Railway question

[JaggedBear]

I was looking at the raway page of the wiki and noticed that it has a plus20% to production and faster movement but it made no mention of gold, do railways still the gold bonus in addition to the hammer bonus? (I havnt played a map where I've needed railroads/roads in a long time and can't remember if they do)
Cheers for any help Jag

 

[Browd]

Railroads do create city connections for city connectin gold.

Moderator Action: Moved to General Discussions.

 

[redwings1340]

Hmm, I'll add another question here. If you have your capital city and another city located on the same continent, and they both have a harbor (even with just a normal road connection), do you still need to build railroads between them, or is it automatic?

 

[Browd]

The harbors need to have an open sea route to form a connection. After Astonomy and once the fog has been lifted from the ocean, that should not be an issue. But prior to that time, harbor connections may be blocked by AI and CS borders.

 

[Dushku]

The harbors need to have an open sea route to form a connection. After Astonomy and once the fog has been lifted from the ocean, that should not be an issue. But prior to that time, harbor connections may be blocked by AI and CS borders.

I think his question dealt with whether or not a city connected by way of Harbors would impart the production bonus of railroads.

You could try it out in IGE. But my guess is no. Harbors talk about city connections, but the production boost doesn't come from city connections alone.

 

[Browd]

Harbor connections do provide the RR bonus. Capital with harbor and City A with harbor ==> as long as a city connection is formed by the harbor connection (which was what I was referring to), the RR bonus applies. If however, there is any plain road segment interrupting the connection, then no RR bonus. So, Cities A and B have a harbor connection with each other, but City A only has a plain road connection with the capital ==> neither City A nor City B has a RR bonus; but the moment the road between the capital and City A is upgraded to a RR, the RR bonus appears in both City A and City B.

Change the facts: City A has a RR connection to the capital, but now City B has just a plain road connection with City C ==> Cities A and B have the RR bonus, but City C does not.

 

[reddishrecue]

Rr bonuses could be complicated but i know that connecting a railroad to a city thats trading with the capital through a harbor then that city that is connected to the city trading with the capital with a harbor will get the rr bonus as well as the city thats trading through harbor.

 

[beetle]

I am still not clear on a few of the specifics...

Harbor connections do provide the RR bonus. Capital with harbor and City A with harbor ==> as long as a city connection is formed by the harbor connection (which was what I was referring to), the RR bonus applies. If however, there is any plain road segment interrupting the connection, then no RR bonus.

Okay, suppose cap and City A are on the same continent, not connected by a road, but both have harbors. Does City A get the RR production bonus? If so, and I then build a road (not a RR), does City A lose the production bonus? If cap and City B are on different continents (again, both with harbors and the RR technology unlocked), does City B get the production bonus? Finally, does Harbor connection gold stack with road connection gold?

 

[Browd]

If the city A harbor to capital harbor forms a city connection, city A gets the RR bonus - they don't have to be on separate land masses, but there does need to be a sea path for the city connection to form. If there is no city connection by harbor (perhaps ice blocks the path from one side of the continent to the other or maybe too much fog or AI/CS borders block the path) then forming a plain road connection between city A and your capital is NOT good enough. You either need an actual RR connection or the city connection has to be through (I.e., by means of) the harbor connection. If you have a good harbor connection, the fact that you might also have a plain road connection between those same cities is irrelevant.

Whether you have a plain road connection, a RR connection or a harbor connection or multiple connections (such as both a road and a harbor connection) will not affect the amount of gold generated by the city connection (there is no stacking if you have multiple ways two cities are connected). But it will affect the profitability of your connection, since roads, RRs and harbors have different maintenance costs. So, if you have a good harbor connection, you get city connection gold and the RR bonus. If you also have a road between those cities, you get no incremental gold; you just have maintenance cost of the road segments. If you want the road for military purposes, great, but be conscious of the cost.

Note also that automated workers apparently don't know anything about harbor connections and will insist on also building roads between already-connected cities if you let them. (Reason #483 why automating workers is a bad idea.)

 

[beetle]

Thanks so much Browd for the clear explaination. That is how I expected that things were working. It bothered me that I could not figure it out from the prompts in game. There is nothing listed under gold income -- because there is no extra income. But it is hard to draw inferences from lack of information!

The in-game artifacts that caused me some doubts are that:

1. If you have a city connected by both harbor and road to the cap, during war when a port is blocked, you will get pop-up warning that a city connection has been lost. If I am not losing gold, why do I care?
2. If you have a remote (but on the same continent) expo with only a harbor connection to the cap, there will be a tool-tip prompt recommendation for (non-automated) workers to build a road. Obviously that relates to your observations that workers apparently don't know anything about harbor connections.

 

[Dushku]

It bothered me that I could not figure it out from the prompts in game.

In the city overview screen, you can hover over your hammers and it will specify +25% for railroad connection.