Is it not possible to destroy enemy railroads and roads?

[Cliftor]

I've decided that their destruction is absolutely essential to a successful from-sea-invasion. However, when I went to try it, my fighters would merely destroy farms and such; rails and roads were untouched, and when there were nothing but those left on a tile I couldn't target it anymore.

Are rails and roads immune to destruction or something? Or am I doing something wrong?

The reason I feel I must do this is because in my first several games entire stacks of advanced units were wiped out by enemy primitives merely by virtue of numbers. The AI just seems to have so many freaking units, huge stacks in each city. And when invaded, every single one of those stacks can all attack a single tile simultaneously if they have rails. So I must destroy them, a buffer zone of about 2 tiles.

EDIT: NOTE: when I tested it, I was only targeting roads; the enemy hadn't built any rails by then.

 

[madscientist]

Interesting, I never tried to destroy roads/rails via air. You can destroy them with land based military by pillaging. I will be intereted in seeing replies on this one.

 

[Cliftor]

Well I dunno, in my gut I feel like I should be able to, yet it won't seem to let me. Yeah, I know my land units could do it, but that defeats the purpose. The idea is to land them after they're safe.

This is why I love Marines so much and am envious of the Americans. That way you can just naval barrage and air bomb a coastal city, and then assault with Marines from the safety of your ship. It's still futile though, because they won't be able to occupy because the counter-attack is irresistible.

 

[oyzar]

Just bring artillery etc. Doing a seaborne assult is pretty hard though... You could use marines of course but you still get the problems holding the cities.

all civs have marines. American marines are just a tad better.

 

[madscientist]

Well I dunno, in my gut I feel like I should be able to, yet it won't seem to let me. Yeah, I know my land units could do it, but that defeats the purpose. The idea is to land them after they're safe.

This is why I love Marines so much and am envious of the Americans. That way you can just naval barrage and air bomb a coastal city, and then assault with Marines from the safety of your ship. It's still futile though, because they won't be able to occupy because the counter-attack is irresistible.

I agree on the American Seals (UU for marines) because they start with march and 1 or 2 extra first strikes (don't recall what it actually is). Once they land they are awesome sinc ethey heal while moving. Also, the American seal is the only UU besides the Indian fast worker that does not go obsolete.

 

[Refar]

I know that you can pillage roads. Not sure if i ever tried bombing them away with fighters.

I use paratroopers on occasion, to get behind the lines and pillage important road connections/improvements.

 

[xanadux]

You can't pillage roads/rail with air units. If you are worried about the counter attack, just use air power or artillery to injure the units, then attack from your boats until 1 unit is left. Let the AI reinforce the city then repeat. Marines are nice, but not necessary. Once units are damaged, CR3 tanks do fine even with the amphibious penalty. With CR3 artillery and tanks, you won't lose many units. And if you have enough air units, you may not lose any.

 

[The_Reckoning]

Can't. I'd like to be able to, at least break rails back to roads. I know in WWII it was a very common mission to go in and bomb railways.

Thinking of that, spies can sabotage roads/rails, so maybe use that in your strategy?

 

[KMadCandy]

just in case you wondered, you can pillage improvements in your own territory if you want to (you get no gold from doing it, tho). but you can't ever pillage roads/railroads in your borders. so if you for whatever reason want a road gone by a newly-yours captured city gone, while the city is in revolt is your last chance.

 

[Belisar]

A commando-promoted mounted unit (via GG) for pillaging is useful in certain situations to prevent enemy artillery from reaching your stack.

 

[troytheface]

must have been over powered because in civ3 u could.
Personally i think destroying roads/rails is pretty important since..when..civil war days?

 

[Cliftor]

I'll try the bait strategy, that sounds good. I just feel weird; not like this game has to be a perfect sim of real life, but in real life rail/road bombings are/were the *quintessential* airforce mission.

Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention I'm playing vanilla. I think that's kinda important. Friends copy, this is my first Civ in a long time (long time Civ 2 player, briefly tried Civ 3, only just recently won my first Civ4 after a few failures. I hope this will be my second victory). I'm not buying my own copy until I build my new computer.

 

[PopHut]

You used to be able to destroy these with nukes. But it looks like they changed all that now.

 

[Snaaty]

There is a trick for doing a naval invasion:

Bring your stack of transports near one weak and distant enemy city (not much roads leading there) and capture that city directly from sea.

Move transports in, unload... ...all your units are able to move... ...use helis or commando promoted units to destroy the roads and move back into the city

 

[Cliftor]

Well, I'm wondering. I'm not a game designer of course and would trust Firaxis to know what they're doing, but is there some reason we can't bomb roads? Would it be overpowered or something?

 

[GKrause]

I'm not sure about the play balance, but I look at it the following way. Civ IV is largely a macro-based game. Some liberties have to be taken with the way the game is fundamentally designed. If you think about the scale to which the game is set, each tile represents a rather large amount of physical area in the real world. Being able to bomb a tile and take out ALL the transportational infrastructure from the air isn't incredibly realistic. Although it would be more realistic in the case of railroads (especially early railroads). WWII destruction of roads and railroads (with the exceptions of key bridges) was more tactical than strategic, and Civ IV is a strategic game at its core. Just my 2 cents.