Can anyone afford railroads?

[Law Lord]

This is really oversimplifying things. The entire Market line of buildings is good to build if you have the production to spare, and unless I'm doing ICS, I can't see skipping Temples. Monasteries and Mints, if available are great buildings.

And really, at 4 gold per hex, Railroads are super expensive. Just imagine how many buildings' maintenance you could pay for by skipping a few tiles of railroads. Again, this might be just because I do everything in my power to have the vast majority of my cities be Coastal.

The railroad's mobility benefit is also somewhat reduced, because in some circumstances, one or two of your units on a railroad track can also potentially block other units. It's a minor point, but it's also irritating if it catches you at the wrong time.

Just another reason not to go nuts on them unless you can afford it (in which case you're probably well on your way to victory anyway).

 

[Bleser]

To be honest, I very rarely have more than two "production" cities. They are most often VERY near my capital and get railed up immediately for a total of +4 gpt! Other then that I just ignore rails outside of Harbor abuse.

As for the correct way to lay them: All trade route connecting features interact with each other; ie: The Great Warpath UA of the Iroquois makes forests into "roads" if your cities are mostly connected by forests but two tiles break the forest up, you can just make roads in those two tiles and it will correctly integrate the roads with the forests. The same is true for the railroad, if you have 3 tiles of road connecting city A to city B, and replace any one of them with railroad, the game will automatically remove the road from that tile, place a railroad and then integrate the two types to seamlessly keep your trade route.

In conclusion: Just replace whatever roads you have with railroads for the cities that you would like to have the railroad bonus in!

Ok, this is what I thought, but the other poster (@stormerne) indicated you had to manually remove the roads after building the railroads.

 

[Druin]

Ok, this is what I thought, but the other poster (@stormerne) indicated you had to manually remove the roads after building the railroads.

negatory ghost rider

 

[Blitz47]

By the time you get to railroads, you should have an economy kicking out hundreds of GPT. It's nice to hook up some of your closest nearby cities to the capital. Those are usually the biggest, best cities and can best make use of the extra production boost. You don't have to wire up the whole civ, if the outlying cities are small.

Are you using too few trading posts? TP spam is your friend.

If you play ICS style, gold isn't an issue, TP spam also won't cause any issue. However, if you like to build up your cities nice and big, filled with structures, then RR may bankrupt you. I sometimes play non-military ICS style and RR is bad news for a large empire with cities far away from each other (I was trying to give each one of my city 5X5 hex radius of tiles, boy, did I learn how expensive RR can be, especially from the plain vanilla release where automated workers build inefficient roads

OP might not be playing ICS style.

To OP: plan your cities wisely, build coastal cities if your cluster of cities are far apart, connect RR from any inland city to the nearest city that'll eventually reach either a coastal city with harbor connection to your capital or reach your capital. Also, don't automate workers. You will be fine, if necessary, go for the commerce SP, if you played like I did, building museum everywhere, you shoul dhave a lot of culture to spend on SP.

 

[Dermo]

OK Thanks,
Will have to give that a try.
It just seems so counter intuitive to the way I've been playing Civ for the last 20 years.
So once this list has been exhausted, what to build? Science?, Wealth?, Troops?

 

[DaveGold]

Railroads are worth it. The production bonuses are very strong and they're constructed with workers that you're likely to have around anyway. Compare that to building a seaport which gives you 2 production each turn for each sea resource but takes a numbers of hammers to build, leaving you a long lead time before you get into profit with hammers.

Build roads between your cities in the classical era and dig them all up when you research railroads and replace them with harbours. Construct railroads for inland connections and transporting military units. Put your connections through allied city states if you can since you don't pay for the routes inside their borders.

It's all counter intuitive but don't worry, that's CIV5 for you.

 

[Bleser]

I'm probably building way too many buildings (my puppets definitely are). It's just tough to resist getting the extra culture, science, etc. I'm in an Emperor game and the AI is an era ahead of me, probably going to pull out a space race win; will be the first time I've actually lost a game in Civ V.

 

[Soronery]

I have a question about how harbors work. Do you need a harbor in your capitol in order to have the harbor cities connected to your capital? Or do you need to just connect a city with a harbor to your capital? I think just building a harbor in one city doesn't do anything by itself.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Soronery
Check out the post I made on page 1.

Basically you need a chain of tiles, the harbor links land and sea. Since the capital is on land, you need some way for sea routes to cross the coast barrier, either with a harbor in the capital or in a nearby city with an appropriate road or railroad route.

 

[Druin]

I'm probably building way too many buildings (my puppets definitely are). It's just tough to resist getting the extra culture, science, etc. I'm in an Emperor game and the AI is an era ahead of me, probably going to pull out a space race win; will be the first time I've actually lost a game in Civ V.

You are in for a surprise

 

[andrewlt]

This is really oversimplifying things. The entire Market line of buildings is good to build if you have the production to spare, and unless I'm doing ICS, I can't see skipping Temples. Monasteries and Mints, if available are great buildings.

And really, at 4 gold per hex, Railroads are super expensive. Just imagine how many buildings' maintenance you could pay for by skipping a few tiles of railroads. Again, this might be just because I do everything in my power to have the vast majority of my cities be Coastal.

Yeah, I'd say the same thing for library and if available, circus. I'd say the buildings worth it to build are:

-Monument
-Coliseum
-Market
-Library
-Circus, if available
-Bank and Stock Exchange, if you have enough production
-Mint
-Temple and Monastery, if you need the culture

Those have pretty cheap maintenance and you can still afford railroads.

 

[stormerne]

Ok, you lost me here. I had no idea what you are saying was true.

What I've been doing is this:

1. Connect all cities via single road network early-game
2. Overlay/railroad that same road network with rail.

Is this not what I should be doing? It sounds like you're recommending one of two things:

A. Do what I'm doing and then "remove" the road underneath the railroad, which I thought I was doing automatically.
B. Build a separate railroad network from my road network, which actually sounds kinda cool!

Nah, you're fine. Overlaying the rail over the road removes the old road. No you don't need an extra step. What I'm not convinced about is - if you do it that way - that your route still stays active as a trade route while your conversion work is in progress. Obviously it is before and after, but I'm not sure about during. If you're earning a lot of cash from trade, you don't want to disrupt it at all.

And that's why I suspect the game makes its own recommendation for the tiles on which to build your railroad, because they always seem to be different to where your existing road is. So when you build railroad on their recommended route, you stay connected at all times. When the rail is done, you get your workers to remove the old road.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

Nobody seems to mention Factory? It gives +50% production for everything, not just buildings, which means it also works on Wonders and military units.

Or are we just talking about the stuff we build in ICS stuff? I seem to notice a lot of people talk about ICS by default when they talk about "You should always ____", and it just seems weird I guess because I only rarely play ICS.

 

[Bibor]

And really, at 4 gold per hex, Railroads are super expensive.

Erm, railroad costs 2 per hex per turn.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Nobody seems to mention Factory? It gives +50% production for everything, not just buildings, which means it also works on Wonders and military units.

Or are we just talking about the stuff we build in ICS stuff? I seem to notice a lot of people talk about ICS by default when they talk about "You should always ____", and it just seems weird I guess because I only rarely play ICS.

A big difference from previous Civs, (and a rather depressing one), is that on OCC, you can't afford to build all the buildings. At least, when I did an OCC, I found I was frequently building second-rate wonders, just because they were the only thing I could build that had no upkeep. And, I was half-hoping some other civ would beat me to the wonder, so I could get the cash consolation.

In previous Civs, basically every building was good if your city was big enough, and a bigger city was always better. Both of those assumptions are gone in CiV.

 

[jaycuhbbb]

The best advice comes from posting saves. 55gpt at railroads means something is very wrong.

 

[Licinia Eudoxia]

A big difference from previous Civs, (and a rather depressing one), is that on OCC, you can't afford to build all the buildings. At least, when I did an OCC, I found I was frequently building second-rate wonders, just because they were the only thing I could build that had no upkeep. And, I was half-hoping some other civ would beat me to the wonder, so I could get the cash consolation.

In previous Civs, basically every building was good if your city was big enough, and a bigger city was always better. Both of those assumptions are gone in CiV.

In OCC, actually, I was building almost nothing BUT wonders. I simply bought nearly every other building I needed, but I suspect it really depends on your one city!

 

[Bibor]

A big difference from previous Civs, (and a rather depressing one), is that on OCC, you can't afford to build all the buildings.

OOC has no trade route or smaller city income to pay for the upkeep of buildings in large cities.

Yes, you're right. Wonders often offer better returns of investment at no GPT cost.

 

[trueblue]

i just dont get you guys.

immortal.

railroads: you dont need them everywhere, just hook up a few of your best cities, and usually they arent too far away from your capital anyway. and obviously use harbours where possible.

can i afford it? easily.


and who wrote that crummy list of buildings taht should only be built? what was it? a market, collusem and monument? build all culture building that are available, right up to the broadcast tower. build right up to stock exchange. in your biggest cities build workshops, factories....


im never skint in this game and i dont even trade post spam.... the odd TP here and there will keep u afloat.




there is a ridiculous amount of mis-information on this board. mis-information and down right useless information.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Money making buildings are population dependent for the effectiveness .. so even when playing ICS, (with enough maritimes) I'll let the cities grow to size 10 or so.

I mean, seriously, unless you're in danger of dropping off the deep end of unhappy, population is a good thing.
Make a theatre as needed, and you're all set.

And finally ... whee specialists.