Railroads.

[hopsblues]

Is there anything more historically important than railroads missing from this game?

Canals

 

[Jarms48]

Canals

Tunnels too.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Canals

Canals are of two types: shipways between bodies of water (Suez, Panama, Kiel, Corinth), and 'regularizing' rivers to make them more suited for transportation (Erie, China's Great Canal). The latter will have to wait until Civ gets around to recognizing the extreme importance of Rivers to historical city development, transport, supply, and industry. The former is partly satisfied by putting a City on a narrow isthmus so that your and your allies' ships can use it for passage. That is inadequate, but since you'll need the owned territory of a city to build Anything, it will do in many cases. What would make it really useful as a Canal Mechanism would be to allow Extreme Builder Actions (or expending a Great Engineer?) to convert a Plains, Desert or Grassland (in other words, 'Flat') tile into Coastal Water. That would allow both some of the Harbor Building that took place historically (dreading) and the canals that connect major bodies of water without necessarily going through the middle of a city.
Until they figure out how to allow and measure movement along a river, the river-canals are pretty much a non-starter, and rivers themselves will remain badly mis-represented in Civ.

Tunnels too.

'Tunnels' is part of the general problem of Civ not allowing the player or AI to modify the terrain to the extent that 'actual' Civs have been doing for centuries. If both railroads and roads could be tunneled through the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and the Alps from the mid-Industrial Era on, there is no excuse for not having some in-game mechanism for it - and later, in the Information Era, even 'tunneling' under Coastal Water tiles (Chunnel). All of these should be massively expensive in either Builder Charges or, better, in the expenditure of Great Engineers.
Along with transportation tunneling, humans have been massively changing the landscape with Open Pit Mining since the beginning of the Modern Era, removing entire mountain tops or excavating the equivalent of an entire city center to get at ores otherwise economically unreachable. Since the mid-Industrial Era, Hydraulic Mining was also used to literally tear apart mountains and hills to get at ore.

Some of these mining techniques, and certainly the results, should be available in Civ in the late game, along with tunnels, useable rivers for transportation and trade, and canals/coastline modification.

 

[killmeplease]

'Tunnels' is part of the general problem of Civ not allowing the player or AI to modify the terrain to the extent that 'actual' Civs have been doing for centuries. If both railroads and roads could be tunneled through the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and the Alps from the mid-Industrial Era on, there is no excuse for not having some in-game mechanism for it - and later, in the Information Era, even 'tunneling' under Coastal Water tiles (Chunnel). All of these should be massively expensive in either Builder Charges or, better, in the expenditure of Great Engineers.

that would be of little use unless they realize trade properly

Along with transportation tunneling, humans have been massively changing the landscape with Open Pit Mining since the beginning of the Modern Era, removing entire mountain tops or excavating the equivalent of an entire city center to get at ores otherwise economically unreachable. Since the mid-Industrial Era, Hydraulic Mining was also used to literally tear apart mountains and hills to get at ore.

quarries are in the game
also, romans did use hydraulic mining

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

that would be of little use unless they realize trade properly

Specifically, realize the placing of Trade Routes properly, and the importance before railroads of water-borne (river or sea) trade routes in both economics and volume.
And to be complete, get rid of the silly dual trade system in which Diplomatic Trades in resources and Gold have no limits on range and number while all other trade is strictly limited in both.
And finally, revamp the Resource system with the Trade system to reflect the massive economic importance of having a Monopoly on a Trade Good and the resulting 'windfall profits' possible to the Monopolist nation (early Industrial Goods to Britain, Silk, Tea and Porcelain to China, etc)

quarries are in the game
also, romans did use hydraulic mining

The Civ concept of Quarries doesn't begin to reflect the massive terrain-changing nature of twentieth century open pit mining. Likewise, there is a world of difference between the Roman mining techniques and the steam-powered machines that in the 19th century made it possible for miners to drastically alter the topography of parts of the Sierra Nevada mountains: to someone with some education in geology, taking a train ride through those mountains today is a real eye-opener, because the results of that mining a 150 years ago are still very visible...

 

[Phrozen]

They won't let us have big bridges either. Nothing like the bridges, well bridge and tunnel combinations, across the Chesapeake Bay that are miles long. I want nice long steel and steel cored concrete bridges.

 

[historix69]

I support the demand for railroads ...

Canals, river water ways and bridges would be easier to implement when the map would be scaled up so that a river is actually a group of water-tiles. Early bridges would then span over 1 hex of water. Modern bridges might span 2 tiles allowing to connect islands or peninsulas with continents, e.g. connect England with France or Spain with North Africa or Sweden with Denmark (or Japan with Korea?)

Civ5 had a Civil War scenario with a Pontoon Bridge, so the technique to build bridges is already there.

Upscaling the map would be in line with the Civ6 district feature, but the game should also support bigger maps to compensate the usage of more hexes for details. Maybe max distance between cities and city range should be increased, too.

I remember a series of hex war games in the early 90s, featuring full hex rivers and bridges, allowing to build and destroy roads, railroads, bridges, fortifications with a special construction unit. (Bridges could also be destroyed by bombers and artillery.) They also featured bunkers and coastal artillery, armoured trains and railway guns. Smaller units could board a transport train and could be transported with train speed to the front. Boarding / Leaving the train cost 1 turn each. The later games also featured ammo and fuel usage of units and provided field repair units (since units did not heal on their own.) Weather could change between sunny/dry, wet/muddy and snowy/frozen, allowing units to cross frozen rivers and lakes.
The game series is called Battle Isle 1-3 and History Line 1914-18. Most enjoyable were Battle Isle 2 (which introduced most of the mentioned features) and History Line (World War 1 Theme).

Spoiler :

History Line (with Transport Cars)


Battles Isle 2


Battles Isle 2 (with a destroyed bridge)

In Trade Empires (2001) (by the developers of Imperialism 1+2), the player was building a trade network connecting production sites (farms, mines) and consumer markets (cities) in different historic eras and regions from ancient china, egypt and mesopotamia to industrial age trans-atlantic trade. The growth of a city was dependant on availability of a range of goods on the local market. Some scenarios like ancient egypt supported the construction of water ways (canals) to allow inland transportation of goods by ship.

Spoiler :

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I support the demand for railroads ...

Canals, river water ways and bridges would be easier to implement when the map would be scaled up so that a river is actually a group of water-tiles. Early bridges would then span over 1 hex of water. Modern bridges might span 2 tiles allowing to connect islands or peninsulas with continents, e.g. connect England with France or Spain with North Africa or Sweden with Denmark (or Japan with Korea?)

Civ5 had a Civil War scenario with a Pontoon Bridge, so the technique to build bridges is already there.

Upscaling the map would be in line with the Civ6 district feature, but the game should also support bigger maps to compensate the usage of more hexes for details. Maybe max distance between cities and city range should be increased, too.

Would love to see maps where the Districts, 'Armies', cities and rivers could be shown in something resembling their actual spatial relationships, BUT none of the programmers working on CIV games seem to be capable of this. (Sorry, folks, but that's how it looks from this side of the Screen) The attempts to increase animation in each tile, which have been on-going since at least Civ IV, have reached the point where each succeeding version of Civ almost requires a new computer: I bought a new one for Civ V (among other reasons, admittedly) and that one is marginal for Civ VI - I have yet to make a Huge Map game work without nasty lag times, but when the cost of a game has to include the cost of a new computer, you have priced yourself right out of the game market!

So, until someone makes a breakthrough in Map Programming to allow about twice as many 'tiles' in the maps without significantly increasing the load on CPU/GPU performance, I don't expect to see either bigger maps or maps with decent depictions of the City-District, city-army or River Size/Movement in them.
This bugs me immensely because, while I'm by no means a programmer, I have played games over the years that appeared to my eye to be just as graphically complicated as any Civ game, yet they displayed perfectly well on what by today's standards were outdated machines: Caesar IV with a 10,000 population city, for instance, or Settlers VI with several hundred city dwellers wandering about the map and rabbits playing in the pastures - and I played both of those games on computers designed and built before 2010!

 

[historix69]

Adding a nice 2D isometric graphic set for map, buildings and units for players who love bigger maps should be sufficient to allow almost unlimited maps on a PC with 4+ GB RAM. Standard players would use the default 3D graphics for normal sized maps as before. Games with larger maps like 100x200 or maybe 200x400 or more would be limited to only run in 2D mode. The current tactical map view somehow does not allow to play on larger maps.

Imagine transfering Civ3 to 64 bit (and reworking the graphics). Would there be any limit for map size (besides a human's life span when playing a game)?

 

[killmeplease]

Actually theres a 2d mode in civ6, i have switched to it after my graphic card died.

As for bridges i dont think such detalization is necessary in a 4x game (its not a wargame)
But railroads in some form are absolutely necessary given their role in history. Its rediculous theres no RRs in civ6

 

[historix69]

As for bridges i dont think such detalization is necessary in a 4x game (its not a wargame)

1upt indicates that it is to some degree a tactical war game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Actually theres a 2d mode in civ6, i have switched to it after my graphic card died.

As for bridges i dont think such detalization is necessary in a 4x game (its not a wargame)
But railroads in some form are absolutely necessary given their role in history. Its rediculous theres no RRs in civ6

Civ V and VI both tried to be All Things To All Players by having a 1upt Tactical Combat System grafted on to what is otherwise a Strategic Diplomatic-Industrial Game. My personal belief is that this was done because the strategic-diplomatc-industrial development parts of the game were so lame that they couldn't stand on their own, but then I'm very critical of the decisions that were made in implementing the Tech and Civics Trees, Diplomacy, and Strategic Movement/Supply.

And bridges are already in the game, but they are 'automated' in that your ability to cross rivers changes automatically when Roads upgrade with Era change.

 

[historix69]

I had a look back at Civ 1 :
Railroad : +50% yields on tiles (rounded down)
Factory : +50% Production in city
Factory + PowerPlant : +100% Production in city
Manufacturing Plant : +100% Production in city
Manufacturing Plant + PowerPlant : +150% Production in city

Units were cheap in Civ 1 :
militia 10
legion 20
knight 40
armour 80

So reaching RailRoads and Industrialization (and Robotics) had a huge impact on your Production.

 

[Jkchart]

I forgot how cheap these things were back in Civ I and how much industrialization really did (it’s been years since I played Civ I, which I did purely because it was the only one I hadn’t played at that time because it was out before i was born) XD

It seems that it would make perfect sense if Factories+Power plants became a super production combo again, and railroads with it would really lend the idea to industrialization being of paramount importance.

As it stands, it’s ridiculous when units are far more expensive and time consuming than they should be when compared to buildings. Proper railroads and industrialization seems like a fix. Add my name to this petition.

 

[Glowzmanz]

You could have it where you have a building in a city (rail station) which then allows your units to fast travel over to another city with a rail station. Much like the airport.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Traderoads now? Too much of a free market, that is my opinion. It does work for a peaceful world. Not for one with iron and fire at its core. Simple as that.
The only way i can see it implemented, is by working out the great wall improvement, to be able to stack on existing improvements, and work as a high speed road, then scale the concept to work for all civs.
At the right time in history, true railroads could kick in. The Great wall mod for culture expansion out of your territory is working in an interesting way, otherwise you could not link two far away cities.

A new concept could get in also, that is, corporation railroads, building your railroad in a colony, would yield gold to your civ, not the colonized civ.
Crosspoints and chokepoints. Building in neutral territory and unclaimed territory. What would happen when two opponents rails or walls clash? A Node? And when two opponents rails cross within one's territory? The node transform into a minor city>fortified trade post?

UN nations decisions, like make a huge neutral territory in a huge desert area, or antarctic, or Amazon like, or great reef region, mountain range, rich in resources, no one can claim, no one can build except for research station. Scott station would make some sense at that point. Your rails would be removed from you and stay in place in neutral territory, everyone could then use it.

Some important decisions are to be made, the first is to declare war to democracy, if this game is to survive the test of steel. You build roads in the Amazon? Drill in the arctic despite UN decision? You break the rules, then its war. Otherwise we can sit there and watch the game unfold by itself. Railroads can be but not as the game is as of now.

 

[acluewithout]

I think there’s a simpler way to represent Railroads:

- Once you research steam, you gain plus +1 trade route provided you have at least 2 coal. You’d also gain plus 1 trade route at combustion provided you have at least two oil.

- You also unlock a “Railway” station city centre building at steam. This can be built in any city with either a Harbour, Commecial Hub or Industrial Zone. The effect is: the city automatically receives a trading post (if it didn’t have one already); roads between two cities (including those belonging to different civs) are upgraded to railroads, and allow for faster movement; Harbours, CH and IZ provide improved yields to domestic and international trade routes to this city.

As for the industrial revolution...

- I think this is almost impossible to represent in a way that isn’t game breaking. You can’t just give people “more production”.

- But if you have to: I think maybe after you research some industrial tech, and provided you have a certain number of IZ / Factories, you should be able to run certain specialised industrial projects - a bit like how you run projects to unlocks atomics.

- These projects, or ‘public works’, would allow you to permanently boost amenities or trade routes or great people or grant an additional policy slot or the like; works could be eg universal sufferage; public health; public education.

- There would also be era score for being the first to complete these projects.

 

[historix69]

One way to represent the effect of Industrialisation might be to make factories a requirement for certain industrial age units and buildings, e.g. to build modern infantry or tanks, you need a (weapons) factory. If the factory multiplies your production by 100 and the cost of modern units is 100 times higher than that of previous ages, both effects cancel themselves down and you can continue to use small numbers for units and building costs.

 

[acluewithout]

I think the real criticism here is that industrialisation (including railways) just don’t feel game changing. I don’t see that just providing extra production or letting players build railways (which sounds tedious) would actually solve that problem, because those buffs would still likely feel underwhelming.

What Civ would actually need is some new mechanics which really change things up, but that are only triggered in the industrial era.

I don’t really have any great suggestions. Perhaps an ability to run unique projects; or perhaps you can combine trade routes to make mega trade routes; or maybe having a certain number of factories gives you an extra wild card slot and some new (and very powerful) policy cards.

 

[Yavid]

IMO the answer is as follows

Railroads, the infrastructure of trade in general
The UN
A well designed Industrial Revolution
the Human Rights Revolution
a meaningful Space Program
Vassal States, being that the English Empire became what it is by having vassals and that's just flat out not in the game, complete with colonies.