No More Rail Sprawl

[frekk]

I hate rail sprawl. Its ugly. And rails should be in lines, not look like someone poured black spaghetti over your entire country.

What about taking away the production bonus for rails so their only use is transport?

If people wanted to keep some sort of production bonus, civ could go back to the farmland-over-irrigation thing and also add deep core mines over regular mines.

Some people would still build rail everywhere but that would be a matter of choice, you wouldn't really lose much advantage if you chose not to do that. Or some sort of restrictions could be put in place to discourage it, like making it take much longer to build tracks so you were forced to prioritize where you wanted tracks to go.

 

[eromrab]

well... that would be the good thing about the labor management screen... you could make it so that all RR's had to go from one city to another... and maybe force players to designate the entire RR length, instead of just one tile at a time... that would get rid of the sprawl, and make it a bit harder to build up railroads... cause you'd have to have a larger sum up money up front (to afford the entire line instead of just one tile).

it would also prevent people from building railroads that reach the edge of their cultural boundaries, cause they'd have to connect 2 of your cities...

what y'all think about that?

 

[Spatula]

I like it. Making it so you can only build it between two cities and all at once would not only get rid of the problem it would make the game more realistic. Two things I would also like to add:

1)When one tile is pillaged the connection is useless. You would only have to re-build that one tile though.
2)The transport takes one turn, no matter how far you are going. No loading/unloading, so a unit arriving in the city would count towards its defence if it got attacked.

 

[frekk]

I think any system that implements a sprawl-less rail network is going to have to have a routine to build the rail in lines between cities, because otherwise the AI won't build rails properly. So if there's a function in there to tell the AI to route the rail properly, I think it should be easy to include one for automation too (whether you're using just regular workers or a more abstract system for terrain improvements).

I don't know if I'd limit rails to being built just within your cultural boundaries and just between cities. In the US rails pushed out ahead of settlement during westward expansion, same with the Trans-Siberian railway and the Canadian Pacific. I don't see why you shouldn't be able to build your rails past your cultural boundaries if you want, to get to forts or bottlenecks or perhaps to a resource colony. Also you should be able to choose the path of the rail if you want to, so that you can place it strategically, and if you can't build just a single square of rail at a time (if you want to) you can't do that.

Also, I don't like to pay for improvements, or I won't have anything to do during those times when the treasury is low and I am at peace. Those times will be even more boring than they already are. And terrain improvements don't need to be based on gold, basing it on population (workforce) and agriculture is just as reasonable.

 

[Spatula]

Rails have to end somewhere though, not just stop. There has to be something at the other end, like a fortress or something. Or maybe even an out-of-city train station

 

[eromrab]

i would agree with that... when you go to build a railroad, it should ask you for a source and destination city/fort/colony/whatever... then it should figure out the shortest route...

but for the purposes of the game, i think all RR tiles should have the same movement points... just for simplification... just as roads have the same movement points used up on a mountain, a hill, a desert, and a plain.

 

[frekk]

Rails have to end somewhere though, not just stop. There has to be something at the other end, like a fortress or something. Or maybe even an out-of-city train station

Nah ... they just need a small loop and a switch. And that's if you're being fancy. During WW2 they had all kinds of tracks that would just end at an unfinished railhead. They'd just reverse to go back, but they were used right up to the railhead for transporting things and also for rail artillery.

 

[Spatula]

I'm sure they would have those buffer things at the end though - the rails wouldn't just stop dead.

But really, why are we asting time over the 'building rails oustise your borders' thing? By the time you get railroads, there's practically no unclaimed land left!

 

[eromrab]

ain't that the truth

 

[frekk]

Civ4 could be different though.

Also you might be building your rail into areas that used to be claimed.

I don't mind making it a bit harder for warmongers, but I still want to be able to take over the world on a big map. If I can't build rails (that aren't even as good as civ3 to begin with) into razed territories it's going to be absurdly hard to do that before the end of the game.

Also, what happens when a city is destroyed? The rail line to it is destroyed? Might be difficult to program when you've got crossings and such. Might get spaghetti if it just removes the line to the next junction, because in an area which changes hands alot ... And if it doesn't get destroyed, I've got a rail to my border. If it exists, why can't I build it?