{The List-} Movement, supply, etc.

[frekk]

Originally posted by Modo44

I disagree here. You can know for sure that using a rail station in a city for military purposes effectively slows down other transport to and from the city. This specific city, not the nation in general. You cannot know if such a transport causes any problems to the rest of the empire. I don't like the idea of troop movements along my borders disrupting prodictivity in my core (i.e. lowering total tax revenue or whatever the effect would be). What I would like, however, is damaging economy in places where military transports actually occur. So if say 20 units pass throug a tile on the same turn, that tile should have production lowered for the turn. Tansporting the goods was difficult because of the military, so the tile "produced" less.

I hate rail sprawl, with a passion. Rails should be in lines, connecting cities and forts mostly. Rail sprawl is really ugly and just makes extra work and micromanagement. If rails have tile bonuses there will always be rail sprawl.

If tile bonuses are impossible to change for some reason, then I guess it is OK to do it that way. But I would like to get rid of tile bonuses, simplify economic effects like this, and abstract it to a national infrastructure level for ease of play.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by frekk
I hate rail sprawl, with a passion. Rails should be in lines, connecting cities and forts mostly. If rails have tile bonuses there will always be rail sprawl - and thus I cannot support such an idea.

Yes, I know what you mean. I really miss the Civ2 way of handling that.

But I really would like specific cities to be affected by whatever effects military rail transports make. Because, even if you have mostly city-to-city connections, you often get many of them, so the route you take may vary. So how about this: the choice you make would not be specific tiles, but rather specific cities. You send too many troops close to a city - that city gets some production problems because of it. This would not tie the effect to tiles, but would stil make it concentrate in places that actually see excess troop movement.

[frekk]

Originally posted by Modo44

Yes, I know what you mean. I really miss the Civ2 way of handling that.

IIRC .. civ2 had tile bonuses for rail. At least I seem to remember horrid sprawl, just much worse graphics.

But I really would like specific cities to be affected by whatever effects military rail transports make. Because, even if you have mostly city-to-city connections, you often get many of them, so the route you take may vary. So how about this: the choice you make would not be specific tiles, but rather specific cities. You send too many troops close to a city - that city gets some production problems because of it. This would not tie the effect to tiles, but would stil make it concentrate in places that actually see excess troop movement.

Ok, think about that this way. You might not do this, but lots of people will - they will always micromanage if there is a benefit to doing it, because no one wants to lose out.

You have a city that is about to produce a much-needed unit in the next round. At the same time, you want to rail a unit along the lines around that city. Now you have to go in the city screen and calculate how much production it will take and if it will delay the production of your unit - a pain in the butt.

You have a single infantry that needs to rail past 5 or 6 cities. It disrupts all their production. But railing 10 tanks twice as far outside your city radius doesn't disrupt any production at all.

You're building a rail, choosing a path. So you build it outside city limits because you don't want to lose the production. Your rail evades all your cities, when possible, snaking its way to the borders through the undeveloped land that falls outside city limits instead of connecting cities along the way. Where it can't avoid city radiuses, it connects to squares that aren't being used and have no production, strictly avoiding mines in particular.

You've just got your rails. A unit disrupts production moving through one of your cities. You notice the rail gives no tile bonus, and wonder why the production has become less when it was fine with just roads before? If the rail gave no bonus, what production was the unit disrupting?

Etc etc. There are just so many glitches with doing it that way. Working around them all would be really difficult.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by frekk
You have a city that is about to produce a much-needed unit in the next round. At the same time, you want to rail a unit along the lines around that city. Now you have to go in the city screen and calculate how much production it will take and if it will delay the production of your unit - a pain in the butt.

Exactly what makes a Sid player differ from an Emperor player. I like it. No, I never got above Emperor.

Originally posted by frekk
You have a single infantry that needs to rail past 5 or 6 cities. It disrupts all their production. But railing 10 tanks twice as far outside your city radius doesn't disrupt any production at all.

Yes and that's how it should work. To use large military transports you would need military railways. (Again the Germans - during WWII they built highways exclusively for the purpose of moving units and supplies.). But you would only need it after a certain free limit is used - that's my idea of your proposed rail capacity. It should be bigger when you are at peace and smaller when at war (during peace there's no rush, so local infrastructure doesn't need to be disrupted by military transports).

Originally posted by frekk
You're building a rail, choosing a path. So you build it outside city limits because you don't want to lose the production. Your rail evades all your cities, when possible, snaking its way to the borders through the undeveloped land that falls outside city limits instead of connecting cities along the way. Where it can't avoid city radiuses, it connects to squares that aren't being used and have no production, strictly avoiding mines in particular.

You are stil talking about rails which give tile bonuses. Imagine they don't. Imagine that running near to a city you simply make it lose a small percentage of it's production. The percentage is zero until you use up the rail capacity and after that each unit moved through adds a small amount (sort of like corruption).

And one more thing. You don't get "unclaimed" space between cities. This never happened in Civ, as it is simply not efficient. And even if it was, avoiding a city radius is only possible when you move out of your productive land anyway. So yes, military transports avoiding production centres would make perfect sense to me.

Originally posted by frekk
You've just got your rails. A unit disrupts production moving through one of your cities. You notice the rail gives no tile bonus, and wonder why the production has become less when it was fine with just roads before? If the rail gave no bonus, what production was the unit disrupting?

Apparently, moving units on roads needs to make the disruption even worse.

Like I said, I'd rather have any military units near citities affect the cities in general. That would differ in war and in peace times. A unit stationing during peace time gives a substantial commerce bonus to a city, whilst a unit during a war just eats on the city resources. Same goes for using roads and rails around the city. A unit moving in peace times can be moved at a slow pace and won't disrupt local transportation all that much, whilst during a war it will have to get through ASAP, taking advantage of all it can get and making economy suffer.

[frekk]

Originally posted by Modo44

Exactly what makes a Sid player differ from an Emperor player. I like it. No, I never got above Emperor.

There aren't enough Sid players to make the game profitable. Micromanagement sucks, anyway.

Yes and that's how it should work. To use large military transports you would need military railways.

Sure, but it will still look kind of strange when your main trunk lines are deliberately avoiding all your cities and mines. Unrealistic, one might even say. People are going to look at the game and think it's weird. How come you have no railways going to your iron and coal mines? How come it is, in fact, counterproductive to build a railway to your coal mine at all?

So yes, military transports avoiding production centres would make perfect sense to me.

If you're not getting tile bonuses, it won't be just your "military" transports. It will be the only rail lines you have, because the only reason you'll be building rail is to move units. The only rails lines you have will deliberately avoid all centres of production. More importantly, they will seriously avoid cities with factories - units will walk outside the city to get to rails (!!!). That looks unrealistic. Rails should be encouraged to go to mines and factories, no matter how you try to look at it. I don't mind taking that encouragement away by eliminating rail bonuses because rails will still hit mines by chance and definately head to factories to pick up units: unless they are discouraged from doing so by this penalty system for using them. If you looked at a map of railroads in in any country, some lines would be strictly military of course, but, the vast majority of lines would be going to factories and mines. Implementing a system which does the opposite is strange.

You are stil talking about rails which give tile bonuses. Imagine that running near to a city you simply make it lose a small percentage of it's production.

Again, we are back to the question: if you get no bonues from building railways, where is the production that they are disrupting? Why should they disrupt production that you were getting before you even had railways?

[Modo44]

Okay, first you say that railroad sprawl is bad, then you need it to live. Make up your mind, please, and be precise about it. Otherwise there's no way to talk to you, because you keep changing the basis of discussion.

[frekk]

I hate railroad sprawl. It doesn't need to live. There is no need for railroad sprawl unless you need to retain tile bonuses to reflect all this production that using the rails can supposedly disrupt, under this overly complex system of localized disruption. It's a silly system because if you don't keep tile bonuses, your production suffers because you discovered railroads. Forget about that system; if you just abstract it you don't need to worry about tile bonuses or weird looking railway paths or calculating lost production in this city and that city or any of that jazz.

Under the abstracted, simplified system, you don't need tile bonuses because rail capacity - not the amount of track that you have - generates a revenue bonus that goes to your treasury. Using the capacity to move troops means you don't get the bonus. So simple!

[Modo44]

Originally posted by frekk
Under the abstracted, simplified system, you don't need tile bonuses because rail capacity generates a revenue bonus. Using the capacity to move troops means you don't get the bonus. So simple!

First of all, I love Civ for it's complexity. If I want something simple, I go over to Total War and other "great streategy games".

Second, how do you propose to count the railroad commerce bonus? Because, somehow, I feel you will be running into the exact same problems my idea does, namely railroad sprawl of some sort. It's just that your idea is too simple and too far from reality for my taste.

[frekk]

The revenue bonus is calculated from unused rail capacity. Rail capacity is a global effect for your whole country. You get more rail capacity when you research different techs, so sprawl doesn't come into play at all - building more track doesn't help your capacity, but getting the "Diesel Engine" advance (or whatever) does.

Rail Capacity = sum of all bonuses from advances.

Rail revenue bonus = all rail capacity left over at the end of your round times N amount of gold

Tile bonuses don't even come into play: there is no need for them because of the revenue bonus.

As we've already been told, civ4 is NOT going to be any more complex than civ3 and there is going to be alot of streamlining. Introducing rail capacity at all - let alone some incredibly micromanagement-heavy system like you're saying - is going to add some complexity. Having a national way of getting a bonus for having trains, though, streamlines it a bit too because you don't have to go around building track everywhere. That cancels it out, and makes rails about the same amount of work in the game that they are now.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by frekk
building more track doesn't help your capacity, but getting the "Diesel Engine" advance (or whatever) does.

Okay, let me repeat myself. Steam engines can be used for war transports. That's an old technology and still one of the most reliable (even if expensive). No new technologies have changed that. And you need tracks to build your economy. Basically all heavy industry relies mostly on rail transports. Many others do as well. Without rails, and lots of them, a country couldn't function these days. The idea of not relying on rails just dosen't make sense.

What you don't want is not getting them everywhere, right? The problem is, even if they wouldn't give direct economical benefits, a player will put them all over the place, just to have his army there on time. My question is, can you stop that? To be more precise, how do you make a railroad sprawl truly too expensive to occur? Because if you won't, it will still occur.

[frekk]

Oh well that is simple. Make building rails take a looong time. You could still build track very fast in a line by using lots of workers, but it would be a waste to build it everywhere if you're not getting tile bonuses.

Also, don't forget, you've got roads once you get off the rail, and since you can only move a limited number of units it's going to be even less benefit to have rail everywhere. Only a few units will benefit. You might build a single line here and there that goes right up to your border, but there would be no reason to build rail in every square - if cities are only 3 or 4 squares apart you can get to any square in the interior by road anyway.

Steam engines aren't used for military transport except in third world countries these days. The US moves all its MBT's (the ones in the US itself anyway) by freight train because it keeps them in good condition and avoids wear and tear not just on the tanks, but on the roads and highways too - and they do so exclusively with diesel-electric locomotives. No steam engines.

[frekk]

Originally posted by Modo44

Steam engines can be used for war transports. That's an old technology and still one of the most reliable (even if expensive). No new technologies have changed that.

Welcome to the modern world.

[Modo44]

I know they are not used. Because most countries don't wage large wars, especially not in their territory.

Originally posted by frekk
Oh well that is simple. Make building rails take a looong time. You could still build track very fast in a line by using lots of workers, but it would be a waste to build it everywhere if you're not getting tile bonuses.

Believe me, it's not a problem to have 5 Workers per city to do that, when the time comes. Easy to do for a good player.

Originally posted by frekk
Also, don't forget, you've got roads once you get off the rail, and since you can only move a limited number of units it's going to be even less benefit to have rail everywhere. Only a few units will benefit. You might build a single line here and there that goes right up to your border, but there would be no reason to build rail in every square - if cities are only 3 or 4 squares apart you can get to any square in the interior by road anyway.

Wrong. Once at war, you want to be able to get everywhere without losing movement points, so a good player will have all tiles railroaded ASAP.

Originally posted by frekk
Steam engines aren't used for military transport except in third world countries these days. The US moves all its MBT's (the ones in the US itself anyway) by freight train because it keeps them in good condition and avoids wear and tear not just on the tanks, but on the roads and highways too - and they do so exclusively with diesel-electric locomotives. No steam engines.

During peace, when fuel is ready at hand and the territory safe from the enemy. Try doing that at a time, when you barely have fuel for the tanks. The point is, steam engines can be used without problems even when oil is hard to come by. A better technology is good for transportation, but only as long as you keep the war away from your core.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by frekk
...

Rail revenue bonus = all rail capacity left over at the end of your round times N amount of gold

Tile bonuses don't even come into play: there is no need for them because of the revenue bonus.

...

I think I've finally figured out why I was unhappy with this idea of unused rail = gold. Basically, every model of rails I've seen so far implemented has rails give a bonus to shield production, not to gold.

I think you kind of proposed this as an inverse of my using rails costs gold model. Your main arguemnt against that seemed to be the lack of gold that would effectively disable rails.

But by that stage, any civ on the path to winning will usually have a hefty surplus anyway, or can reduce reserach for a turn to make one. Giving extra gold for not using your rails simply makes the excess gold syndrome even worse.

[Max Sinister]

I also think that you shouldn't get a lot of revenue for some rails you built into the wilderness where you don't need them for transporting your troops (and neither would anyone else, in reality)