Keep infinite railroad movement?

[Proteus_MST]

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[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Xorbon


From a realism point of view, it would make more sense if movement on rails was fixed instead of dependent on movement points. That is, infantry should be able to go as far as cavalry or tanks when on rails.

Good point.
It could give you plain 20 MP regardless of the type of unit (after which you couldn´t move the Unit you transported (as it has to be unloaded for the rest of the turn)

[GreenCrescent]

Remove Infinite movement

There are two reasons why infinite RR movement needs to be removed. First it doesn't sit well that you can move halfway across the continent in one turn with a cavalry unit on a railroad and then proceed to move across a whole enemy city radius and capture a city whilst a Modern Armor has to wait a turn after it has been airlifted. Wasn't the whole point behind strategic airlift be that it can get you somewhere faster than a train or ship ever could?
Secondly with inifinite railroads the game becomes highly defensive. It depends less on your position of attack (hitting the enemy in weakly defended area, like MacArthurs invasion of Inchon or the Schwartkopf's attack into southern Iraqand not just Kuwait in the first Gulf War), and more on how many units you have compared to your opponent. Limited railroad movement (1/4 or 1/5) will reintroduce a level of defensive strategy lost in the civ games once the industrial age rolled around. The industrial benefits of the railroad (like perhaps three extra shields for hills and two for plains) should be emphasized instead

[Toby Rowe]

I'd go for stopping infinite Railway movement the moment the AI stopped cheating on knowing every unit you have in each city. Until then, it's needed to counter that huge cheat. (not having the reload facility would turn the game into a parody of Civ.

The publishers simply had to make research 8x/9x etc longer for a challenge on the harder levels, instead they wasted hundreds of hours programming in AI cheats.

The result was a game based upon cheating, rather than the players skill level, forgivable, but poor.

Why dovote all that time to cheating if you could simply programme the player research "power" at 1/10th of the AI speed? Simple.

I wish to to do as best I can, knowing the AI will simply cheat more on these higher levels is a real disincententive.- I have nothing to measure my performance against.

Toby

[Toby Rowe]

Originally posted by Sava
infinite rail movement?!? Sure why not... but I wish it was different

unfortunately, the passage of time is the problem with CIV games, I'd like to see a system more like HoI and Eu2 where the passage of time is more realistic. That way, moving a unit across a large area doesn't take 200 years.

Cheers mate,

Nice to get a bit of support about this attitude: a very few "seasoned" players have on a gaming board.

A player starts to learn a game as a new player, if he or she plays often enough they become "seasoned".

A decent "seasoned" player helps new players rather than deriding them for being a new player, they actually answer the question, however stupid it might seem to the seasoned player......

The sense of community and ethos of the internet may be lost if we get "you newbies" type of attitude for simply asking a question.

I certainly don't believe people sit there asking questions for the fun of typing:- they actually desire an answer.

Being called a "newbie" is a plain insult within the internet (now) as we are all "newbies" in any game we play at start. It has to be the most meaningless attitude I've ever witnessed in society.

Toby

[Wai_Wai]

Features to Remove
RailRoad should not have infinite movement bonus.
Remove the +1 bonus to every railed tile

Reasons:
- it is unreasonable. How come you can move in anywhere in no time? A rail can be even faster than airplane...
- it standardized the strategy - build railroads at once and everywhere!
- you really need to place no defender in any city (except frontier cities). It's because when you see the enemy army attacking your weakest cities, you can send all your units in less than no time. That's really crazy!!
- it makes airlift...
- it unbalances the gameplay


Features to Add
- fixed movement points by rail [all movements points are used after they leave the rail]
Reasons:
- No units need to walk themselves to the destination. Rather they take the rail. so they should share the same movement speed.
- Although they don't need to walk (use their own movement points), time is spent when taking the rail. So their movement point will still be deduced proportional to the fixed movement point by rail.
Eg:
A cavalry is 3MP, rail has fixed 20MP.
If we travel 10MP-long by rail, 2(1.5)MP of cavalry is used.
If we travel 20MP-long by rail, 3MP of cavalry is used.

You may imagine they take the rail in the morning, when they arrive to the destination, it is night already. So they decide to stay at hotel and continue the journey next day. If it is just afternoon, they make go further a bit until it becomes night. :P


Rail Station
Function: It's acted as a stop. Units can only be transported to nowhere but a stop.
Some options available:
a) Every city represents a rail station automatically as long as the rail is connected to the city
b) The rail station is a city improvement (which cost maintenance). It is available when a city is connected by rail
c) The rail station is a tile improvement which can be built in any railed title with restrictions imposed (eg limitations on distance between each rail station, so a player will not built rail stations everywhere)


General Bonus
- Bonus when we build rail to different cities (eg trade bonus)
- Bonus when we build rail from cities to mines (eg shield bonus) [NOt simply build a rail on the mine is not enough. Connection to the city is required!]

Reasons:
- If we can get bonus on every railed tile, we will build it everywhere which is not realistic in reality. (Have you seen any city building rail everywhere?)
- It is more reasonable for the bonuses we get. (I can't see why a railroad helps with irrigation on every tile. No government connect rail to farms!)
- The gameplay will be more balanced and diverse - we no longer reduce to crazy railroad building!

[Addled Platypus]

It should be more simular to rebaseing aircraft, its not unlimited

[Toby Rowe]

Wai_wai,

A fixed point system for rail movement would be great- having a single station at each city, and with railways only allowed between them would be the icing on the cake- but only if the AI didn't cheat on [knowledge of] national troop dispositions within your nation I feel.

Didn't an old game called the "US Civil War" (or something similar) use the system you describe?

Apart from the single terminal bug (on my PC) it was an excellent game and the rail use allowed was completely proportionate within the game.

Toby?

[TechWins]

I like the idea of 5 (or some small set number) free tile movement points for railroad. The unit would have whatever movement points it normally would have based on the normal movement deductions (i.e. going 2 spaces on railroad then jumping off onto non-roaded tile). As the unit is moving on the railroad it could show - in a silhouette type fashion - the number of free movement points for the railroad. Once the free railroad points end and the unit remains on railroad the movement rules for roads would start to apply. So that means if there were 8 railroad tiles in a straight line an Infantry could get to that very last tile, and for instance, a Cavalry would have 2 movement points left over (5 free+3 road were deducted). It's simple, easy to keep track of, and solves the infinite railroad problem.

[Shigga]

Re: Remove Infinite movement

Originally posted by GreenCrescent
There are two reasons why infinite RR movement needs to be removed. First it doesn't sit well that you can move halfway across the continent in one turn with a cavalry unit on a railroad and then proceed to move across a whole enemy city radius and capture a city whilst a Modern Armor has to wait a turn after it has been airlifted. Wasn't the whole point behind strategic airlift be that it can get you somewhere faster than a train or ship ever could?
Secondly with inifinite railroads the game becomes highly defensive. It depends less on your position of attack (hitting the enemy in weakly defended area, like MacArthurs invasion of Inchon or the Schwartkopf's attack into southern Iraqand not just Kuwait in the first Gulf War), and more on how many units you have compared to your opponent. Limited railroad movement (1/4 or 1/5) will reintroduce a level of defensive strategy lost in the civ games once the industrial age rolled around. The industrial benefits of the railroad (like perhaps three extra shields for hills and two for plains) should be emphasized instead

Now that's the first good reason I read fot kicking the infinite railroad movement. I totally agree on this, it really cuts defensive strategy short to fast-building your rr-network. Hm I think I changed my mind on the matter. Although I will curse myself for it when my first city falls in enemy hands

[Shigga]

hm I came upt with something, what do you think of the following:

make th railroad an instant transportation device like the airport. It should work only with connected cities and should not give any movement bonus other than the "teleport". Limit the number of units a city can RECEIVE per turn, make it improvable through different buildings (f.e. trainstation +1, marshaling yard +1, depot +2, cumulative) and have them cost more upkeep. This would be a neat capacity limitation, because I agree with the others that commented it is not a matter of speed but rather one of capacity. Also, it would make for interesting offensive strats (the disruption of the enemy rr-network by bombarding key points, trying to bombard those above mentioned city improvements) and defensive strats (defending those vulnerable points, unit placement for defensive action). It would also make it crucial to improve your cities on the border either as a defensive measure or as part of war preparations.

Keep the bonus for terrain like hammers and food. But make it dependant on the city size. Larger cities = more goods. so you don't have a bonus per terrain unit but a bonus of like one hammer per city population point. The map won't be crowded with those rr's anymore since they don't give you a bonus through terrain inside the city radius.

EDIT: Come to think of it, make the same capacity limitation for airports, but give them a higher number of units they can receive per turn from start on (like 3 instead of 1 for rr)

WOW, this could actually work!!

[Anaximander]

Not to beat a dead horse.....

Unlimited RR movement should be eliminated and replaced with a fixed number of RR moves for each unit per turn. Furthermore, the number of RR moves should be the same for any land unit, whether it be 10, 15, 20, etc... The RR movement should not count against the units movement points.

[Zoid]

That would be the easiest solution IMO And there could be three different train speeds/RR moves depending on the level of tech. steam at first, then electricity and then the really fast super trains

[lajzar]

Its kind of funny to see ideas that I suggested months ago and taht got rubbishged then, get proposed anew. thats what happens when theres no stable record of whats been proposed. Im just as guilty of course. Its why I made a wiki to help keep track of all the proposals.

[Zoid]

I´m too lazy for the wiki