[GS] Railroads worth it?

[Phoenix1595]

I understand the CO2 emission bump during the early days of railroad, since most steam engines would be burning coal. However, just like how you can mitigate power plant emissions via tech upgrades to a cleaner source, the same should be said of railroads as engines evolve with the same cleaner techs.

That said, even if railroads produced less CO2, the main issue arises: why bother to make them at all? We have all adapted to a civ game without railroads for the past two years, and now that they are back, the benefits are lackluster. I agree with the above in that they should either increase land route yields, or somehow increase city yields, like production or gold.

On a related note: please fix the road graphics, Firaxis. The game is visually becoming a mess, which is sad given how outstanding it usually is.

 

[Disgustipated]

An enemy cavalry unit rode my rails deep into my home territory and started pillaging.

I feel Civ4 did this best by not being able to use enemy roads and railroads.

Also they're ugly.

I think they are attractive, at least outside my city radius. It's a big reason I sometimes build them. But inside the city radius it gets a bit messy because the district graphics don't show the railroad. So I often have to hover over the tile to make sure a railroad is there. I think wonders don't show a railroad either. I find myself tempted to build a RR over every tile that has a modern road on it, and districts and wonders seem to always get a road on it (I actually never noticed this until I started building RR's).

Like I said, they are kind of ugly in the mess of districts, but connecting far apart cities they look nice enough.

 

[BTSeven7]

I can’t imagine they are ever “worth” it to build. It’s a new toy in the late game but I bet in 3 months people will hardly build them assuming they aren’t updated.

My 2 cents is that you should be able to run a project that creates a railroad to another city. Base the project production and resource cost on the amount of tiles. They should add production and food bonuses to the connected cities when completed.

Also an enemy should be slower on your rail system. If you aren’t allies and it’s not your territory you really should be moving at half speed on those rails or as if they are roads.

 

[chazzycat]

I was pretty disappointed building my first railroad, mostly by the graphics. I don't understand why they didn't make railroads go through districts. They just look terrible, because they stop at every district. So there is no coherent route from city to city on the map and it's just not pleasing to the eye.

 

[King of Prussia]

To add on to what i said before, i agree that RR should do more to the tiles they are on or cities they connect. and i dont mean just more TR income. There should be bonuses outside of it. perhaps bonuses for each type of district the city has.(more production, food, tourism etc,.) a boost to tile yields/increase in gathering resources wouldn't hurt either. I am fine(assuming they fix climate change balance) of adding more cons to offset the new pros, to make you think about where you build them. I have seen the AI build them, but they dont build them near often enough.(probably lack of one or both resources)

 

[Sostratus]

I was really hoping to get railroads as the second pillar of the late game, "industrial revolution," building game. IMO the big hole of the late game was that there wasn't much to do.
So placing railroads - a deliberate planning action- would be a good candidate (along with the canals) to replace the building aspect of districts early game. Do they need to do more? Well, I think giving them interaction with other things on the map would build that sense of planning and building that people enjoy in the early game. So, in that sense, yes. Even if the benefits were minor.

RRs have a one time cost, and their emissions impact is negligible unless you truly spam them. How many tiles of railroad do you build? 30? That's 10 turns of burning 3 coal (12 power.) It's nothing compared to what a standing army of oil using units will do to the climate. I usually set up one axis through my empire, sometimes two depending on how its shaped, just to help move military units around. That's not a lot of tiles, really.

 

[acluewithout]

I like the Mechanic for building railways. Hopefully it’ll be extended to normal Roads.

But yeah, railways don’t really do much, do they? I feel like they need something like “IZ gains additional +1 adjacency for every city it is connected to by a railway” etc. The trade yield boost is cute but really doesn’t cut it.

 

[Red_warning]

Well, in my first (and hopefully only) GS religious victory I built a railway line to each civ so I could convert them faster. I think it took 3 turns for an apostle to travel to the other side of the continent thanks to that.

I also use railroads to speed up my worker usage for the space station projects.

 

[Halcyan2]

I like railroads. All you really need is a single Military Engineer. Given enough time, that single unit can build all the railroads you need. (I tend to play on Marathon). If you want you can go with 2-4 Engineers but it's not a big investment.

The nice thing about railroads is that they only contribute to CO2 once, when they are built. As opposed to per turn consumption that you get with power or units.

The extra movement between my cities is a nice benefit. It's not crucial - I can get by with Modern roads, but the railroads are still helpful.

As for additional bonuses to railroads, I am reminded of Civ V where cities connected to the capital via railroad got a +25% production bonus.....

 

[acluewithout]

As for additional bonuses to railroads, I am reminded of Civ V where cities connected to the capital via railroad got a +25% production bonus.....

Something like that would be perfect.

Or something like that, or extra hammers for every city you’re connected to provided you have a IZ or Factory, but tied to some policy card.

I just find it so weird FXS introduced railways, gave us a fairly good Mechanic for building them... but then they just don’t really do anything substantive? Just a shame.

 

[Disgustipated]

I built a railway line to each civ so I could convert them faster.

Can you build railroads in other civilizations? I was able to build RR's in city states (with gunboat diplomacy), but I forgot to try to see if I could do it in other civs I have open borders with.

 

[Equilin]

I only built in in two games.
War Machine as France, and War Machine as Germany.

 

[King of Prussia]

Can you build railroads in other civilizations? I was able to build RR's in city states (with gunboat diplomacy), but I forgot to try to see if I could do it in other civs I have open borders with.

you can. I was building through ottoman(allied) lands in my last mali game, to connect my cities on the other side of them.

 

[Red_warning]

Can you build railroads in other civilizations? I was able to build RR's in city states (with gunboat diplomacy), but I forgot to try to see if I could do it in other civs I have open borders with.

Yes, absolutely. I imagine you could even make an invasion a bit easier by constructing a railroad network before the hostilities start. Of course, it can be a double edged sword, but if the distances are great enough then it may be worth it.

 

[acluewithout]

I was really hoping to get railroads as the second pillar of the late game, "industrial revolution," building game. IMO the big hole of the late game was that there wasn't much to do.
So placing railroads - a deliberate planning action- would be a good candidate (along with the canals) to replace the building aspect of districts early game. Do they need to do more? Well, I think giving them interaction with other things on the map would build that sense of planning and building that people enjoy in the early game. So, in that sense, yes. Even if the benefits were minor.

RRs have a one time cost, and their emissions impact is negligible unless you truly spam them. How many tiles of railroad do you build? 30? That's 10 turns of burning 3 coal (12 power.) It's nothing compared to what a standing army of oil using units will do to the climate. I usually set up one axis through my empire, sometimes two depending on how its shaped, just to help move military units around. That's not a lot of tiles, really.

I do think there’s a missed opportunity not making railways more part of the whole “Industrial Revolution”. As in, “powering” your cities requires you to both connect them up to a literal power supply (a Powerplant) and with railways. The game alread gives you Era score for connecting cities with Railways so clearly the basic functionality is there.

Resources, Power and Railway are all mechanically really great gameplay elements ... but FXS seem to have just stopped short of making the elements actually impactful.

 

[bonafide11]

I think fixing railroads can be done in three easy solutions, which shouldn't be that difficult to do in a patch:

1. Railroads need to provide some sort of production bonus to cities, at least cities with industrial zones. That would make them feel more like part of the Industrial Revolution.

2. There needs to be a technology that reduces the CO2 emission of railroads to reduce global warming.

3. Traders or military engineers should be able to auto-improve roads into railroads so you don't have to tediously move your unit from one tile to the next to improve all the roads.

 

[Arent11]

Fully agreed. It's a big missed opportunity. My hope is that, considering all the changes bringed by GS, devs wanted to give themselves some time to measure the balance and get a feeling before puting everything in shape.

Well, I mean one important element of 4x games is building. And what era captures the essence of building more than industrialization? What is more satisfying for those builders among us than to build railroads, productive factories & simply outproduce the evil warmongers (=me) that always threaten them? Building wonders, pyramids, great wall? Nah, a true builder rejoices when he sees his hammers/cogs rise through the roof.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Yeah, it seems like an opportunity to buff industrial zones.

 

[Timodelphia]

+1 Railroad graphics should be improved
+1 Railroads should provide some small increase to production, most logically to Industrial Zones, Harbors and Spaceports, possibly to mines and lumbermills
+0 Environmentally impact should be adjusted. I think it is just fine where it is at.

As to the OP question "Railroads worth it?", for me it is a solid "yes." Surely not for the min/maxer, but I'm a builder/roleplayer and I believe that railroads significantly add to those aspects of the game.

 

[AriochIV]

Railroads are very useful for allowing troops to move quickly to hotspots in a large empire, but it takes a lot of turns of micromanagement to set them up.

I don't find the environmental impact to be meaningful, as sea level rise is inevitable and unstoppable.