Railroads
- Thread starter Iron Beagle
- Start date
AAArrggh!!!!
Not this one again!! Forget the whole year turn please..it's just flavour.
Start thinking in turns, not years..please.
Infinite RR is the single worst thing in Civ, it's ridiculous.
In every game I've played over the last...10? years, I've start to loose interest the moment RR started to come on-line, from that point on, it started to become work, instead of fun.
No more sense of surprise, no more nothing.
"Oh wait, I can't get ths city with 30 units, no problem, I'll get another 50 from the other side of the world."
"What have we here...a 1HP warrior...hmmm, don't I have some obsolete elite chariot anymore somewhere? Ahh yes, let's go for another Leader with it, though it's based 3547 tiles away from here"
RR..bléh!!
Aussie_Lurker
Deity
I will admit, Alva, that how many months or years a turn supposedly represents is not the best argument for keeping railroad movement infinite. However, unlimited RR movement does have 'book-keeping' advantages over any kind of limited RR system.
What is good about the system I have proposed-IMHO-is that it addresses the concerns (right or wrong) of the realists, whilst still retaining a very strong strategic element to land-based unit movement as well. Now, if a player can only take advantage of his rail network to move 10 of his units an unlimited distance-that turn-then said player has to really think about which units are best suited for any upcoming conflict (because, once the unit leaves the rail, going back on will cost another capacity point).
Not only that, but what if moving 10 units is enough to totally decimate his civilian economy for that turn? Then he might only be able to move 3-or 4-units, which makes his strategic planning even more critical.
Alternatively, he can switch to War Mobilization, which will reduce the cost to his economy of comandeering rail capacity, but will hurt his civilian production/economic base in other ways. His enemy, of course, can be a real prick and send commando units behind the lines to pillage his rail lines-thus reducing his available capacity for that turn.
Suddenly, Industrial/Modern age combat is no longer simply about who has the most units-its about who has the best rail infrastructure, the best rail placement, and the economy robust enough to handle its diversion away from civilian use.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
What is good about the system I have proposed-IMHO-is that it addresses the concerns (right or wrong) of the realists, whilst still retaining a very strong strategic element to land-based unit movement as well. Now, if a player can only take advantage of his rail network to move 10 of his units an unlimited distance-that turn-then said player has to really think about which units are best suited for any upcoming conflict (because, once the unit leaves the rail, going back on will cost another capacity point).
Not only that, but what if moving 10 units is enough to totally decimate his civilian economy for that turn? Then he might only be able to move 3-or 4-units, which makes his strategic planning even more critical.
Alternatively, he can switch to War Mobilization, which will reduce the cost to his economy of comandeering rail capacity, but will hurt his civilian production/economic base in other ways. His enemy, of course, can be a real prick and send commando units behind the lines to pillage his rail lines-thus reducing his available capacity for that turn.
Suddenly, Industrial/Modern age combat is no longer simply about who has the most units-its about who has the best rail infrastructure, the best rail placement, and the economy robust enough to handle its diversion away from civilian use.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Illini Rule
Warlord
I thought railroad movement was fine. The part that needed to be fixed is the naval and air movement. It took years to move a battleship across the Atlantic, we were in Iraq in a day or so
Sickman
Man in the outer darkness
Illini Rule said:
That's the whole point: All movement compared to normal land movement was screwed.
It would have taken only seconds to get same amount of military power as battleship represent by railroads across the both Eurasia and America combined with Africa in earlier Civs.
So yes Air, Naval and railroad movement should be changed in order to make the game work more realistically and add actual strategy to logistics which is one of the most important parts of military strategy.
Roland Johansen
Deity
J-S said:
Hmm, but how many kilometers could an ancient man walk in 50 years? Lets say 20 kilometers a day, that makes 365000 kilometers in 50 years, that's about 9 times around the earth. The most logical conclusion would be that any ancient unit could get anywhere on the planet in a single ancient age turn (as long as no bodies of water have to be crossed). Maybe we should then make all movement infinite, for every unit, in every age. That would be completely realistic. Still, something tells me that that wouldn't be such a great idea.
Sickman
Man in the outer darkness
Ok , now I must retire for a while (go to sleep)
Sorry Roland, was little bit doo-doo when I wrote that message.
Sorry Roland, was little bit doo-doo when I wrote that message.
MacBaldrick
Warlord
I can live with the unlimited movement provided some capacity or turn limitation is built-in, i.e. a turn to entrain / detrain or Ausie_Lurker's excellent suggestions.
To avoid covering the new 3D maps with rail lines, make each railed tile cost gold to balance the bonus set by terrain type. So a net gain is obtained around cities on plain & grassland, marginal or zero on hills / forest (apart from bonus tiles ?) and a deficit on mountains / desert / tundra. Alt. increase the maintence cost in the more difficult terrains to acheive the same effect.
This should satisfy the realists are the East Coast of the US is / was covered by track but there are still only a few tracks across the Rockies and western deserts. Ditto across the Russian tundra / taiga.
With the universal modding capabilities promised though ought to be given to implementing some of the simpler ideas by manipulating resource factors.
To avoid covering the new 3D maps with rail lines, make each railed tile cost gold to balance the bonus set by terrain type. So a net gain is obtained around cities on plain & grassland, marginal or zero on hills / forest (apart from bonus tiles ?) and a deficit on mountains / desert / tundra. Alt. increase the maintence cost in the more difficult terrains to acheive the same effect.
This should satisfy the realists are the East Coast of the US is / was covered by track but there are still only a few tracks across the Rockies and western deserts. Ditto across the Russian tundra / taiga.
With the universal modding capabilities promised though ought to be given to implementing some of the simpler ideas by manipulating resource factors.
Iron Beagle
Designated Marksman
If you want "realism" with naval units with regards to real-world movement times, then every ship will have to be able to cross the world in 1 turn, bombard the enemy and return to its home port unscathed. What fun is that?
Likewise infinite railroads eliminates all strategy and ruins gameplay. You can't cut cities off from their rail system. Take out one tile - big deal, every single square in the empire is railed. Enemy invading? Just pull every offensive unit from all over your country to counterattack and have them back in their home cities in one turn. No strategy, no intelligence, no need for planning. It's a horrible system and it needs to go. But, I repeat myself...
CyberChrist
You caught my attention
Assuming that tiles with roads still generate trade (and that roads are needed to build RR) then an easy solution would be that RailRoad reduce trade output by 1 (to simulate maintenance). Building RailRoads on all squares could then very well cripple your economy.
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
I think railroads should stay the same. It's realistic, in terms of moving military equipment (nobody moves tanks across a continent on highways, period). The unlimited movement is also fairly realistic, considering the speed of redeployment compared to the speed of an advance in hostile territory (you can redeploy units all the way across a continent in the time it takes to make a 250 mile advance in hostile territory).
Capacity, yes, to be realistic there should be limits (and many of the old chip-based board wargames did have "railcap" rules). But, it might be a bit too much overhead in a game already heavy with management of units.
The big problem with limited rail movement is just that ... it would add vastly to unit management in latter phases of the game, when there are so many units. Every turn would be include 10 minutes of headache-inducing flashing screens as you are watching bazillions of units flashing around on their gotos (think what it's like with automated workers, now multiply that by 10 or so and remember that you'll want to be paying attention to the military gotos and trying to keep track of where everything's been sent to ...).
One little tiny thing they might do, to resolve a minor issue though, is to somehow reduce the need to put rails in every tile. The production bonus could just be given to cities connected to the capitol or to a port via rail. Add some sort of disincentive to putting rails in every tile too (make them take longer, perhaps, or put a limit of X number (say, 10) of rail tiles that you can build per city you have). Railroad sprawl bothers me too, aesthetically. But, it too is pretty realistic in terms of how rails are actually laid out in the real world. People are familiar with maps with show only trunk lines, but the reality of railroads once branch lines are included is that they do indeed sprawl everywhere. Possibly this could also be fixed simply by doing better graphics, where the railroads are still visible but smaller and neater.
The big thing they should keep in mind though, is to have an option in the editor to restore or remove unlimited movement, whichever approach is taken in the new game. As long as this is done, nobody can really complain too much as we are only arguing about defaults, which is silly.
Capacity, yes, to be realistic there should be limits (and many of the old chip-based board wargames did have "railcap" rules). But, it might be a bit too much overhead in a game already heavy with management of units.
The big problem with limited rail movement is just that ... it would add vastly to unit management in latter phases of the game, when there are so many units. Every turn would be include 10 minutes of headache-inducing flashing screens as you are watching bazillions of units flashing around on their gotos (think what it's like with automated workers, now multiply that by 10 or so and remember that you'll want to be paying attention to the military gotos and trying to keep track of where everything's been sent to ...).
One little tiny thing they might do, to resolve a minor issue though, is to somehow reduce the need to put rails in every tile. The production bonus could just be given to cities connected to the capitol or to a port via rail. Add some sort of disincentive to putting rails in every tile too (make them take longer, perhaps, or put a limit of X number (say, 10) of rail tiles that you can build per city you have). Railroad sprawl bothers me too, aesthetically. But, it too is pretty realistic in terms of how rails are actually laid out in the real world. People are familiar with maps with show only trunk lines, but the reality of railroads once branch lines are included is that they do indeed sprawl everywhere. Possibly this could also be fixed simply by doing better graphics, where the railroads are still visible but smaller and neater.
The big thing they should keep in mind though, is to have an option in the editor to restore or remove unlimited movement, whichever approach is taken in the new game. As long as this is done, nobody can really complain too much as we are only arguing about defaults, which is silly.
Aussie Lurker: I like your rail ideas a lot, but I`m not sure I quite understood how to calculate the economic effects of using CP`s. But how about this: Each pop-point gives you 10 cp`s. Each CP gives the possibility to transport 1 unit 30 tiles x tech level. Small wonders, goverments and improvements may give bonus CP`s. Excess cp`s each turn gives you 1 gp per 10 cp`s.
This means that longer trips takes more capacity and small compact civs will benefit from this. Number of tiles you`re able to move per CP spent may also vary according to world size.
But naval movement also needs a tweaking...
-Tantor-
This means that longer trips takes more capacity and small compact civs will benefit from this. Number of tiles you`re able to move per CP spent may also vary according to world size.
But naval movement also needs a tweaking...
-Tantor-
frekk
Scourge of St. Lawrence
Tantor -
If there was to be a rail capacity model, it would have to be something simple that wouldn't have to be "guesstimated". You should be able to know how many units you can move without having to do any calculations. Any replacement of the current model has to be one that is VERY light on adding micromanagement. Determining capacity can be formulaic, I think, as long as I've got a rough idea how to raise it and a display somewhere that tells me how much I have, but personally, I would need to know ahead of time *precisely* how many units I could move to a given area without thinking about it too too much.
Tweaking naval movement to something realistic is very very simple - just structure it like air movement is done now. Ships have a set of missions they can perform (amph landing, redeploy, naval superiority/intercept, convoy, recon) and a range. To me this would be alot more interesting, and the idea of ships operating over a range would make things like blockades more practical.
If there was to be a rail capacity model, it would have to be something simple that wouldn't have to be "guesstimated". You should be able to know how many units you can move without having to do any calculations. Any replacement of the current model has to be one that is VERY light on adding micromanagement. Determining capacity can be formulaic, I think, as long as I've got a rough idea how to raise it and a display somewhere that tells me how much I have, but personally, I would need to know ahead of time *precisely* how many units I could move to a given area without thinking about it too too much.
Tweaking naval movement to something realistic is very very simple - just structure it like air movement is done now. Ships have a set of missions they can perform (amph landing, redeploy, naval superiority/intercept, convoy, recon) and a range. To me this would be alot more interesting, and the idea of ships operating over a range would make things like blockades more practical.
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2004
- Messages
- 12,418
Definitely...also if this was applied to ground units as well (with railroads acting as an finite increase in mission range but infinite redeployment capacity)
eddie_verdde
Warlord
I say, let's find out the email adresses of the designers of CIV4 and fill in their inboxes with messages on this issue...
I would like (at least) to keep unlimited railroad movement for workers. This is a convenience issue; it is much more convenient to move them in stacks and parcel out the jobs as I come to them. I don't want to have to manage my workers to make sure that they don't run out of movement points.
Warwind
Chieftain
Why not just remove the tile bonuses from railroads , give them an upkeep -1gp and any city connected to them gets an significant bonus towards food , commerce , and production. That should significantly cut down on the railroad sprawl , and add some strategy to invasions.
Aussie_Lurker
Deity
If you ask me, constantly having to check up on how many MP's you units have left would be a lot more frustrating than just having a quick glance at the screen to see how many CP's your nation currently has left unused. Plus, if that doesn't help, just take a quick look at your current gpt level-if its heading too low, then one thing to do might be to stop moving any more units that turn!!!
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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