Railroads?

[Octavian X]

Originally posted by CyberShy
repost of the idea

Pherhaps a better idea:
roads: 1/3
railroads: 1/9
superhighways: infinite. maintanance: 1gold/tile/turn

That forces you to think about the places you want to build superhighways. You most probably will only connect cities through superhighways and not flood your entire country with it.

I really do like this idea, except for the idea of superhighway maintanence. That gets expensive after a while, I would think, even for just connecting cities. Maybe .1g, rounded up.

There's also have to be another factor to prevent a player from just building superhighways all over the place, just as one does currently with railroads. Maybe, rather than terrain improvments, superhighways could be individual city improvments. For example, in the build menu for City A, options 'Superhighway to City B, Superhighway to City C, etc.' would be present.

[Fosse]

Just adding my voice to the cacophony....

Infinite movement is a terrible design, and breaks late game combat. Make it some other fraction. I would say 1/6.

I am in favor of no economic bonus to the tile rail is built on, but additional income to cities that are connected by rail. Also, a gold per tile (1 or .5, assuming that gold is worth about the same as in previous games) upkeep.

Rails everwhere will bankrupt you.
Rails connecting cities directly will make you a little cash.
The ideal military rail network (best defense grid possible, and lines to all fronts) might cost a little bit, or maybe break even.

The map looks nice, combat isn't broken, and there is a little thinking involved in your rail network.

[Robert]

I really do like this idea, except for the idea of superhighway maintanence. That gets expensive after a while, I would think, even for just connecting cities. Maybe .1g, rounded up.

That may be a better solution indeed. Or pherhaps 1g / 5 tiles (or x tiles) of superhighway.

Maybe, rather than terrain improvments, superhighways could be individual city improvments.

I prefer the system in which the worker has to build the roads. Pherhaps a city can make a highway-ring around the city, which is needed to connect the superhighways to.

And you can put a worker in a city and chose: "Create highway to....." option

Intersting idea, but it still eliminates the importance of troop placement.

This can be implemented by taking a one-turn penaly from any unit that wants to travel over the superhighway.

Thus: you can get from whatever point on the continent to whatever point at the other side of the continent, it'll always take you 2 turns anyway. (1 for getting ready to travel and 1 for traveling)

For short distances one can take the ordinary railroad for only 1/9 (with no start penalty)

[Lawrence of Arabia]

also, with less railroads (seeing how they would cost,) artillery and bombers would have to be a lot more expensive to both build and upkeep so that you cant cripple an entire civ in one strike - or then decrease their bombard strength, or keep bombard strength same and make roads a lot harder to destroy with bombard. railroad same to destroy roads a lot harder (which is true in real life, bombing a railroad will destroy it, bombing a road will keep the road there unless you really bomb it)

[rickontherun_21]

make it so you have to embark/disembark from train/superhighways and that would take a turn

[Drachasor]

Errr, 1 turn to get on or off a railroad? That is a lot less realistic than 1/9 or 1/12 rail movement (upgradeable to higher values), and a lot more annoying too. Same with the maintainence cost. Also, charging 1 turn to load eliminates the usefulness of that transit system...at that point you might as well use the airport.

Just remove the bonuses to trade and production given by rails/roads, and give them a high, but limited movement. Perhaps increase the number of turns it takes to make a rail (perhaps). Then you will only see rails and roads used for actual travel purposes, no ugly glut. It is a lot easier to deal with than ideas about unloading and loading from rail, easier to tell in-game (can you defend a city if you are loaded on the rail inside it?). This is the simplest solution I think.

Then, as I said, let units be set to a "defensive" mode. This would be like fortify/sleep, with a unique graphic. When a city within a 1 turn movement is attacked, then 1 by 1 they will go to the city to defend it if the defenders there are defeated. Movement for these purposes should ignore enemy ZOC (if it exists), so the only way to stop it would be to fully surround a city.

These changes would make strategy in unit placement have a much bigger role in the post-rail game. It would make it so you can adequately defend you cities as well, without being an overpowering change. If you somehow can't find ways to place the troops you need within 20-30+ tiles of where you need them (remember, almost all units late game have 2+ movement), then that is something you need to work on; not something you need a crutch to prop up.

You shouldn't punish people for building rails (by making it cost money/turn), nor should you punish people for using them with a load/unload time (heck, it doesn't take time to load on to a ship, now does it?) Instead make rails useful and fun, but find ways to get rid of the usefulness of putting rails everywhere. As for highways, well, there is no reason why roads shouldn't eventually become 1/6 or 1/9, say an increase when you get the automobile, and another later on. By then your rails will probably be superior, but both would be handy.

-Drachasor

[Lawrence of Arabia]

and the only way to make sure rails arnt everywhere is to make them cost money. if they dont cost, people will still put them everywhere so that when one tile gets bombarded, they still have road/rail link to their luxeries and strategic resources.

[SpencerH]

Infinite railroad movement has to go, but only if naval landings are much more limited in where they can be done. It's impossible to protect an entire coastline without infinite rail movement and nonsense to think modern armies can just pick up sail around the globe for 20 years then land whereever they please. The problem could easily be solved with another terrain type that allows modern units to come ashore (marines would be allowed to land anywhere).

[Fosse]

It should be impossible to protect an entire coastline. Can you imagine building a military large enough to actually defend even a small country's entire shore?

That being said, units should not be able to disembark onto mountaintops. But I don't see the need to limit navy landings beyond one or two terrain types. Navies are already useless enough, and efforts should be made to increase their power.

If the other guy's navy can land almost anywhere, and you don't have the ability to teleport to them on rails, then you have to actually think about your defenses strategically. That's a huge gain.

[Enigma_Nova]

The only way to prevent rails being built everywhere is to make building the rail useless.

If it costs the same to maintain an A->B connection as it does to maintain a A->(B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I) connection, then people will probably keep spamming the increased number of connections.

Make rails a path between 2 squares rather than a tile in a specific square.
That way a hub with 8 rails coming out of it would in effect be 8 rails - build time and maintenance applies.

You just might see a strategic network forming, with rails running along coasts or through mountains and between bases without the mess of having all 3 lines form an ugly pattern.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Fosse
It should be impossible to protect an entire coastline. Can you imagine building a military large enough to actually defend even a small country's entire shore?

That being said, units should not be able to disembark onto mountaintops. But I don't see the need to limit navy landings beyond one or two terrain types. Navies are already useless enough, and efforts should be made to increase their power.

If the other guy's navy can land almost anywhere, and you don't have the ability to teleport to them on rails, then you have to actually think about your defenses strategically. That's a huge gain.

The point is you shouldnt have to defend the entire coastline. Its impossible to land modern troops just anywhere. Do you think that the allies would have attacked Normandy in the face of Hitlers 'fortress Europe' if they could sail any old where and attack at any point.

The fact is that infinite rail movement allows you to defend against naval invasions at unreasonable locations. The answer is to limit where modern units can land and thereby allow reasonable (limited) rail movement.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
The only way to prevent rails being built everywhere is to make building the rail useless.

If it costs the same to maintain an A->B connection as it does to maintain a A->(B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I) connection, then people will probably keep spamming the increased number of connections.

Make rails a path between 2 squares rather than a tile in a specific square.
That way a hub with 8 rails coming out of it would in effect be 8 rails - build time and maintenance applies.

You just might see a strategic network forming, with rails running along coasts or through mountains and between bases without the mess of having all 3 lines form an ugly pattern.

I like that although again, infinite rail movement would need to be stopped.

[Enigma_Nova]

Infinite rail movement was indeed dumb.
If my enemy had lost all my troops, I could take his entire continent in one turn with just one unit.
"Day 23: Killed all resistance in New Orleans, which had conveniantly been waiting on the railway tracks for my locomotive. Moving on to St. Louis."

[Tassadar500]

When would an AI never have any units?

[Deathmerchant]

Originally posted by SpencerH


The point is you shouldnt have to defend the entire coastline. Its impossible to land modern troops just anywhere. Do you think that the allies would have attacked Normandy in the face of Hitlers 'fortress Europe' if they could sail any old where and attack at any point.

The fact is that infinite rail movement allows you to defend against naval invasions at unreasonable locations. The answer is to limit where modern units can land and thereby allow reasonable (limited) rail movement.

Alright, Hitler's forces at normandy were not the strongest forces he had on the Western Coast. Hitler assumed that the allies would attack at the shortest point possible between Britan and France, which is where he concentrated his defence, Normandy happens to be about twice that distance. So Hitler -did- have a tough time defending all that coastline. If he could have teleported all of his army to normandy via railroad, the invasion of normandy would have easily failed.

But reading your post again, I see that this probablly wasn't your point. Your point was not allowing troops to land anywhere and everywhere they want? Which makes perfect sense, but now we have to wonder where they can and can't land. If your entire coastline consists of open grassland, well, tough luck, they should be able to invade anywhere they want to in that scenario. If half of your coastline is mountain, the other half is grassland, well, you would be forced to land on the grassland. Or should you? Why can't I land my units on mountains? Sure it would take em awhile to get up those slopes, but they should still be able to find some way up, shouldn't they? Should it depend on how steep the mountians are? What about how well equipped your troops are? Should some units be able to land and some not?

Well, what if my coastline was entirely mountains, steep, frozen, lifeless mountians. Well I'd say that you should probablly find another way around. But what if I had a crack infantry divison that specializes in climbing mountains. Why shouldn't I be able to land then?

Or should we just simplify the entire thing and say that nobody can land on mountians? Or what if we had a different type of coastline that didn't allow the landing of troops? So it depended on the coastline rather then the type of terrain that you're landing on?

Just a few questions to ask yourself when considering this.

(Sry for the slight threadjacking at the end, but the start of my post had a paragraph about the evilness of infinite rail movement. )