Railroads

[Cliffton]

I'd like a change in the railroad system where railroads can only be built between cities and not all over the country. You would order your workers to build a railroad from city A to city B, the workers would then build a railroad between those cities. The route would not necessarliy take the shortest route but would take in account of the terrain between the cities.

Railroads between countries would be built after both countries agreed to do so, something that can be added to the diplomacy part of the game.

It would stop the map looking as if the Borg had turned up!!

 

[warpstorm]

Except that in real life railroads aren't limited to just between major cities. They connect up many rural and industrial sites as well as many, many smaller towns.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

Except that in real life we don't mine (bonus) grassland lol...

 

[Dell19]

How would you define what the best route was? A human player would be tempted to produce long routes to create the most bonus tracks and what about loops in railroads? Several cities may be connected in several different directions since there are cities in these directions. An exploit of this would be to make railroads from every city to every other city which would effectively cover every square...

 

[Swaty]

Maybe a change in the bonus would be in order. If we would remove the bonus trade generated by road and by railroad we effectivly would limit the use of roads and railroads I think.

Perhaps a bonus was created only when the city got connected to the other cities in the empire or something?

Also, adding a cost to build roads/railroads would limit the use of nets of communications.

 

[Mewtarthio]

Adding a base cost would do nothing, since the GPT worth of commerce you'd recieve from the improvement would eventually outweigh it. Am I the only person who doesn't mind massive railroad systems sprawled across the earth? Think of it as convience for the people in the suburbs. And I don't understand how limiting the bonus to "when the city got connected to the other cities in the empire" would solve this, since a massive, sprawling railroad system would be, almost by definition, connected to the trade network. Placing lots of railroads not only gives you a commerce boost, but it also gives your military and your workers more movement options.

 

[Denarr]

Railroads weren't limited between cities. Many Railroads were used to connect to resources, and even to areas of frequent warfare.
It is a wonder why it's better to Rail to every terrain square in the game than it is to Rail to everywhere in the real world, though. Must be a miss correllation in the game math....

 

[ShADoW^HawK]

Actually, what they should do is simply take away the infinite movement points of the railroads and instead add a big movement point, but fixed for all units (since a train carrying a lot of cavalry won't go faster than a train carrying a lot of marines) like 9 or 12 movement for all units.

Also, I had an idea, earlier, of adding maintenance payment to all roads and railroads. Depending on how much extra money you would pay per railroad square per turn, the railroads and roads would be better maintained and would offer better movement for other units. For example, you could pay 1 gold per every 9 squares for the movement I said above for railroads, and for a warrior moving 3 squares per turn on a road (so this would be the standard setting). If you would pay something like 1 gold per 16 or 18 squares, it would be 2 squares per turn on road (for warriors) and only 9 movement on railroad. If you would pay 1 gold per 4 squares, it would be 4 or 5 movement on road (for warriors) and 15 or 18 movement on Railroad per unit. Therefore, this would make the player value railroads not being all over the place, and would not make railroads be soooooooooooo cheap.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Or to be really simple about, just split the road and rail movement/connection effects away from the other road and rail effects. Then provide a separate improvement (villages?, depots?) to get the +1 trade bonus from roads and the +1 food or +1 mining bonus from rails. If all you want is the trade/food/mining bonus, you build the other improvement. It's assumed to be connected to the main road/rail lines by village lanes or rail spurs too minor to show on the map. If you want the movement bonus and connection to the capitol, build the road/rail. If you want both, build both.

Since this should all be reflected in the editor, the player could easily opt to go back to the Civ3 model if so desired. (Just delete the two new things and change the road/rails back to having a bonus.)

 

[GeZe]

how about..... highways!!!!!

and on the topic of railroads....
how about you can only move between trian stations. This would be an improvement. And this would remove the need to build railroads on every tile (at least for movement).

 

[kulgan]

I agree with Shadow^Hawk on the movement points. All units should have the same movement rates when using the railway. However like the ocean, what would be so wrong with having a train unit that could carry units and limit its distance travelled, not necessarilly what it can carry. Perhaps create the train unit to travel 15points before it breaksdown, unless it stops a turn at a city station.

The bonus points for a railway line being through a tile should stay, eventhough a train many never pass over that tile.

 

[Dell19]

An idea to reduce the likelihood of railroad mania would be to simply increase the cost of building each railroad tile. Or since this idea would only require more workers to build the raillines in the same amount of time, a second idea would be to limit the bonuses from rails so that once 6 tiles are improved in a city radius no more bonuses are given to tiles with railroads.

Any improvement to limit railroads is still going to have the problem that if every tile is improved then it is a lot easier to get to a polluted square. Its one of the main reasons why I end up improving every tile, just so I can clear up pollution quickly when it appears.

 

[Verowin]

Railroads make your mobilization to fast. It would be more likely to connect speed/turns to distance. Make it for example 10 times faster than traveling per road.
On other option would be to build in highways (suggested before), so you can choose between railroads with a certain speed, or use Highways with a faster speed. Each time you use it, it would cost money. Buy a ticket for the railroads, or pay to drive your highway.
You can charge your ally or enemy money if he wants to move his army across your territory. You can offer him slow or fast movement, all for a certain cost.

 

[Dell19]

Moving units is a critical part of the game and if you had to pay to move units then the whole financial side of civ would have to change to allow an empire to go into negative finances or somehow be able to use railroads without paying. The alternative would be too unrealistic to consider that a nation at war wouldn't be able to use their own railroads...

 

[Verowin]

Ok, but
1. have an ally/ enemy pay to use your infra strusture systems is still possible
2. Moving you uits across a continent wthin a turn is not realisitic.

 

[Dell19]

So a movement point cost is acceptable, just don't make players actually have to pay gold for it.

 

[rcoutme]

I still think creating the trains as carrying units (similar to but not the same as transports) would solve a lot of the problems with the 'infinite movement'. Give trains a movement allowance of about 25 to 50 (depending on the map size) and make the units have to be picked up and moved one (or a few) at a time. Having to maintain the train unit would cover the cost of moving the other units, the finite movement of the train would limit the distance of moving large armies. The only item this would not likely limit is how many tracks are laid down. I don't know about other regions of the world, but here in Massachusetts there are train tracks everywhere, so I don't think tracks should be limited anyways.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

So, lets say that you have to move 100 units to the other side of your modest empire
You will have to press the load shortcut a 100 times+100 times the enter key or double-click in the display a 100 times. (at least with a transport in a coastal square you can use the stack movement to load). I would prefer some movement restriction instead...

 

[magicshane]

I have an idea. You could still kepe railroads as infinite movement, but make it so that you can only move when you are on a train. A train could be built like any unit but cost maybe 200-300 shields Also, similar to what was said before, you could have workers create train stops. The train could move any number of tiles to get to a train stop, but once it unloaded there, it couldn't move until the next turn. That way, you still have a great way to get around fairly unrestricted, but you couldn't send EVERY troop in EVERY city ALL to one spot in a matter on one turn (Unless you had alot of trains). What do you guys think?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, my solution to the Railroad dilemma involves a few fairly minor changes-well, OK, mostly minor with one fairly MAJOR change.

1) Keep unlimited movement for RR's, but ONLY if the RR hex is entered from a city, airport, colony, outpost, or fort. Otherwise, the RR counts as an 'advanced road', perhaps granting a movement bonus of 1/4 or 1/5.

2) If you leave a RR square outside of a city, then you lose ALL of your remaining MP's. If you pass from a RR, to a city, and back to a RR, then you lose 1MP. i.e. Your unit loses 1mp for every city it passes through along a rail line. Alternatively, you could have it that only a maximum no. of units, using rail, can 'pass through' a city in a given turn-to represent logjams at rail terminii. To make things more interesting, certain units can count as 'multiple' units for the purposes of this. So an infantry unit would count as ONE unit, a cavalry unit might count as TWO units, and tanks/modern armour count as THREE units. This would reflect the fact that it is easier to move large numbers of foot soldiers than it is to move lots of tanks and artillery!

3) Break everyones turn up into a movement phase and an attack phase. This will allow defenders to retaliate to an invasion by bringing forces up from the 'interior'-but only if they are within range.

4) Give RR's an ongoing maintainance cost-perhaps 1gpt/3-4 hexes. Roads would also have a cost, but would be more like 1gpt/6-8 hexes! This will help prevent players, and the AI, from simply railroading EVERY hex in sight, and perhaps force them to focus more on connecting up cities and connecting major cities to strategically important landmarks and terrain improvements!

What is important to remember here is that we are not simply focussing on 'Realism' in this instance, but also dealing with gameplay and aesthetic concerns. I definitely feel that my ideas, IMHO, would help deal with these concerns

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.