I need to know something important about railroads!

[hardcore_gamer]

I heard that connecting your city to your capital with railroads increased production by 25%, so I started to build railroads.

However, do the railroads have to go DIRECTLY from the capital to the target city or is it enough to simply transform the already existing roads that lead from one city to the other (with the capital being the original one) into railroads?

For example:

If City A is the capital and city B and C are normal cities, and there is a railroad between city A and B and then another railroad between city B and C, then would that connect city C to city A and give it the 25% bonus?

I really need to know this, because I have already built some of the railoads and I will be SO annoyed if it turned out that I built them for nothing!

Also, is it possible to remove railoads (and roads) if you don't want to pay upkeep costs?

Anyone?

 

[Franks]

You can just upgrade your roads to railroads. The connection doesn't have to be direct, it can be indirect (ie. going thru another city, which is also connected by railroad to the capital) and yes you can remove roads/railroads with a worker if you want.

 

[anandus]

Yes, as long as there is a connection, it doesn't matter how.
It doesn't have to be a direct connection.
Say a * is a railroad and you have capital A and cities B, C and D and you connect them like so:
A***B***C***D
Then D is connected to A

And removing (rail)roads indeed reduces upkeep.

You can save quite some money if you adopt a good road strategy, minimising the amount of (rail)road tiles to connect the cities.

Also a harbor-connection counts as a (rail)road, so say ~ is a 'waterway' and you connect above cities like
A***B~~~C***D
Then D is also connected to A.

Sometimes harbors can be cheaper and reduce the amount of (rail)roads.
But limiting the amount of (rail)roads can also limit the movement of your army, that's the payoff.

 

[Gort]

Just posting to say it's bloody stupid that your capital cannot ever get the railroad bonus.

 

[The_Quasar]

Just posting to say it's bloody stupid that your capital cannot ever get the railroad bonus.

Why is that? The capital gets other bonuses that other cities don't get, this evens it out a bit, but the capital is still better off... if the capital got a railroad bonus too, it would make capitals rather unbalanced, imho...