Ugly, ugly, UGLY railroads!

[Witchfinder]

Damnit, I hate railroads. I mean, I love them for the bonuses they give to your food and production, and their freedom of movement, but I simply hate the look of every square covered by railroads.

I'd like it if the next patch made railroads much harder to construct, so that they became much more important strategically, being used to link up cities, instead of becoming a massive iron grid that blankets the land. Bleh!

Another point is that I think rivers are too easy to cross. I understand that this should probably be something for Civ 4, but bridges and roads are very important in warfare, but in Civ 3 they are only really of any use to the civ that "owns" them.

Anyway, just some random scribbling while I'm at work. Anyone agree or disagree?

 

[Arvedui]

I agree with you. I think that everything covered with railroads is plain ugly. It should be like Civ2, where railroads only increased movement and shield production, but not food. Maybe there should be farmland in Civ3.

 

[-proletarian-]

Actually, I have started to kinda like the look of my empire when It is railroad-ed. I play a style where my cities are spaced out, not tightly packed together, so I only railroad squares that fall within a city's radius, anything further away than the two squares and I leave as open countryside. It look great when you have islands of civilization, a city surrounded by rail, interspersed with open country........

 

[cephyn]

sheer insanity prol...i RR the entire continent no matter what. Nothing more absurd than inviting your supply lines to be more easily cut!

 

[Psychlone]

In the graphics modpacks section of this forum is a modified railroad.pcx file, I forget who made it. Anyhow, it cuts out a lot of the excessive, crazy-looking looping and branching of the railroads, I highly recommend it. Just download it and swap the file for the existing one. (Be sure to back up the original file tho, just in case).

 

[Heffalump]

As cephyn said, a redundant road/railroad system is now vital to keep supply lines open. Even with production bonuses removed it would be wise to build them. And there's no guarantee that it will be easy to re-build pillaged rail lines given the fact your source of coal may expire at some point. So it's not just about 'looks' anymore. And I agree it looks bad, but I like the importance Civ3 places on keeping a functional transportation network.

 

[Soufie77]

"I" made it . And may I also recommend skankyburn's civ2-style railroads which you can find over at apolyton's. I haven't tried it out yet but the screenshots for that look incredible. Very neat and tidy.

 

[Grotius]

I like the way Civ3 rail functions, but I don' t love the way it looks either. Too many silly loops. I'll try downloading railroad.pcx; thanks for that tip.