Things I have waited for since the first Civ

[FungiPlasm]

I have the following ideas:

Hexagonal map grid: Hexagons model the sphere of influence of a city better than a square. Travel is also more realistic: In Civ3 the diagonal distances are weighted as 1.5 and the orthogonal ones as one. Moving orthogonally still costs a single movement point though.

Timelines: The turn based system works fine for me except that travel time has been warped. Trains travel faster than planes in Civ! I understand that a plane has limited range and train goes as far as the rail goes. But then a plane should be allowed many missions in a turn – or something. I know its hard to get the balance right – but some units simply are not balanced due to the great advantage they give you? That’s why they were invented in the first place! The drawback of airpower is cost (both initial and running cost) and the difficulty of supply to keep aircraft serviceable – that could be included as well.

Battle models: I think its time we use something more sophisticated than a random number generator with attack and defense modifiers. What about a better model? Each unit receives an attack type in addition to only the usual attack strength. All units also have defense vulnerabilities that is better exploited by certain units. The notion that a spearman applies its defense points just as efficiently against a tank as mechanized infantry just isn’t right. Giving a spearman a chance against armor is fine by me – but that chance must be negligible. A unit will have certain attack types according to the weapons it has, and defense according to its protection and defense tactics. In the spearman’s case for instance, it only has a spear and shield. The attack type is a “manual sharp object attack” similar to what a swordsman might have and the defense is very light armor that might stop a barbarian club, but definitely not a tank shell or a tank running storming over a few spearmen.

That brings me to the next point: evasion. A spearman might not be effective against a tank, but it could avoid destruction better than another tank if he hid in the bushes. Infantry would also hide and take a shot at a tank with his RPG only when he thinks he’s not visible to that tank. Squaring off toe-to-toe would be folly.

Group attacks are also not being done the way I’d though they would work. All units in a stack the player selects to do a specific attack must be used (and not the one at a time we do now), and the same goes for defense.

Maybe the battles should occur on zoomed-in grids that are representative of the terrain on that block. All the units selected for the attack takes part. Everything can be kept turn-based, but then at least the power of a big army can be made visible in a battle. It would be great to see my whole army lined up for the battle and use some tactics instead of just commanding each unit to jump into the fray one by one.

One thing I do like about Civ is its way to portray complex interactions of politics, diplomacy and economy in a simple way. That must not change. Some things are just so oversimplified that their essential elements are lost, and the biggest of these is the physics and physical interactions of the world.

But even if I never see these implemented - I still love and live the game and will buy Civ whatever the edition.

Regards

 

[Dida]

as far as battle goes, I think civ4 should borrow heavily from panzer general. PG has a great turn based combat model, both on its zone of control, movement, unit supply, and attack type. it will be really great if civ4 can get some of the good stuff in PG

 

[Mongoloid Cow]

I have the following ideas:

Hexagonal map grid: Hexagons model the sphere of influence of a city better than a square. Travel is also more realistic: In Civ3 the diagonal distances are weighted as 1.5 and the orthogonal ones as one. Moving orthogonally still costs a single movement point though.

I've also wanted a map as such. Hexagons are far superior to squares in these sorts of games; the only problem with them is that you can either move north-south or east-west. You can't do both unfortunately.

Timelines: The turn based system works fine for me except that travel time has been warped. Trains travel faster than planes in Civ! I understand that a plane has limited range and train goes as far as the rail goes. But then a plane should be allowed many missions in a turn – or something. I know its hard to get the balance right – but some units simply are not balanced due to the great advantage they give you? That’s why they were invented in the first place! The drawback of airpower is cost (both initial and running cost) and the difficulty of supply to keep aircraft serviceable – that could be included as well.

There's huge support for removing infinite movement of railroads, so it would hopefully be a non-issue in Civ 4 if they change it.

Battle models: I think its time we use something more sophisticated than a random number generator with attack and defense modifiers. What about a better model? Each unit receives an attack type in addition to only the usual attack strength. All units also have defense vulnerabilities that is better exploited by certain units. The notion that a spearman applies its defense points just as efficiently against a tank as mechanized infantry just isn’t right. Giving a spearman a chance against armor is fine by me – but that chance must be negligible. A unit will have certain attack types according to the weapons it has, and defense according to its protection and defense tactics. In the spearman’s case for instance, it only has a spear and shield. The attack type is a “manual sharp object attack” similar to what a swordsman might have and the defense is very light armor that might stop a barbarian club, but definitely not a tank shell or a tank running storming over a few spearmen.

I think this is far too complicated. I've always advocated roles instead (though I did this when I was still active at CDG at not here).

That brings me to the next point: evasion. A spearman might not be effective against a tank, but it could avoid destruction better than another tank if he hid in the bushes. Infantry would also hide and take a shot at a tank with his RPG only when he thinks he’s not visible to that tank. Squaring off toe-to-toe would be folly.

Complication thing again. Spearmen though run around in very clunky and heavy armour, so I don't know if simply jumping into bushes would help much.

Group attacks are also not being done the way I’d though they would work. All units in a stack the player selects to do a specific attack must be used (and not the one at a time we do now), and the same goes for defense.

Group attacks are fine IMO. They aren't perfect, but they it works now gives balance and fairness.

Maybe the battles should occur on zoomed-in grids that are representative of the terrain on that block. All the units selected for the attack takes part. Everything can be kept turn-based, but then at least the power of a big army can be made visible in a battle. It would be great to see my whole army lined up for the battle and use some tactics instead of just commanding each unit to jump into the fray one by one.

That'd be a sweet feature (except the whole actually leading the army thing because some people like me would most likely suck at that and thus this feature would suck also), but unfortunately it would take a lot of resources to do and I'd imagine a lot of people would eventually turn the feature off, especially once full-scale invasions took place with 50 battles per turn.

One thing I do like about Civ is its way to portray complex interactions of politics, diplomacy and economy in a simple way. That must not change. Some things are just so oversimplified that their essential elements are lost, and the biggest of these is the physics and physical interactions of the world.

Diplomacy and Economics could so much be improved for Civ 4, but keeping it simple is the key here.

Some good ideas for Firaxis

 

[FungiPlasm]

I think the battles now are so long because they occur one after the other. Most battles (for me anyway) occur on one concentrated front and making the units attack consecutively takes time and gets boring to the extent that some people turn off the animation.

I say: rather do a big battle all in one go and get the realism right as well. I would just love watching all the units go at it in glorious 2/3 overhead perspective.

 

[eromrab]

what about octagons? can you make a map with them? then you'd get the full 8 move locations... N NE E SE S SW W NW...

 

[frekk]

Hexagons, big time! I've waited for this for a very long time too. Using squares should have been over with in the first civ - hexes should have come in with civ2. The squares are so completely outdated now. As to octagons, no, you can't make a map with them because they don't interlock properly.

As far as railroads, I don't support removing the infinite move. First off, it is not as unrealistic as ppl think. Rails allowed massive amounts of men to be moved very very quickly. Also, in terms of gameplay, I think you will all get frustrated NOT having unlimited movement towards the later part of the game, when you are moving many more units. Finally, planes DO NOT travel slower than rails. Nor helicopters. Rebase range (imho it should be unlimited) is usually much, much farther than you can travel on rails, unless you are on an all-land map and control almost all of it. Load a unit to a helicopter and it can rebase, effectively transporting that unit. If you create a transport plane it can do the same thing. The planes don't travel all that far on a single mission, but that's a factor of range, not speed. Carrying troops or bombs or missiles instead of fuel, the planes can't go that far, and then presumably they spend most of their time that turn reloading refuelling and repairing. I do not support removing infinite movement for rails, and I'll be very upset if I don't at least have the option of turning it back on in the editor.

The spearman and the tank thing again. OK, first off, how often do spearmen kill tanks? I've *never* had it happen to me, except with a redlined tank. That would be a small group of tanks that is all shot up and probably has no ammunition, food or fuel and the troops are hallucinating from drinking motor oil and eating rubber. It's not inconceivable that a horde of spearmen could clean that up. But, in order to end this debate once and for all, Civ4 should have all obsolete units that aren't upgraded change graphics and name with each era to make you people happy. Spearmen become Peasant Militia in the middle ages, Town Militia in the industrial age, and Armed Mob in the modern age. That would be the most realistic solution, because let's face it, even the poorest and most backward parts of the world today would not field spearmen in any conflict. The bottom of the military scale in the modern age would be civilians with Molotovs, bombs, and outdated rifles, not spearmen.

I am for some form of revision as regards the combat system, but nothing too radical. Civilization isn't a wargame. If you want a wargame that is extremely realistic, you should be playing a wargame. I don't mind the idea of stacked combat though, which would be simple and encourage the formation of proper armies with different elements (not often was there a force was made up exclusively of archers or chariots - you always had foot soldiers accompanying them).

Here's some stuff I *would* like to see.

-Restore the City View that was dropped in Conquests (understandably) and do it right this time. Not a big deal here, but it would be fun.
-Point and click editor. No more subfolder after subfolder and fooling around in notepad with text files and ini's and checking spelling bazillions of times. Have the editor able to point to animation and icon files and remember paths, preview animations, and enter civilopedia entries. I want all the functions of FLICster and the Multitool built into the editor, not have to open up third party applications and fool around in Windows and Notepad.
-For the Epic Game, stock rules, a longer Ancient and Medieval period, so that there can be real empires and bigger wars during this time.
-Hexes! (I know I already said I like that idea, but I have to say it again, because this is probably the single most overdue improvement).
-Unique city graphics for every civ; or at least, alot more diversity in city graphics.
-Canals and navigable rivers. Or at least canals.
-Offshore strategic or luxury resources. Worker should have to go and build some type of improvement over them, though (like an oil rig), from a ship.
-Resource, and resource trade system, should be overhauled. You should be able to buy a resource you already have for the purpose of trading it; some resources should be limited, that is, activate and use them a number of turns and then they disappear (doesn't need to be default but an editor option would be nice); and maybe, quantifiable resources that only supply X number of cities. Again, perhaps not something everyone would like so I'd say make it an editable option or something.
-Blockades. It should be easier to blockade a port. You shouldn't need to surround every water square next to a port to blockade it. It makes it impractical to even think about blockades as part of an overall strategy, because you'd need hundreds of ships and it would take till the end of an age to get them all in position. Maybe something like, if a warship or sub fortifies within waters that are within city radius, the harbour ceases to function. It still wouldn't be easy to blockade all the ports of a civ with lots of them, but it would make it at least possible to consider as an option, and would be a good way of representing the U-Boat war, or the Union blockade of the Confederacy in the American Civil War.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I say, keep infinite RR, but have RR's cost money per turn AND have each city passed through, by a unit on RR, cost 1 mp. This means that unless a civ has built a heap of costly 'RR's to nowhere', then there will be some inherent limitation to how far a unit can move in one turn on RR! Even more so if each city can only handle X units passing through each turn via RR. Hope that makes sense!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[frekk]

Hmm, that might be good. It reminds me too of one other thing: do away with the crazy railroad sprawl by removing the production bonus, and instead bring back double improvements like building farmland over irrigation, so that railroads run in lines, not poured out like spaghetti all over the place.

 

[eromrab]

i don't like the idea of railroads costing points for entering a city... then all you'd do is place an extra 2 railroads around the city and you have a bypass... which means you'd basically have it the same way as it was before... infinite movement.

but at the same time... let's think about it like this... what is wrong with infinite movement on a railroad track?? each turn is AT LEAST a year long USUALLY... you telling me you couldn't go from Miami Florida to Seattle Washington (or even Alaska!) in ONE YEAR on a railroad? i mean... come on...

i like the way railroads are, but i think they should be able to be edited to less for mods and people who don't like it...

 

[frekk]

I don't like the idea of railroads costing points for entering a city

It's not really historically accurate either. Railroads didn't only affect the speed of troops and supplies to the front, arguably, its biggest effect was in its ability to move much greater numbers of troops to the front, as well as supplies (which allowed much larger armies to be at the front). Roads simply cannot handle the amount of traffic rails can, even today. Dirt roads turn into mud and disappear, pavement breaks.

 

[Jon Shafer]

*Trip pulls his hair out.

The fact that the little box says "1880 AD" one turn and "1882 AD" the next turn means absolutely nothing. All that matters is gameplay. If you wanted things to be "realistic" then you should have infinite land movement ANYWHERE, infinite sea movement ANYWHERE and infinite air movement ANYWHERE.

How much fun would the game be then?

I say, keep infinite RR, but have RR's cost money per turn AND have each city passed through, by a unit on RR, cost 1 mp. This means that unless a civ has built a heap of costly 'RR's to nowhere', then there will be some inherent limitation to how far a unit can move in one turn on RR! Even more so if each city can only handle X units passing through each turn via RR. Hope that makes sense!

Uhhhh, what stops players from just moving units AROUND cities?

Plus, why should it be limited to movement points? Why should Cavalry move so much further ON RAIL CARS than Infantry?

 

[MOTH]

Keep the infinite RR move, but add a 1mp cost for entraining or detraining (loading). For that matter, loading or unloading from a ship should also cost 1 mp. If you want to use it for instant defense then you would need to leave your 1mp units loaded and then they could rush to anywhere your rails go and unload. Meanwhile your 3mp Cavalry could move-load-RR-unload-and maybe move a little more.

 

[frekk]

Why should Cavalry move so much further ON RAIL CARS than Infantry?

Note that Cavalry don't move any farther than infantry, since there is no movement cost for rail.

The reason they might move farther AFTER they get off the rail:

Trains, moreover, traveled about five times faster than mule-drawn wagons, which not only expedited the delivery of supplies but actually reduced the number of supply vehicles required. Faster travel meant more round trips in a given time, which meant that fewer vehicles were needed to maintain the required flow of supplies (see table 2). Faster travel also meant that cargoes, be they men or supplies, arrived at the front in better condition. Troops traveling by train rather than on foot experienced less fatigue and fewer instances of straggling and desertion, even though the freight cars used for most troop movements were anything but comfortable. Supplies hauled by rail were more likely to reach the troops in useable condition, owing both to the speed of delivery and to the shelter afforded by enclosed railroad cars.

http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/gabel4/gabel4.asp

So troops getting off the rail line are supposed to be in really good condition, and having full move sort of reflects this in a way.

If you read the rest of that article, you'll see why unlimited movement on rails actually reflects the military realities of the railroad revolution quite well. The bunching up at the railheads, the death of the 'interior line' strategy, ease of and speed of reinforcement, and expansion of the possible scope of a front to the operational level are all replicated somewhat in the game because of unlimited movement.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Note that Cavalry don't move any farther than infantry, since there is no movement cost for rail.

I wasn't talking about how things are now, that was in response to people who think that MP should be tied to RR movement.

The reason they might move farther AFTER they get off the rail:

http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/gabel4/gabel4.asp

So troops getting off the rail line are supposed to be in really good condition, and having full move sort of reflects this in a way.

If you read the rest of that article, you'll see why unlimited movement on rails actually reflects the military realities of the railroad revolution quite well. The bunching up at the railheads, the death of the 'interior line' strategy, ease of and speed of reinforcement, and expansion of the possible scope of a front to the operational level are all replicated somewhat in the game because of unlimited movement.

I'm well-aware of how much RRs impacted military strategy, but there are better ways to impliment the change than allowing units to move across the entire map expending 0 moves.

And this is for both realism and especially gameplay purposes.

The ability to move any units anywhere in your emipre instantly completely removes a strategic facet from the game. No longer do you have to worry about the positioning of your troops, you can simply rely on the ability to move any units anywhere in case of trouble. That removes thinking from the game, removes strategy and removes fun.

I think the best solution is to give RRs a certain amount of free moves for every unit, regardless of how many MPs they have. 10 or 12 or 15 tiles along rail and possibly the removal of the ability to attack after moving would help balance it out from the current infinite state.

 

[frekk]

No longer do you have to worry about the positioning of your troops

But that's exactly what railroads did. You still have to worry about the positioning of troops not connected by contiguous land, but with the advent of railroads troops could be shuttled between fronts far faster than any breakthrough could occur or signifigant advance under fire made. Witness World War I. Railroads were one of the major reasons the lines held. Everyone just railed up to the front, and if there were a problem on another front you could transfer troops all the way across the country to reinforce before the enemy could travel more than a few miles. In World War 2 it got even better: the Nazis were advancing at something like 20 or 30 miles a day in the first few weeks of the attack on Russia, but consider that reinforcements were being railed in at about 30 times that speed. In civ, that translates to being able to move 30 or more tiles in a round. I'll admit, being able to rail across say all of Eurasia is pretty ridiculous, but realisitically, if you control all of Eurasia and have it connected by rail, you've probably already got airports in all your cities which could account for the movement. Get rid of the ability to have infinite land movement, with stacks even, and people will be forced, one by one, to airlift every single unit to get the most out of their round. No thanks!

Also removing the ability to attack after moving on rails would be historically false. Troops coming off a train were much better rested and had more supplies than troops who had to move by road; troops at a railhead were always ready for battle and if the enemy was near the railhead, he could expect waves of attacks. Troops moving overland were far less prepared to attack than those just coming off the rails.

 

[Spatula]

Troops moving overland were far less prepared to attack than those just coming off the rails.

I take it the pun wasn't intended?

 

[Jon Shafer]

The problem is that there are a number of things real generals have to worry about that Civ generals do not. If you have something like infinite movement, then it completely ruins all strategy in the Industrial and Modern eras. In real life you have to worry about morale, logistics, supply, breakthroughs, envelopments, surrendering troops...

In Civ none of that stuff exists, and the game must be abstracted. If you abstract it to the level it's at now and then throw in something like infinite movement, it basically eliminates all strategy - enemy army attacks, move your entire army to that point, kill the enemy. That's all. That's certainly not now war in real life has worked the past 150 years, and particularly today. Because of this you end up with the requirement of using exploits like fort cities and stuff like that in order to make any advance against a non-AI enemy. Wars in the Industrial and Modern eras become COMPLETELY dependent on the number of troops you have. That is not what makes fighting wars fun.

Do you see what I'm saying?

 

[eromrab]

i see and agree... that's a big reason i think it gets boring near the end of the game... but at the same time... i don't like the idea of getting rid of infinite movement... hmmm... i wonder if there would be some other way?

 

[frekk]

The problem is that there are a number of things real generals have to worry about that Civ generals do not. If you have something like infinite movement, then it completely ruins all strategy in the Industrial and Modern eras. In real life you have to worry about morale, logistics, supply, breakthroughs, envelopments, surrendering troops...

But Civ isn't a wargame. Do you want to do supply lines too? For all your units? Should we calculate how much ammunition they have? The generals do worry about these things, but the leaders do not. They tell the generals what they want done, and if its possible, the general worries about all the details like logistics. Breakthroughs, envelopments, and surrendering troops are abstracted and further, not really affected by the difference between infinite rail and 20 points rail. If you want to play a game that explores these elements in depth, you want a wargame, eg TOAW or something like that. Infinite movement does not "completely ruin all strategy" that's absurd. Are you saying there's no strategy to the later phases of the game??!!??!!? Then try playing at a higher difficulty level!

In Civ none of that stuff exists, and the game must be abstracted. If you abstract it to the level it's at now and then throw in something like infinite movement, it basically eliminates all strategy - enemy army attacks, move your entire army to that point, kill the enemy. That's all. That's certainly not now war in real life has worked the past 150 years, and particularly today.

That's only how it works with 1pt-movement troops and incidentally, that is *exactly* how it worked before the advent of independant armoured forces and deep battle theory. I mean, how else would you like it? The majority of forces being behind the front line, waiting to get to the front, in a modern war? That's not how it worked, except perhaps for the US which had to cross the Atlantic. When Germany and France fought, for instance, almost *all* of their forces came right up to the front. The German penetration behind the lines by going through the Ardennes was only succesful, because there were no troops in the hinterlands, so their advance was completely unimpeded and they could cut off the British and French from their supplies from behind the lines. If most of the army was in transit, they would have encountered too much resistance to do this and would have been stuck making a frontal assault along the Maginot, a la WW1.

Because of this you end up with the requirement of using exploits like fort cities and stuff like that in order to make any advance against a non-AI enemy.

You mean almost like huge troop buildups and very slowly advancing trench fortifications? Incidentally, this phenomena tends to disappear in the game with the advent of armour, and undergoes further reduction with the advent of mobile infantry (APC's) and modern armour, not to mention airpower (at least in C3C with lethal land bombardment).

Wars in the Industrial and Modern eras become COMPLETELY dependent on the number of troops you have. That is not what makes fighting wars fun.

Since the advent of the locomotive and the rifled barrel, and until the advent of mechanized forces, wars WERE completely dependant on huge masses of troops. First you don't like the inaccuracy, and say you want to worry about "morale, logisitics and supply" and now you want it to be fun but not accurate because it takes too long. Think about this too: if your empire is so big that it covers the entire map, and thus makes the infinite move seem unrealistic, do you really want to have to move all those troops to the front line manually? Is that "more fun?" If you get to a point in a game where rail movement is unrealistic, it's also going to be a huge drag not to have it.

 

[Jon Shafer]

But Civ isn't a wargame. Do you want to do supply lines too? For all your units? Should we calculate how much ammunition they have? The generals do worry about these things, but the leaders do not. They tell the generals what they want done, and if its possible, the general worries about all the details like logistics. Breakthroughs, envelopments, and surrendering troops are abstracted and further, not really affected by the difference between infinite rail and 20 points rail. If you want to play a game that explores these elements in depth, you want a wargame, eg TOAW or something like that.

I never said it was a wargame, nor did I say I wanted supply, logistics, etc. included. Maybe you misunderstood my point?

Not including things like breakthroughs and such makes it into a race to build the most troops, which is not fun. Whoever gets the best start wins. Whoever gets the best land wins.

A game like Civ should strive to require the victors to think and win on skill, not on dumb luck in getting the best start that allows them to build the most Cavalry or the most Tanks.

Infinite movement does not "completely ruin all strategy" that's absurd. Are you saying there's no strategy to the later phases of the game??!!??!!? Then try playing at a higher difficulty level!

It certainly does ruin strategy. Build the biggest army and you win. No thinking involved at all. Once the war is started its already over. There is no strategy and there is no fun in that.

With regards to playing a higher difficulty level, I regularly play on Demigod and have beaten Sid before a few times. Playing on higher difficulty levels ruins the strategy of the game even more. All that needs to be done is overcoming the AI production and unit advantages, which is done by war. Win a few wars early on and the rest is smooth sailing, except on Sid, which isn't even like playing normal Civ.

That's only how it works with 1pt-movement troops and incidentally, that is *exactly* how it worked before the advent of independant armoured forces and deep battle theory. I mean, how else would you like it? The majority of forces being behind the front line, waiting to get to the front, in a modern war? That's not how it worked, except perhaps for the US which had to cross the Atlantic. When Germany and France fought, for instance, almost *all* of their forces came right up to the front. The German penetration behind the lines by going through the Ardennes was only succesful, because there were no troops in the hinterlands, so their advance was completely unimpeded and they could cut off the British and French from their supplies from behind the lines. If most of the army was in transit, they would have encountered too much resistance to do this and would have been stuck making a frontal assault along the Maginot, a la WW1.

Every front is a Maginot line in Civ when RRs get put up. Try to make a breakthrough? Impossible. RRs allow units to get anywhere instantly. Ardenne-like offensive aren't even possible because every front is covered by every unit in a civ's empire.

That's what I mean by removing the strategy from the game. You take a single city on the offensive and the enemy can INSTANTLY relocate its troops anywhere to stop you from getting any further. Battles like Germany vs France in 1940 or the USSR vs. Germany in late 1942 at Stalingrad are impossible because there's no way to trap or encircle opponents without them being magically whisked away at the slightest hint of danger. That is what I mean by there being no strategy.

There is no risk of leaving a front underdefended to protect certain cities more, because they're all equally protected with everything a civ has because of infinite movement. It makes intercontinental invasions almost impossible because the turn you get ashore is the turn the enemy can bring its entire army to bear on you.

Sounds a lot like June 1944? Actually, no, it doesn't, because if Germany could do that then D-Day would have failed. More historical inaccuracy.

You mean almost like huge troop buildups and very slowly advancing trench fortifications? Incidentally, this phenomena tends to disappear in the game with the advent of armour, and undergoes further reduction with the advent of mobile infantry (APC's) and modern armour, not to mention airpower (at least in C3C with lethal land bombardment).

Armor and Modern Armor can only move 2 tiles. With culture involved that's usually not even enough to reach the first border city before the enemy can magically summon 60 Artillery and the entireity of his Tank Corps from the boonies of his empire to crush that invasion.

You try to invade and your army is smashed by everything the enemy can bring to the front. It's impossible to win without more troops. That is not historical, and that is not fun.

The only way to avoid this outcome is either A) to build more troops than the enemy can kill or B) to exploit the use of Settlers to steal culture and RRs from the enemy and "creep" up to his cities and penetrate into his rear. Both the reason for the exploit and the massive potential success from the exploit are due to infinite RR movement.

Since the advent of the locomotive and the rifled barrel, and until the advent of mechanized forces, wars WERE completely dependant on huge masses of troops.

Completely? So after RRs came into use every war was decided by the number of troops?

I guess my history professors and all the books I've written about strategy are all wrong.

First you don't like the inaccuracy, and say you want to worry about "morale, logisitics and supply" and now you want it to be fun but not accurate because it takes too long.

You need to read what I write more carefully.

I never said I wanted to include morale, logistics and supply. I said that Civ abstracted those, and therefore it has to compensate in other areas in order to make the game fun to play.

There is a balance to be struck between historical accuracy and good gameplay. Something like infinite movement ruins them both for the reasons I've cited elsewhere.

Think about this too: if your empire is so big that it covers the entire map, and thus makes the infinite move seem unrealistic, do you really want to have to move all those troops to the front line manually? Is that "more fun?" If you get to a point in a game where rail movement is unrealistic, it's also going to be a huge drag not to have it.

What about playing on huge pangaeas? With only 4 civs of equal strength remaining, the number of troops and the size of the landmass are so immense that even if you do control enough territory to make infinite RR movement "unrealistic" its still a balanced game between equal powers - and infinite movement messes this up.

There are better ways to organize units and armies than via infinite movement. Putting them in large stacks is easy enough already, and I imagine that it will be even easier in Civ 4.

Do not cover up the wound, heal it. Infinite Movement is a bandaid for the problem, not a cure. If you have problems with how long it takes to move large numbers of units, then address that problem - do not add in new factors which disrupt the nature of gameplay in other areas.