Leptomeninges
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2004
- Messages
- 97
I would definitely leave railroads in. I don't like their infinite movement, but it would be worse to remove them. My suggestion would be to increase road movement back to the 3x base. I've never found that to be particularly unbalanced.
Luckily, this discussion of the need for railroads to stimulate city growth serves as a nice segue into my thought for the day...
(in a nutshell...)
The inability to put railroads on mountains kills them as a useful tile.
(now for the discussion...)
First off, I'm only midway through industrial. (My huge map is starting to slow down.) I've been expecting to be able to road/railroad mountains at some point, but I'm wondering now if that ability ever comes. I'm at work so I can't look closely through your civilopedia to see if that ever changes. (I don't even know if it's possible to have that associated with a tech.)
I definitely like mountains impassable to most units. But the inability to road them surprised me. I've been waiting to see how it developed. While it's only a little bit irritating from the perspective of unit movement (a midevil infantry should be able to follow a road through the Alps, right?), my bigger concern is about production.
(I jotted the following numbers down before I left for work today. They may be inaccurate. They are all under republic.)
Terrain type/food/shields/trade/total
Irrigated/railroaded grass 6 / 0 / 2 / 8
Irrigated/railroaded bonus grass 6 / 1 / 2 /9
Mined/railroaded grass 3 / 2 / 2 / 7
Mined/railroaded bonus grass 3 / 3 / 2 / 7
Irrigated/railroaded plains 5 / 1 / 2 / 8
Mined/railroaded plains 2 / 3 / 2 / 7
Mined/railroaded hills 2 / 4 / 2 / 8
Irrigated/railroaded desert 2 / 1 / 2 / 5
Mined Mountains (no railroads) 1 / 3 / 2 / 6
The booby prize is obviously desert. What suprised me is that mountains are only marginally better. Hills actually produce more shields than mountains. Mined bonus grassland produces the same number of shields. If you removed the base two trade all tiles produde from the totals above, the discrepancy would be even more glaring. Obviously, mountains are killed by the lack of railroads. I think you have two options. Either allow them to be roaded/railroaded (if it's coming later in the game, I think you should move it earlier) or increase their production without railroads. You could do this by either making their bonus resources real humdingers (heh, just like that word) or by increasing their base shield production or both. My suggestion would be to do all of the above while leaving them impassable without roads, especially since I think you should reduce food output from both hills and mountains.
I'm obviously biased by my experience with the civ series. I look at a mountain and think "high production, no food." (Remember mountains with iron from civ 2? What a tile... I get all nostalgic.) You can argue that this may not be a "realistic" way to think about them. Perhaps that's what you're trying to achieve.
Anyway, that's just my two cents.
Luckily, this discussion of the need for railroads to stimulate city growth serves as a nice segue into my thought for the day...
(in a nutshell...)
The inability to put railroads on mountains kills them as a useful tile.
(now for the discussion...)
First off, I'm only midway through industrial. (My huge map is starting to slow down.) I've been expecting to be able to road/railroad mountains at some point, but I'm wondering now if that ability ever comes. I'm at work so I can't look closely through your civilopedia to see if that ever changes. (I don't even know if it's possible to have that associated with a tech.)
I definitely like mountains impassable to most units. But the inability to road them surprised me. I've been waiting to see how it developed. While it's only a little bit irritating from the perspective of unit movement (a midevil infantry should be able to follow a road through the Alps, right?), my bigger concern is about production.
(I jotted the following numbers down before I left for work today. They may be inaccurate. They are all under republic.)
Terrain type/food/shields/trade/total
Irrigated/railroaded grass 6 / 0 / 2 / 8
Irrigated/railroaded bonus grass 6 / 1 / 2 /9
Mined/railroaded grass 3 / 2 / 2 / 7
Mined/railroaded bonus grass 3 / 3 / 2 / 7
Irrigated/railroaded plains 5 / 1 / 2 / 8
Mined/railroaded plains 2 / 3 / 2 / 7
Mined/railroaded hills 2 / 4 / 2 / 8
Irrigated/railroaded desert 2 / 1 / 2 / 5
Mined Mountains (no railroads) 1 / 3 / 2 / 6
The booby prize is obviously desert. What suprised me is that mountains are only marginally better. Hills actually produce more shields than mountains. Mined bonus grassland produces the same number of shields. If you removed the base two trade all tiles produde from the totals above, the discrepancy would be even more glaring. Obviously, mountains are killed by the lack of railroads. I think you have two options. Either allow them to be roaded/railroaded (if it's coming later in the game, I think you should move it earlier) or increase their production without railroads. You could do this by either making their bonus resources real humdingers (heh, just like that word) or by increasing their base shield production or both. My suggestion would be to do all of the above while leaving them impassable without roads, especially since I think you should reduce food output from both hills and mountains.
I'm obviously biased by my experience with the civ series. I look at a mountain and think "high production, no food." (Remember mountains with iron from civ 2? What a tile... I get all nostalgic.) You can argue that this may not be a "realistic" way to think about them. Perhaps that's what you're trying to achieve.
Anyway, that's just my two cents.
