Roads and Rails

[damnrunner]

I have never really understood the reason why railroads (and roads) give such ubiquitous advantages in all of the civ games. I don’t know about you but if my hometown had its roads replaced with railroads I would be pretty ticked off. Also it just looks sort of odd to see a map completely covered with train tracks.

I have always thought that railroads (and even roads) should be subject to the same cost benefit equations as other terrain improvements. Right now the only downside of building a road/rail is the lost opportunity cost of building something else. I think it would make a lot of sense if railroads came with a disadvantage. For example, 0.2 increased unhealthiness or unhappiness. But there are a ton of options here and the effects of roads/rails could be set up to only be choices between different positives (+1 commerce vs. +1 production). I think a mix of pros and cons would be most interesting.

This would also make adding different types of terrain improvements (for example roads, rails, highways, high speed rail) far more interesting. Each would have its pro’s/cons and the player would be forced to make interesting development choices (as is the case in Civ 4 with cottages, workshops, farms, windmills, mines, etc). Another interesting idea could be benefits from forming road networks. For instance each city linked to a rail network could gain a production bonus based on the total number of linked cities. Or maybe building a rail station gives some advantage based on the number of linked cities.

On the military side, this addition to the game would add an entire new dimension of strategy as one tries to optimize troop transport as well as tile improvement. It would also create interesting military situations where you could disrupt strategically important supply lines.

It would also make for a far more visually engaging map.

 

[Hail]

i suppose your proposal implies that movement_cost(roads) = movement_cost(rails) = movement_cost(highways) = movement_cost(high speed rail)?

if yes, then some cities BFC will be covered by roads, some by rails, some by highways, depending on the bonus/penalty of each tile improvement and city specialization. is this what you want?

if no, then there is not much choice of tile improvement: most tiles will be covered in the tile improvement with the cheapest movement cost to facilitate unit movement, while the rest.. see previous paragraph

 

[fireflames]

Kudos, damnrunner. That's among the best - and well developed - suggestions that I've seen in this whole fevered maelstrom of a forum. Seconded on all counts.

 

[weltraeumer]

guess unit movement will differ in civ 5... imagine a frontline, a unit with just one movement point wouldn´t be able to cross it (since there is one unit per tile) without moving an already fortified unit... maybe the artillery got 1 movement point but I guess all others will be in the range of 2-8... so I guess there are major changes for roads and railroads too

 

[Grit]

This is the same argument that comes from bombard with archers and arty. Each tile is so macro that road to rails is a sort of generalization in my opinion but I'm up for a change so that you have more culturally specific infrastructure.

 

[damnrunner]

i suppose your proposal implies that movement_cost(roads) = movement_cost(rails) = movement_cost(highways) = movement_cost(high speed rail)?

if yes, then some cities BFC will be covered by roads, some by rails, some by highways, depending on the bonus/penalty of each tile improvement and city specialization. is this what you want?

if no, then there is not much choice of tile improvement: most tiles will be covered in the tile improvement with the cheapest movement cost to facilitate unit movement, while the rest.. see previous paragraph

I was meaning different movement costs and different pros/cons. For instance if rails cause -1 happiness you would be far more frugal in building rail roads. Connecting major cities for troop movement - but not spamming every tile. These effects could also be linked to terrain improvements. For instance a pasture might be less productive if a highway runs though it.

You are right that if improvements only give positive effects - then yes every tiles will end up being improved (just with more diversity). But if improvements also give penalties then there is an incentive not to build improvements.

It is probably easiest if basic roads do not have negative effects - but this would still lead to spamming roads. Therefore an easy negative to give basic roads would be similar to the +0.2 health a city gets from each forest. If every totally unimproved tile gave +.1 health a player would have a marginal disincentive to spam roads.



Depending on what costs or benefits are given to each improvement would effect how this works out. It would involve a lot of thought and game testing to really tease out what works the best.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

A single tile in CIV represents huge stretches of land. Heck a whole city fits into just one tile.
Railroads as such do not represent replacing the entire transformational infrastructure of a tile with just rail but instead represent the addition of a railroad line to the already existing infrastructure of roads, paths, streets, dirt paths and other modes of transport.

 

[cardgame]

sounds pretty good but it might end up being too much micro.

 

[squadbroken]

Railroads causing penalties is absurd. If you want to limit their use then make them more costly to build.

 

[RobertTheBruce]

This would also make adding different types of terrain improvements (for example roads, rails, highways, high speed rail) far more interesting. Each would have its pro’s/cons and the player would be forced to make interesting development choices (as is the case in Civ 4 with cottages, workshops, farms, windmills, mines, etc). Another interesting idea could be benefits from forming road networks. For instance each city linked to a rail network could gain a production bonus based on the total number of linked cities. Or maybe building a rail station gives some advantage based on the number of linked cities.

This is a really hard kind of scaling to try and balance. If I have N cities which each are linked and build a rail station, I end up with a total N cities * (N-1) network links bonus. A N^2 scaling sets up large empires steamrolling.

Its similar to the problem with Sid's Sushi. You spam garbage coastal cities to grab more seafood and receive a huge population boost throughout the empire. It makes the corporation of questionable value to small empires and game breaking for large empires on water maps.

I think any kind of "network effect" mechanic should be avoided.

 

[NA00]

Railroads causing penalties is absurd. If you want to limit their use then make them more costly to build.

I agree with this. I would like to see infrastructure projects become more massive under-takings, at least in terms of connecting the cities with railroads. I would not want to see building a farm become a more massive undertaking.

I remember in CivII when the ai would spam every single tile with railroads. It was very annoying.

 

[CMKMStephens]

I'd rather have it in that in each city you can build a railroad station; once two or more cities have them, a railroad appears between cities across the tiles via the path of least resistance. This way rather than the map being covered in railroads, you'd have roading in most tiles with railroading between cities.

This could be supplemented by the ability for workers to build railroads as well, but with a decent cost, and the limitatation of requiring the railroad tiles to work like irrigation, i.e. having to be connected to a previous railroad tile.

This could also approximate a private vs government /planned vs unplanned approach, the railroads which you build cost money because they're not utilized for trade or commerce or whathaveyou, they effectively lead to nowhere (until you declare war), or if you railroad everything they're effectively superfluous.

In the end you could still coat everything in railroads, but it would cost you, and it would be far better to just go with where your railroads build themselves. Pluses to commerce and minuses to health could also just be attached to the railroad station building rather than trying to calculate something base on the number of railroaded tiles.

 

[MeteorPunch]

I hope it will no longer be beneficial to railroad every tile on the map...that's been one of my pet peeves forever. I'd like to see cities connected and junctions here and there, but that's it.

 

[Metal_Casting]

I don't think railroads cause unhappiness, in most countries (including mine) small towns often compete with each other for grants to have rail connectivity. When some towns don't get it there are often protests. This may not be the case in US, but in most countries rail network forms the backbone of inter-city travel.

 

[pi-r8]

I think it would be a nice touch if roads give a commerce boost, while rails give a production boost. It might be tough to balance that, but it does look ugly and weird when every single tile is covered in railroad.

 

[Souron]

How about this: from some modern advance, all roads work as railroads. That way it is still advantageous in the industrial age to focus on building rail roads, but every tile won't be covered because by the time you finish, the advantage would be lost.

This would mimic how the prevalence of auto travel and highways has replaced the advantage rail once gave.

 

[azzaman333]

Based on the C3 to C4 transition, they will continue to push for roads and railroads to be less and less of a build everywhere without thinking improvement.

 

[Silurian]

I always assumed that railways were also highways hence the spaming all over the place

see highspeed rail thread in ideas

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Railroads already have a massive disadvantage. Spies start with commando.

 

[damnrunner]

Railroads causing penalties is absurd. If you want to limit their use then make them more costly to build.

Any increase in cost is a penalty. So we are really talking about the same thing.

Right now the cost is lost opportunity cost of building something else. It sounds like you are suggesting a cost more like that in Civ: call to power where infrastructure like roads costs $ to build. That would also limit construction. However, the cost would probably have to scale up over time in order to be effective. Right now in the early game road construction is limited by the need to build other improvements. By the late game however it is logical to spam roads/rails. If roads cost $ the cost will have to be sufficiently low early in the game or else it will hugely curtail infrastructure (which won’t be fun). But if low costs from the early game are maintained - by the late game these costs will be close to nil.

Personally, I think the best solution would be for roads/rails to reduce city health/happiness by a small fraction. This can be easily offset by starting cities with higher health/happiness or increasing the city improvements the boost health/happiness.

Someone earlier made a point that railroads don’t increase unhappiness and that cities compete to get on the rail network. That is true, but the situation described is generally the case for single rail links. People would not like to live in a land where pointless rail lines extend in all directions. It would be the equivalent of living in a industrial park.

I get the point about network multiplier effects being an unfair and huge benefit for large civs. Another suggestion along similar lines would be that every city connected to the rail network gets +10% production bonus. Highways could give a similar bonus for trade route commerce. A multiplier effect could also be implanted if the increase was reduced for each additional city that is connected. Depending on the formula used, this could limit the total benefit to some finite amount.