Infinite RR Movement == Evil!

[Jon Shafer]

Please, please, PLEASE get rid of infinite RR movement!

It's imbalancing and removes strategic choices from the game. And that's not a good thing for a strategy game.

At the very least, add the ability to mod out the infinite movement and customize it (perhaps adding the ability to create different kinds of terrain movement improvements that you can determine the amount of movement bonus you get from them).

 

[Colonel]

u know i would agree with u but its actually not wrong look at a turn is one year now could u get on a train in europe and make it around the world in one year(if there were a railroad completely around the world

 

[Longasc]

I must agree with Trip - it basically limits strategic choices for invasions, once you have secured a continent the AI will never be able to get ashore. First, it is incapable of executing naval invasions. Second, you can throw all your defensive forces in one turn against the enemy, because of railroads. If movement would be limited you would have to place them all at the Pas de Calais and be surprised by an invasion in Normandy .

The only positive thing about railroads is that they help with continental rally point and so on later in the industrial age of mass battles and micro-management horror!

 

[Colonel]

ok but if u think they shouldnt be able to move that fast then they are going to have to break up a turn and make one turn=one month at most to make realistic otherwise its gay because it would be like oooooooo it takes 50 years for a warrior to move one square scenerio

 

[Jon Shafer]

Colonel:

This is a situation where FUN should take precedence over ACCURACY. Yes, turns are at least a year - then shouldn't ships be able to move all the way around the world in a single turn? Shouldn't Tanks be able to even (without RRs)?

I'll reiterate my main point - it limits strategic choices. It makes defending a piece of cake. Instead of having to defend 2 sides of your empire with 1/2 your army each, you can simply keep your entire army together, teleport it to any side of your land that is threatened, and you can always defeat an invasion no matter where it appears. That is bad for gameplay. That is why infinite movement should be removed.

 

[Dell19]

I agree with Trip, once you have railroads it is no longer necessary to spread your forces so the game becomes easier, any sort of AI naval invasion is doomed to fail as combat units can be rushed to the area. The problem is how do you replace it? 1/6th movement points, 1/12th movement points? The Micromanagement point is a good one in that if this was true then war would begin to much harder to undertak as that artillary stack cannot be moved to the other side of the front and reinforcements wouldn't arrive immediately. It might be fun as a well prepared army could take advantage but suprise attacks would be more annoying.

 

[daengle]

Personally, I like the railroad movement as it is.

1) IMHO, It's a good thing that it vastly simplifies the problems of conducting the stategic defense. Otherwise organizing a defense against an attacker with modern mobile units would be much to tedious.

2) The railroad system as is (along with the appearance of artillery at nearly the same time) captures, in a simple and elegant way, the revolutionary effect that railways with their ability to move tons of artillery shells changed war around the start of the 20th century. The massive causualites and ineffectiveness of the strategic offensive in the first world war were largely due to this effect. The real problem with the game is that the AI just doesn't use artillery well enough.

3) It's important to realize that without railroad movement to help the defense out the AI would be at a serious disadvantage when it was defending. The AI is not (an may never be) smart enough to deploy units in an effective defensive disposition. As I said above, this would be difficult for the human player. It would be impossible for the AI players. The fact that are no railroads at sea is a major reason the human has the advantage in naval wars.

All this said, I certainly agree that allowing the option to limit rail movement in the editor would be good for some senarios.

Some people who really don't like rail movement just increase the number of turns needed to make a railroad to the point where they can't be finished during the game, or make railroads require a resource that isn't in the game. But, that eliminates railroads entirely.

 

[kulade]

RRs should not be infinite but civ3mod should be able to change there value from zero to infity in case a modder wants it that way. Civ4 isn't sopposed to have much hardcoded, which is good. So probly you will be able to edit them.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Personally, I like the railroad movement as it is.

1) IMHO, It's a good thing that it vastly simplifies the problems of conducting the stategic defense. Otherwise organizing a defense against an attacker with modern mobile units would be much to tedious.

The only difference between the modern era and the previous eras with regards to strategic defense is the fact that there are more tools - both offensive and defensive to employ. Empires are the same size and there is the same amount of land to cover. Why should RRs provide a defensive freebie? It's both unrealistic and takes strategic decision-making away from the game. The whole reason to defend cities is taken away - all you need is a massive single army anywhere, and whenever an attacker comes by you instantly and for free have your entire army anywhere you want. A city that had 0 units last turn could have 50 Infantry and 50 Artillery the next, stationed on the opposite side of the continent.

If you want to make the game less tedius with regards to combat, then giving the defender the advantage later on is not a good idea. The whole point in playing the game is having to think. Think about where to station units to maximize defense. Think about what are the routes most vulnerable to attack and should be defended more importantly. Think about which areas of your empire are more important and defending those more than others - Taking away the thinking takes away from the game.

2) The railroad system as is (along with the appearance of artillery at nearly the same time) captures, in a simple and elegant way, the revolutionary effect that railways with their ability to move tons of artillery shells changed war around the start of the 20th century. The massive causualites and ineffectiveness of the strategic offensive in the first world war were largely due to this effect. The real problem with the game is that the AI just doesn't use artillery well enough.

Artillery is still in the game either way, and still is just as effective - you only have to be smarter about how you place it. Rewarding smart players is the whole point of strategy games.

What wasn't true historically was how armies teleported across from one side of the continent to the other at a whim. That's the whole reason Germany lost WWI - they expected to be able to knock out France before Russia was able to mount an effective attack, which did not pan out. Had Germany had Civ railroads then they would have easily won, taking down France quickly and teleporting back to fight the Russians - or on the other hand, had France and Russia both had Civ RRs from the start then Germany would never have had a chance to begin with, as they both would have had their entire armies available anywhere at any time.

It rewards the player with the most units, not the smart player who makes a good strategic move. Civ suffers enough from that tendancy as it is, there's no need to keep drilling it home.

3) It's important to realize that without railroad movement to help the defense out the AI would be at a serious disadvantage when it was defending. The AI is not (an may never be) smart enough to deploy units in an effective defensive disposition. As I said above, this would be difficult for the human player. It would be impossible for the AI players. The fact that are no railroads at sea is a major reason the human has the advantage in naval wars.

Well, improve the AI then, don't cheat for it. Humans can use any game loophole a thousand times better than the AI. I've destroyed multiple entire large AI civs in 3 turns successively because of RRs. That does not make the game fun for me, nor challenging. Because it's a game system, I can always find a way to use it better than the AI, giving the advantage, ultimately, to me.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You know, I'd be willing to countenance infinite RR movement if certain strictures were imposed on other elements of it.

1) When travelling on a RR, moving through a city should cost you 1mp! This would mean that how far you could travel in one turn would be dependant on the movement rate of the unit, and how many cities lie between it and its destination. The only way a player could work around this would be to build RR's to nowhere (on the mere offchance of invasion).

2) Optionally to (1) (or along with (1)) the number of units which can travel through a city, in a given turn, using a RR should be limited (possibly based on city size). So, for instance, a size 16 city might allow you to move 8 units through it per turn. In addition, units like tanks might count as 2 or 3 units for the purposes of this limitation. This will make players think much more about how many, and what kind, of units they most want to move into defense!

3) Give terrain improvements a maintainance cost. This will make player and AI alike give much greater thought to how much RR they want to lay. There would be a point where the costs of maintainence would far outweigh the benefits!

If any, or all, of these things were done, then I would be happy to leave RR movement rates as 'technically' infinite

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Colonel]

honestly i think that makeing turns span less time would make the game last longer so here is my suggestion this solves the railroad issue by not makein it instantanous travel
but rather goes at maybe 6 spaces on railroad for a regular tank i dont the math for the rest of units but base it off that scale

each is equal to one turn

begining of the game 5 years
late ancient 1 year
mid middle ages 1/2 year= to six months
mid industrial 1/4 year= to three months
modern 1/6 year= to two months

i think a new time scale and the new railroad movement that i suggested would work perfectly. now i know that some dont want an even longer game but this is the only possible way to silence some of us would like accuracy alot while still appearing to gameplay

so anyone thoughts on this idea yea nae good horrible

 

[warpstorm]

I would like the default to be infinite movement with limitations.

 

[Chauliodus]

Maybe remove the railroad tile improvement and add a airport like one called railroad. It would still make cross continent travel fast, but it would take a turn to move units to the nearest cit but they wouldn't be able to attack of fortify. Unlike airports where theres a direct connection between cities, make it so they need the cities inbtween to have the improvment to.

Maybe make the improvement produce alot of pollution to as a downside to the advantage.

 

[Loaf Warden]

1) When travelling on a RR, moving through a city should cost you 1mp! This would mean that how far you could travel in one turn would be dependant on the movement rate of the unit, and how many cities lie between it and its destination. The only way a player could work around this would be to build RR's to nowhere (on the mere offchance of invasion).

Or simply build railroads around the cities.

3) Give terrain improvements a maintainance cost. This will make player and AI alike give much greater thought to how much RR they want to lay. There would be a point where the costs of maintainence would far outweigh the benefits!

I wouldn't be opposed to this. It would add a strategic element to force players to think hard about where they want to put railroads.

 

[daengle]

... That's the whole reason Germany lost WWI - they expected to be able to knock out France before Russia was able to mount an effective attack, which did not pan out. Had Germany had Civ railroads then they would have easily won, taking down France quickly and teleporting back to fight the Russians - or on the other hand, had France and Russia both had Civ RRs from the start then Germany would never have had a chance to begin with, as they both would have had their entire armies available anywhere at any time.

While I respect and agree with your desire to see a more demanding set of operational military problems in the latter eras of the game (and a smarter AI able to handle them), I think your history is a little fuzy.

The Russian front was not the decisive theater of WWI. The Russians were unable attack Germany effectively and signed a seperate armistice with Germany in December 1917, while the war on the western front lasted until 1919. The Russians dropped out of the war because they were preoccupied with the communist revolution.

I assume this must be a typo and that you are refering to WWII. But you should realize that the invasion of France which began in May 1940 was effectively over by June 1940. The German attack on the Soviet Union did not happen until June of 1941. The Germans had more than ample time to ship as much of their army as they wanted to the eastern front berfore begining operation Babarossa.

The ability of Russia to move large numbers of men to decisive battles like Stalingrad by rail was indeed critical to stopping the Nazis. This was very definitely a case where the use of railroads helped the strategic defense.

There is a tendency in the West, especially in America, to think that the Germans were defeated because of the problems of fighting a "two front war". While there is some truth to this, it is largely a myth. The American and British armies didn't attack Germany in Europe until June 1944 (D-day). From June 41 to June 44 the vast majority of all the fighting in Europe was on the Eastern front. It was mostly the Red Army which stopped the Nazis.

 

[Colonel]

while saying someone is wrong u yourself are wrong in mid 1943 the western allies invaded italy which diverted alot of resourses to that defense, and then in 1944 more western allies in france forced alot more troops and resourses into the western front, which in essence led to the major defeat of German forces in Europe and Russia along with the Russian winter and not the Red Army itself but more or less good timeing with winter and allied forces

 

[Hygro]

The more roads and rails a nation has in real life, generally the wealthier the nation. Transportation generates wealth, so having maitnance costs outweigh the benifits isn't entirely realistic.

 

[Bartleby]

I like infinite movement precisely because it makes the game easier once you hit the industrial age, I like artillery for the same reason.
I have no objection to the option to mod RR movement being implemented, but I will not buy Civ 4 if infinite RR movement is not possible.

 

[Dieterbos]

IMHO the problem isn't the infinite momevement RR's cause (which I support beacuse of the fact that it reflects the impact RR's had in real life). As in Civ each tile with RR's receives a bonus, you usualy see the entire country covered in RR's. In real life, due to the maintanance cost of RR's and the rolling stock, each country has only several strategic RR's. If there could be devised a system to have players construct a network of a few strategic RR's instead of covering the entire country with them, then the infinite movement is balanced out with a few vulnerable RR's. When going to the offensive, just take out his RR and slow down the advance of reinforcements to that sector. You will note that in both world wars, much of the objectives were in fact strategic RR's or RR junctions.

 

[Longasc]

Dieterbros is right, it is just annoying to see entire countries cluttered with grey railroads because of the commerce bonus and mobility issues. They should COST money per tile or something like that!