Railroads?

[Drachasor]

Hmm, you need construction dates on all culture producing buildings for one. Maybe they are lazy and also save the culture levels and other things that can be deduced from construction dates too. Hmm, if they are lazy in a few other areas, then that could account for it.

However, I don't see how they could get all that lazy with the tile-edge road system. Not to the extent where it would add much to current saved games.

-Drachasor

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Drachasor
Hmm, you need construction dates on all culture producing buildings for one. Maybe they are lazy and also save the culture levels and other things that can be deduced from construction dates too. Hmm, if they are lazy in a few other areas, then that could account for it.

Yes, I've guessed something like that... if you've got to save every culture level for every civ on every tile, that's a lot of data...

Originally posted by Drachasor
However, I don't see how they could get all that lazy with the tile-edge road system. Not to the extent where it would add much to current saved games.

Maybe it was the path-finding algorithm or so...

[lajzar]

*deleted by Bob for national security reasons*

[mrmitchell]

I missed a lot of this thread, but add me to the "infinite with option to change it" camp.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Deathmerchant
Please explain your argument further, I don't understand why we can't make it just a better road. It would allow a 3 or 4 turn delay from forces that are tied up elsewhere. I would think that this is perfect. A sneak attack on a border city shouldn't be able to get a 'rush order' of your entire army into the city within seconds.

Micromanagement. Plus, you'll still probably have RR every tile.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Drachasor
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.

No! No more taking over an entire civ in one turn with howitzers!

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Kucinich
No! No more taking over an entire civ in one turn with howitzers!

Well, listen to my entire idea next time. I wanted non-infinite RR movement, and non-sprawled RR. Additionally I advocated that you should be able to set soldiers to auto-defend nearby cities (say within a turns movement radius given non-infinite RR movement).

All these together would mean you couldn't take out an entire Civ in one turn. You might be able to conquer some of it, but you couldn't get too far because of spread out auto-defenders. If you pushed yourself too far, then you'd have to deal with the counter-attack (and attacks on parts of your empire). Since you wouldn't have unlimited RR movement you wouldn't be able to toss most/all of your army at one person.

-Drachasor

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Micromanagement. Plus, you'll still probably have RR every tile.

You give the player the ability to lockgroup worker units into a type of unit like you currently have with armies (at the same time you get the ability to build rails), give that uber worker unit an additional bonus over and above what the individual workers within that uber worker unit would have (to create incentive to the player to use that system). The end result is you cut down on the total worker entities in the game.

You do that to reduce micromanagement rather than keeping infinite movement and its strategy-killing format.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Kucinich

Originally posted by Deathmerchant
Please explain your argument further, I don't understand why we can't make it just a better road. It would allow a 3 or 4 turn delay from forces that are tied up elsewhere. I would think that this is perfect. A sneak attack on a border city shouldn't be able to get a 'rush order' of your entire army into the city within seconds.

Micromanagement. Plus, you'll still probably have RR every tile.

No, there are plenty of ways to eliminate the need and desire for RRs on every tile:

1. Allow anyone to use anyone else's rail and road.

2. Restore ZOC (right of passage eliminates ZOC issues though). At least restore ZOC to units in forts and cities.

3. Eliminate everything but movement bonuses from having a rail line through a tile. (Instead have bonuses for having a city connected to other cities).

4. Reduce the rail bonus from infinite movement to something more reasonable, like 1/6 at first and later upgradeable to something like 1/9 or 1/12.

The above 4 things alone would make it unadviseable to waste your time building rails everywhere. Not only do they give no tile benefit, but they'd make it easier for the enemy to move around your territory.

Some other points could aid this even more:

5. Let all tile improvements that aren't roads give 1/2 movement (upgadeable later if roads get an upgrade). This means that your workers can move around more easily in the improved radius of a city. This represents that road support network that would exist, and how it would be less efficient for unit movements compared to the main roads.

6. Add a "defend" order to troops. This acts like fortify/sleep in that you have to cancel it to give the troop another order. The effect of "defend" is that the troop would move to defend any fort or city within some X square radius if all the defenders there were beaten. If stacked combat is used then this order would be given to the entire stack. Lastly, if the troops couldn't get to the location in 1 turn, then they can't defend it (perhaps have this be the limited factor as opposed ot the X square radius).

7. Similarly, allow artillery that is fortified to counter-attack enemy artillery that is within ranged. This includes attacks by enemy artillery on your improvements (such as roads), which aren't directly against the counter-attack unit.

Six and seven in particular helps a fairly significant problem in TBS's. The fact that you can get blitzed by someone only because you aren't allowed to mobolize your troops until it is your turn again. This makes the game more dynamic, and it makes defense more important, since you can defend more effectively (almost as effectively as you can attack).

All the points together change late game combat dramatically. As you can't count on blitzing someone, as they will have more capable defenses at their borders, and ones you can't easily get around. Also, you can't rush an assault on someone and not watch your back, since you no longer have the crutch of unlimited RR movement to rapidly move troops to the opposite side of your empire.

Naturally you'll have less roads because they are less needed, and less vulnerable to being knocked out. If you want them even less vulnderable to being knocked out you can add in this point:

8. Allow the building of roads/RR upon already existing roads/RRs. This "doubling" (and even "tripling") up means that it takes that many more successful artillery blasts to knock out.

This isn't anything I haven't said before, but I think I've put it is less spread out than it was (at least 1 or 2 of the points are).

Oh, and the corollary of needing less roads is that you'll have fewer workers, since you don't need to be building as many tile improvements.

-Drachasor

[Deathmerchant]

Originally posted by Drachasor
*Snip
6. Add a "defend" order to troops. This acts like fortify/sleep in that you have to cancel it to give the troop another order. The effect of "defend" is that the troop would move to defend any fort or city within some X square radius if all the defenders there were beaten. If stacked combat is used then this order would be given to the entire stack. Lastly, if the troops couldn't get to the location in 1 turn, then they can't defend it (perhaps have this be the limited factor as opposed ot the X square radius).
*Snip
-Drachasor

I like every one of your ideas, (great ideas, btw), except this one. I just don't like the idea of having units auto-move to cities under attack. Seems to.. cheezy. If you didn't have enough defenders in the city, or you underestimate the size of the opponent, you deserve to lose the city. Its an idea, for sure, just one that I wouldn't like to see in the game.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Deathmerchant I like every one of your ideas, (great ideas, btw), except this one. I just don't like the idea of having units auto-move to cities under attack. Seems to.. cheezy.

Agreed. It should be up to the player to defend his territory, rather than simply dump a bunch of troops into centrail cities. Please no auto-moving defenders!

[Drachasor]

Well, the only problem with non-autmoving defenders is that it gives the attacker a huge advantage. If they can choose between any 10 of your cities to attack, and you have to split your defenses among those 10 cities, then they'll end up going through quite a number of cities. Unless I am missing something.

Perhaps you two would feel more comfortable if the defending radius was much smaller? Anyhow, my thought was that you could combat this as the attacker by destroying the rail lines into the city. Hmm, anyhow, the disadvantage would be they'd be defending unfortified.

Anyhow, the idea was to balance the mobility of the attackers with increased defender mobility. The main problem you get with a TBS is that attackers can get a huge advantage because they won't meet any response to their attack until after they have moved all of their units. It could do with some sort of improvment.

-Drachasor

[lajzar]

I regard the fact that the defenders need more men than the attackers as a valid strategic choie that has to be made, not as a chore tht needs to be gotten rid off.

[Drachasor]

If, as a defender, you have to spend a lot more time and resources defending yourself, then you might as well attack. If you attack you get more cities, which means more of everything.

Basically the current system really favors a first-strike, and I don't care for that much. (This sin't as evident with the computer AI because it is really bad at massing troops).

-Drachasor

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Drachasor
No, there are plenty of ways to eliminate the need and desire for RRs on every tile:

1. Allow anyone to use anyone else's rail and road.

Not only does this not work (this provides a disincentive to any rail network), but it's ****ing stupid. Maybe you do, but I don't want to go back to the days of "take over an entire country with howitzers in one turn".

2. Restore ZOC (right of passage eliminates ZOC issues though). At least restore ZOC to units in forts and cities.

This doesn't have anything to do with it.

3. Eliminate everything but movement bonuses from having a rail line through a tile. (Instead have bonuses for having a city connected to other cities).

That wasn't part of your original proposal. I've supporteed this since the beginning.

4. Reduce the rail bonus from infinite movement to something more reasonable, like 1/6 at first and later upgradeable to something like 1/9 or 1/12.

That just makes rail in general less useful. People

5. Let all tile improvements that aren't roads give 1/2 movement (upgadeable later if roads get an upgrade). This means that your workers can move around more easily in the improved radius of a city. This represents that road support network that would exist, and how it would be less efficient for unit movements compared to the main roads.

Or just give workers infinite movement on roads, with a certain tech (probably the same one that gives RR's).

6. Add a "defend" order to troops. This acts like fortify/sleep in that you have to cancel it to give the troop another order. The effect of "defend" is that the troop would move to defend any fort or city within some X square radius if all the defenders there were beaten. If stacked combat is used then this order would be given to the entire stack. Lastly, if the troops couldn't get to the location in 1 turn, then they can't defend it (perhaps have this be the limited factor as opposed ot the X square radius).

Way too complicated...

7. Similarly, allow artillery that is fortified to counter-attack enemy artillery that is within ranged. This includes attacks by enemy artillery on your improvements (such as roads), which aren't directly against the counter-attack unit.

It already gets a chance to - arty moves at one square per turn, so in fact the defender gets the first shot.