Keep infinite railroad movement?

[Optimizer]

What kind of railroad model would we like for Civ 4?

[korn469]

I think that all units should have the same movement across railroads, like 10 or 12 spaces for each unit, regardless of their movement. Also this shouldn't count against their movement points. This means a 1 move archer and a 3 move tank would both move the same on a railroad, but after they finish their railroad move, the tank could still move farther. Unlimited railroad movement diminishes the power of air and sea units which already suffer under current rules.

[realpolitic]

If you do have a resource cost for rail movement, keep it small, it should be much less than the maintence cost for moving it by road, or nothing.

[alms66]

I just voted, but would like to add that a monetary/resource maintenance cost should be applied to all terrain improvements. Roads & Railroads should grant no other bonus, but the movement bonus.

[Snotty]

I love railroad infinite movement

From a realism point of view, it represents the revolution that came with the steam and combustion engines, and they develpoment of the infastructure needed to use those really fast engines. It would take me about a week to cycle to the south west tip of england at 60 miles day, how far could medieval troops force march day after day? But with the infastructure with cars or trains it takes about 8 hours (and they dont need to sleep on longer journeys).

For the games purposes the combustion revolution really does create relatively instant travel

[Maquiladora]

Infinite RR movement

These are the kind of concepts we can look forward to in civ4 with a lead designer interested primarily in the AI's performance.

[Inverse Icarus]

Railroads should act as they do in real life, they connect cities quickly.

Units in a city should use a "GOTO" window, and select another city connected by rails. They should get there instantly, but lose all movement points.

This make RRs a lot more defensive, rather than offensive, and is a bit more true to life. Then again, I don't think railroads should plaster every tile, but thats just me, I guess.

(psst... Railroad upkeep.)

[Nikolai]

It's much better to have infinite RR movement, than to have a tank use some years to cross a continent. And if this should turn out to be removed, then there should be different movement rates in different world sizes.

BTW, check out the thread link in my sig(Terrain) for some of the previous discussion.

[Modo44]

Civ3 movement is almost good. It should probably get small changes to avoid the Railroad-blitz, but that's it.

[Dauphin]

Keep RR as infinite, just make the build time longer.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Snotty
It would take me about a week to cycle to the south west tip of england at 60 miles day, how far could medieval troops force march day after day? But with the infastructure with cars or trains it takes about 8 hours (and they dont need to sleep on longer journeys).

Have you ever tried to use SouthWest trains?

[Guardian]

I voted for 3 options: "No rail bonus in enemy territory (like Civ 3 model)", "Utilization limit for railroads - only a limited number of units can get rail bonus from a square each turn" and "Monetary/resource cost for railroad maintenance".

Now, the way I envision this is as follows: Your railroad system has a certain maximum capacity, for game purposes represented by a maximum number of units that can be moved for free by rail each turn. Now, you can increase the capacity of the rail system to allow for more units to be transported, but that would increase the maintenance cost of the rail system. So, I imagine you'd have a default number of "free unit moves" which would be related to the total size of your railroad network, and then you could choose to increase capacity beyond default values - for a certain price.

Now I see a couple of people voted for "Rail bonus should only apply when travelling between cities". In my opinion, this is a silly artificial limitation that has nothing to do with realism. Trains don't need a city to be able to stop! Of course, if we're talking tanks, artillery and heavy equipment, it may be a bit of a hassle to unload this in the middle of a forest, but it's really quite amazing what the military can do in times of war. If Civ 4 is to be the greatest Civ game of all times, the last thing we need is to add silly, unrealistic limitations!

"Disallow tanks, cavalry and other heavy units from rail movement bonuses"
Once again, we're talking silly, unrealistic limitations that I hope we'll never see. Disallowing tanks and cavalry from traveling by rail makes about as much sense as disallowing them from traveling on roads! Moving big, bulky, heavy stuff from A to B in a fast, cheap and efficient way is exactly where the railroad is second to none and always has been.

Originally posted by Modo44
Civ3 movement is almost good. It should probably get small changes to avoid the Railroad-blitz, but that's it.

You mean moving a bunch of workers into newly captured territory to build railroads the same turn you captured it and then move your forces through at no movement cost to attack the next city within that same turn? Yeah, I do that a lot in the late game. The Zulus once went from being the second largest empire in the world to being completely wiped out in just 2 turns, thanks to this strategy. Perhaps that was a little "over the top", but I'm not so sure we want to get rid of the "railroad blitz" capability alltogether.

Think of it. In a standard Civ game, one turn represents a whole year or more. Historically, there are more than a few examples of railroads being built in a matter of weeks during times of war.

[alva]

In a standard Civ game, one turn represents a whole year or more. Historically, there are more than a few examples of railroads being built in a matter of weeks during times of war.

Oh man, I'm so sick of this argument...it doesn't allright, all it does is add a bit of flavour, it's sounds better than reading that you are currently playing "turn 267". That's all there is to it.

only a limited number of units can get rail bonus from a square each turn"

Not against this in principle but the thing, all one would have to do is build parellel rail-roads to work-around that limitation and this force more MM on the player.
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I personally really dislike unlimitted movement, in each and every game I have played, I started loosing interest as soon as railroads came online.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by alva

In a standard Civ game, one turn represents a whole year or more. Historically, there are more than a few examples of railroads being built in a matter of weeks during times of war.

Oh man, I'm so sick of this argument...it doesn't allright, all i does is ad a bot of flavour, it's sounds better than reading that you are currently playing "turn 267". That's all there is to it.

Well, all right. I agree that the "1 turn = 1 year" thing is not to be interpreted too strictly, since a lot of things tend to make very little sense if you do. (Travel times and build times way too long, aircraft can only fly one mission per year, etc...)

But that's not really the point here anyway. Even if we suppose that a turn could represent a month, a week or even just a couple of days, it would still be possible to build a railroad in that time if you had the manpower, the resources and the will to do so.

only a limited number of units can get rail bonus from a square each turn"

Not against this in principle but the thing, all one would have to do is build parellel rail-roads to work-around that limitation and this force more MM on the player.

Not if you're a railroad freak like myself who likes to plop down railroads all over the place in any case. If you don't like the "micromanagement" this entails, then just pop out a few workers and set them up for automatic railroad construction.

I personally really dislike unlimitted movement, in each and every game I have played, I started loosing interest as soon as railroads came online.

I don't see why. There's nothing even remotely unrealistic about placing your units on a train and having them travel across your nation in a single turn. Of course, if your empire covers half the planet and you're thinking 1 turn = 1 day, then sure - that would be stretching it a little, but even a nation the size of the USA can be crossed from coast to coast in less than 3 days.

[alva]

I don't dislike it because of anything time related but because it kills all strategy and it just becomes a clickfest.
"mm, should I defend my eastern front against that AI that will invade me for sure any turn now? Nah, I'll just recall everything on the completely other side once he does."

I dislike it because it becomes too easy.