Keep infinite railroad movement?

[Yarco_TW]

Yes, it should be infinite movement.

Travelling years from one place to another is somewhat unrealistic.

And no movement on foreign land. But yes, you need not travel etween cities. In real life there are train stations i between.

[Toby Rowe]

A Cohort marching to Greece was a little slower than the two British army Officers who invented the "Blitzkreig" therom in the 1920's using Petrol (Gas). In relative terms, it was instant, and as each turn is a year or more in all Civ versions.......

Toby :-)

[Straybow]

I would happily see modern roads in Civilization. If that's really your thesis, though, you shouldn't be advocating for a change to railroads but rather their elimination and replacement by the similar highways.

Eh? I'm advocating a change in RR? Since I don't have Civ3 I'm not sure if I'm advocating a change.

In the old Civ3 List and Movement threads ther are suggestions on tiered road improvements, rail, etc. My original handle on this forum was "don Don" . However, many of the ideas expressed are those of other members. Some of my ideas weren't even included. Elimination of unlimited RR was not my idea, and I did not and do not favor it.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Yarco_TW
Travelling years from one place to another is somewhat unrealistic.

Mentioning the word realism in a game means opening a can of worms, I hope you are aware of this. How realistic is it on the other hand, that you need many years to circumnavigate the globe by sea?

A strategical game is the better, the more strategical choice you have, without losing on balance. Think of a Civ game as of a big board (like an enlarged chessboard) with a variety of different units (chessmen) on it. That's exactly what it is. Forget mountains, hills, oceans and forests, they are just eyecandy, and so are improvements like mines, farms and roads. And forget warriors, knights and tanks. They are just chessmen, able to move and to interact with other (enemy) units. Some special units exist, that can interact with the board itself (settlers and workers), something that doesn't exist in chess.

Now imagine in terms of chess, that all chessmen would have the ability to move to every free tile on the board in one turn. Wouldn't this make that game incredibly stupid? And even if you limit it to "not on enemy territory", it would still be stupid and render the whole strategy and tactics useless.

Even more. Lets look at chessmen in terms of realism.

King - can move in all directions, but very slow. Ok, that would be realistic

Queen - can move in all directions, but very fast. Hello realism? If the king crawls, why can his wife move like a lightning? By the way, in older versions of chess, the queen could move only 1 diagonal tile. But some game designer invented the unlimited queen movement.

Rook - was formerly meant to be either a boat, or a war elephant. Is there a realistic reason, that it can move only N, S, E and W, but not NE or SW?

Bishop - a cleric. Why can he move only NE, NW, SE and SW but not in the "straight" directions? Is that realistic? Is he drunk or something?

Knight - Jumps in 8 possible directions. Ok, that might be fine, even though it is not very realistic, that a mounted warrior moves slower than a drunk cleric, let alone the queen.

Pawn - Moves only straight north, in no other direction. The other side's pawn moves only straight south. Can beat others only, if they are not directly in his way. If he reaches the end of his way, he will ineviatbly become either queen (even if male), bishop (even if not religious), knight (even if not noble) or rook (a boat? an elephant?). Hello realism?

Keep in mind, that just like Civilization, chess is meant to be a "mirror of the world". It is a model, at a certain level of abstraction. It is not a simulation. It does not have to be realistic.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Keep in mind, that just like Civilization, chess is meant to be a "mirror of the world". It is a model, at a certain level of abstraction. It is not a simulation. It does not have to be realistic.

to Sir Ralph!

[Peter Triggs]

Yes, that's an excellent post, Sir Ralph.

The crucial thing is that we want a game that's designed to be fun to play.

Anyone who wants total realism can turn off their computer, go out, and get a lousy job.

[boojumhunter]

Anyone thought of this?

A strange thought regarding rail travel... What if EVERY city a unit passed through while using the railway... deducted a point of movement from it's normal movement allowance.

You COULD snake a railway from one side world to the other, but the 'game' cost to do so would be SIGNIFICANT.

It would create a very different game playing strategy.

Such a long line would have a great cost to production... intent to invade would also be signalled as you create the long 'non-city' rail lines.

Thoughts?

[GeoModder]

I don't want to lower your spirits, but this was already suggested about a week ago.

[Toby Rowe]

Boojumhunter,

You made me think on that:

The actual railway connections we already have could actually join 6 of the 7 continents with just two more links.

The Russians have the Trans-Siberian railway- crossing the Bering strait to Alaska would link Asia and Europe to the Americas, both North and South.

A link from Gibraltar to Africa would complete it. Only the Aussie's would be left out.

Toby

[Willem]

Originally posted by Toby Rowe

The Russians have the Trans-Siberian railway- crossing the Bering strait to Alaska would link Asia and Europe to the Americas, both North and South.

There's actually some discussion going on now about building a bridge across the Bering Strait. I saw a program about it on the Discovery Channel. It would be a huge undertaking to say the least, but it's possible.

[AeonOfTime]

I'm for railroads that only give a big movement bonus, but not illimited. This has probably been thought of before, but I could not find this mentioned in the railroad threads I checked:

Instead of unlimited movement via railroads, I imagine a third upgrade in the road/railroad chain, like a maglev or something like that. It would come quite a bit later in the game, as it would require quite advanced techs, and it would give the unlimited movement bonus. It would also have to be quite costly to build and give no additional tile bonuses like railroads (purely tactical for movement). Maybe even disallow the use of multiple Workers to finish it faster to avoid the railroad military tactics / have a minimum number of turns to build it?

By using this third layer of road improvements, you could connect important cities with maglevs and move your units accross a whole continent as long as they stay on it. If something like that can be modded into the game, it would definitely be nice to see how it could work.

[Tattila the Hun]

Unit on a railroad tile could move to any point in the connected rr network, but this allways takes one turn, so the unit cannot do anything else. Embarking/disembarking time.

[AeonOfTime]

Even if you only move 1 tile?

[binTravkin]

Embarking/disembarking time.

Disembark in period of 4000 - 3950 anyone?

Going by foot will be faster than stepping out of a train for 50 yrs

Voted for:
"fraction of movement"
or
"limited number of units thru RR tile" - seems pretty realistic, you can't move all the country thru one junction in a year.

[AeonOfTime]

I think railroads are too powerful as they are - if you manage to get them before anyone else, you have an enormous tactical advantage. When I play against the AI, that is nearly always the thing that turns the tide - dramatically.

However, I would definitely miss being able to organize and move my troops without having to think about movement - it would be a real nightmare to plan the movements of 60+ units in one turn AND having to keep track of the available movement points (ok, ok, I'm sure there are a few who would actually love to have that kind of strategic depth). For me, it would turn that part of the game into a nightmare.

So if we were to make railroads more realistic, I'm for something else (like the maglevs I mentioned earlier) that can give me unlimited movement anyway that would be realistic enough to keep the skeptics at bay