[BTS] Railroads

[Nociti]

Noob to the game. I'm reading and learning but have come across discrepancy in information. The reference guide pdf that I got from this site states that RAILROAD requires "railroad, coal, iron" but the FANDOM wiki claims it requires railroad and "coal or oil." Which is correct? What is the best source for up to date information so that I can avoid wrong info again. Thanks!

 

[s.bernbaum]

To actually build a railroad, you need the Railroad Tech, and either coal or oil. It seems logical that you also need iron but having never gotten to railroad without already having iron, I never paid attention to what would happen if you did not have it.

 

[lymond]

Not sure what this pdf reference guide is here. Possible that it's not update to date based on the expansions. No clue really. I've never paid much attention to railroads and rarely ever build them in the many years I've played the game. However, Coal is the resource I've always associated as a requirement for railroads.

Interestingly, the in-game Civlopedia appears not to have an actually entry for the railroad improvement, so I see nothing there about the requirements.

Coal and Oil sounds like the most up to date info. The Fandom wiki sounds reliable..I've used it for other things and it is recent in terms of all expansions.

 

[Nociti]

Thanks all. The reference guide I mentioned is:

"CIVILIZATION IV: Beyond the Sword
Reference Guide
English version
assembling and graphic layout
Anion
(contact: civman@o2.pl)
revision and proofreading
Jason77024
5th edition
(updated 7th April 2008)"

Noted to be updated for 3.13. I downloaded the PDF from here somewhere.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Thanks all. The reference guide I mentioned is:

"CIVILIZATION IV: Beyond the Sword
Reference Guide
English version
assembling and graphic layout
Anion
(contact: civman@o2.pl)
revision and proofreading
Jason77024
5th edition
(updated 7th April 2008)"

Noted to be updated for 3.13. I downloaded the PDF from here somewhere.

I have several guides, including this one. Looking through this one, it appears that you have misinterpreted the requirement. It does not say iron is needed. It says the Steel Tech is a prerequisite for Railroad Tech, which it is, but just lists it as "steel". You have to page up to the column header to see that it is the Tech prerequisite column. Looking at the Tech tree you can also see this.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

It's either coal or oil. Iron is not required. I just checked with the XML files.

 

[f1rpo]

There's a more recent version of the Reference Guide: link
That one should be pretty reliable – although it still gets the Railroad requirements wrong. I've reported that issue, maybe it'll get corrected eventually (dankok8 hasn't logged in for a few months).

My impression has been that the Wiki is more badly out of date than the Guide. For a quick test, I've checked for some fairly obscure v3.17 changes in the Wiki and noticed that it misses the Drill promotions as alternative requirements for Medic and Ambush, and the limit of 5 Executive units per Corporation (whereas the Missionary limit is mentioned in the article about missionaries). Edit: Also misses flank attacks of Horse Archer.

 

[LincolnOfRome]

I played recently with coal but no iron. Iron isn't needed.