My dream: No more railroad ugliness, instead:

[Dearmad]

Rails are built sensibly to connect two or more places... and the 3d animation on the map has a little steam locomotive moving along the rails through the countryside randomly with little puffs of smoke... changes to diesel and/or little electric animated train later. Just randomly going from connected place to connected place...

The way the 3d maps looked in the 3 videos of gameplay I saw seem promising to me- almost quaint. Little trains moving along would be sorta neat. I like how it looks more alive now. There's a lot of potential to add immersive atmosphere with these graphics, I hope they don't blow it wth:

irrigation everywhere.
rails everywhere. (especially ugly!)
roads everwhere

vary it up. Seems they might with wineries, windmills, etc...

 

[Sullla]

I think the map might get unimaginably cluttered if little locomotives moved around on it every time you moved one of your units.

And there won't be irrigation everywhere in Civ4. Looks like there are a lot more terrain improvements to choose from than just irrigation and mines.

 

[Dearmad]

I just meant one train... occassionally... Not like all the time.

Sorta funny how niggling are the little details I want at this point. I've given up asking for better AI and such anymore in games... that's always out of our hands anyway- they promise, they fail to deliver, I get angry... this way all I want is a little train.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Really, i think irrigation everywhere is a part of the charm of the game: especially in Civ1: irrigated lands looked like a city sky view at night with myriads of little lights... were really underlining the presence of civilization...

 

[Dearmad]

Ick. Here's a marker- scribble all over your monitor as the game progresses... same effect.

 

[charlesolmsted]

I hate the irrigation and railways everywhere. I did away with irrigation completely in my version of the game - except in flood plains.

 

[Graadiapolistan]

I hope that civ 4 will have railroad option from one city to another- and not a worker option of build railroad. This is a good way to not have cluttered railroads, have a railroad from one destination like a city to another city

But, in the industrial age your cities expand because railroads give an irrigation bonus. Civ 4 has to have some method of giving irrigation bonuses that makes sense instead of building railroads everywhere

 

[kafkaesk]

But, in the industrial age your cities expand because railroads give an irrigation bonus. Civ 4 has to have some method of giving irrigation bonuses that makes sense instead of building railroads everywhere

The "improved irrigation & supermarket"-system Civ2 had worked quite well, I think.