Keep infinite railroad movement?

[Datajack Franit]

No movement, bonus of 5 gold and 5 minerals if connected to other cities with a +1 for every city connected of the same civ.

[Straybow]

Troops driving trucks coast to coast could take a week with stops for rest and food. The train can move continuously while they eat and sleep to cover the distance in half the time. But that only makes sense if the game turns are maybe a week of time.

Civ isn't a tactical game, it is strategic. The turns are months or years in length. Movement is not based on speed, else motor units would have ten times the movement of foot units, and air units would have ten times the movement allowance of ground motor units.

Movement is an assessment of many factors of mobility and capacity. Unlimited rail works because it is simple; keep it both unlimited and simple.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Straybow
Unlimited rail works because it is simple; keep it both unlimited and simple.

But it is too much of a good thing. Put a kid in a candy store and watch him gorge himself into a stupor because of the unlimited goodies he has.

Or to use a civ3 analogy - watch a player pat himself on the back with the illusion of cleverness with an unlimited rails setup.

You already have the capability to move some units across the map with airports (as long as you have linking airports in place). That, to me, gives the player a measure of the unlimited movement ability - especially when you can mass-airdrop units into a city on a hostile front or critical area - or even deep within enemy territory (simply RB an airport there). You are limited by how many airports you have - yet it is still a powerful tool.

But you have that ability coupled with rails that provide unlimited movement for unlimited units, and it ends up becoming overkill.

As it stands now, being able to move unlimited units across the map because of a rail network eliminates the need for strategic tactics - this is a shame in a game that is based on strategic decisionmaking. Either limit how many units you can move on a rail network, or have the rail network have limited movement points, and you retain strategic planning.

Oh, and if you are concerned about management of units in a limited movement rails setup - autopath the units where you want them to go (but fix it so the units retain their autopathing if they are selected in transit...)

I want a game that makes me think!!! And I'm going to keep hammering on this weak gameplay design whenever it comes up.

[Addled Platypus]

quote:
@Spiffor: the discovery of a tech could increase your rail-speed

Now we are moving in the right direction

[Straybow]

As it stands now, being able to move unlimited units across the map because of a rail network eliminates the need for strategic tactics - this is a shame in a game that is based on strategic decisionmaking.

No, the dumness of the AI is the problem. A human opponent can limit the effectiveness of the defender's rails with a few well-placed units. If Civ4 has ZOCs (as it should) then blocking the defender's rails becomes much easier, maybe even for the AI.

[evilnerd15]

Perhaps the railroad should offer 10 free movement points. But perhaps there could be some sort of high-tech futuristic transportation system which would be offered at the end of the modern age. It which would act the same as railroads in civ3. You would be able to go anywhere on the rail instantly.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Me from page 6...

All this Rail Road nerfing gets me thinking.
In the US the Highway system if even MORE expensive and powerfull then the Rail system, you can go roughly as fast on it and its easier to get on and Off. Lets have "Highway" as a late game Super Transport system that Upgrades Roads, is more expensive then Rail Roads, requires some steep upkeep costs (1-3 gold per tile) and have most of the abilites of Old school Rails aka Infinite movment, geting on and off at any point, no need to board transports (were assuming vehicles are ubicuitous by this point).

This would give us 3 levels of Transportation.
Level 1 - Roads - reduce movment costs of terrain to a minimum, no maintance costs
Level 2 - Rails - reduce movment cost to zero but only for special "Locomotive" unit that can carry other units, pay maintance for each Depot
Level 3 - Highway - reduce movment costs of terrain to zero for all units. Pay maintance for each Tile of Highway.

[MxM]

It is interesting for the poll with the title "Keep infinite railroad movement?" there is no answer "yes".

[AeonOfTime]

@MxM: It is interesting for the poll with the title "Keep infinite railroad movement?" there is no answer "yes".

Errrm... I would say there is. A little breakdown of the poll at the time of writing:

- Implies that railroads stay with unlimited movement
Monetary/resource cost for railroad maintenance: 48
Monetary/resource cost for railroad usage: 20
No rail bonus in enemy territory (like Civ 3 model): 88
Total: 156 votes

- Implies that they don't
No free rail movement: 102
Skip the concept of Railroads: 3
Total: 105 votes

- Doesn't count (only when all units/tiles get the bonus or none get it)
Rail bonus only when travelling between cities: 20
Disallow heavy units from movement bonuses: 16
Utilization limit for railroads: 32
Other limitation: 14

So it's just an impression - there are merely more people against unlimited movement posting here than people defending it

[sophist]

This whole discussion suffers from a lack of consensus as to what exactly the problems are with railroads and how significant those problems are. I myself don't think that the players' ability to shuttle units around is the only thing that constitutes military strategy in civ. I think the status quo is better than any alternative mechanism I've seen, and there are much larger dragons to slay.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by sophist
This whole discussion suffers from a lack of consensus as to what exactly the problems are with railroads and how significant those problems are. I myself don't think that the players' ability to shuttle units around is the only thing that constitutes military strategy in civ. I think the status quo is better than any alternative mechanism I've seen, and there are much larger dragons to slay.

I don't know - I think different players have different preferences.

Some like the ease of moving infinite number of units instantaneously for quicker gameplay, but at the price of actual longterm planning.

Others would rather have to face possible complications because they may have had their units out of position. It's rather hard in an infinite movement setup to have that happen...

Others would like to have to make decisions of what Tile improvement to build at that time period of the game, rather than coating the map with rails because it is idiotic not to do so.

If they only would give players the ability to mod the movement, rather than hardcoding 'infinite movement' as they did in civ3, I wouldn't care if the game shippped with infinite movement as the standard. At least I could change it myself for my own setup.

[AeonOfTime]

@hexagonian: I think different players have different preferences

Good point. I guess we are forgetting that Civ is also such a great game because it allows a huge palette of playstyles.

I like railroads and the unlimited movement because it simplifies keeping track of your army a lot. This is how I normally proceed:

I gather and stack all units in one place, with one stack for each unit type. That way I know how many cavaleries, infantry, tanks etc. I have at my disposal for that turn - a great help for deciding what I will be able to do... destroy those attackers at spot x, then add some defense to city x, if I have enough units left, maybe even attack city x.

The next turn, I regroup all units that are able to fight, add any newly built units to these stacks and move all units that need healing to a city near the gathering spot and I start all over.

That would be impossible to do without unlimited movement - I would have to take into account how far I can go with each unit, keep track of where units are built, and in case there are several battle fronts, manage each one separately.

So I like unlimited movement as it gives me more flexibility and because it is much simpler. Then again, I would not refrain from buying Civ4 if that feature is out - I would have to adapt to the new way of handling things, and if it is a fractional movement modifier, fine - I like changes and finding new ways to adapt.

[sophist]

Originally posted by hexagonian

I don't know - I think different players have different preferences.

Which is exactly my point. Different people think different things are different problems with differing degrees of significance. As a result, you won't get any consensus on what the right solution is.

People who think rail blight is ugly will buy into maintenance. People who think infinite movement are unrealistic will prefer making railroads more like ordinary roads. People who think unlimited infinite movement is too powerful will favor capacity limits. People who think it's the production bonuses that suck will favor just getting rid of those. And then there are the people who may agree with any and all of those problems but think all of the proposed cures are worse than the disease.

At this point, I'm in the last group. I'd rather have infinite movement, warts and all, than the micromanagement hell of capacity, the inconsistency (with other types of improvements) of maintenance, or the pointlessness of roads++. I realize I'm overlooking some of the other proposed solutions, but I'm just summarizing.

[hexagonian]

Go to the last part of my last post - instead of hardcoding the feature as 'infinite movement' Firaxis could give rails the ability to move a near-infinite number of tiles (plug in a number like 1,000,000,000 as the baseline and for all intents and purposes, you have infinite movement) and people could do what they want through the editor.

Something that Firaxis had refused to do for rails up through c3c...This little omission in the civ3 gamecode had locked the game into this format with no means to alter it, other than to move rails to the last tech in the game.

That's why I keep hammering on the point. Give players the means to change it so they can keep rails in some sort of format in the game. I'm not opposed to rails, but the inability to format it to better suit deeper strategic considerations is frustrating.

To put it in perspective...
I can easily create infinite rails in CTP2. I can also give them any kind of production/commerce/food bonus that I want. Heck, I can even make them cost gold/production/or food on a turn-by-turn basis.

I cannot do the same in civ3, and I hope that is not the case for civ4.

[sophist]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Go to the last part of my last post - instead of hardcoding the feature as 'infinite movement' Firaxis could give rails the ability to move a near-infinite number of tiles (plug in a number like 1,000,000,000 as the baseline and for all intents and purposes, you have infinite movement) and people could do what they want through the editor.

Ok, sure, whatever. I don't care about the mods. I want the official game as released to be good. I think most of the people who say that the solution is to mod the game will do so and then play about 10 turns before changing it back. It's a much more complicated issue than people seem to think, which is why there's no consensus. Everyone sees a different part of it.

Incidentally, your suggestion is quite likely unnecessary. It's a way of making infinite railroads work in the official game while allowing mods that change that, assuming that the only way to do it is by changing a number in some data file somewhere. That's not really a good assumption to make. For one thing, they've been emphasizing the customizability of the game. For another, that only would enable one of the proposed alternatives. It leads proponents of maintenance or capacity out in the cold. In theory, Firaxis could make those settable parameters as well, but there are other ones that wouldn't be so easy, and there's a limit to how much you can reasonably parameterize things. They might as well just expose the implementation code and let people have at it directly, which is what I expect they'll do. It's just far easier for them and for us.