Can't build railroads?

[lte7]

I'm playing the latest version and I reached the railroad tech but I don't have an option to build railroad with my workers. I had it greyed out before but once I reached the tech it disappeared. I also built the wonder that supposedly builds me a railroad network but nothing happened.

 

[Nimek]

I am not sure but railroad requires steel to build.

 

[AIAndy]

Railroads need Steel and (Coal or Oil or Diesel).

 

[lte7]

I have both Steel and Coal.

 

[AIAndy]

I have both Steel and Coal.

Best post a savegame then so someone can have a look what is wrong.

 

[lte7]

Best post a savegame then so someone can have a look what is wrong.

http://www.mediafire.com/?41jediap6we951s

As I mentioned before, I have The Golden Spike built so I should fulfill the conditions to build railroads but they do not appear as an option with my workers, only normal roads such as highway or paved roads.

 

[Nitrazius]

I had this exact same problem. However, when I researched Nitroglycerin and was able to upgrade my workers to Industrial Era Workers they regained the ability to build Railroads.

And regarding the Golden Spike wonder, it's rather unclear what a transcontinental line is exactly. When I built it, it only connected a few nearby cities with a railroad, which didn't even span the length of my empire.

 

[AIAndy]

I had this exact same problem. However, when I researched Nitroglycerin and was able to upgrade my workers to Industrial Era Workers they regained the ability to build Railroads.

Ah, right, normal workers are not set to be able to build railroads in the XML, work animals and industrial workers are though.

 

[lte7]

I had this exact same problem. However, when I researched Nitroglycerin and was able to upgrade my workers to Industrial Era Workers they regained the ability to build Railroads.

And regarding the Golden Spike wonder, it's rather unclear what a transcontinental line is exactly. When I built it, it only connected a few nearby cities with a railroad, which didn't even span the length of my empire.

Ah, thanks! That exactly was my problem.

 

[Vokarya]

And regarding the Golden Spike wonder, it's rather unclear what a transcontinental line is exactly. When I built it, it only connected a few nearby cities with a railroad, which didn't even span the length of my empire.

What I programmed the Golden Spike to do is:

• Starting from the building city, find the point furthest west on the same continent. This point has to be reachable moving through safe territory (territory you own or uncontrolled). The code should be capable of handling continents that go across the map edge.
• Do the same for the point furthest east.
• Build rails from both of those points to the building city.

Does that match what you saw happen? I'm curious to know if it's working the same way as I programmed it. The initial version was to upgrade all Roads and Paved Roads to Railroads, which I got a lot of complaints about. So I toned it down to the current version.

 

[Nimek]

@Vokraya

Dont you think that it should work backwards.
First you build transcontinental rairoad and then have some benefits like when you finish task

 

[Vokarya]

@Vokraya

Dont you think that it should work backwards.
First you build transcontinental rairoad and then have some benefits like when you finish task

I think that would be really, really difficult to code. The Golden Spike is supposed to represent the whole transcontinental railroad project. I picked the name Golden Spike because I felt it was more evocative.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

What I programmed the Golden Spike to do is:

• Starting from the building city, find the point furthest west on the same continent. This point has to be reachable moving through safe territory (territory you own or uncontrolled). The code should be capable of handling continents that go across the map edge.
• Do the same for the point furthest east.
• Build rails from both of those points to the building city.

Does that match what you saw happen? I'm curious to know if it's working the same way as I programmed it. The initial version was to upgrade all Roads and Paved Roads to Railroads, which I got a lot of complaints about. So I toned it down to the current version.

This isn't what happened in my latest game, though it might be due to peculiarities in the continent I wound up with. Unfortunately, I don't have a before and after savegame. In any case, my continent was a really oddball one, with two horizontal regions each extending about 1/3 of the circumference of the globe running near the north and south poles, and a long vertical landmass joining the two. Overall sort of a distorted S-shape or logistic curve. The Via Appia worked as expected, but the Golden Spike's railroad ended in two seemingly random locations. I want to say that the western branch went about halfway down the length of the western horizontal region, while the eastern one only extended about as far as the eastern edge of the vertical region. I did make use of forts and strategically placed cities to create canals through a few narrower regions of the continent though.

Would it make it work better or more consistently if it searched for easternmost and westernmost cities instead of points?

 

[Vokarya]

This isn't what happened in my latest game, though it might be due to peculiarities in the continent I wound up with. Unfortunately, I don't have a before and after savegame. In any case, my continent was a really oddball one, with two horizontal regions each extending about 1/3 of the circumference of the globe running near the north and south poles, and a long vertical landmass joining the two. Overall sort of a distorted S-shape or logistic curve. The Via Appia worked as expected, but the Golden Spike's railroad ended in two seemingly random locations. I want to say that the western branch went about halfway down the length of the western horizontal region, while the eastern one only extended about as far as the eastern edge of the vertical region. I did make use of forts and strategically placed cities to create canals through a few narrower regions of the continent though.

Would it make it work better or more consistently if it searched for easternmost and westernmost cities instead of points?

Really odd continent shapes will throw off the Golden Spike algorithm; I don't know of a solution, short of running the algorithm multiple times. It only checks each point once (running from the bottom-west corner of the map, going horizontally and then up until it reaches the top-right corner) and only can check against the previous point that had been declared as a possible anchor for the railroad. It does have a separate code section for a continent that spans the entire planet.

I expect the algorithm would have the same problem if it searched for cities instead of points, although I do admit that if it searched for cities, you would be guaranteed to get a connection. I'd prefer to keep it searching for points as that way you get the longest possible railroad.

Did you keep any savegames of that game? I'd love to see the continent shape.