Railroads - any value?

[pokiehl]

Railroads in Civ 6 definitely feel like an afterthought to me. Too much work to make, not nearly enough return on investment. I practically never use them.

 

[Miserable Old Git]

Accumulating aluminium is problematic. But provided youve got deep pockets, the daft AI will sell you all it has! (Except hostile civs)

 

[EdTice]

Accumulating aluminium is problematic. But provided youve got deep pockets, the daft AI will sell you all it has! (Except hostile civs)

D'oh. I never even thought to buy it from the AI. You're right. Even an AI who is only a turn behind (or ahead of) me for a science victory would probably sell it. I feel silly now. Thanks.

 

[Beaver79]

I usually play large maps on epic speed so I almost always build them for the movement speed. I do at least some war every game and instead of my units taking 20 turns to get to the other side of the map, they take 3. It is a lot of micro though.

They also contribute to global warming and I usually want that, so even after I build a continuous path with them I just keep going.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I use all cities, or at least all bar one, to build lagrange/terrestrial laser projects (I only play on deity, so any suboptimal strategy will end up in defeat). So all the builders need to be prebuilt, and used in every city on every turn. Hence the railroads.

You need to optimize your play when playing deity indeed, but this is imo not the place to do it.
Having spaceports in "all" cities (I will assume that means in 10 or more cities) doesnt noticeably increase your win time, because there are very sharp diminishing return on laser projects.
The first project shaves off a whopping 25 turns off of your win time, but the second "only" an additional 9 turns.
Then you shave off another 4-5 turns (from 2 projects to 3), and then 2-3 turns (by going from 4 laser projects to 5).
After that that you are shaving off only an additional 1 turn (going from 7 to 8), or even no turns at all until you hit the next breakpoint.
If you need that 1 extra turn to win the SV then by all means go ahead, but usually this is very overkill.
You will also be capped at the "1 builder, per turn, per spaceport" rule either way, and railroads dont speed up that input of builders as long as you have builders being produced in other cities every turn.

Some people like to build railroads for fun and thats fine, but its by no means essential to win, and usually it has no effect at all.

 

[EdTice]

You need to optimize your play when playing deity indeed, but this is imo not the place to do it.
Having spaceports in "all" cities (I will assume that means in 10 or more cities) doesnt noticeably increase your win time, because there are very sharp diminishing return on laser projects.
The first project shaves off a whopping 25 turns off of your win time, but the second "only" an additional 9 turns.
Then you shave off another 4-5 turns (from 2 projects to 3), and then 2-3 turns (by going from 4 laser projects to 5).
After that that you are shaving off only an additional 1 turn (going from 7 to 8), or even no turns at all until you hit the next breakpoint.
If you need that 1 extra turn to win the SV then by all means go ahead, but usually this is very overkill.
You will also be capped at the "1 builder, per turn, per spaceport" rule either way, and railroads dont speed up that input of builders as long as you have builders being produced in other cities every turn.

Some people like to build railroads for fun and thats fine, but its by no means essential to win, and usually it has no effect at all.

Yeah I was wondering about this same thing. For the cost of a railroad network followed by a half a dozen spaceports to shave off one or two turns, you can do many other things to accelerate the win.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

On huge or enormous maps, railroads do let my Panzers get to where they're needed much more quickly.
(of course, once I get GDRs, it's all moot)

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Yeah I was wondering about this same thing. For the cost of a railroad network followed by a half a dozen spaceports to shave off one or two turns, you can do many other things to accelerate the win.

This.
I just finished a science game as Gandhi today, and I "only" had 5 spaceports (which is high for me, usually I just bother with 3).
Those however were very productive cities, clocking in at 100 to 300 production each, hence the innate laser production speed was around 5 to 1-2 turns depending on the city (epic speed).
You can speed up laser production further by chopping forests with Magnus in them, and generally I recommend having a good gold economy to buy builders or military engineers.
I'm not sure if military engineers can be used to speed up space race projects in GS civ 6 (or if that is the better balanced game mod that I am currently testing), but if they do, they are preferrable to builders because their gold cost remains fixed, whereas builders keep scaling upwards for every builder you already acquired.

 

[sethjohnson]

You get a load of era points for being the first to connect two cities so its worth if for that

 

[iammaxhailme]

I make them for the era score and then quit. I wish they had "build to here" like civ 5 did

 

[Vizkan]

This.
I just finished a science game as Gandhi today, and I "only" had 5 spaceports (which is high for me, usually I just bother with 3).
Those however were very productive cities, clocking in at 100 to 300 production each, hence the innate laser production speed was around 5 to 1-2 turns depending on the city (epic speed).
You can speed up laser production further by chopping forests with Magnus in them, and generally I recommend having a good gold economy to buy builders or military engineers.
I'm not sure if military engineers can be used to speed up space race projects in GS civ 6 (or if that is the better balanced game mod that I am currently testing), but if they do, they are preferrable to builders because their gold cost remains fixed, whereas builders keep scaling upwards for every builder you already acquired.

Engineers can speed up space projects in unmodded GS. However, my understanding of the mechanic is that the amount of production applied to the project is based on the number of build charges the unit you're feeding into the project has. So I always use builders because they can have 6 charges with the public works card + Liang compared to military engineers which only have 2 build charges.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Engineers can speed up space projects in unmodded GS. However, my understanding of the mechanic is that the amount of production applied to the project is based on the number of build charges the unit you're feeding into the project has. So I always use builders because they can have 6 charges with the public works card + Liang compared to military engineers which only have 2 build charges.

I should test this further, because the engineers seemed to add more than builders, suggesting that the production per charge might be higher.
It's not an exact science, but when I used one in my strongest city it finished half the progress bar with one engineer use (it was 1 turn to finish it anyway though), whereas builders seemed to add around 20%.
But this might not be correct for all I know since there might be production overflow in play, or the UI doesn't show values correctly for 1 turn charge uses.

 

[EdTice]

This.
I just finished a science game as Gandhi today, and I "only" had 5 spaceports (which is high for me, usually I just bother with 3).
Those however were very productive cities, clocking in at 100 to 300 production each, hence the innate laser production speed was around 5 to 1-2 turns depending on the city (epic speed).
You can speed up laser production further by chopping forests with Magnus in them, and generally I recommend having a good gold economy to buy builders or military engineers.
I'm not sure if military engineers can be used to speed up space race projects in GS civ 6 (or if that is the better balanced game mod that I am currently testing), but if they do, they are preferrable to builders because their gold cost remains fixed, whereas builders keep scaling upwards for every builder you already acquired.

Yes, military engineers can speed up Lagrange Laster Station. I just confirmed by doing it. I am similar to you in that, by the time I'm speeding up the exoplanet expedition, I have the economy to buy multiple builders per turn (one per space port city) and can still (thanks to what I learned in this thread) buy enough Aluminum to keep two or three space ports active.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

how i haven't try this yet. and not yet using Lagrange Station thing.

 

[EdTice]

how i haven't try this yet. and not yet using Lagrange Station thing.

Who are you asking?
The requirements to win a science victory changed between the original game and the Gathering Storm DLC. In Gathering Storm, you can't do the space projects in parallel. You have to do them serially. The last project is to launch an exoplanet expedition. Once your EE travels 50 light years, you will win a science victory. But when you first launch, it's only going one light year per turn so it will take fifty turns from launch to victory. In order to speed up the exoplanet expedition, there are two "laser station" projects you can do.

In order to do either project, you must research "Offworld Mission." After that, both laser station projects will show up as city projects, similar to Bread and Circus or Campus Research Grants or whatever.

The projects cost 600 production each in addition to the power or Aluminum.

You can speed up those projects with builders or military engineers if you meet some additional prerequisites
(a) having a Tier 3 government (Communism, Fascism, Democracy)
(b) having built the Royal Society in your government plaza

If you've done both of the above, you can start the project and then place a builder or military engineer on your spaceport. A new icon will appear letting you have the builder or engineer speed up the project.

If you meet the two requirements above, it's not just the laser stations you can speed up this way. You can do it for *any* project including the launching of the exoplanet expedition or even the earlier space race projects if your science is running ahead of your production.

Does that answer your question?

 

[Benevolent Dictator]

how i haven't try this yet. and not yet using Lagrange Station thing.

The Laser Station railroad hack only works if you build multiple Spaceports IIRC, which doesn't tend to be the meta.

You can only use a Builder/ME to speed up a Spaceport project once per turn per Spaceport with the 3rd level GP building.

So transporting civilian units with Railroads is futile without Multiple Spaceports.

I usually have a backlog of 1 charge Builders hanging around the Spaceport waiting to be consumed. But I never actually build a 2nd.

 

[EdTice]

The Laser Station railroad hack only works if you build multiple Spaceports IIRC, which doesn't tend to be the meta.

You can only use a Builder/ME to speed up a Spaceport project once per turn per Spaceport with the 3rd level GP building.

So transporting civilian units with Railroads is futile without Multiple Spaceports.

I usually have a backlog of 1 charge Builders hanging around the Spaceport waiting to be consumed. But I never actually build a 2nd.

I believe that the amount of speed-up you get is proportional to the number of charges the builders have left so this might not be the best strategy. If a science victory is getting close (or over) 300 turns, a second spaceport is a good idea. Usually by then you have all of Reyna's promotions and can just buy a second one to run projects. But I still don't understand the need to transport builders. I usually have Pingala in the spaceport city (for the project speed-up) and Liang in an adjacent city. I just buy a builder each turn and move them in a line toward the spaceport. But then when playing peacefully it takes me 250-300 turns to win on science.

 

[Benevolent Dictator]

I believe that the amount of speed-up you get is proportional to the number of charges the builders have left so this might not be the best strategy.

Can anyone else confirm whether # of Builder charges remaining contributes differently to Spaceport project completion?

This is something I had never considered before.

I know it doesn't work this way with Military Engineers & Green Non-Specialty Districts. But in those cases, the contribution to completion is a fixed, described percentage.

Edit:

• Builders gain the ability to use all their charges to provide bonus Production to a District Project (2% of the project's Production cost per build charge used). Once per city per turn.

The Civ 6 wiki seems to confirm that charges do effect completion quite drastically. Another mechanic not explicitly described in game.

Thanks @EdTice for pointing out the fatal flaw in my strategy.

 

[Albertan Civfanatic]

I see railroads as an insurance policy providing fast transportation late game, in the event the AI summons the gonads to actually attempt to wipe me off the face of the Civ earth.