The curse of railroads

[Gargantutron]

i think rails work fine they way they are. zero movement is realistic... i mean in the late game 1 turn=1 year, and it sure as hell dont take 1 year to travel by rail from say London to Shanghai! course the air transport is weird. it should be zero movement as well.

cripple rail network? quite possible in the early industrial age. later its not, and this IS realistic. the continent of Europe is filled with rails. if one gets destroyed there will still be lots of other rail lines to use instead. real railroads only have true chokepoints when they cross rivers. blow up a railroad bridge and you do some heavy damage in the real world. same for roads btw. perhaps firaxis could come up with something on bridges for civ4!
afterall, among the most important strategic things to do in World War 2, was to secure or destroy bridges.

 

[Renfield]

I think railroads are fine as they are.

The unlimited movement is realistic. Each turn is equal to one year. Do you think it's realistic that it would take longer than a year to move a combat unit from one end of a country to the other end with railroads? Even huge countries like Russian can move units within days. Nothing approaching a year.

To the point of RR'ing every tile; I look at it as if I am building highwyas as well as railroads. Not every tile would have a railroad but the balance would certainly have highway access. Again this allows industrial and post-industrial societies to travel an unlimited distance in under a year.

To use the US as an example; If say California were invaded by... Japan, would it take a year for troops from Texas or North Carolina a year to reach the front? No. Why? Because they could be rail'ed or trucked there without using any aircraft in a matter of days.

 

[RagingBarbarian]

I don't have a problem with the railroads power per se, but the graphic used it really horrible, they should look a little more sparse. You end up having a maze all over your empire. I think this was a complaint since Civ3 first was released.

 

[storealex]

Combined forces is the way to go, so you need some artillery or bombers to destroy the enemy's railroads, s.t. they don't get you.

?
The problem is that the railroad is every where. Railroads every where isn't that bad. Unlimited movement isn't that bad. But combined, it's a killer, because you can't to much to stop the enemy using unlimited movement since the rails is every where.


To the people arguing that it is realistic with unrealistic movement, regarded to the fact that a year is one turn - don't you forget that the game also has to be realistic to if self, not only the real world?
Sure it would not take a year to travel from one part of russia to another, but would it take 15 years to sail across the pacific? Or 20 years to drive a tank trough asia using only roads? No. The problem about time and realisem has to be there, in order to make the game playable, hence, you'd have to accept that when all ways of transportation in the game is slower than in real life, so should the railroad.
I find it really annoying, that for an example if I have total air supiriority, the AI is still capable of using it's railroad without worrying about fighters decending upon their troopwagons.
I find it annoying that it takes me 7 years to send reinforcements to the front be sea, while it takes the AI exactly no time at all by railroad. Sure rails are fast, but not faster than a jet fighter. Still, the jer fighter has no chance of attacking the units traveling be rails.
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[rychan]

All of you claiming that rail movement is realistic because a turn takes a full year are correct, but that doesn't resolve the inequity with respect to roads and airplanes. You can't just look at railroads in isolation. You could say that railroads are realistic, so long as you afford then that roads and planes are far too slow. And really that's all that matters in the context of gameplay, the relative speeds. Not the absolute speeds.

When railroad was invented it was the fastest form of transportation. But since the creation of modern interstates, roads are just as fast or faster. Since the invention of flight, planes are much faster even for heavy equipment (tanks, artillery). (you could say rail is higher bandwidth and cheaper, though).

So maybe a interstate wonder that makes all of your roads equivalent to railroad can become available in the modern era?

 

[PirateRob]

There are plenty of strategies you can use when attacking an enemy area connected by a rail network.

1) Bomb the snot out of the rail network FIRST.
2) The AI will move its troops to attack the invaders. If you messed up his rail network then when he gets to you, he will be cut off from his rail net.
3) Attack his territory at another point. Since his troops are tied up with your first attack in an area that has no rails, he is defenseless.

Rob

 

[Bleser]

There has been a lot of arguing back and forth about whether or not the unlimited movement of railroads is realistic or not. I say it is NOT.

Example 1:
On a "huge" Pangea map, I can explore every single square of my neighbor's map (if he has built his rail network and I have ROP with him/her) with a SINGLE unit in a SINGLE turn, and that unit can then return back to any city on my land and fortify itself. Give me a BREAK!

2: The same goes for the military. I can build a single unit, lets say a cavalry, and go thousands of miles in one direction, fight a unit, and return thousands of miles back to my homeland via railroads, all instantaneously. Yeah right!

I could see "zero movement" to and from the major cities, but EVERY SQUARE that has railroads? Sorry, this is not accuarate and too overpowering.

The Allies bombed the heck out of the German's rail network, yes, but they still had railroads, and yet they couldn't send tanks from the Eastern front, cursh the Allies' Invasion, and the return to the Eastern front all at once. This kind of movement took months. And don't say that "each turn in Civ is a year" because if that were the case then every war in Civ is REALLY REALLY long compared to real life!

 

[nullspace]

I don't think the problem with railroads is that they make an offensive war too hard for the player, the problem is that they make a defensive war too easy. Once you have a rail net and replaceable parts, you're practically invulnerable to the AI. As long as you defend every city wihtin 3 spaces of the border, there isn't much the AI can do. They move a stack into your territory, and you bring your entire army from every point in your empire, bombard them, and then kill them. You can often wipe out the attackers with little or no losses.

Some people have already mentioned a good solution: you only get the unlimited movement between cities. Moving by train would be like airlifting, except the cities would have to be connected by rails. You can still get to any connected city instantly, you just can't get absolutely anywhere. That wouldn't be terribly inconvenient for moving workers around and stuff like that, and your army wouldn't be able to be everywhere at once.

 

[Sic_Berserker]

I like rails as they are, but I agree they could be better...
In my opinion, roads are the key, cos: are the ancient roads the same as the actual ones? no. they are 10 times faster... rails are even faster and actual rails are... well... faster. there sholud be differences between them, depending on tech. balance is not for me, its just an idea...
maybe a station is needed to leave and to enter a rail, and that with a movement cost, (and the same to the airlifts, please, not an ENTIRE turn to move by air!) so we must use roads the rest of the way... (stations may prevent from building any other tile improvement...)

something Ive read and I liked was the possibility to intercept a unit in rail with our jets, Id love to have that possibility!
and, as we argentinians are used to, road/rails can be blocked by unhappy laborers...

 

[Emperor Xerxes]

I agree with the point that railroads reflect real life. Once rail roads are in place it would be ridiculous to spend two years traveling an army across the country. In real life World War II was about 3 turns length.

In short; I would leave the railroads be.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Real life movement is not improtant!

Relative movment is important.

If Cruiser can go 6 tiles in a round, and Bomber can bombard a target 12 tiles around then rail movemet can't be a teleport spell.

All movments need to be relative to each other, otherwise you get a tactical mess.

As for 1 turn year argument, then why legion needs 20 years to get one tile outsite of Rome?

 

[Emperor Xerxes]

All I can say to that is its just a game and has been playtested to hell. If the railroads were really a problem the game testers would have pointed that out long before it was released.

The point about the legions is good though, its always silly when I have a war raging for 1000 years which would never happen in real life.

 

[Longasc]

I think modern times are where Civ begings to suck. Not only because you have to MM stacks of units so large that you have to scroll them.

Redeploying bombers is very quick, too. Their range is incredible, even on Huge maps. Fighters are a bit neater, they have less range for redeployment.

Once I have airports in my cities and capture a city with an airport, dozens of units per turn airlift into that city.

This has some merits and some downsides...

For pollution cleaning however railroads are a blessing.

MY ADVICE: Kill them all before railroads!

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Railroads are easy to pillage at present, if you limited the number of railroads it would be very easy to cut them all.

Even as it is, a modern era Civ can easily cut all the communications around an area they are going to attack (vital for amphib. operations), you don't HAVE to fight their whole army.

With D-Day the Allied Air Forces had pounded German roads and rail to prevent reinforcement, time you did the same guys.


However, I do feel it would be nice if it cost gold to maintain roads and railroads in the hope of limiting their spread to EVERY square.

 

[Park Ranger]

I think the idea of unit movement and turn durations can be reconciled with the following interpretation:

Moving a unit from one tile to another represents more than just sending some troops out on a foray. It represents establishing a "base" for that unit from which it can exert influence and control over the local area (ie that tile directly, and bordering tiles indirectly with the ZOC ability.) If units from 2 different civs attempt to control (ie "move into") the same tile then there are a series of engagements which will eventually cause one unit to surrender/die, or in some cases retreat.

So, in the first turns of the game, moving a warrior from one tile to the next taks 50 years because what it means is that your civ supports a warrior "caste" or tradition in that tile. Moving that warrior means reorganizing the whole society that supports that unit (whose members span a couple of generations) so it can exert its control elsewhere.

As the game progresses, the turn time decreases, representing the increasing control of governments over people. But moving a unit still means moving all the bases, the soldiers' homes, or the supply lines to those homes, and maintaining transportation between the tile the unit occupies and the home country. During the span of a turn the individuals in a unit may travel back and forth many times, but "moving" the unit, ie reoganizing the base of operations and thus the influence that unit can exert, takes time.

Until the industrial revolution, that is, and the development of rails. Sure, tanks could drive across the country, given a year, without rails, but how the heck do you move the heavy equipment (garages, lifts, parts factories) and relocate the personnel that support the tank unit without heavy transportation capacity? Basically, spend a year taking it apart to ship to the new location, or rebuild some of it at the new location.

I know there's problems with this interpretation (ship movement takes a bigger stretch of the imagination), but it does rationalize why rails can provide free movement within borders while roads can't. Though I agree with some posters that modern superhighways fulfill the same role as rails, this does not necessarily coincide with the "roads" that the workers build.

In any case, I don't have a problm with the way rails work WRT movement or production/food bonuses. I think it's wise to assume that in the late game the "rails" also include superhighways, though remember rails still exceed roads in terms of gross weight capacity. You eventually need highways just to take some of the lighter traffic away.

Finally, this gives a reason to allow rail movement while restricting airlifts. Making units wait a turn after airlifting demonstrates the logistical difficulty in getting not just the tanks/trucks the unit needs to the new airport, but also the fuelling stations and maintenance garages.

Hope this makes sense, and note this is just a suggested way of interpreting CIV3 as it currently stands, not an attempt to shut down good ideas for changing it.

 

[Greyhawk1]

I think rails are one of those "Civ" things that is more to do with balancing the game than anything in real life. Like never having Settlers able to have more than 1 move, even with the advent of Paratroopers and other units that can move great distances.

Rails are invaluable for pollution clearing - which is good since they appear round about the same time as all the pollution does. Without rails Coal would be pretty weak as a vital resource and moving all those massed units would be a major pain.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by storealex
I was invading an AI on it's own huge continent. I launched the attack at it's nothern end, but because of those damn railroads the AI was able to bring in every single offensive unit that it had to front in one turn!

The conclusion is, that railroad takes away a lot of the realismen of the game.

Any suggestions to help me are wellcome.

You may want to send in your "special" force in advance before landing your troops. It's really easy! For example, let's say your settler is your special force. It work as follows:

1. Have your ships standing by outside the border ready to land in one turn.

2. Land your settler (just 1); if you land too many units, they will ask you to leave or declare war.

3. Lure them into declaring war on you (there are so many ways to start a war while keeping your reputation crystal clean).

4. Once they officially declare war on you, use your settler to setup your base of operation and immediately unload all your troops. Of course, you now have the first strike. Immediately position your artillery and setup your killing zone (by destroying all incoming rail/road or whater) and wait.

5. Because of rail, the enemy will dump all their forces at your defensive position. They will all come and they will all die. Once they are running out of troop, use their rail to take the rest of their cities. This war should end very quickly too. Isn't railroad so wonderful?

 

[storealex]

Is it possible to build a city within the enemys border? Also, that tactic(Bombing killzone) donsn't work unless you have air control, even before you land you're troops - you might have more fighters/bombers, but surely you dont have them all with you on carriers.
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[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by storealex
Is it possible to build a city within the enemys border?

Once war is declared, you can build city inside your enemy border. You need to do it step by step as I have mentioned in previous post.

Also, that tactic(Bombing killzone) donsn't work unless you have air control, even before you land you're troops - you might have more fighters/bombers, but surely you dont have them all with you on carriers.

Even a group of simple warriors would be able to accomplish this. There is no need for bomber or whatever. I normally, use cavalries to destroy rail/road if I don't want them to get slaughter the next turn where the warrior will surely die. Of course, explorer would be best for this task. The bottom line, no bomber/fighter is needed!

 

[Fredric Drum]

Originally posted by Park Ranger
I think the idea of unit movement and turn durations can be reconciled with the following interpretation:

Moving a unit from one tile to another represents more than just sending some troops out on a foray. It represents establishing a "base" for that unit from which it can exert influence and control over the local area (ie that tile directly, and bordering tiles indirectly with the ZOC ability.) If units from 2 different civs attempt to control (ie "move into") the same tile then there are a series of engagements which will eventually cause one unit to surrender/die, or in some cases retreat.

So, in the first turns of the game, moving a warrior from one tile to the next taks 50 years because what it means is that your civ supports a warrior "caste" or tradition in that tile. Moving that warrior means reorganizing the whole society that supports that unit (whose members span a couple of generations) so it can exert its control elsewhere. (...cut...)

I'm sorry, but this is 100% BS
It takes 50 years because otherwise it would take ages to complete a game. Simple game mechanics. No reason to try to 'justify' this