Does anyone else use railroads?

[NukeAJS]

I almost always play continents maps on small or standard size so I really don't build railroads.

That being said, on pangea and/or huge maps ... they can definitely be very useful.

 

[MrRadar]

Can anyone explain how this trade route uses a nine tile longer way through two harbors instead of the two railroad tiles to Victoria?
Those land tiles between Victoria and Nazca even do not have roads yet. This is definitely by far the weirdest pathing I've seen yet

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Judging just from your screenshot, I can only think of this possible explanation: Victoria has a harbour district which is one tile closer than the city center, so the trader seeks entrance through the harbour first, which puts him on the water, then it uses the next closest harbour for disembarkation and continues from there to the city centre.

But that's pure speculation. Information about trade route pathing is remarkably scarce, for the life of me I could not figure out where to look for it in the game files, and online searching gave me no answers so far. I would really appreciate if someone with more knowledge stepped in and gave more valuable insights.

Blackburn and Victoria are on the same continent, aren't they? You could also probably check the tooltip text in the trade route screen, it might be that those three water tiles and one railroad tile (is there a railroad on that forested hill left of the harbour? It seems so, but I'm not sure) makes the longer route a bit more valuable than only two desert railroad tiles, but that's even deeper into reading the tea leaves than my first guess.

 

[kryat]

I like to have at least one main line running through my empire to rush units from one end to the other in case of emergency. But I hate the way they tangle up like spaghetti.

This is similar to what I usually do. I’ll often run one main trunk line through my major cities and then on to the frontiers. I find them very useful for quickly moving settlers and builders to undeveloped regions. They’re also useful for moving large armies if I’m feeling like a lagging neighbor just needs to be absorbed or if any free cities develop.

 

[Stacked_Deck]

Just for the era score. The only time I need that level of movement is when I'm going domination, and if I'm perfectly honest, having even more units to move around isn't very appealing. If I'm playing relatively peacefully then it doesn't take very long to move to make them worthwhile.

I'd prefer it if they were a city project, pay some hammers, some coal and it connects a railroad to a city of your choice. Or a trader style unit that's just for moving production around and makes railroads as it goes.

 

[Ceydezed]

I think railroad are actually quite useful in science victory, to connect your builders-building city(ies) with your spaceport cities. You can pump out (or buy) builders and use them the same turn on the spaceport projects, without having to move them manually through all your mines or between mountain. Pretty useful when you have a decent size empire with high production cities not always next to each others.

 

[cvb]

I like to have at least one main line running through my empire to rush units from one end to the other in case of emergency. But I hate the way they tangle up like spaghetti.

This is similar to what I usually do. I’ll often run one main trunk line through my major cities and then on to the frontiers. I find them very useful for quickly moving settlers and builders to undeveloped regions.

I also always loved to build an efficient infrastructure, ie. beef up a branched road network with some strong railroad backbones.

I mean, in a game, which needs or gives you an advantage doing it.

I didn't even know you COULD build railroads.

This decline makes me a bit sad. In civ1 railroads were very prominent, I could literately feel 'Civilization' & 'RailroadTycoon' are twins ...

.

 

[FeiLing]

Spoiler :

Blackburn and Victoria are on the same continent, aren't they? You could also probably check the tooltip text in the trade route screen, it might be that those three water tiles and one railroad tile (is there a railroad on that forested hill left of the harbour? It seems so, but I'm not sure) makes the longer route a bit more valuable than only two desert railroad tiles, but that's even deeper into reading the tea leaves than my first guess.

Yeah there's a RR connection between Victoria and it's harbor. However I could always draw a more 'valuable' route than what the game
suggest me if I made the route longerand go weird ways, so I doubt the trade route yields play a role in deciding which path it takes.
On thing that trade routes like to do certainly is (from many observations): Taking an existing road rather then the shortest way. It doesn't here though.
Maybe it's an oversight from the developers and they don't count railroads in the same way as roads for trade route pathing?

Judging just from your screenshot, I can only think of this possible explanation: Victoria has a harbour district which is one tile closer than the city center, so the trader seeks entrance through the harbour first, which puts him on the water, then it uses the next closest harbour for disembarkation and continues from there to the city centre.

Thank you! That seems like a plausible explanation since the trade route length it shows you when choosing it's destination
in the UI is not the actual number of tiles/turns it will take but the distance between the two cities over air (including impassable tiles).
I wish they would fix this btw. How hard can it be to count and show the number of tiles the trade route is actually going to walk instead?

Glad you/this post made me remember this distance bug. I have thought of this many times but always forgotten to mention it (but I always had in mind:
"What was that one thing that really annoys me in Civ6 even though it's a really simple fix?" Hey Firaxis: If you ever fix this, you could also just tell us
how often the trade route is going to make a tour before it ends (see the graphs in this thread) [since it's kinda annoying having to remember to only chose trade
routes with the 'air distance' 3, 4, 6, 11, 12 or 13 (for them to not take overly long/multiple trips) especially since these breakpoints change on every game speed setting].

 

[Jkchart]

I do love building them. However, I tend to only build one main line to my most important cities though because a) micro intensive and b) if my empire is big enough it can sink the world

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I build a lot, not only connect every city, but also every tile in or even not inside my territory.

Furthermore, I head towards railroad in my late game tech pace choose. I go straight to Steam Power after researching other necessary techs.

Railroads provide very good movement speed bonus on any tile you want, which is very useful, especially when plain road are hard to build in Civ6.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I do love building them. However, I tend to only build one main line to my most important cities though because a) micro intensive and b) if my empire is big enough it can sink the world

I've never built them before for these two reasons.
Does it make any sense that you would still need coal to build railroads past say the Atomic Age. Why not use oil instead since many trains nowadays run on fuel.
That would also help to not sink the world as fast.

 

[Jkchart]

I've never built them before for these two reasons.
Does it make any sense that you would still need coal to build railroads past say the Atomic Age. Why not use oil instead since many trains nowadays run on fuel.
That would also help to not sink the world fast.

Well coal IS a fuel, Alexander's Hetaroi!

But I get where you're going - we don't exclusively use coal for powering trains anymore. My guess is so that Coal still has a strategic relevance outside Battleships and Ironclads, especially since many people will switch to greener power whenever possible (although there are advantages to using coal power in game).

 

[iammaxhailme]

Too much clicking.

If we had "build route to" like in Civ 5 I'd use them. At the moment I only use them enough to get that era score and then stop

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Well coal IS a fuel, Alexander's Hetaroi!

But I get where you're going - we don't exclusively use coal for powering trains anymore. My guess is so that Coal still has a strategic relevance outside Battleships and Ironclads, especially since many people will switch to greener power whenever possible (although there are advantages to using coal power in game).

Diesel/petroleum fuel as opposed to coal powered steam engines.
I like the idea that eventually some of the early strategic resources won't be useful anymore after a certain era. I don't know if we need coal to be relevant past a certain era just like horses and niter end up becoming irrelevant later on.

 

[kryat]

Diesel/petroleum fuel as opposed to coal powered steam engines.
I like the idea that eventually some of the early strategic resources won't be useful anymore after a certain era. I don't know if we need coal to be relevant past a certain era just like horses and niter end up becoming irrelevant later on.

But would we want more sinks for oil? Maybe we need to increase the amount of oil on the map.

The other thing to remember is that it costs coal to build, but it only costs pollution, not resources, to maintain. On the one hand, I could see a decrease in pollution per turn per tile at some tech being justified, on the other hand, maybe it’s ok the cost stays the same because the assumed increase in traffic would offset the decreased pollution per train.

 

[steveg700]

I use railroads to mobilize units on borders where I know there's going to be war. They way mountain tunnels allow virtual teleportation anywhere along the range, I think they're quite handy.

 

[jozef57]

i use them in practicaly every civ game i play

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Can anyone explain how this trade route uses a nine tile longer way through two harbors instead of the two railroad tiles to Victoria?
Those land tiles between Victoria and Nazca even do not have roads yet. This is definitely by far the weirdest pathing I've seen yet

Weird? Yes? Efficient? Probably not. Valuable? Heck yes

You get diversity, and that path seems to earn more gold because it's passing through 2 Harbours (Sea Routes yield greater rewards), and likely yields more rewards than what you would get from passing through the Railroad.

 

[JaeChunDaeSung]

If only there weren't a futuristic version of railed transport that could be transitioned into for the future...
Hmm....

 

[cain3456]

I usually get them only for frontier cities where I don't want to waste a trader building roads.

 

[tetley]

I build RR's late-game because some of my cities have nothing better to do. The game is won, but I want some insurance. So I build some military engineers, and RR up. Civilians move back-and-forth on them. If I get a surprise DOW, there they are.