DB_in_Omaha
Warlord
The subject of railroad movement came up today on my mod's thread, and while I was posting a response just a few minutes ago, an interesting (but rather drastic) possibility came to mind to revise them. I posted it there, but I figured I'd post it more generally, as well, to see if anyone else has tried something like this or has any suggestions.
Roads, per se, could be eliminated from the game. Road graphics would be replaced with railroad graphics, road building would be tied to Steam Power, and railroad building wouldn't be available at all. Roads (which in this mod would actually be railroads) could be given a movement rate of, say, 1/10.
(By the way, there is *not* a full correspondence between the arrangement of road tiles in the "roads.pcx" file and the arrangement of railroad tiles in the "railroads.pcx" file. So you couldn't just use the existing railroads graphics file for roads; you'd have to go through and manually rearrange the railroad tiles into the sequence used in the road tiles graphic. Not an impossible job, but not one I'd want to tackle unless I was fairly sure it would pay off.)
The first problem is that roads provide early commerce bonuses, and that without roads, the bonuses wouldn't exist. But this could be gotten around simply by giving various terrain types commerce production *without* roads.
The second problem is that movement in the early game would be substantially more difficult. A lot of readjusting would need to be done in regard to the whole "impassable to wheeled vehicles without a road" concept, since such terrain would remain impassable until the Industrial Age, when roads (a.k.a. railroads) finally become available. And at least some early unit movement rates would probably have to be boosted, since roads simply wouldn't be available to provide faster movement.
The third (and perhaps most significant) problem is tied to the food and shield production bonuses that true railroads provide. There's no way to simulate this with regular roads. And while the production bonuses of factories and power plants could be boosted to compensate for the loss of railroad-generated shields, there's no way to have an improvement or wonder increase food production except in water tiles.....
On the plus side, there'd be no more "infinite movement" problem, and since railroads wouldn't be providing production bonuses, neither the AI nor human players would have any need to build them in every friggin' tile....
-- Darryl
Roads, per se, could be eliminated from the game. Road graphics would be replaced with railroad graphics, road building would be tied to Steam Power, and railroad building wouldn't be available at all. Roads (which in this mod would actually be railroads) could be given a movement rate of, say, 1/10.
(By the way, there is *not* a full correspondence between the arrangement of road tiles in the "roads.pcx" file and the arrangement of railroad tiles in the "railroads.pcx" file. So you couldn't just use the existing railroads graphics file for roads; you'd have to go through and manually rearrange the railroad tiles into the sequence used in the road tiles graphic. Not an impossible job, but not one I'd want to tackle unless I was fairly sure it would pay off.)
The first problem is that roads provide early commerce bonuses, and that without roads, the bonuses wouldn't exist. But this could be gotten around simply by giving various terrain types commerce production *without* roads.
The second problem is that movement in the early game would be substantially more difficult. A lot of readjusting would need to be done in regard to the whole "impassable to wheeled vehicles without a road" concept, since such terrain would remain impassable until the Industrial Age, when roads (a.k.a. railroads) finally become available. And at least some early unit movement rates would probably have to be boosted, since roads simply wouldn't be available to provide faster movement.
The third (and perhaps most significant) problem is tied to the food and shield production bonuses that true railroads provide. There's no way to simulate this with regular roads. And while the production bonuses of factories and power plants could be boosted to compensate for the loss of railroad-generated shields, there's no way to have an improvement or wonder increase food production except in water tiles.....
On the plus side, there'd be no more "infinite movement" problem, and since railroads wouldn't be providing production bonuses, neither the AI nor human players would have any need to build them in every friggin' tile....
-- Darryl
