Railroads?

[Enigma_Nova]

Unless you've somehow built an undersea railroad to the invading location, the point seems somewhat moot.

Most likely, there will be railroads through the mountains - especially if the guy on the continent has artillery.

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I like the 'super highway' idea, move the infinite movement thingy back up the tech tree.
If roads are 1/3 make Railroads 1/7 or so. That will solve the army teleporting thing, which is far too cheesy IMO.

[Drachasor]

Well, there are two goals I think that need to be considered.

1. Elimination of infinite troop movement. It is unrealistic, and destroys depth in combat strategy.

2. Elimination of rails and roads being everywhere.

Solutions:

A. Reduce the benefit of rails to 1/9 or so, and have it upgradeable to higher levels. Eventually 1/18 or some such. Have road travel upgraded too, first when you hit the automobile, and later on as well. Car speed should never be as fast as rails though (unless you don't follow the rail speed upgrades at all). Good rails are always fast, even in modern times. Perhaps have the upgrades to rails be small wonders though, to show you must dedicate resources to it.

B. Allow everyone to use all road and rails freely, regardless of who built them. It is pretty obvious why this should be true for roads, and for rails one can just assume some sort of mechanism was jury rigged to allow this. This will mean you don't want them.

C. Eliminate all bonuses roads and rails give beyond movement. With B this will mean you don't want roads and rails everywhere, since the enemy can get troops on them very easily if they are too prevelent. If you are concerned about a coastal invasion, for instance, don't make nice high speed lanes for the enemy to use if they arrive.

D1. Make it harder to bombard rail and roads into oblivion. Perhaps give them a "damaged" state, that is repairable by any worker in 1 turn. Once this is reached it should be extremely difficult to damage the road.

D2. And/Or, use my idea of setting troops into a "Defensive" mode, wherein they automatically defend anything that is attacked. Have artillery automatically fire on anything in their radius that passes. Fighters should automatically scramble against enemy bombers that come into your territory. Perhaps let SAM batteries be build by workers inside forts, but give this a very long construction time. It would be nice to have some sort of ZOC back.

Net effect: It will be very hard to damage the road and rail network within a civilization, since a smart player will build fortifications and cities in a way to block and attack anything that tries to threaten them. Also, with defensive stance troops, you can have strategic troop placement, while still maintaining a movement advantage for linked cities. Sure, you can still spam roads and rails everywhere, but then you sacrifice time you could be spending to build defensive networks, more troops, and more improvements (since you'll need more workers).

Lastly, I think that regular tile improvements should give a 1/2 movement bonus when next to each other, and this should upgrade with the automobile to 1/4, and continue to improve with roads. This represents the fact that there are road/rail networks there, just primitive ones, smaller ones. It also makes there be less incentive to spam roads and rails everywhere for movement, since you'll get a bit of a bonus in the lesser used areas anyhow.

This way we wouldn't have to deal with infinite movement, the messiness of "loading" troops onto roads/rails, nor paying maintainence costs. While the last one is realistic, it is also a decided headache (hence very unfun).

-Drachasor

[Enigma_Nova]

Which, added into my 'limited links' idea will make a great system.

Some form of primitive link at a developed square... I don't see how you'd implement that; make a troop that passes over the square spend 2/3 of a movement point?

[lajzar]

Does anyone have any thoughts on an old idea of mine?

Tile improvements are road (1/3) and highway (1/5? 1/9?).

Rail depots are a city improvement, available before highway and after road. It allows redeployment of troops in a similar manner to the civ2 airport, for cities that are connected by roads. There is a gold cost for each unit moved by the rail depots.

[Enigma_Nova]

Does it cost the same gold to move units over 2 road connected tiles as it does over 20?

[lajzar]

Just to clarify that gold cost for using the rail depots.

If you are moving units with their usual movement allowance, there is no gold cost. Roads allow x3 speed, highways allow x5 (x9 ?) movement.

The rail depot allows you to move a unit instantly to any other city. The restrictions are:

1 - both cities must have a rail depot
2 - both cities must be connected by a road/highway network.
3 - The unit must start its turn in a city.
4 - Moving a unit by rail depot ends the unit's turn.
5 - Each unit moved by rail depot costs [n] gold for the movement, regardless of actual distance.

Essentially, the mechanic is the same as the civ2 airport, except the main limiting factor is gold instead of "one unit per turn".

Thus, normally, you'll want to keep your units in a good position for defence, but if necessary, you can spend hard cash to get your reserves in position in an emergency. Good players will have their defence arranged such that they won't usually need the rail move order.

Having rail depots as a city improvement also solves the issue of using "enemy" roads and rails. Roads and highways can always be used (its just a long thin hard piece of flat ground after all); rails require significant facilities to use, represented by rail depot city improvements. Theres no need for the civ3 "can't use enemy roads" rule.

[Enigma_Nova]

So basically it's a rehash of an old idea which avoids the central problem of infinite railway movement.
Right.

[Deathmerchant]

Originally posted by Drachasor
*Snip

Good post .

A) Yes.
B) Yes.
C) Yes.
D1) So you propose it would take two bombardments to destroy a road/railroad? Or just one to reduce a road into a rail, then another to destory it? Or more then that? I would favor three or four bomardments for a road, just so it isn't too easy, and think about it, to disrupt every different route you could take in that one square (think of it as a network of roads in a square, not just one) but I'd think it would be just a couple bombardments to destroy a rail network. Railroads should be a bit easier to destroy, I'd think anyway. This would all be effected by chance to, it may take 4 or 5 bombardments for a rail, if chance is against you.

D2) To a degree maybe, someone else had an idea about auto-defending land units, where they just zoom to a city being attacked automatically, I really wasn't in favor of that. But I'd say yes for the fighter and SAM batteries shooting bombers down, and artillary auto-shooting at approching enemies.

And great idea with the network of roads with terrain improvments. That would simulate grid roads that branch off major highways that connect cities. They are still there, but just not as fast of travel as highways are.

[Enigma_Nova]

Well, can't have a primitive road network on a per-tile improvement,
but can't have my 'linked nodes' idea either
(Where you install the link to one adjacent tile separately from the links to other adjacent tiles).

Which idea gets the nod and which gets the heave?

[Vince278]

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.

Considering the sea and air superiority the allies had at that point of the war I often wondered why they landed in France where the Germans were somewhat ready for them instead of going somewhere closer to the target, such as the Kiel area of Germany or even Denmark.

[Enigma_Nova]

Because Germany had Railroads, of course.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Because Germany had Railroads, of course.

Oh. I was talking about the real world (for a change... )

[Tassadar500]

I think he knew that.

[Enigma_Nova]

The real reason was because Germany had Land superiority on the direct assault path to Berlin.
So, the Allies attacked a different point.

But if Germany had Railroads, the allies would have been stuffed.

[Drachasor]

Here are some other reasons the allies did what they did:

1. Avoid having Germans east, west, and south of them.

2. They wanted to *liberate* Europe, so just going in and attacking Germany wouldn't have accomplished they. There still would have been large contingents of German troops elsewhere.

3. They wanted to have a direct line of supply for the troops, and to make it as unlikely as possible that the supplies lines could be attacked. As it was, Patton pushed things almost to the breaking point on the supply end.

-Drachasor