How to bring back railroads?

[Planas]

Just change the name Military Engineer to simply be Engineer, give the ability to create railroad on existing roads, make it costs upkeep like in civ V and I agree that different districts should give different bonuses.
No special district.
No special specialization.
Just increase move speed and trade value to connected cities.

I liked most of the ideas but stop and think if you really are going to build 100 workers to make a railroad from A-B and if it's really fun to do so, or simply build another district witch doesn't make sense, imo, so you can have an automatic railroad built to the city.

 

[marius_kaparius]

If the Transport Hub is introduced as a district, should it maybe be merged with the Aerodrome? What would the buildings in the District be? I think that unlike roads, railroads should make you build every tile individually and every tile should have a cost. The cost should be reduced if you have access to coal and to iron/steel. For this, the railroad should generate a bonus based on every tile that it connects. For example +1 production for every mine, +1 Gold for a plantation, +1 food for every farm. Once a Railroad is completed (connect Transport Hub in one city to TH in other city) you should be able to run a trade route along the railroad and then the tile bonus are added to the yields of the trade route. You can therefore invest in a longer more expensive route for a bigger payoff later.

Mmmm, maybe to avoid zig-zagging the bonuses should be from adjacent tiles and the cost should increases for going through rough territory.

 

[Hrothbern]

From real life:
Railroad had her heighdays roughly from 1850-1950
It depends a bit on how far and fast the general economical development was and is of a country.
The USA was the first country where the everincreasing motorway network, favored by private cars, offered a more flexible platform for trucking as prime source of transport. That pushed railroad towards cheaper bulk goods. The famous Greyhound busses took care of personal transport.

Railroad is in the developed countries very much subsidised nowadays, also because of the military significance and offering some way of transport for people that cannot afford a car.
A spin off of the railroad is the Subway. Cities above a certain size cannot handle the daily citizen logistics anymore unless there is a Subway. The economical break even starting somewhere between 1-2 million inhabitants.

That could for example be reflected in CIV by something like:

• From 1850 onward, so from the Industrial era onward: you can build in the City centre district a Railroad station that is also straightaway a trading post. Any trader traffic between cities with a railroad station get +4 Gold to reflect the higher speed and lower cost. Military units travel at twice the speed (between two stations !).
• From the Modern era onward, you can build in the City centre district a Subway, which gives 2 housing and 1 amenity.

 

[Temppu]

My ideas about a railway system:

The new civil unit "Railway worker" has six points to build railways on tiles. It costs 2 points to put a railway on a hill, desert or swamp or over a river.

Definitely love the idea of an implementation of railroads, that encourages building them efficiently. With sufficiently expensive "railway worker" (or civil engineer), there would be a real incentive to design the minimum spanning tree of the city nodes for the most optimal railroad network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree).

The new railway district
offers an extra adjacent bonus (+1) to adjacent districts. City centers gain +2 food. Neighborhoods +1 food. Aerodromes +2 gold.

Units can move between connected railway district automatically (like traders). Every turn the unit moves max. 10 tiles (if the tile is free otherwise the transported unit stops in front).
The unit can be stopped manually on the way but cannot execute commands directly only in the next round.

Traders following a railway from one railway district to another offer +1 to every ordinary benefit from the trade route and change their appearance into a locomotives.

I find the district implementation of railways somewhat unrealistic and problematic from gameplay point of view. Most railroads in real life connect to (at least in Europe, haven't really travelled elsewhere myself), or very close to, the city center, not some distant place from it. Moreover, because connecting all cities with railroads should be an optimal strategy, this would conflict the idea of districts being a way to specialize cities. (Of course, it is currently optimal to spam CDs in nearly every city, but at least the harbor can sometimes provide decent a substitute.)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Been thinking a lot about this lately, and re-reading some accounts of early railroad building, and here's what I've come up with:
Building Railroads
The limitation was not workers, but Money - Gold, in game terms. The critical and unique skill required was not in construction, but in surveying - finding the optimal or even the possible route for the rails. With this in mind, Railroads would be constructed in two parts:
Railroad survey - the route is marked out tile by tile by a Military Engineer or Great Engineer (Industrial Era or later) moving through the tile. Neither type of engineer is expended by this, but of course laying out an entire Civ-wide route with one engineer unit could tie them up for an appreciable part of the game! The route would be marked by a dotted line on the map ("survey stakes"). As the dotted line goes through each tile, the cost in Gold to build the railroad in the tile would be displayed. Building through jungle, hills, marsh, tundra, desert, or across rivers is more expensive, probably by about 2 - 3 times more than across nice, flat Plains or Grassland.
Railroad Building - you spend the Gold for each tile as you would 'Charges", and the tile is instantly Railroaded.
Railroad Effects - A railroad leading from a City Center or Railroad District allows other Districts to be built for the city in the railroad tiles out to the limit of the city radius - potentially expanding the city enormously (as happened historically in the late 19th, early 20th centuries). City Radius also expands faster along the railroad tiles. A railroad connection between cities increases Gold and Production in each city, dependent on size of the cities, current production and gold in each. A railroad routed through a tile containing a Resource increases the output of that resource by +1 Gold, Production, and/or Food, depending on the type of Resource.
Units move along a Railroad at X tiles/turn (varies with Size of Map, but always at least twice as fast as any ordinary move)
Railroads extend Trade Routes by up to twice the normal distance allowed for Land Routes
Railroad Districts
Railroads can be built between City Centers, but to get the maximum out of them, a Railroad District is necessary.
The Railroad District MUST be built next to the City Center. It gets Adjacency Bonuses for being next to a Commercial, Industrial, or Harbor District.
There are three Buildings that can be built to 'enhance' a Railroad District:
Passenger Terminal - Provides +1 Housing, +2 Gold
Freight (Marshaling) Yard - Provides +3 Gold, +3 Production
Container Terminal - Provides +5 Gold, +5 Production, +1 Trade Route from this city.
The last is a Modern Era building, the other two are Industrial Era.

All figures are 'best guess' initial estimates, subject to change after discussion and/or testing.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A few 'Footnotes' on Railroads...
I see them taking the place of 'Industrial Roads' in the game, coming in the same Era.
Modern Roads are a Road Upgrade, not a Railroad Replacement. Accompanying them should also be a Project called National Highway System - think German Autobahns or the US Interstate Highway System. This would cost a bunch of Production and Gold and take X Turns - dependent on number of roads/routes, number of cities and size of map - but increase the Modern Road speed from .5 to .3 and provide +1 Gold and +1 Production from each Industrial and Commercial District and Container Terminal, and +1 to All Yields from Domestic Trade Routes.

All of this: National Highways and Railroads, would provide a significant Production Boost so you can afford all the expensive Modern-Atomic-Information Era constructions and units, and also the Gold required to maintain those late-game units.

 

[Manifold]

A few 'Footnotes' on Railroads...
I see them taking the place of 'Industrial Roads' in the game, coming in the same Era.
Modern Roads are a Road Upgrade, not a Railroad Replacement. Accompanying them should also be a Project called National Highway System - think German Autobahns or the US Interstate Highway System. This would cost a bunch of Production and Gold and take X Turns - dependent on number of roads/routes, number of cities and size of map - but increase the Modern Road speed from .5 to .3 and provide +1 Gold and +1 Production from each Industrial and Commercial District and Container Terminal, and +1 to All Yields from Domestic Trade Routes.

All of this: National Highways and Railroads, would provide a significant Production Boost so you can afford all the expensive Modern-Atomic-Information Era constructions and units, and also the Gold required to maintain those late-game units.

Good idea! This could be a huge infrastructure dlc also with

canals,
tunnels (like Brenner Tunnel, Channel Tunnel) and
bridges (like Oresund Bridge) ...and a nice railroad scenario...

It is unfortunately very unloved that the infrastructure changes automatically with the change of era.

 

[Caratacos]

Science: Research railroads and a trainstation will become available in your capital. Then choose a city from a list, just like when you pick a city for a trader. A small train will start its journey towards that city, and lay out a railroad on its way there. Once completed, the destination city will recieve a train station, and you can now choose a new destination from each train station available. Rinse and repeat.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Science: Research railroads and a trainstation will become available in your capital. Then choose a city from a list, just like when you pick a city for a trader. A small train will start its journey towards that city, and lay out a railroad on its way there. Once completed, the destination city will recieve a train station, and you can now choose a new destination from each train station available. Rinse and repeat.

This has the (big) advantage of being simple and to some extent consistent with the current 'trade route/road' system in CiVI.

I don't think it shows the immense expense of building railroads relative to the economies of the Industrial Era, which was historically significant, or the fact that many railroads - primarily in Europe - were built specifically to provide military traffic to strategic areas while other railroads - primarily in the rest of the world - were built to 'open up' entire new areas to economic or population expansion.

While it might be considered an unnecessary complication to show the Economics of railroad building in the game (although I think my suggestion addresses it as painlessly as possible) I do think we should allow the plotting of railroads for military or expansive purposes: the results were far too important in the history of the past 200 years - in Game Terms, to the Industrial and Modern Eras at least.

 

[Manifold]

Science: Research railroads and a trainstation will become available in your capital. Then choose a city from a list, just like when you pick a city for a trader. A small train will start its journey towards that city, and lay out a railroad on its way there. Once completed, the destination city will recieve a train station, and you can now choose a new destination from each train station available. Rinse and repeat.

Someone has argued here that the train station is always in the city center. Right,

but the holy district, the commercial market and the cultural complex is also very were in the middle of the city -normally. The game is not realistic.

I like the districts. It is a kind of puzzle game. There is always the alternative between perfect long-term location and short-term boost if you are not Japan. That is fun.

It would be cool, if we get more new districts like the railway district, administration district, diplomatic quarter...

For the rest, I like your idea

 

[JustifierNA]

Add it into a modern era or industrial civic card relating to trade. Boom. Make my routes Choo Choo trains!

 

[Phrozen]

Someone has argued here that the train station is always in the city center. Right,

but the holy district, the commercial market and the cultural complex is also very were in the middle of the city -normally. The game is not realistic.

I like the districts. It is a kind of puzzle game. There is always the alternative between perfect long-term location and short-term boost if you are not Japan. That is fun.

It would be cool, if we get more new districts like the railway district, administration district, diplomatic quarter...

For the rest, I like your idea

It is a weird abstraction as cities in area weren't that big and most things would be what now would be considered downtown. Really the only districts before the industrial era should be holy site, representing things like monasteries and such, and harbors. You could make a argument for science district but really most universities were pretty urban with some exceptions mostly in North America and England.

 

[Japper007]

I think Railroads should get their own tech on the tree.
I'd put it in the Industrialization/Steel area, maybe as a connecting tech between the more "military" Industrial Era techs (Military Science, Steel) and the more "economical" ones (Chemistry, Economics, Industrialization, Electricity). As it is right now there is no reason to not take all the economic ones first, unless you somehow inexplicably do not manage to have cleared/conquered enough space through conquest this late... More connectivity here would make the late-game tech-progression feel more "natural" to me, and railroads were an essential development in both military and economical evolution so it makes some sense.

As to how they'd work, I'd say give every improved tile (be it through a District or an Improvement) a movement boost (say, 5 times normal speed) and provide one extra yield in all the districts to represent their new interconnectivity. It would solve two of the main issues the game has right now IMHO. Those being the extremely, frustratingly, slow movement even in the late game (seriously, an Infantry unit shouldn't take a few decades to reach the frontline in the Modern Era, that's just silly! Most real 20th century wars didnt even take that long!) and the late game techs not mattering much beyond unlocking a few buildings.