Oil should be enough to build railroads.

[Neomega]

Why is coal required?

It should be coal or Oil. No locomotives today use coal, they all use diesel.

 

[yoshi74]

Gameplay reason, Oil is important for so many things, making it also a resource for rails would be to powerfull (and coal less usefull). IMO the need for resources in cIV is less than before. There arn't so many really needed resources.

Also someone could argue that a city with power from powerplant is enough for rails, since today many railroads use electrical power. Its a gameplay decision. AFAIK in civ3 you needed BOTH coal and iron. Now its only coal. Don't see a problem there.

 

[Seanirl]

Maybe you should need iron + coal OR iron ?

 

[FraggyFragbait]

i think its fine the way it is,ive never noticed it before to be honest!

 

[Neomega]

You'll notice if you are going around pumping out battleships and helicopters, but can't lay railroad...

 

[rob.derosa]

erm. when you first develop railroads. they all used steam. so it makes perfect sense for the rescource to be coal

 

[h22chen]

yep, they should have it changed to Iron and Coal to make it historically accurate.

 

[Viperace]

I agree with the thread starter. Something is need to be done with the railroad resource requirement.

U can have Nuclear plant, battleship, carrier, stealth bomber and u don't have railroad O__o . Thats what happen in one of my game.

 

[Col.BBQ]

Coal is required in the production of steel; in smelting iron and removing impurities to make certain grades of steel. If you didn't have a source of coal, the railroad system would be deemed too expensive to produce and maintain so you'll get stuck with roads until you import some coal from a foreign empire.

 

[Alphawolf]

To build railroads I think you should need iron and coal or oil or electricity.

-the Wolf

 

[eg577]

Coal is required in the production of steel; in smelting iron and removing impurities to make certain grades of steel.

What are they making the battleships and aircraft carriers out of then?

 

[Rince]

As yoshi74 said, it's all about gameplay. Making it historically accurate would be stupid.

Carriers would need Iron, Oil, Uranium, Copper, Aluminium etc. Same for planes.

Rince

 

[Viperace]

at least make coal distribute more evenly in the map . That would solve the no-railraod in an advance civ problem.

 

[Ice]

Nah, I think it's a good gameplay feature, it adds to the interesting choices you have to make. I'd actually prefer it if there was more resources and build restrictions. For instance in one of my games, I had a slight techinical lead and got "Steam Power" first, coal is reveals and there are only 2 sources of it on my known map, one with my bitter enemies the Americans (who were 2nd strongest in the game) and one with my friends the Japenese, who were one of the weakest. Now I had to decide, do I try and make peace with the Americans and get them to trade coal with me down the line? Go to war with them and try and take it by force? Go to war with my weak friends the Japenese or gift them the technologies to reveal coal and hope they'll trade it with me.

This is one of the things that makes Civ games so interesting and keeps them different.

 

[Hyronymus]

Why is coal required?

It should be coal or Oil. No locomotives today use coal, they all use diesel.

So sorry but as a railroad fanatic I must say you're really good at making our kind of people laugh. Here is a small history lesson for you.

 

[CyberChrist]

Iron AND (Coal or Oil) would make the most sense imho.

 

[Hyronymus]

That doesn't make sense because railroads will become available with oil too but not as early as with steam engines. And I must say iron and coal have been sufficiently available on all maps I've played sofar.

 

[Sybot]

IMHO it would just make Coal worthless if rails could use Oil. Most civs would have either Oil or Coal in thier borders, so there would be no point in trading for it. If that happens they might as well remove Coal entirely.

 

[randallman]

IMHO it would just make Coal worthless if rails could use Oil. Most civs would have either Oil or Coal in thier borders, so there would be no point in trading for it. If that happens they might as well remove Coal entirely.

All of this being said, Coal is probably the single most abundant fossil fuel on the face of the earth. I feel thjat the resource as a whole is underrepresented in both Civ III and Civ IV. Perhaps this is done for game balance, but when *key* defensive tools such as the 'railroad' improvement depend on it, not having coal can really ruin your late-game.

At a very minimum, the number of coal resource 'tiles' should at least double that of the available Oil tiles in a random map generated to have a similar topography to that of the current 'Earth'.

This is quoted from http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/infosheets/coalreserves.htm

Worldwide, coal is the most abundant of the fossil fuels, and its reserves are also the most widely distributed. Estimates of the world's total recoverable reserves of coal in 2002 were about 1,081 billion sort tons. The resulting ratio of coal reserves to production exceeds 200 years, meaning that at current rates of production (and no change in reserves), coal reserves could in theory last for another two centuries. The distribution of coal reserves around the world varies notably from that of oil and gas, in that significant reserves are found in the United States and the Former Soviet Union (FSU) but not in the Middle East. The United States with 26 percent and the FSU with 23 percent account for nearly half of global coal reserves. China (12 percent), Australia (8 percent), Germany (7 percent), South Africa (5 percent), and Poland (2 percent) also have significant amounts of the world's recoverable coal reserves.

 

[Zhahz]

I guess someone didn't have readily available coal in a recent game?

Just more reason to put the smack down on someone (to grab a resource you want).