Revisiting the Maginot Line

[Wondian]

I didn't mean to be a part of CIV. I used "Reality" for the logical pattern that commands the CIV system. If it comes closer to our everyday vision, we can merely be apt to rule it. This means a better AI that you can communicate with your own terms, not with a simple computer language. Of course I am not expecting CIV to be a real-time simulation that I will play my life long (and every minute of it), but there must be a "SCALE" (not for me!, for the game itself). And, there is already (to some extent). It seems that the future versions will depend upon a better scale for the sake of reality. This will mean, I think, a more complicated game (like the reality itself), but I feel it won't be harder to learn since we are in it. I think we all love CIV now with "better" graphics, "better" diplomacy, "better" units, etc.. ("better" here is "more realistic" for me).

I've been playing Civilization for a good 10 years now and I am very much acquainted with its world. "Railroads" is a small thing, but it is more to me... For example, I am very pleased to see that it is possible to trade with other civilizations now. But I see that I can't trade units. I wish it were possible for me to satisfy my strategy of selling (or donating) Jet Fighters to a poorer country when it is conducting a war against my No.1 rival. This is a limitation and is totally irrational!.. This is one of the many frustrating details that should have already been worked out by 2001. Frankly, I feel that the Civ-III is a bit late comer; this version should have appeared much earlier and we should be talking about CIV-V, etc. now. It's a bit frustrating and I can't help seeing those details and report to this forum (for the sake of a better Civ). Of course I can accept as it is and enjoy playing.. (actually, that's what I am doing now! )

 

[knowltok]

Certainly the bombing of terain squares can work to nulify railroads, but that doesn't mean that railroad movement couldn't be modified and still retain a great game. Also, will the AI bomb your railroads to stop your internal movement? If not, advantage player. It is just something that would be interesting to hear the rational behind.

 

[Ruffin]

What's irrational about unlimited movement on rails? If I want to move troops from one end to the other in one turn why not? They have (at my current 1756 turn) two whole years to make the trip.

For those complaining about armies moving from attacking on one end to defense on the other, the German army did just that in WWII. Since my most-of-a-continent Civ only amounts to 212k square miles (roughly the size of the real France, there's no difference. We can't run rails up to the enemy's from door any more, which is what was unrealistic about unlimited movement before.

What's unrealistic is the naval movement. IMHO, naval units should be based like air units. Particularly in the early game, it takes generations to make even the shortest trips.

 

[knowltok]

That's what's wrong with the rail. The naval units aren't synched up. We can get into the two year turns, but why can't your unit on a road do the same thing in 2 years? I have always viewed the game as having two timelines, one for city building, and one for waging war. The waging war part isn't so much a measure of time, but just a turn based thing in my mind. That's why I've always had a problem with unlimited rail movement. Perhaps a good solution would be to make rail travel like shipping, with a container. You would have rolling stock and would have to load your troops, then move and unload where you want them. I know a system like this would add horrible complexity, which is why I favor limiting rail travel to 1/5 or something like that. Face it, it takes as much time to load troops onto trains as onto ships. Also as much time to unload them and form up, so why does rail travel get the advantage?

 

[costanza]

Perhaps another improvement in military movement could be the addition of airfields (again). For instance, you could set up an airfield on a foreign continent (out of enemy ZOC) and station planes and troops there. If you put it on the coast, you could put ships there.

Maybe even a lease in case one day another country's influence surrounded your base, and perhaps an ally would let you build one so you could help defend them.

We have this practice in real life all over the world. The US has military bases in the carribean, in asia, in europe, and certainly in the middle east. For the game, maybe you could build transport planes or for the sake of tedium, build one huge air wing of transports (as a single unit for building and detail purposes) so you could move your armor and infantry in without using transport ships. This would certainly add another twist to whoever has air supremacy on the fringes of their control....

 

[RedDwarf]

I appreciate the amount of though put into these posts and would like to agree at a few points and disagree to some as well.

As i have posted on other related threads there needs to be a definate improvement in the movement range of naval units. A modern aircraft carrier can move around the world 3 times in 1 year. This is probably unlikely in the world of civ as civ does not make an exact copy of reality as ironfang as noted. But civ does make a scenario BASED on reality. It shapes reality in a way that makes it more fun to play. Now i think most of us agree that naval units that move many more spaces is definately more fun. Some of the earlier ideas like airstrips or such is also good. I think if you have a secure peace treaty with somebody you should be able to land jets in their airfields and repair your ships in their ports. This is pretty standard even for loose allies. Pakistan for instance.

I disagree with the logic used by iron fang. I think most of u are thinking along the lines of a scenario based on a reality taking only the parts that make it fun. I doubt that anybody here is hoping for an exact copy of reality as iron fang suggested.

 

[vonork]

If it cost a sum to rail troops then that would give you something to think about before moving troops all around the world in one turn. Or perhaps pay an upkeep for all the rail in your country that would hamper the ugly "world of railroads".

 

[jaguara]

Roads and RR should cost upkeep on the empire that owns them!

It is so simple, and yet make so much sense. Maintaining roads and railways have had continually rising costs in North America at least...and it could be nicely reflected in the game...helping to discourage the "whole world is a railway" approach.

I use railways heavily, and have done so in Civ1 and SMAC as well...but I think it is more realistic to have troops "shipped" by railway from one city to another at a fixed cost, similar to air transfer - but leaving some movement available for the turn...

Jaguara

 

[Flynn]

So, we could have...

1) Units must enter or leave a railroad in a given turn. Personally, I like the idea of Mount/Unmount from railroads as only available once per turn. The unit should still have the ability to attack, however. So you could Mount, travel unlimited distance, and attack, but the attack would Unmount you automatically. You cannot Mount again, so you have to wait until the next turn. That forces a minimum vulnerability on rail-based attack units. But you can still move *out* successful defenders (because you can Mount, then move), and you can still launch counter-offensives via rails. The Unmounting would be automatic, when you moved to attack or moved onto a square containing no rails. This would also address the rail-to-road-to-rail nonsense. And it's an accurate reflection of what's involved in loading up a military unit onto boxcars

2) Rails should have a maintenance cost (track maintenance is the #1 expense for any operating railroad -- every mile of track translates to dollars) and the automatic settlers should not be so anxious to build them. In fact, they should build railroad automatically *IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE GOVERNOR SETTINGS ON THE AFFECTED CITY*. If you've set the city to emphasize production, rail all mines. If you've set the city to emphasize food, rail all irrigated squares. That's it. No other rails automatically. It would be nice if the workers knew to connect the cities via rail efficiently, but that's a nuance that I think most of us can comfortably get past.

I'm not sure what the maintenance cost for rails should be. Instintively, I think 1 gold/1 rail tile is too high, but anything else causes fractional calculations which will probably be a pain to represent. 1 gold/3 rail tiles is probably what it should be. Anyway, this approach would address railroad sprawl, the questionable redirection of forces allowed by railroads, and the lousy automatic settings for workers.

Note that it would not make workers less effective, since they could Mount, travel, and follow orders in a single turn. It should also be set that any railed tile acts as a road to an Unmounted unit, so you can get consistent road performance across a single rail tile branch that you're crossing.

You could also throw in some nice special conditions about all this, too. For example, maybe you can Mount rails in mountains unless there's another improvement there? Mines, fortresses and colonies would all have depots of some kind, but a stretch of rail along a mountainside wouldn't have room to load up a set of tanks. Maybe you can allow bombardment without Unmounting, so you could effectively have an artillery train that cruises around your territory. Maybe Mounted units automatically retreat to the nearest city when weakened to 1 HP -- *OR* maybe any Mounted unit becomes unmounted when it is attacked. You could argue either way, and both open up interesting gameplay.

Anyone think they can get Firaxis to take note of this thread?

 

[-proletarian-]

I still think that you should be limited to choosing to either put transport (roads/rail) or irrigation on a desired square. This would clean up the endless road/railway sprawl that makes the game look so ugly in the later ages.

 

[-proletarian-]

That wasa, of course, a typo. "madness".

 

[-proletarian-]

that WAS a typo.

-sobs-

 

[spongeucsb]

Well, it seems to me that a LOT of people are missing the point on railroads and naval units. I personally have no problem with teh game mechanics and tend to agree with ironfang. Naval units HAVE to be slow in ancient times. Remeber the Trojan War, it took Odysseus TEN YEARS to get home and many of the ships were lost. This is pretty accurately described in the game mechanics, galleys being lost at sea and such. Railroads allow rapid transport between your empire and it would be ridiculous to say that your tank could not travel from the west coast to your east coast in one turn. As you progress through the ages the speed of the game increases as does your mobility, imposing movement point cost on rails is stupid and would ruin the game. The whole point of rails is that they are a HUGE (and i cannot overstate this) improvement to previous forms of transportation. Sure, there are some strange things that tend to happen with highly mobile units utilizing the unlimited trans of rails but what do you expect it IS a game. It seems everyone is concerned about changing something because of a few VERY special circumstances ie cavs attacking across empire returning to newly conquered city... What you arent seeing is that the way rails are treated in civ allows the game to be fun while maintaining the historical importance of railways. Like ironfang says, rails are HUGE targets the goddamned AI bombards my rails every chance it gets, it understands the importance. The changes to civ 3 are all great and fixed a lot of the problems i had with cvi2. I see a lot of posts bashign firaxis, but i think theyve done a great job, the two biggest problems with civ2 was the lack of national borders where the AI would plop a city down in the middle of your empire and there was nothing you could do, and voila we have national borders. The second problem was using enemy rail networks to attack their own cities which thankfully has been fixed. HOWEVER, heres an interesting lil AI story, I was engaged in a late industrial war with the indians across the ocean and to gain access i befriended the chinese and signed an RoP. Here's the kicker, the chinese landed on my continent and blitzed 3 of ym cities INCLUDING my capital using my rail systems. If you ever feel bad about using an RoP to sneak attack an AI just remember the AI is capable of the same thing.

Anyways, thats my 2 cents

B

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by knowltok
I don't know about anyone else, but I was shocked to learn that railroads still give unlimited movement. This seems completely unrealistic to me. I know the game is measured in years and all, but wars to my mind were always fought at a different time scale, else why don't ships have unlimited movement in later ages?

Actually, the game gives a simulacrum of the strategic (yearly) and the tactical (day by day) movement of the units. It does it so well, that most of us love this game and forget that some movements are tactical and take place in days, and others take years.

But to keep the tactics feeling "right", rail is too powerful. In WWI, when the Germans and Russians called it quits on the eastern front, the Germans raced by rail to the western front. They needed to get there and break through the lines before the Americans were fully mobilized. They did not succeed.

In the game, rail is actually faster than airpower. Airpower has to stop to relocate. That is how the rail should work also, from railstation to railstation.

The rails should only be for connecting cities, and maybe resources; not run all over the place in a haphazard manner.

---------------------

On the other hand, rail does provide unlimited movement, so in the meantime, kiss the wife goodbye, unfortify, cross the country, attack, retreat, recross the country, refortify, have supper with the kids -- all in one turn.

Civ3 is a great game. Thanks Sid.

 

[tetley]

I think the point of railroads is that the Industrial Age should have a very distinct, different look & feel to it from the Middle Ages. I mean, railroads shouldn't be a little different--they should be a LOT different. Such as unlimited movement. And factories, etc.. And then Flight changes that yet some more in the Modern Age, being able to airlift. If airlifting cost only, say, 1 movement, instead of all of it, the game would still be equally interesting (or tedious), IMO. As it is, I think allowing unlimited incoming flights like the game does now is pretty powerful.

 

[narmox]

Originally posted by jaguara
I have to agree somewhat here with knowltok. I was a CIV1 and AC player, but not CIV2. In Civ1, RR use was not totally unlimited, but virtually - eventually a movement point was removed if you went far enough - still only really effected units with one movement.

False. RR in civ1 gave unlimited movement. But cities had roads under them, not railroads. Hence, when your unit passed in a city, it deducted 1/3 movement point for the road. Same in civ2, iirc.

In civ3, once you're advanced enough, it automatically creates RR under new cities, and even old cities I believe.

 

[Moulton]

I think ships are too slow. but after all, in real time we can move our tanks (This is US) from one coast to the other almost overnight. Takes about as long to load/nload as to travel the 2500 miles. And if you clear the tracks of trafic, ginving your armor wartime precedence, they can move that in 24 hours. But if we sent an invasion force to , say Afghanistan, by sea we are looking at 6 days for the Atlantic, 3 for Med/suez, two more to get to the nearest coast.
While I hate taking 15 turns to send my envasion force across the ocean, I have to admit that in relative time it is about right. I could perhaps be a bit faster.
On the other hand I would not be happy to sea an empty ocean one day, and have their next turn start with a fleet in my biggest port

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Moulton
I think ships are too slow. but after all, in real time we can move our tanks (This is US) from one coast to the other almost overnight. Takes about as long to load/nload as to travel the 2500 miles.

It takes more time than that to load the tanks on and off the rail, IRL.

 

[Moulton]

The actual loading process is about a day per train, I think. Of course a line of tanks in a rail depot is not much good IRL. they still have to transported to the fight location, and then do whatever it takes to make them war-ready. I'm Navy, not Armor, but I know there must be things they still have to do. But the handling processes would be the same in a sea port, also, but longer. You cant very well drive a ship up to a ramp, and drive the tanks off, like you can on a train. Unless you use an LST or LSD. I was Amphibous forces, and we offloaded with cranes. Took a while.

 

[Gruntboy]

Stow ammo, lock turrets/guns down, remove & add tracks.

Tanks are usually trasported by wheeled road vehicles from the railhead too - travelling miles by tank tread is slow and increases wear & tear. Guzzles masses of gas too.