dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
I meant to make a pessimistic point. Even one capacity point per city per turn is too much. If 12 CP is too much, then 40 CP is definitely too much.
New RR model
- Thread starter Dida
- Start date
Aussie_Lurker
Deity
This is, to some degree my point-and why I feel Capacity Points could work. I admit that it would need to be adjusted to achieve the proper game play balance, but I still feel the underlying principle is sound. As I have said before, your early capacity is going to be incredibly restricted and, even in modern wars, moving vast numbers of troops is going to REALLY cost you. I must also admit, though, that my model works best in a 'simultaneous' move system. That is, everyone moves BEFORE any combat is resolved-with the order of movement being based on a form of initiative system. With such a system, a nation caught between two enemies, even WITH a good rail network, is going to have to make some tough decisions regarding how many troops he sends to each front. Without such a system, then it would be very easy for the player to send dozens of troops to each front. Reducing the movement rate of rail would still leave this prospect open unless the nation is truly HUGE!!!
Also, I never said that rail would be built automatically, I said that rail Capacity Points are built 'automatically' as a result of normal player actions. Please Yoshi, if you are going to accuse people of not reading your posts, then it helps if you don't do the same thing yourself
!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Also, I never said that rail would be built automatically, I said that rail Capacity Points are built 'automatically' as a result of normal player actions. Please Yoshi, if you are going to accuse people of not reading your posts, then it helps if you don't do the same thing yourself
!Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
In my thoughts the primary problem with the railroads isn't the inifinite movement, it's the access and number of units per turn that are moved. Just by limiting access to the rails you cut out a lot of problems, and add the strategy element of cutting the enemies rails into the conflict zone. Second, the theoretical basis for capacity points would be the number of trains running through your network. The idea of one train per depot/siding or per city wouldn't be that far out of whack. The only current unbalancing effect of rail is the fact that every unit in your civ can load and leave the rail wherever they want making it the be all, end all mode of transportation. The number of units on the rails at any one time is restricted just by requiring movement to an access point.
@Yoshi
In your model, a tank would actually move 3x slower on a rail than on a road. I think your numbers may need tweaking a little.
In civ and its clones, we have 3 general classes of tile improvement...
Food - irrigation, farm, modern farm, hydro farm, genetic farm, soopa doopa mega farm, nut and berry collection zone, etc
Shields - mine, deep mine, mega mine
Trade (ctp2 only) - trading post, shopping mall, national park
Transport - (ctp) road, rail, maglev // (civ) road, rail
And maritime equivalents for some of thse in ctp. And a whole bunch of specials with varying functions (radar post, airbase, fort, etc)
Personally, I think the trade improvements were badly thought out, and best left out. perhaps in a 10x model, other tile improvements give a small trade bonus instead. The key point I am leading into here though, is that there is just a single set of transport tile improvements. You can't have a road AND a rail in the same tile, just as in civ 2 you couldn't have an irrigation and a farm in the same time. That's why I feel having upgradeable roads and upgradeable rails would be bad. It would simply require more complicated graphics and make the tile hard to read.
That's why I'd rather have rails abstracted. It keeps the screen cleaner, and roads were there first. Since most of us here are working on a model where rails work from city to city, or perhaps to a special rail siding tile improvement, having rails assumed where roads exist and the cities have rail depoit improvements just makes it a whole lot simpler.
@Aussie Lurker
Your model has rail capacity, in which you receive X free gold, bits of which are lost for each unit you move on your rails. In my model, you don't directly receive free gold, but instead lose gold for each unit you move on rails. I think my model is simpler in this regard, as it makes for one less number for players to keep track of, and rails have never really come close to hitting physical capacity - The rail from Alice Springs to that big city on the south coast could handle 50x the number of trains it does if the rail company decided to, at least for short periods.
In your model, a tank would actually move 3x slower on a rail than on a road. I think your numbers may need tweaking a little.
In civ and its clones, we have 3 general classes of tile improvement...
Food - irrigation, farm, modern farm, hydro farm, genetic farm, soopa doopa mega farm, nut and berry collection zone, etc
Shields - mine, deep mine, mega mine
Trade (ctp2 only) - trading post, shopping mall, national park
Transport - (ctp) road, rail, maglev // (civ) road, rail
And maritime equivalents for some of thse in ctp. And a whole bunch of specials with varying functions (radar post, airbase, fort, etc)
Personally, I think the trade improvements were badly thought out, and best left out. perhaps in a 10x model, other tile improvements give a small trade bonus instead. The key point I am leading into here though, is that there is just a single set of transport tile improvements. You can't have a road AND a rail in the same tile, just as in civ 2 you couldn't have an irrigation and a farm in the same time. That's why I feel having upgradeable roads and upgradeable rails would be bad. It would simply require more complicated graphics and make the tile hard to read.
That's why I'd rather have rails abstracted. It keeps the screen cleaner, and roads were there first. Since most of us here are working on a model where rails work from city to city, or perhaps to a special rail siding tile improvement, having rails assumed where roads exist and the cities have rail depoit improvements just makes it a whole lot simpler.
@Aussie Lurker
Your model has rail capacity, in which you receive X free gold, bits of which are lost for each unit you move on your rails. In my model, you don't directly receive free gold, but instead lose gold for each unit you move on rails. I think my model is simpler in this regard, as it makes for one less number for players to keep track of, and rails have never really come close to hitting physical capacity - The rail from Alice Springs to that big city on the south coast could handle 50x the number of trains it does if the rail company decided to, at least for short periods.
For the record, I did post a short critical analysis of the 'capacity' system. The fact that no-one even bothered replying to that is an indication that some people here are, in fact, just posting to see themselves type.
You posted:
I'm not talking down to you, I'm just stating fact.
And infinite movement RR are big deal to many players who will actually mod them out due to the fact that they mess up strategy (particularly in mods/scens): 1) you can't intercept units on RR, 2) in scens with smaller turn integers, it messes things up because you can go from one front to another in 1 turn 3) it conflicts with the limited movment of the rest of the game (i.e. you go from thinking terms of a max of 9 squares per turn to moving hundreds of squares in a turn--this has nothing to do with realism but continuity and game balance). People have been complaining about that stupid infinite RR thing since Civ1 and no response from Microprose and then Firaxis. Many consider this to be one of the major flaws in the Civ franchise.
And I won't lighten up, I've put up with this ridiculous infinite movement system long enough; I don't want to see it in Civ4, especially when a perfectly good (did I mention SIMPLE) solution available.
(I think I'll open my own thread and add a poll because I'm getting nowhere here. Cheers.)
Fine, the onl...hey wait a minute, don't make me out to be the bad guy!cfacosta said:
You posted:
It sounds like you're implying that you wouldn't mind the RR tweaked a bit. What you propose is way more than a tweak but an all-out change in game mechanics. My solution tweaks RRs without deviating from the original format so much as an inch. Yours and all the others presented in this thread on the other hand, represent substantial deviations from the original format.
I'm not talking down to you, I'm just stating fact.
And infinite movement RR are big deal to many players who will actually mod them out due to the fact that they mess up strategy (particularly in mods/scens): 1) you can't intercept units on RR, 2) in scens with smaller turn integers, it messes things up because you can go from one front to another in 1 turn 3) it conflicts with the limited movment of the rest of the game (i.e. you go from thinking terms of a max of 9 squares per turn to moving hundreds of squares in a turn--this has nothing to do with realism but continuity and game balance). People have been complaining about that stupid infinite RR thing since Civ1 and no response from Microprose and then Firaxis. Many consider this to be one of the major flaws in the Civ franchise.
And I won't lighten up, I've put up with this ridiculous infinite movement system long enough; I don't want to see it in Civ4, especially when a perfectly good (did I mention SIMPLE) solution available.
Heh. I'm just waiting for one--just one--post by anyone posting these complicated ideas here quoting Firaxis' new "simplify, simplify, simplify" slogan...so I can throw this thread at them like a rock.azzacanth said:
(I think I'll open my own thread and add a poll because I'm getting nowhere here. Cheers.)
Yea, I am aware that my suggestion is a complete change in the game mechanics for railroads. I still think it is a simpler system from the player's perspective, though. Either way, I did read your posts Yoshi. The only serious issue I have with the system you propose is the actual 1/10 total MP value. This isn't a huge deal, just raise the value a bit. Otherwise, cavalry armies, as they are in C3C, would go slower on the rail than on foot (or hoof, I guess).
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
dh_epic said:
You said it. Five minutes. That's the slowest units.
It's not about realism, it'S about giving the player the ability to do thing without having to wait half an hour to do them. Which is exactly what cutting the railroad would do, since each extra turn you add to the time it takes for a unit to move from point a to point b translates to 10, 15 more minutes spent waiting before you can actually do what you build the unit for.
Ergo, a game bloody nobody except a few hardcore fans would play.
Hence why taking out the insta-move is a stupid idea.
azzacanth
Warlord
Oda Nobunaga said:
Make it moddable. Then those hardcore fans could play without instamove if they want.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Yeah, if railroad can be removed via modding, I have no problem with that - as long as the basic game (you know, the one casual players WILL play for the most part) do not involve that sorts of change.
With my moddable, it would be simple enough to change the paramters such that it has no issues for novice players. To whit:
1 - change rail move cost to zero for all units
2 - Make the rail depot trivially cheap to build, or have a trivially cheap small wonder to place depots in all cities.
It then becomes a case of instant move for any unit in a city to any other city at no cost (beyond ending that unit's turn). And you don't even have to watch in bored silence as the computer animates your unit stepping onto each an every tile en route.
1 - change rail move cost to zero for all units
2 - Make the rail depot trivially cheap to build, or have a trivially cheap small wonder to place depots in all cities.
It then becomes a case of instant move for any unit in a city to any other city at no cost (beyond ending that unit's turn). And you don't even have to watch in bored silence as the computer animates your unit stepping onto each an every tile en route.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
Oda Nobunaga, not only did you miss the point, but you've basically indicted every game ever made. You took one of the premises in my reasoning out of context, and ignored the conclusion of my point.
You focused on how it's stupid that RTSes take 5 minutes for a walking unit to get across the map and criticized that. To me it doesn't matter whether it's 5 minutes or 1 minute. The fact of the matter is that Jets only move four times faster than walking in many RTSes, and you get very few complaints about realism. That's because the gameplay still delivers. Jets still have a huge strategic advantage over walking, and still basically create the sense of verisimilitude in an RTS.
If they made jets truly 100 times faster than walking, the game would essentially BREAK.
Apply that to any other game from any other genre, including Civ. Railroads, if you took out infinite movement, would still be faster than roads and still create an overall sense of "rails are faster than roads". And it would be more strategic than having a form of transportation that is INFINITELY faster than roads.
Way to justify your unwillingness to see the game change with poor logic, and ultimately miss the point.
You focused on how it's stupid that RTSes take 5 minutes for a walking unit to get across the map and criticized that. To me it doesn't matter whether it's 5 minutes or 1 minute. The fact of the matter is that Jets only move four times faster than walking in many RTSes, and you get very few complaints about realism. That's because the gameplay still delivers. Jets still have a huge strategic advantage over walking, and still basically create the sense of verisimilitude in an RTS.
If they made jets truly 100 times faster than walking, the game would essentially BREAK.
Apply that to any other game from any other genre, including Civ. Railroads, if you took out infinite movement, would still be faster than roads and still create an overall sense of "rails are faster than roads". And it would be more strategic than having a form of transportation that is INFINITELY faster than roads.
Way to justify your unwillingness to see the game change with poor logic, and ultimately miss the point.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Learn to read, man. Maybe then you won't accuse others of missing the point entirely then babble on about something completely unrelated to their posts.
What I said is that it's NOT about a sense of realism. Realism is NOT the issue, and strategic thinking is NOT the issue either. The issue is real-time. As you said, in RTS the slower unit often will take about five minutes to cross the whole map, maybe ten pushing - 5-10 minutes is not much in terms of real time.
ON the other hand, if moving a unit from point a to point b in Civ takes several turn, how much real-time do you think that will take? Well, in my experience 10 minute is not uncommon at all for the AI to play all their turns in the industrial age, so that's what it'll take if hte unit can move from one end of the map to another in two turns.
10 minutes, even there, is not so bad. That's why I say that adding the airport restriction (a unit that use aiport uses up all its movement points for the turn) to railroad is not TOO bad.
Except most of the changes here will take rather more than 1 full turn for a unit to reach its destination (one full turn = a unit that start moving on turn 101 will be able to attack, fortify or whatever else on turn 102). The Fixed-10-movement solution can easily require 2, 3 full turns to get from one end of an empire to another (half an hour to an hour, because you have to go through your own turn too) for any sort of units. 1/5th movement is not much better - we're still talking about as much time in minutes for anything short of cavs or tanks (maybe half an hour for them).
Yes, these would be entirely more strategic. But strategy is not the issue at hand here, it's playability. My take on the whole issue is that a vast majority of casual players won't play a game where they need to wait half an hour to do something productive with their newly built army.
And since casual gamers generally vastly outnumbers the hardcore fans, they're the ones the industry must generally focus on if they want to make enough profit to keep their publishers happy.
So DH, don't come back to me with another speech about realism and how I "completely miss the point". I'm not missing your point, I'm making a new one you completely glossed over in your series of argument - namely that the sense of realism is not what is at stake here, but the casual gamer's sense of enjoyment.
What I said is that it's NOT about a sense of realism. Realism is NOT the issue, and strategic thinking is NOT the issue either. The issue is real-time. As you said, in RTS the slower unit often will take about five minutes to cross the whole map, maybe ten pushing - 5-10 minutes is not much in terms of real time.
ON the other hand, if moving a unit from point a to point b in Civ takes several turn, how much real-time do you think that will take? Well, in my experience 10 minute is not uncommon at all for the AI to play all their turns in the industrial age, so that's what it'll take if hte unit can move from one end of the map to another in two turns.
10 minutes, even there, is not so bad. That's why I say that adding the airport restriction (a unit that use aiport uses up all its movement points for the turn) to railroad is not TOO bad.
Except most of the changes here will take rather more than 1 full turn for a unit to reach its destination (one full turn = a unit that start moving on turn 101 will be able to attack, fortify or whatever else on turn 102). The Fixed-10-movement solution can easily require 2, 3 full turns to get from one end of an empire to another (half an hour to an hour, because you have to go through your own turn too) for any sort of units. 1/5th movement is not much better - we're still talking about as much time in minutes for anything short of cavs or tanks (maybe half an hour for them).
Yes, these would be entirely more strategic. But strategy is not the issue at hand here, it's playability. My take on the whole issue is that a vast majority of casual players won't play a game where they need to wait half an hour to do something productive with their newly built army.
And since casual gamers generally vastly outnumbers the hardcore fans, they're the ones the industry must generally focus on if they want to make enough profit to keep their publishers happy.
So DH, don't come back to me with another speech about realism and how I "completely miss the point". I'm not missing your point, I'm making a new one you completely glossed over in your series of argument - namely that the sense of realism is not what is at stake here, but the casual gamer's sense of enjoyment.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
If you're saying that speed = enjoyment...
... then you've essentially laid out a reason why roads and movement points are a dumb idea in the first place. You're saying that nobody would want to play a game where it takes them "half an hour" to do something with their newly built army. The late ancient age will often require as much as 10 turns to get a troop from one end of the Roman empire to the other to fight a war -- and that's if you have roads. Is that a problem in Civ? Is that hurting the game's appeal?
When I thought you were talking about realism, I thought you had missed the point, and I apologize for the accusation. But after clarifying, your point seems radical -- basically attacking the entire basis for movement points in the game, and thus suggesting that Civilization can never appeal to a large audience with its current movement paradigm.
... then you've essentially laid out a reason why roads and movement points are a dumb idea in the first place. You're saying that nobody would want to play a game where it takes them "half an hour" to do something with their newly built army. The late ancient age will often require as much as 10 turns to get a troop from one end of the Roman empire to the other to fight a war -- and that's if you have roads. Is that a problem in Civ? Is that hurting the game's appeal?
When I thought you were talking about realism, I thought you had missed the point, and I apologize for the accusation. But after clarifying, your point seems radical -- basically attacking the entire basis for movement points in the game, and thus suggesting that Civilization can never appeal to a large audience with its current movement paradigm.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Not quite, because ancient age turns are NOWHERE near as slow as industrial turns. This is simply due to the fact that, the game, by its very nature, require empires to grow bigger. AS empires grow bigger, there are more decisions and more data processing required of the computer, which slows down the time it takes to finish each turn.
Taking 10 2-minute turns to accomplish something is not that much of an issue. Taking 10 10-minute turns to accomplish the same thing is, however, a major issue.
Essentialy, the way the game is set up right at the base REQUIRES that turn will get longer as the game progress. The direct corollary is that, to avoid boredom settling in with those later turns, you need to speed up transportation to the point where it remains to use possible relatively quickly in real-time, even with the industrial age.
Hence why insta-move is needful.
Taking 10 2-minute turns to accomplish something is not that much of an issue. Taking 10 10-minute turns to accomplish the same thing is, however, a major issue.
Essentialy, the way the game is set up right at the base REQUIRES that turn will get longer as the game progress. The direct corollary is that, to avoid boredom settling in with those later turns, you need to speed up transportation to the point where it remains to use possible relatively quickly in real-time, even with the industrial age.
Hence why insta-move is needful.
Dida
YHWH
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2003
- Messages
- 3,434
I can simply rebuke Oda's arguement by pointing out that, even in the conservative case which RR gives only 1/5 movement, it WILL NOT take 10 or 20 turns to move an unit from one end to the other. Most industrial and modern unit has 5 movement points(as is the case in CTP), meaning they moves 25 tiles a turn. Usually, it takes them 3 or 4 turns, to get to a point. (25x3 or 25x4 would means an empires that is 75 tiles or 100 tiles wide, which is very, very big). 3 or 4 is a huge difference from 10. Oda has exaggerate the problem by more than doubling the turn it usually requires to move an unit, or his misconception might have arised from simply the lack of experience with the new RR model. In the later is case, I think it is not very wise to make uneducated guess on how the change would effect the game without serious thinking about it.
In fact, in CTP, by introducting stacked movement and combat, and replacing worker with PW, the player only has a few units to move around, and no workers to worry about, which means the computer does not need to run althorithm to determine where to send the workers and how to get them there. This greatly reduced the micromanagement on the part of the player, and greatly speeds up time between each turn. Oda's problem with late game management is thus unfounded.
In fact, in CTP, by introducting stacked movement and combat, and replacing worker with PW, the player only has a few units to move around, and no workers to worry about, which means the computer does not need to run althorithm to determine where to send the workers and how to get them there. This greatly reduced the micromanagement on the part of the player, and greatly speeds up time between each turn. Oda's problem with late game management is thus unfounded.
Let's take the extreme case for a normal game. A tank (move 3) on a road (x3 move) moving 128 tiles (halfway around the world for a huge map). It will take just over 14 turns.
A more reasonanle case would be where you are, say, one of three super powers on that map, and that half the map is water. Your empire might reasonably span up to 256/6 tiles in that case. You'd be looking at 5 turns to cross your empire, which is quite reasonable in my opinion.
In my rail model, you can still move instantly across your empire anyway by using the rail lift orders. You just pay gold to do so, forcing an opportunity cost decision. And opportunity cost decisions are the meat of games like Civ.
A more reasonanle case would be where you are, say, one of three super powers on that map, and that half the map is water. Your empire might reasonably span up to 256/6 tiles in that case. You'd be looking at 5 turns to cross your empire, which is quite reasonable in my opinion.
In my rail model, you can still move instantly across your empire anyway by using the rail lift orders. You just pay gold to do so, forcing an opportunity cost decision. And opportunity cost decisions are the meat of games like Civ.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Is reading my posts so frigging hard?
"The Fixed-10-movement solution can easily require 2, 3 full turns to get from one end of an empire to another (half an hour to an hour, because you have to go through your own turn too) for any sort of units. 1/5th movement is not much better - we're still talking about as much time in minutes for anything short of cavs or tanks (maybe half an hour for them)."
I said that two posts ago. But perhaps you missed it because you wanted so badly to "debunk me", and it's much easier to completley misrepresent my 10 turn comment than to face the actual argument I made, isn't it?
I'm frankly sick of people here misrepresenting my points. I made the 10/10 comparison not because I think it takes 10 turn to move from one end of the empire to another, but to simply underline the fact that X turns in the early game and the same X turns in the late game translates to an entirely different length of time.
But that would have kept you from making your "brilliant" point about how "TEN TURN IS ARE BE TEH EXAGERATION!", wouldn't it?
Rhialto, your pay-gold-to-insta-move solution, I have no problems with. I'm not defending absolute stasis here ; the current system CAN be improved. I'm simply arguing against banning all forms of insta-move until airports roll around, which I feel is too late in the game,
"The Fixed-10-movement solution can easily require 2, 3 full turns to get from one end of an empire to another (half an hour to an hour, because you have to go through your own turn too) for any sort of units. 1/5th movement is not much better - we're still talking about as much time in minutes for anything short of cavs or tanks (maybe half an hour for them)."
I said that two posts ago. But perhaps you missed it because you wanted so badly to "debunk me", and it's much easier to completley misrepresent my 10 turn comment than to face the actual argument I made, isn't it?
I'm frankly sick of people here misrepresenting my points. I made the 10/10 comparison not because I think it takes 10 turn to move from one end of the empire to another, but to simply underline the fact that X turns in the early game and the same X turns in the late game translates to an entirely different length of time.
But that would have kept you from making your "brilliant" point about how "TEN TURN IS ARE BE TEH EXAGERATION!", wouldn't it?
Rhialto, your pay-gold-to-insta-move solution, I have no problems with. I'm not defending absolute stasis here ; the current system CAN be improved. I'm simply arguing against banning all forms of insta-move until airports roll around, which I feel is too late in the game,
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
Unfortunately, Oda, your argument depends on fuzzy math. You say that the game is okay with 10 short turns, theoretically speaking, to move across the map. But you contrast it with 10 extremely long turns as a justification for insta move -- movement within a single turn.
Let's even concede that your math is right. Let's assume you're right that late game turns take 10 minutes. And I'll do one better. Let's assume turns take ONE minute at the start of the game, not even 2 minutes. Meaning the game takes ten times as long at the end.
If movement speed is acceptable at the start of the game (when turns take one minute), then to keep movement speed acceptable at the end of the game (when turns take ten minutes), you must make movement approximately ten times as fast.
By that math, 1/10th or 1/9th movement speed for rails (or 1/3 * 1/3, to compare it to roads) would keep the gameplay speed you so crave. And limiting 9 squares per movement point would be sufficient for strategy -- to make troop positions count for something again.
And that's assuming your pessimistic turn-time math is correct. Not that I have the answer, but it's something that can easily come together when you're testing for gameplay balance. Insta-move is not necessary, nor is it desirable.
Let's even concede that your math is right. Let's assume you're right that late game turns take 10 minutes. And I'll do one better. Let's assume turns take ONE minute at the start of the game, not even 2 minutes. Meaning the game takes ten times as long at the end.
If movement speed is acceptable at the start of the game (when turns take one minute), then to keep movement speed acceptable at the end of the game (when turns take ten minutes), you must make movement approximately ten times as fast.
By that math, 1/10th or 1/9th movement speed for rails (or 1/3 * 1/3, to compare it to roads) would keep the gameplay speed you so crave. And limiting 9 squares per movement point would be sufficient for strategy -- to make troop positions count for something again.
And that's assuming your pessimistic turn-time math is correct. Not that I have the answer, but it's something that can easily come together when you're testing for gameplay balance. Insta-move is not necessary, nor is it desirable.
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Actually, I'm tempted to say 10 minutes is not much of a pessimistic estimate. I'Ve seen much longer, although admitedly on very large maps.
But that said , yeah, if you go to such points as 1/9th or 1/10th movement points, I have no more issues with the notion of not having railroads insta move. 1/10th means that cavalry unit can cover 30 squares per turn ; that's good enough to allow for rapid offensive. Mostly everyone was talking about things like 1/5th or the ilk, which is MUCH too slow (less than twice as fast as roads, but between roads and RR the turn length more than double I'm pretty sure), but 1/9th-1/10th is fine enough - especially since the units the casual players will care about moving fast are the ilk of Cav and Modern Armor, ie the offensive stuff.
And that, incidentally, is why fixed movement points is not a solution. Realist? Yes. But playable? Nope. Either you fix it to somethign that sounds reasonable for infantry (9x movement speed?), so 9 points, which is worthless for cavalry (for whom 9 MP is what they get on roads already) and modern armor, or else you set it to fit those units (which are, after all, the casual players favorites), in which case you get 27 move points on railroad - which is humongous for infantry type units ; might as well give them infinite movement by then.
So yeah. A high enough multiplier, I could agree to - the only problem being of course that cavalry moving faster than infantry on railroads just sounds goofy.
But I personally think the answer lies in limiting the development of railroads more than the movements along railroads.
But that said , yeah, if you go to such points as 1/9th or 1/10th movement points, I have no more issues with the notion of not having railroads insta move. 1/10th means that cavalry unit can cover 30 squares per turn ; that's good enough to allow for rapid offensive. Mostly everyone was talking about things like 1/5th or the ilk, which is MUCH too slow (less than twice as fast as roads, but between roads and RR the turn length more than double I'm pretty sure), but 1/9th-1/10th is fine enough - especially since the units the casual players will care about moving fast are the ilk of Cav and Modern Armor, ie the offensive stuff.
And that, incidentally, is why fixed movement points is not a solution. Realist? Yes. But playable? Nope. Either you fix it to somethign that sounds reasonable for infantry (9x movement speed?), so 9 points, which is worthless for cavalry (for whom 9 MP is what they get on roads already) and modern armor, or else you set it to fit those units (which are, after all, the casual players favorites), in which case you get 27 move points on railroad - which is humongous for infantry type units ; might as well give them infinite movement by then.
So yeah. A high enough multiplier, I could agree to - the only problem being of course that cavalry moving faster than infantry on railroads just sounds goofy.
But I personally think the answer lies in limiting the development of railroads more than the movements along railroads.
dh_epic
Cold War Veteran
Well we have an understanding, which is good. Because I think that 1/5 movement isn't enough -- to make RR matter strategically, or for even verisimilitude (the sense of realism. That would be like jets going twice as fast as a footsoldier in an RTS).
I think it's one active incredient. But another active ingredient may very well be something like "you can create three basically-straight railroad routes from city A". Or "rails cost X to build, or Y to maintain".
Or maybe something as abstract as "you can't cover a 2X2 area with rails -- at least one of those squares must remain a regular road". It would be hard to come up with a justification for this, but it would be strategic, to some degree.
I think it's one active incredient. But another active ingredient may very well be something like "you can create three basically-straight railroad routes from city A". Or "rails cost X to build, or Y to maintain".
Or maybe something as abstract as "you can't cover a 2X2 area with rails -- at least one of those squares must remain a regular road". It would be hard to come up with a justification for this, but it would be strategic, to some degree.
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