How should motorism be included in Civ 4?

[Optimizer]

It looks like Civ 4 has neglected all aspects of automobiles and motorism.

How should we mod Civ 4 to do more justice to the historical importance of motor vehicles?

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think "Highway" as the third level of road would be nice, it would have infinate movment rate ala oldschool civ. Each tile of Highway would cost gold in maintanace, no bonus per say but it might be a pre-requisite for Towns to grow into "Burbs" which give perhaps -1 food, +2 hammer, +1 comerce ontop of Town effects. Highways might also produce sickness like a Jungle dose.

Automobile Tec (representing the large scale "auto culture" not the invention of the Automobile itself as that took place much much earlier). Would give the Highway improvment, and possibly some other effects as well.

I too have been vexed at the total lack of automobiles

[Tufturk]

Very good sugestion, though the +2 hammers might be a bit too much when coupled with Universal Suffrage?

[Impaler[WrG]]

I would expect that the time to grow the Town to a Burg would be something like 40 turns (halfedable ofcorse with that Civic that halfs them). Remember the highway always cost 1 gold and its reducing food and health esentialy a -1.5 food for a +2 production.

[Tufturk]

Yes, could be a reasonable tradeoff, though cottages are already very good...

Another thought: The health cap is heavily (80-90%) tied to population, and so, the bigger a city is, the more problematic the Highways would become. To benefit from Highways, one would have to be careful to stop city growth, and I think that is somewhat counter-intuitive: Bigger cities should recieve more benefits from a Highway than smaller cities, I think. But then we may have to look at trade routes...

Perhaps cottage growth should somehow be connected to city size?

[Jaybe]

Bananas.
You are taking an abstraction (motorization) to replace other abstractions (e.g., particular civics, railroads). It does just fine as it is, but DO enjoy your modding as you like.

[djpsychonaut]

So, I voted for both Highway improvements as well as the Automobile tech. I think that the tech should unlock the improvement.

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
I think "Highway" as the third level of road would be nice, it would have infinate movment rate ala oldschool civ. Each tile of Highway would cost gold in maintanace, no bonus per say but it might be a pre-requisite for Towns to grow into "Burbs" which give perhaps -1 food, +2 hammer, +1 comerce ontop of Town effects. Highways might also produce sickness like a Jungle dose.

Automobile Tec (representing the large scale "auto culture" not the invention of the Automobile itself as that took place much much earlier). Would give the Highway improvment, and possibly some other effects as well.

I too have been vexed at the total lack of automobiles

I'm in agreement with the return of infinite movement using highways. Think about it, it takes approximately 4 days of driving to get across the continental US when driving major interstates. A turn in the modern era approximates about a year in time? I think it makes sense.

I do not agree that highways should cost maintenance. While in real life, highways are expensive to maintain, think about the net effect that they create. They promote economic growth. If their net effect wasn't so powerful, we wouldn't build them. I think this should be built into the abstraction and simply have a smaller benefit as a result.

As far as the net benefit, I can see several ways this could be handled:

- Additional trade route
- Additional profit from existing trade routes (ala harbor)
- Increased gold from cottages (I think it should only be +1 gold with no production increase; see my note above about the maintenance abstraction)

I'm a little wary about the unhealthiness though. I think the game is already abstracting the effects of unhealthiness in big cities enough without adding this to it. It is a good argument that highways, while providing many economic benefits, do promote pollution because there are cars driving on them. However, I think that the pollution from autos is most concentrated (and so most directly affects health) in city traffic where cars are closer and move a lot slower. For smaller cities which have highways running through them, they experience less pollution, so I think it makes sense to have the game continue to calculate health as a function of city size. Overall, I maintain that the existing health model already penalizes the player appropriately for the level of growth.

[ghen]

I really don't want any kind of road that makes infinite movement.. that makes the game way too simple late game.

[Optimizer]

Right now I have added a tech called "Automobile". It gives +1 road movement, Tanks, and allows workers to build towns.

[Enigma_Nova]

The ability to build towns with mass transit

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by Optimizer
Right now I have added a tech called "Automobile". It gives +1 road movement, Tanks, and allows workers to build towns.

How do you solve railroads, though?

[Optimizer]

Railroads still have the same movement rate - and they are still severely faster than roads.

I have thought of increasing Railroad speed with Robotics though, modelling high-speed trains.

[Apocalypse Cow]

Here's an idea:

Auto Tech leads to highway improvement that is the same as railroads(10 movement) but has no coal requirement. Also allows building of national wonder, Superhighways(or Autobahn or Eisenhower Interstate System) that increases highway movement to 15, and roads by +1.

[TomVeil]

Originally posted by Apocalypse Cow
Here's an idea:

Auto Tech leads to highway improvement that is the same as railroads(10 movement) but has no coal requirement. Also allows building of national wonder, Superhighways(or Autobahn or Eisenhower Interstate System) that increases highway movement to 15, and roads by +1.

Problem: at least where I live (Washington, DC), the roads are made out of coal (asphalt) and the trains run on oil (diesel) or electricity.

[TomVeil]

The fact is, there's only one thing I can think of that roads do better than trains: travel through mountains. Troops and their supplies travel much faster by train because they can sleep and the train keeps going. But mountains are hell on trains. Cars, though, just zip up and down the hills. So how about an "auto" technology that makes the mountain peaks available for improvement and -- if you want to get really ambitious and realistic -- also reveals the mountain peaks to be chock full of mineral resources?