Railroad instant movement bonus is silly

[oldStatesman]

Great points in this thread. My obvservation is that depending on your perspective, rail movement will be viewed in different ways.

Realists: Infinite penalty free railroad movement is ridiculous.

Historians: Rails compared to normal, sea and road movement is ridiculous - more a problem with the fact it takes 1 to 50 years to move a unit one or two squares that is not on a rr.

Gamebalancers: Infinite RR is fine - it leads to balanced gameplay.

Personally for ease of play I like the magic rr's. But I think that a price should have to be paid - I like Aussie Lurkers idea of using points - but why add another thing (CP's) to worry about? Perhaps using a modified shield/gold system would work - instead of having production/commercer points firmly tied to one city, instead have a trade network concept - once 2 or more cities are connected by first roads, then rr's, then airports, they can pool their resources - but a trade/travel tax % will be taken out off the top before allocating to building units/structures/research for maintaining the trade network depending on tech level, speed of travel wanted (dirt road or 8 lane Autobahn; steam locomotive or bullet train; dirigible or C-5 transport plane; etc.) If you instead want to move military units, the trade/travel tax % will be more depending on where you want to go and how many units you want to move - just like A_L's system. You must balance the need for speed against the need to feed. This wold open up huge strategic decision making strategies without increasing the dreaded micromanagement tasks. plus make resource allocation in your empire more flexible.

Also, to use other Civ's roads and or RR"s etc you will have to have an embassy, and negotiate specific types of RoP's that allow usage. You will pay a fee to that Civ for using their roads/rails/harbors/airports over and above your domestic travel tax. Road usage would be penalized - perhaps you would use a reduced road bonus unless you paid more fees - simulate import taxes. You would have to wait one turn when crossing borders before using the other Civ's rr's - customs inspections detraining/retraining due to rr gauge differrences etc unless you pay a big bonus tax to expedite things (i.e. grease the custom inspectors hand). In war time you would not be allowed to use captured enemy roads the first turn, or rr's until you rebuilt them by having a worker spend a turn on each rr square to help prevent the unrealistic settler creep exploit.

Sorry to go on - I agree revamping movement with such a system would also help in other areas of the game - enhanced trade, diplomacy and take some of the emphasis away from warmongering if wanted and making other strategies more in depth.

But more than likely this will have to wait for Civ5 or for another game to be implemented.


JMHO

 

[player1 fanatic]

Gamebalancers: Infinite RR is fine - it leads to balanced gameplay.

No, it's not.
I kills strategic options, due to infinetly fast reaction time.

 

[Moonsinger]

Instant transport kills strategic logistics in moder era.

How so? When you press a button to launch your nuke, would you rather wait a few turns (a few years) before you see a "boom" or would you rather see it right away (which is very unrealistic in Civ3)? In the real world, if you launch a nuke at a target city A for example, and if there is a nuclear base in city A, I'm sure they would have plenty of time to launch all their nukes right back at you before your nuke actually hit them. Not to mention that they probably have enough time to move their stack of modern armors out of the city before your nuke actually hit them. Now, that's what I call true strategic logistic whatever!

Like I have pointed out, one turn in civ is really equal to a period of time in real life. In the modern era, 1 turn is equal to 1 year which is plenty of time for train to travel all the way around the world. Therefore, the word "instant" is really misleading, especially in a turn base game.

 

[oldStatesman]

No, it's not.
I kills strategic options, due to infinetly fast reaction time.

Huh?

How does it kill strategy?

It makes for different strategic options. I would agree that the strategy before magic rr's can be built is different than after....if that is what you meant.

 

[mitsho]

The defender can hit the attacker with (pretty much) all of his army, and then quickly return to its cities. That especially makes invasions of islands impossible. That's what he means and what we do not want.

mitsho

 

[Symphony D.]

Cut the enemy's rail links with bombardment. Problem of the enemy moving instantaneously solved. But they you can't just build tanks and wipe them out? That's strategy for you! I'm trying to imagine the German and Russian mobilizations in WWI on the Eastern Front with "limited railroads":

1914: Oh, war! Now to just send all my infantry to the front!
1916: Err... well, damn, I guess they'll get there next turn.
1918: What do you mean the war's over?! We just got here!

Ignoring of course the war would've been two turns in civ time.

 

[oldStatesman]

The defender can hit the attacker with (pretty much) all of his army, and then quickly return to its cities. That especially makes invasions of islands impossible. That's what he means and what we do not want.

mitsho

But if you put an economic penalty on their use - wouldn't this make it better? UNLIMITED magic rr's are the problem IMHO.

I was just puzzled when it was said magic rr's KILLED strategy. That statement is just not true. They just make for a DIFFERENT strategy. In your example. it makes it much harder to invade an island with rr's - but NOT impossible. You just have to come up with a different strategy. For example: Maybe wait until you can build carriers and redline the defenders first; bomb the cities with barracks until they are destroyed, and cut the rail lines with bombardment. Or before air build lots of frigates and ironclads and destroy the rail lines around your beachead area before invading.

Everyone seems to complain about the ability of the other player to use this unlimited movement against them...but hardly anyone complains about being able to use it to their advantage.

As I said in my original post, I think one's view on magic rr's seems to depend in large part on how one percieves the game: as an historical experience; a reality simulation; or simply as a game to be played.

 

[Moonsinger]

I don't think it has killed any strategy! Imagining the Borg with the technology to open a portal right next to earth (by the way, they did), does that actually kill any strategy or would it help the Federation to come up with newer and better tactic/strategy in dealing with the Borg?

The defender can hit the attacker with (pretty much) all of his army, and then quickly return to its cities. That especially makes invasions of islands impossible. That's what he means and what we do not want.

Since there are plenty of tactics for establishing a beach head, I really don't see why that's an impossible task! Beside, the tougher they are, the better the reward and the greater satisfaction.

 

[mitsho]

Great tactics, and now do the same against a human opponent (as opposed to the AI). But I must admit, I'm neither a top-player (who excels at this game), nor one who's able to play it very often. So, these situation didn't occur to me very often until now, thus I won't discuss with you on that specific rr-topic any longer.

To your argumentation: A tactic to win this game is to put up much culture. To do this, many players conquer much territory and then place endless amounts of cities. Is this what the developers intended, when they introduced this peaceful way of winnning, no? It's just a tactic, the best, that the players could think of.
Thus, it may be an option to build endless sod's of ships to bomb the hell out of a city, the defender, if he's on same level, will always be able to build more defenders or ships and defeat my ships. It takes too long to destroy the barracks (in c3c, the units are attacked first by bombs) and we are not able to destroy all rr leading to the city, we'd need planes for this, a whole lot of planes.
As I said, possible against the AI, pretty much impossible IMHO (!!) against a human.

mfG mitsho

 

[Dark Russell]

Maybe the options for rail and road movement should be further enhanced in the editor for C4. That way this whole discussion of what is better is solved by modding the game to how you see fit.

 

[Moonsinger]

As I said, possible against the AI, pretty much impossible IMHO (!!) against a human.

IMHO, nothing is impossible, especially against a human. As human, we are bound to make mistakes some day, some where, ... eventually - no one is perfect! Sure, a human player would never let you match your army right up to his/her capital as you would do to the AI, so you may have to come up with a different tactic. There is one thing you should know about human is that they have a strong desire to win the game was much as you do...so that is one of their biggest weakness there! Exploit such weakness and you will win the game. As Sun Tzu said "the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself".

 

[bkwrm79]

But if you put an economic penalty on their use - wouldn't this make it better? UNLIMITED magic rr's are the problem IMHO.

I was just puzzled when it was said magic rr's KILLED strategy. That statement is just not true. They just make for a DIFFERENT strategy. In your example. it makes it much harder to invade an island with rr's - but NOT impossible. You just have to come up with a different strategy. For example: Maybe wait until you can build carriers and redline the defenders first; bomb the cities with barracks until they are destroyed, and cut the rail lines with bombardment. Or before air build lots of frigates and ironclads and destroy the rail lines around your beachead area before invading.

They do kill strategy. You just concentrate forces. If you're fighting wars on more than one front, you INSTANTLY transfer exactly as much as you need from one to the other.

In both World Wars the fact that German forces committed to one front were NOT available to the other front (without the equivalent of a couple turns transit time) was important.

Everyone seems to complain about the ability of the other player to use this unlimited movement against them...but hardly anyone complains about being able to use it to their advantage.

Simply untrue.

As I said in my original post, I think one's view on magic rr's seems to depend in large part on how one percieves the game: as an historical experience; a reality simulation; or simply as a game to be played.

[/quote]

RR teleportation sucks from both a historical perspective (it eliminates the feel of historical dilemmas) and from a gameplay perspective (it reduces grand strategical decisions available to you).

 

[oldStatesman]

... and from a gameplay perspective (it reduces grand strategical decisions available to you).

Sorry, I disagree.

Isn't it a strategy to plan on how to set up the rail net? Don't you have to decide whether you need to build rails in the AI civ's territory sometimes so you can get your units to the other side of the continent to protect your colony? Don't you have to make decisions regarding garrisons - will you garrison that important rear area city in case of an AI sneak attack over your rails? What happens when the AI troops cut your rail line to part of your country? Did you plan on that? Do you have enough troops of your own there to defend it?

Besides, as far as gameplay is concerned, IMHO rr are the one thing that makes the game play faster and actually playable in the modern era - I would NEVER play the game if I had to tediously move units around during this part of the game in addition to allocating my workers, playing the micromangement game in each city every turn, cycling through the foriegn advisor screen to check on the other AI's every single turn... the game is bogged down now...magic rr's help keep it moving as far as playability is concerned.

Edit: forgot to metion that becasue of the corruption model you could not have a large empire without magic rr's. It is simply not possible to build units fast enough to defend a region far from the capital in that region itself; and if you only had roads then you would be spending the whole game building and moving units out from the core area - Not much strategy there IMHO.

 

[bkwrm79]

Sorry, I disagree.

Isn't it a strategy to plan on how to set up the rail net? Don't you have to decide whether you need to build rails in the AI civ's territory sometimes so you can get your units to the other side of the continent to protect your colony? Don't you have to make decisions regarding garrisons - will you garrison that important rear area city in case of an AI sneak attack over your rails? What happens when the AI troops cut your rail line to part of your country? Did you plan on that? Do you have enough troops of your own there to defend it?

Besides, as far as gameplay is concerned, IMHO rr are the one thing that makes the game play faster and actually playable in the modern era - I would NEVER play the game if I had to tediously move units around during this part of the game in addition to allocating my workers, playing the micromangement game in each city every turn, cycling through the foriegn advisor screen to check on the other AI's every single turn... the game is bogged down now...magic rr's help keep it moving as far as playability is concerned.

Edit: forgot to metion that becasue of the corruption model you could not have a large empire without magic rr's. It is simply not possible to build units fast enough to defend a region far from the capital in that region itself; and if you only had roads then you would be spending the whole game building and moving units out from the core area - Not much strategy there IMHO.

Sending units from your core to the peripheries isn't that difficult or time-consuming even in Civ I. Certainly much better than micro-managing cities, workers, and cycling through the foreign minister each turn - none of which I do.

If Civ IV lets you group units, as some people believe has been hinted at, this will become even easier.

 

[whereagles]

Well, teleporting railroads do NOT kill strategy. They just require players to adapt their plans to the rules of the game.

HOWEVER, I think most people will agree that Civ should be realistic. And teleporting railroads are not realistic. Neither is railroading every tile.

 

[player1 fanatic]

And teleporting railroads are not realistic.

Thus leading to unrealistic startegies...

 

[oldStatesman]

Well, teleporting railroads do NOT kill strategy. They just require players to adapt their plans to the rules of the game.

HOWEVER, I think most people will agree that Civ should be realistic. And teleporting railroads are not realistic. Neither is railroading every tile.

Personally, I disagree - I will not speak for anyone else - I believe that while realism is important, playability trumps it at times. Again, it comes down to whether one views Civ to be a game, a realistic simulation or a historical exercise.

For me, there are lots of really good historical simulations out there - but most are extremly complex and sacrifice playability for realism - an example is the modern warfare game Harpoon4.

IMHO Civ is above all a game that incorporates some aspects of history - and very well - to create a fantasy that appeals to people and stimulates their minds while giving enjoyment. It is abstractly based on reality - however I totally agree that when it comes down to playability over reality that some allowances have to be made. And again IMO magic rr's are one of the needed aspects that increase playabilty at the expense of 'realism'.

 

[whereagles]

Yes, indeed "realism vs playability" is the issue here. Teleporting RR sure makes it less tedious.

Perhaps civ 4 can have an option like
Fast move railroads [ON][OFF]

 

[wotan321]

Looking at the E3 videos, I see different roads graphics. Is that because of terrain differences, or is there more than just two types of roads now?

 

[troytheface]

perhaps the way Time is portrayed or the map scale - ie time and map / are more in need of a change than "movement". But i too thought that Call To Power had a fine railroad system that let u travel far- usually far enough- but not infinite- but the whole thing may be different in this new game so i will have to see -
Most of the threads and comments seem to revolve around "realism" vs Gameplay (abstraction)- since it can never be "real" the realists tend to keep aiming at a self directed center of accuracy-as do those crying out "gameplay!"- I vote for a railroad that has horizontal bars across the rails-i play this game mainly for the graphics.