engineering
3.paved road +5 Metallurgy
4.railroads +8 Steam Power or a possible tech Railroads
5.asphalt roads +9 possible Steel
6.highways +10 or 12 Ecology

What do you think?
Click to expand...

What's the difference between roman and paved roads, or paved and asphalt roads? It seems that paved is either one of the two, no?

Plus would you have to rebuild the road each time? Sounds like tons of micromanagement to upgrade 6 times.

It seems to me that movement should be based on the type of unit. A horse would move just as fast on a roman road as on an asphalt road. Same goes for infantry walking - they move pretty much just as fast no matter what the road is paved with. The big difference comes with motorized transport without treads that move much faster on asphalt than cobblestone. But these units have faster base movement anyway and are very few. I don't know, there just doesn't seem to be that much difference in roads to neccessitate 6 different categories.
 
I like Vizurok's idea the best, especially how roads are contiuosly improving (maybe they could use this model for farms and mines too). No more infanite movement!

I would also like to see some kind of change made in an effort to create more realistic road-rail networks. Maybe take the trade bonus away, or make roads cost more, maybe a gold per turn upkeep for each square (or 5 squares, or 10 squares) with a road on it. I think a public works system (see public works thread) would help too. Part of the reason the whole world gets covered so fast is the abundance of workers running about. A public works system would require you to be more careful about what terrain improvements you build and where.
 
I have a problem with changing bonuses like this. It is very difficult for one to play a superhuge map without the lovely RR instantmove in the modern era.

Also, we must remember the relative stupidity of the computer, and its inability to factor in the relative importance of one tile improvement over another. I fear that the computer would simply make RR and Highways all over, regardless of penalties.

I personally would like the transit system to remain basically the same, but with a removal of all bonuses (bonii? ;p) from RRs to prevent the stupid RR orgy that always happens (except the movement one, which is a must have).

Other than that, I would like to see the little trains that I remember from one of the older civs (either Call to Power or Test of Time, cannot remember which).

I think that the transit system is fine, but could use some graphical overhauls.
 
I find it very strange that roads cannot be used by the enemy. In most wars defending, seizing or destroying important crossroads is a primary objective. Thus the aspect of beeing able to defend your roads and RR is important. But what point is there in defending your roads and railroads if you have èm everywhere? My suggestion is that roadmovement in enemy territory should be 1/ 2. The defender still has an advantage but a lesser one. RR movement in enemy territory should be 1/3. It`s not easy to utilize enemy RR tracks, but they provide a bonus. Exception here will be inside enemy city radius where there will be no bonuses. I imagine a homedefense that will make ambushes, roadblocks and blow bridges within theis city radius. Wich difference will these suggestions make? One must defend your roads and RR with fortresses etc. Build fewer roads on non city tiles as you must defend your roads. Make roads in difficult terrain more valuable. (Fight for jungle and mountain roads) Introduce a new tactical aspect to civ warfare.

Sorry for the essay, I got carried away :eek:
 
I would also like to see bridges. In earlier civs bridgebuilding were a tech and i liked that. Bridges should be expensive to build, but they could provide an extra trade and production bonus. Further it should be harder to cross rivers. Perhaps one could separate between navigable and non-navigable rivers or have only some places along the river bridgebuiliding or fording were possible. If crossing rivers were harder, fords and rivers would be important in war as well. Many historical cities were founded where it was possible to cross rivers. (London, Lutetia/Paris, Budapest etc) Many historical battles have also been to gain control over important bridges.(Market - Garden, Stirling bridge etc.)
 
The big thing is to take away the tile bonuses, and just have trade and movement bonuses instead. Just have your mines/irrigation upgradable, instead of putting rail over them. Also, it may be fun to add an upgrade over rail like in call to power, but paved roads I don't think would work, since highways came well after rail, maybe maglevs or bullettrain rail.
 
Originally posted by Aeon221
Also, we must remember the relative stupidity of the computer, and its inability to factor in the relative importance of one tile improvement over another. I fear that the computer would simply make RR and Highways all over, regardless of penalties.
Click to expand...

Under my plan they would starve if they did that.

As for maglevs and bullet trains, I certainly wouldn't want to see these built everywhere. Are they even fit for military use? As far as I know they are used only for passenger travel. Perhaps they can be built as a trade improvement in cities (like superhighways were in Civ2). But highways are much more useful as terrain improvments considering that the U.S. interstate highway system was a national defense project. Highways are the dominating method of transportation in the modern era and should be recognized in the game.
 
I propose that connecting each individual system to your road system gives it a trade bonus on every individual square in the newly connected city's territory (whether it has roads or not). But, each individual road square costs a certain amount of gold upkeep. Thus, you have an incentive to connect all of your cities but by using the shortest and most efficient road network possible. Roads would also be important sites to defend this way.
 
Updated.

Some great ideas ! I always thought for instance techs should have an effect on some issues such as movement. Better, faster raods with new techs but without needing to remake them. Issue : it should cost something.
 
Originally posted by Vizurok
I think the movement costs should depend from technical advances...

1.ancient road +3
2.roman road +4 Consturction or Engineering
3.paved road +5 Metallurgy
4.railroads +8 Steam Power or a possible tech Railroads
5.asphalt roads +9 possible Steel
6.highways +10 or 12 Ecology

What do you think?
Click to expand...
I think way too many different types, even if you don't have to upgrade them manually. Highways are just not that much different from asphalt roads or paved roads: they're fundmentally the same thing, with only minor changes that don't justify the added complexity of new numbers for movement rate, new graphics, etc.

I think the current two-tier system (road, RR) is fine, but if you want to add more levels, one more would be plenty - there's no need for 4 more!

For people who don't like the effects on strategy that zero-movement-cost railroads have, here's a simple change: you can move as far as you want on railroads, but the movement point cost is not zero. If you're on a railroad tile, you wouldn't move normally, you would click on a command similar to airlift (but with a graphic related to rail travel), you would get a special cursor (again, similar to airlifting) then you could click on any other tile connected by rail, and move there instantly, but in the process, you'd either use up 1 MP, or possibly all of them, ending your turn.
 
Originally posted by Pirate
Under my plan they would starve if they did that.
Click to expand...
What is the logic behind decreasing food from tiles that have railroads? Each tile is many miles across, railroad tracks, even when you include the right-of-way next to them, are no more than several yards wide. Putting a railroad across some farmland would have a completely negligible effect on how much land was available for growing crops!

If the idea is simply to try to keep people from railroading every tile, there's got to be a better way! Besides, if you look at a map of most any part of the developed world, there are roads (and railroads, too) all over the place! It might be ugly, but I don't think its unrealistic to have roads crisscrossing every square.
 
Originally posted by judgement
What is the logic behind decreasing food from tiles that have railroads? Each tile is many miles across, railroad tracks, even when you include the right-of-way next to them, are no more than several yards wide. Putting a railroad across some farmland would have a completely negligible effect on how much land was available for growing crops!

If the idea is simply to try to keep people from railroading every tile, there's got to be a better way! Besides, if you look at a map of most any part of the developed world, there are roads (and railroads, too) all over the place! It might be ugly, but I don't think its unrealistic to have roads crisscrossing every square.
Click to expand...

I agree roads should be everywhere. I never said they shouldn't - roads carry no food penalty. Railroads and highways are another story.

Railroads decrease just for the tile they are on, but give a food boost to the surrounding tiles, which more than makes up for it and gives an incentive to build a few railroad routes but leave the rest of the country with just roads. Highways do the same thing.

If a tile has BOTH railroads AND highways then the tile is "urbanized." This represents urban sprawl of modern cities. Trade and production are boosted, but the square is now a suburban tile that no longer supports farms. Of course highways wouldn't be available until the modern era so this makes sense.

For this to work, other food bonuses may need to be put into place that make farm tiles more productive to compensate, however this would add incentive to build transportation routes that are more realistic than currently in the game.
 
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