infinite movement with RR fix

[Volstag]

you can mobilise your entire army in one turn on land which is a load of cak. it took russia months in ww2. it also leaves the airports with no point unless over different continents

That's the point I was trying to make. Yeah, it took months for Russia to mobilize, but since an MA turn is a full year, it's realistic and eminently possible to transport horrifying amounts of materiel within that timeframe. Adding capacity is an interesting play balance fix, but it's not very realistic. Even the most rudimentary rail system, under mobilization, can transport sufficient quantities within a year to generate the "teleportation" effect that we see in Civ III (as evidenced by the Russo-Japanese war, wherein it took six months to transport the average Russian batallion to the front -- however, when looked at through year long "time slices", they effectively teleport to the front in massive quantities, even when deployed across the thoroughly fickle, and extremely long, Trans-Siberian railroad).

In short, I don't see a very clean, or (quasi) realistic, solution to this "problem" when the smallest turn represents an entire year. For example, within a year, it would be theorectically possible for the entire US armed forces to walk from Seattle to New York City with plenty of time to spare.

-V

 

[dexters]

From a game balance perspective, I think many aggree the current RR model is broken.

A sensible suggestion would be to divorce RR and the road system entirely.

Instead of making railroads upgrades to ancient roads have it such that roads upgrade into highways, with another movement bonus. Railroads would however be something else entirely and would function more as a point to point line of sight transportation mode.

Movement would remain infinite, but the rails themselves would have a capacity, implying a more interesting strategic combination of moving troops through your highways (much slower but still faster than unupgraded roads) and through rails, which is instant, but you can't shift your entire army at once.

The above suggestion is a revised version of an earlier suggestion I had which limits railroad movement by making it non-infinite and grants instead infinite movement to airports. But to combat the current airport exploit, I decided to add in a capacity system.

Here it is: Rails and Airports

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

A friend of mine interestingly said that the ONLY reason RR's were infinite in the original Civ1 was because of Sid Meirs' previous background in Civil War gaming. Apparently, RR's have NEVER been so important in war as they were during the US civil war (my friends opinion, not mine), and this effected Sids thinking when he put RR's in civ.
Point is, though, that this is more about gameplay than realism, and so a capacity point system would go a long way towards improving gamplay IMHO!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[sir_schwick]

1) I think its a pretty common consensus on this particular forum that 'realism' time-scale arguments are moot. Years are just put there to give an hisotrical feel to progress. Gameplay should be considered in terms of turns, not the arbitrary years assigned to them.

2) In WWII and even WWI, logistics was one of the biggest considerations of any army. There were many times when logistics and transportation could not keep up with the territory it traversed or the gains made. It takes months to mobilize the bulk of the US army as it is.

3) I agree with dexters to say that roads and RR need to be seperate systems. The Autobahn was as much a bane to the Nazis as anything else. Also, what capacity is and how its determined is what is really being debated.

___________________________________________________________________

The big debate has been how capacity is determined, generated, works, etc. In my opinion the roads, RR, airports, and harbours you build are simply paths of transit. They inherently have no value until your capacity utilizes them, like a hiking trail. You also have to invest in capacity through production and other investments. Military usage of capacity takes away economic usage of capacity, which may cripple or make you poor. Smaller nations get more efficient usage of capacity for reasons that I could explain if asked.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I think the key issues for me are:

1) Building a road or a Railroad does not, by itself, generate Capacity. It is in making them join two locations together that they create capacity.

2) The amount of capacity generated by joining two cities together would probably be very low, say around .25 CP's for RR, and .5 CP's for roads.

3) What increases Capacity is: (a) The size of the cities connected by your infrastructure, (b) the tech-level of the infrastructure and the 'rolling stock' that makes use of it and (c) the amount of your budget which you invest in Infrastructure and Transport (above and beyond the base amount needed to maintain the basics).

4) What uses up CP's, each turn, is (a) unit movement (only from a city in the case of RR), (b) formation of land-based trade routes and (c) movement of food and shields between cities.

5) Unit movement has priority over other uses of CP's, so moving too many units in one turn may cause 1 or more trade routes to collapse.

6) In addition, using CP's for ANY purpose costs a certain % of your per turn income-with how much possibly depending on the number of cities you have, or possibly the total amount of money you have in your treasury (I AM a bit vague on this one!)

7) Smaller nations can keep pace (and even surpass) larger ones-in infrastructure-for a couple of major reasons: (a) larger nations cover more territory, meaning more RR/Road to connect them, meaning a higher base infrastructure cost per turn, (b) because a smaller nation may contain fewer, but larger, cities-the population-based CP multiplier will be more 'lucrative', (c) because the 'base' infrastructure cost is normally lower for a smaller nation, it means that they can afford to invest more-above the base-to increase their CP total.

8) Seaports and Airports would work in a very similar fashion, but their CP's would be based primarily on the size of the city they are built in, the infrastructure investment, and the tech level. Multiple air/sea improvements within a city will boost its CP contribution in a similar fashion!

Anyway, hope that makes sense !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.