Roads and Rails

[Sqwerlpunk]

There's a mechanism to represent this popular outrage --> faces.

God, unhappy citizens were already beyond annoying, I don't want mechanics to actively encourage more of them

 

[Greizer85]

Make railroads cost coal/oil to operate, so you can't afford to spam them everywhere. Ofc there is a problem or two... What happens when the enemy pillages your coal resource? Will the railroads simply stop working? What if half of the coals is pillaged? Which half of the rails will continue to operate? Whew, thank God I'm not a game designer! However there will need to be a way to get rid of the spam; it's annoyed me since Civ2.

Edit: Also, you could trade for extra coals (or conquer and leave the conquered lands railroad-less). You could make the AI real stingy with coal trades, but still, if people have the money they will do it.
Maybe there simply needs to be more late-game improvements? Workers busy building skyscraper-farms and thermal boreholes will not be busy building railroads. If the automation algorithms are good enough,
you may leave your workers to improve your lands ("farm -> skyscraper farm") and it will not add much to micromanagement. Still feels artificial, but it's the best I can think of.

 

[Sqwerlpunk]

Hehe, I remember my railroad checkerboard in Civ 2. That was fun.

 

[axi]

Make railroads cost coal/oil to operate, so you can't afford to spam them everywhere. Ofc there is a problem or two... What happens when the enemy pillages your coal resource? Will the railroads simply stop working? What if half of the coals is pillaged? Which half of the rails will continue to operate? Whew, thank God I'm not a game designer! However there will need to be a way to get rid of the spam; it's annoyed me since Civ2.

I hate to quote myself but if you look at my post earlier, I suggested the same thing, but with coal/oil reducing upkeep. So when such things happen, your upkeep skyrockets.

 

[Bibor]

Roads and railroads are a no-brainer and spammable, thus they are really, really badly implemented, except maybe in the case of early connecting. R/RR should be a valuable investment and a choice, much like the other improvements.

Forcing players to place roads and railroads strategically would greatly benefit this game series. Strategic advantage should come at a price, even if a totally "illogical" one.

Thus, my suggestion is:
Roads should reduce the food production of the tile by 1.
Railroads should produce unhelath (like flood plains).

 

[toft]

It pains me to see every tile covered in roads or rails in civ4... I hope we get an upkeep to roads and rails, and that the AI can handle it.

 

[Souron]

Here is hoping for....

Cities build improvements in nearby hexes, not workers.

Working a hex causes automatic improvements at a slow rate in the direction that it is being used under. You might be able to work "food", work "production" or work "commerce" in a given hex.

On top of that, you can "build improvements" like you would build a building. The radius of this is beyond the city borders -- you can build improvements outside of the fat hex of the city.

Transportation technology advances. There are a few kinds...

None -- default
Paths -- beat down dirt. 1/2 movement cost.
Roads -- roman-style. 1/3 movement cost.
Bridges -- makes crossing rivers cost 1/2 movement cost, instead of full. Crosses rivers.
Canals -- early industrial revolution in England relied on Canals to transport goods. 4 squares/turn movement. Must be adjacent to a river or freshwater lake tile. Boats can enter these squares.
Railroads -- industrial-revolution style. 6 squares/turn movement.
Highways -- second industrial-revolution style. 8 squares/turn movement.
High-speed rail -- maglev trains. 10 squares/turn movement.

How many years does it take to transport an army by train? It's true that industrial rail is not as fast as modern transportation, but functionally It's no worse for moving troops to any connected station within less than a year. This is way rail was originally 0 move. It really does effectively make it very easy to move troops accross the world in no time. Maglevs may be a benefit to trade, but they won't their military benefits are negligible.

 

[Silurian]

Souron@

industrial rail is not as fast as modern transportation

Rail freight is as fast as road freight except for short distances
Passenger rail is faster than highway

In the game rail also represents highways

 

[DPyro]

I like the upkeep idea but what about railroads built in neutral territories?

What about a production penalty on tiles with railroads, but to offset that cities connected to the trade network with rail get a +X% production bonus?

Personally, I don't mind roadspam as its not really a problem until the later half of the game. Some graphic tweaks so your territory doesn't look like a cobweb would be appreciated (you still want the roads for maintenance/military maneuvering advantages. The only problem with this is that you would still be free to spam rail in friendly but unused territory.

(Also it would be nice if you could build a tunnel through a mountain )

 

[damnrunner]

Makes sense though. Imagine your gov't trying to remove a popular route used by citizens, no matter the reason, they'd have a fit.

Or imagine the fit citizens have all the time about eminent domain issues when new highways are built.

 

[axi]

I like the upkeep idea but what about railroads built in neutral territories?

Let the barbarians pay for them. With all the loot they have collected, surely they can afford them?

Seriously now, just have no upkeep for those.

 

[Yakk]

How many years does it take to transport an army by train? It's true that industrial rail is not as fast as modern transportation, but functionally It's no worse for moving troops to any connected station within less than a year. This is way rail was originally 0 move. It really does effectively make it very easy to move troops accross the world in no time. Maglevs may be a benefit to trade, but they won't their military benefits are negligible.

Huh? It doesn't take 100 years to cross the roman empire on foot with an army in the more ancient eras.

Due to scaliing reasons, the multiple scales of civilisation are not rendered accurately. Wars are too slow, buildings aren't rebuilt often enough, etc.

The point of the railroad -> highway -> mag-lev is to make modern transportation of troops and goods feel faster, relative to older.

Canals, as in early industrial revolution waterworks in Britian, are faster than roads -- at least for infantry. Railroads (in this particular case, early industrial railroads) provide all units with the speed of cavalry-on-beaten-roads while in friendly terrain.

Highways become an upgrade to Railroads (reflecting the improvements made by the 2nd industrial revolution, and road networks like the US highway system).

Mag-lev railroads is just intended to be some relatively arbitrary improvement over highways that is near-future, that is marginally better.

 

[Bibor]

Mag-lev railroads is just intended to be some relatively arbitrary improvement over highways that is near-future, that is marginally better.

Sure, having a train running at 350 km/h can't really beat the 160 km/h car on a highway

 

[Souron]

Huh? It doesn't take 100 years to cross the roman empire on foot with an army in the more ancient eras.

Due to scaliing reasons, the multiple scales of civilisation are not rendered accurately. Wars are too slow, buildings aren't rebuilt often enough, etc.

The point of the railroad -> highway -> mag-lev is to make modern transportation of troops and goods feel faster, relative to older.

Canals, as in early industrial revolution waterworks in Britian, are faster than roads -- at least for infantry. Railroads (in this particular case, early industrial railroads) provide all units with the speed of cavalry-on-beaten-roads while in friendly terrain.

Highways become an upgrade to Railroads (reflecting the improvements made by the 2nd industrial revolution, and road networks like the US highway system).

Mag-lev railroads is just intended to be some relatively arbitrary improvement over highways that is near-future, that is marginally better.

The advantage of early rail was enough so that troops could effectively be on the front as soon as they are trained. highways and maglevs do not add to this advantage. Sure the cars move faster (or sometimes not according to Silurian), but that does not make a strategic difference.

Water travel was always poorly handled by civ. Rightly a ships, like units on rail, should be able to explore and travel long distances very quickly. Naval moving of armies is much faster than walking, at least until the automobile.

I agree that there are economic benefits to maglevs, but not strategic.

 

[damnrunner]

The advantage of early rail was enough so that troops could effectively be on the front as soon as they are trained. highways and maglevs do not add to this advantage. Sure the cars move faster (or sometimes not according to Silurian), but that does not make a strategic difference.

Water travel was always poorly handled by civ. Rightly a ships, like units on rail, should be able to explore and travel long distances very quickly. Naval moving of armies is much faster than walking, at least until the automobile.

I agree that there are economic benefits to maglevs, but not strategic.

If there is only a troop movement benefit then there is no point in going beyond roads and rails.

But highways and/or high speed rail makes sense if they generate econ or other benefits.

 

[axi]

Highways are more versatile than RRs and resilient against bombing. They also help mechanised units have a high campaign speed, even in enemy territory. If they have to be loaded in trains, they actually are slower to mobilise than infantry.

 

[Souron]

Thus my idea to make roads auto-promote to highways in the modern era.

 

[Freyas]

Here is hoping for....

Cities build improvements in nearby hexes, not workers.

Working a hex causes automatic improvements at a slow rate in the direction that it is being used under. You might be able to work "food", work "production" or work "commerce" in a given hex.

On top of that, you can "build improvements" like you would build a building. The radius of this is beyond the city borders -- you can build improvements outside of the fat hex of the city.

Transportation technology advances. There are a few kinds...

None -- default
Paths -- beat down dirt. 1/2 movement cost.
Roads -- roman-style. 1/3 movement cost.
Bridges -- makes crossing rivers cost 1/2 movement cost, instead of full. Crosses rivers.
Canals -- early industrial revolution in England relied on Canals to transport goods. 4 squares/turn movement. Must be adjacent to a river or freshwater lake tile. Boats can enter these squares.
Railroads -- industrial-revolution style. 6 squares/turn movement.
Highways -- second industrial-revolution style. 8 squares/turn movement.
High-speed rail -- maglev trains. 10 squares/turn movement.

I'd love to see something like this replace workers in their entirety. Instead of sending out a unit to improve terrain, having them improve based on the city management would be excellent. Roads would grow up automatically between cities, and develop based on the sizes of the cities, as well as the technology available. When a new city is founded, roads would grow between that city and nearby cities, and roads would grow to cities in other nation's territory when borders have been opened with that civilization.

To give more control over things, the player could additionally spend government money to subsidize the creation of a road or improvement from the city management. This would represent the government spending funds on improving the infrastructure, like the Romans spending government resources to improve the main roads throughout the empire for their armies to move along. The additional cost would also help discourage spamming of unnecessary improvements, while still allowing the player to prioritize things like hooking up new strategic resources after the appropriate technology is discovered.

Another benefit for this is for the learning curve of the game for new players. As can be seen, one of the hardest things for a lot of players to learn is to make enough workers to get their land improved, and making the right improvements. Taking out a lot of the worker micro would help out a lot in helping new players play reasonably, while there can still be a lot of room for more advanced players to customize and optimize things.

 

[hewhoknowsall]

Sorry if this has already been stated, but it doesn't make much sense that a tank moving on a road moves faster than a helicopter in the air; I know that roads make it easier to drive in but wouldn't moving in the air be even easier?

And why can't enemies use your roads unless if they have the commander promotion?

And it would be cool if, say, legionaries (for Rome) had the ability to build roads, because they were known for that.

 

[Raider]

Realistically, what should happen is roads within friendly territory should provide movement bonus based on tech level. Say move 2x as fast as unimproved ground in ancient times. 3x with engineering. 10x with motorized transportation equivalent. I agree that having every single tile covered in railroad tracks looks silly.