[GS] Gathering Storm Screenshots Discussion Thread

[WillowBrook]

Was there any mention of new Great People in GS? We surely get new ones for the future era.
Adding 1 of those per age and category wouldn't be hard. I think this would improve the game with slightly more randomness which GP are available. And a few new abilities, for example related to new mechanics, wouldn't hurt.

Yeah, we really need more great people, especially when playing with larger numbers of civs.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

... Maybe they just cost gold? That would make sense in my opinion. Pay X gold for a road on this tile, no charge expended.

Given that railroads were some of the most costly 'infrastructure' improvements in human history up to that point (building Renaissance Walls around most of the cities in France is the only other one I can think of that comes close) a Gold requirement to build railroads would make perfect sense. Either that or tie the ability to build railroads to a Capitalization financial Civic or Tech.

Or even, the Great Person who facilitates railroad building could be a Great Merchant, not a Great Engineer: Jay Gould or C. P. Huntingdon instead of Grenville Dodge or S. S. Montague...

Just thinking out loud: it doesn't look so far as if anything like that is going to happen...

 

[Haig]

In 100 Greatest Britons list that the British people vote, I Isambard Kingdom Brunei was #2 !

As a finn I had not heard of him before but I looked up and he sure had lots of projects.

 

[Steamboat Willem]

In 100 Greatest Britons list that the British people vote, I Isambard Kingdom Brunei was #2 !

As a finn I had not heard of him before but I looked up and he sure had lots of projects.

I think that was mostly due to a concerted effort by students at Brunel University, but he was definitely influential and famous in his time.

 

[UWHabs]

Given that railroads were some of the most costly 'infrastructure' improvements in human history up to that point (building Renaissance Walls around most of the cities in France is the only other one I can think of that comes close) a Gold requirement to build railroads would make perfect sense. Either that or tie the ability to build railroads to a Capitalization financial Civic or Tech.

Or even, the Great Person who facilitates railroad building could be a Great Merchant, not a Great Engineer: Jay Gould or C. P. Huntingdon instead of Grenville Dodge or S. S. Montague...

Just thinking out loud: it doesn't look so far as if anything like that is going to happen...

Yeah, it feels like each railroad tile should at least cost you 1 gold per turn in maintenance, or if they could do it, it should cost 1 iron to build, and 1/4 coal per turn to maintain. So if you want 8 RR tiles, it will cost you 2 coal per turn. That would also prevent you from basically building railroads everywhere to pollute the world - if I happen to be a landlocked country with no vulnerable coastlines, I would totally go build RR on every tile in my empire, cause a ton of pollution, and try to flood my neighbours' coastlines.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'm just glad they've taken Military Engineer from a less than worthless unit to one that you'll almost NEED at least one of in a game.

I'm not convinced that you'll build railroads for anything other than because it's cool. If you do, though, one ME should be sufficient. In which case you may want two MEs for the game, assuming you use one to build two Forts side-by-side in some random locations for the boost. That latter part might just be me.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'm just glad they've taken Military Engineer from a less than worthless unit to one that you'll almost NEED at least one of in a game.

I'm not sure how much I will want to build railroads unless we get confirmation that a trader unit graphically turns into a train locomotive when on one.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'm not sure how much I will want to build railroads unless we get confirmation that a trader unit graphically turns into a train locomotive when on one.

Since there already is a Sid Meier's Railroads game, I should think the graphics for that one wouldn't be too hard...

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'm not sure how much I will want to build railroads unless we get confirmation that a trader unit graphically turns into a train locomotive when on one.

I would totally spam railroads if this happened.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'm not convinced that you'll build railroads for anything other than because it's cool.

Ugh. Just thought of another downside to building railroads (besides the CO2 emissions, loss of resources, and need for a ME): other civ traders traveling to your cities will get their yields boosted if they travel on your railroads.

Your traders will also get a boost, of course, but because the boost is only equal to the yield of sea routes, it may be situational as to when or how often railroads will lead to a better yield than current sea routes (especially if the civ you're trading with doesn't have railroads on it's side of the border).

The faster unit movement is the only really reliable benefit.

 

[bbbt]

I'm not convinced that you'll build railroads for anything other than because it's cool. If you do, though, one ME should be sufficient. In which case you may want two MEs for the game, assuming you use one to build two Forts side-by-side in some random locations for the boost. That latter part might just be me.

Yeah, the railroads seem pretty basic in their implementation as shown (at least boost the connected cities as well)! If there is the rumored 3rd expansion though, this might be the 'emergencies' of GS (i.e. something that has a basic implementation that gets build upon in the 3rd one).

 

[LeroyJenkins]

I'm not sure how much I will want to build railroads unless we get confirmation that a trader unit graphically turns into a train locomotive when on one.

I cannot agree enough, nor can I like this post as much as I want to.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm not sure how much I will want to build railroads unless we get confirmation that a trader unit graphically turns into a train locomotive when on one.

Alas, not at present.

 

[acluewithout]

I think we got railways because people kept asking for them. Exactly the same as canals.

The implementation of both railways and canals are “fine”, but I can’t see them having much impact. They’re just for fun.

Honestly, I can’t see much else they were going to do with these. It’s a land grab, resource management and light tactical combat role playing game. Not a city builder. How are Railways and Canals really ever going to matter?

 

[AriochIV]

Railroads were in vanilla Civ VI right up until just before release, when they were removed. At that time they were just a higher tier of route that converted automatically, which wasn't very interesting. At least in this iteration they require some interaction from the player. Whether they will be worth the effort remains to be seen.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Honestly, I can’t see much else they were going to do with these. It’s a land grab, resource management and light tactical combat role playing game. Not a city builder. How are Railways and Canals really ever going to matter?

In past versions of Civ, railroads were critical to boost the production of your empire. Civ 5 backed off from that a bit, and now in Civ 6 railroads - based on what we've been told to date - have no impact on your industrial output.

With strategic resources coming into play, I'm rather surprised that the boost to Mines that currently comes automatically at Industrialization wasn't made dependent on having a connection by railroad or sea to a Factory. Similarly, the output of strategic resources could have been limited until connected to your industrial zones by rail or sea.

 

[Steamboat Willem]

In past versions of Civ, railroads were critical to boost the production of your empire. Civ 5 backed off from that a bit, and now in Civ 6 railroads - based on what we've been told to date - have no impact on your industrial output.

With strategic resources coming into play, I'm rather surprised that the boost to Mines that currently comes automatically at Industrialization wasn't made dependent on having a connection by railroad or sea to a Factory. Similarly, the output of strategic resources could have been limited until connected to your industrial zones by rail or sea.

Or the boost at Apprenticeship made dependent on having a workshop. The Harbor buildings give benefits to coastal tiles, no reason why the IZ buildings can't give boosts to mines, quarries, and/or lumbermills. I can't understand why they thought it was a good idea to throw the design with boosts from overlapping factories out of the window, rather than increase the production cost of everything in industrial and later eras. Now you get to the Industrial Era, you build a Factory, and instead of getting a massive increase in production as you should in the Industrial era, you get a few measly hammers.

 

[WillowBrook]

With strategic resources coming into play, I'm rather surprised that the boost to Mines that currently comes automatically at Industrialization wasn't made dependent on having a connection by railroad or sea to a Factory. Similarly, the output of strategic resources could have been limited until connected to your industrial zones by rail or sea.

There's still time for them to implement something like this! It still feels weird to me that you get a resource as soon as you improve it - I like how in some past versions of Civ (III, at least), you had to connect the resource with a road to have it available. With the way roads work in VI, that wouldn't work well, but increasing yields with appropriate rail connections would not only make railroads more interesting but also would be somewhat realistic.

 

[Siptah]

I wish for an automatization for railroad building: similar to earlier civs I want to be able to assign my ME the task to build a railroad from where he is now to a specific target hex. I actually don't want to manually connect 5 cities tile by tile.

I'm wondering if MEs still dissolve once you used up all charges, or if they stick around and can only build railroads. I assume they dissolve and I will continue to not get the forts eureka in any game

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Or the boost at Apprenticeship made dependent on having a workshop. The Harbor buildings give benefits to coastal tiles, no reason why the IZ buildings can't give boosts to mines, quarries, and/or lumbermills. I can't understand why they thought it was a good idea to throw the design with boosts from overlapping factories out of the window, rather than increase the production cost of everything in industrial and later eras. Now you get to the Industrial Era, you build a Factory, and instead of getting a massive increase in production as you should in the Industrial era, you get a few measly hammers.

Based on one of the screenshot grabs that were posted, I believe there is an additional boost to Factories' Production from adding a Power source to the city/Zone. Too lazy to look up the specific shot, but I believe it was 3 - 4 additional Production. Better than nothing...

That railroads might have just a minor Trade effect and a little extra movement shows a bankruptcy of understanding on the part of the Design Team: railroads made a Massive Change to land transport, that effected army movement and supply, population movement and migration, internal and external Tourism, and both production and market availability. Among other things, Railroads made every city connected to a railroad independent of local resources for food: it could be shipped in daily from a continent away.

If all of that is going to be left out except movement of Units and a minor Trade boost, AND we aren't even going to get an obvious and entertaining graphics change, then we are being ROBBED!!!