Keep infinite railroad movement?

[Addled Platypus]

long live sophist

he as never insulted anyone that I can think of.

but here is a good exampe of a poster who did
quote:
Originally posted by hexagonian
Another insult directed at us poor, stupid fans...

Polls and ideas have a way of getting off topic.

thanks for reining us back in

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by sophist
Asserting that will not make it so. The poll was about how, not if. The option for the status quo didn't say "leave it alone," it was about enemy rails.

The wording of the poll defines rails exactly as they are in civ3 - no more and no less - thus they are status quo and are meant to be left 'as is'...

Originally posted by sophist
Are you saying that Firaxis can't develop the game the way they see fit? They don't have to listen to any of us. They're better off if they do, but that doesn't mean that the players are going to come up with better ideas most of the time.

It is in their best interest when plugging the incredible moddability of their game (which appears to be the best of any civ game that has come out if it is to be believed) to take gameplay issues where players are clearly divided to give them the ability to change them in the easiest fashion. They are free to do what they want.

I take modding seriously - I have been a modder for some time now. I presented a solution to a potential issue that has been in the civ series, and that can be rectified rather easily. Your comments were, in effect, dismissive of the solution, when in fact, it would not change your desire to have infinite rails in the game as a standard feature.

I apologize for taking this issue a little too much to heart and letting my words become offensive - but I still feel that the fanbase ends up knowing the game a whole lot better than even the company that produces the game.

The question I posed is 'Why is my solution so bad???'

You have yet to give a good answer.

[inca911]

What are you two arguing about anyway? With all the comments on language and quotations, it's hard to keep track of your core differences. As far as I can tell, you're now arguing about who is more insulting to the rest of the board? Go send a PM or an email and quit wasting everyone's time.

[sophist]

Fair enough. I'll get back on topic.

There is no inherent flaw with what you suggest. However, it only makes sense if you assume that railroads are implemented at a code level the same way in civ4 compared to civ3. Perhaps it's implemented as a per-tile move rate, in which case you change their zero to some non-zero value, so there's no infinity problem. Or maybe they came up with a way to represent infinity. Or maybe it's some other representation entirely. Or maybe they didn't retain unlimited movement in the game and this is moot. In effect, it assumes that the API for modifying Civ3 is nearly the same as the one for Civ4. Given what we know of the game, that is at best an unreliable assumption.

In addition, it only opens the door to one particular kind of modification, leaving capacity, maintenance, city-to-city only, and other variations out in the cold. Since there is a practical limit to the number of hooks they can expose in the game, we're better off advocating a big, general hook instead of a small, specific one. It may take more work to do the former, but it's also more powerful, and someone can leverage it to enable the small, specific change you advocate. It only takes one person to do that to enable everyone to make their own custom changes, but for a Firaxis person to do it means taking time away from something else.

[Sarxis]

definately smaller rail movement.. definately smaller... late for wapner though... costs about $100.

[hexagonian]

Again, apologies for the flamefest...

My point all along has been that the general hook you talk about can also be made so inflexible that it prevents ANY type of change to be easily made - and that is my concern regarding this particular issue.

OK, I have another question regarding how infinite movement has been implimented in past civ games?

I have never looked at, or been involved in the modification process with civ1/civ2/SMAC. All of those games had infinite movement tile improvements. Was it possible to change the value of those infinite movement items, or was that a hard-coded item?

If it was easily changable, then disregard all that I said (unless civ4 does come out with the same type of setup as in civ3).

If it was not changable, then there is potential concern, because history says that there is a good chance that it will remain the same. Yeah, I know they are building the game from scratch, but it's a good bet that they will be influenced by the decisions that they made for civ3 in many areas.

And in light of the poll, I spelled out the 3 general directions that are the ways fans want rails addressed.

1. infinite movement/infinite number of units
2. infinite movement/finite number of units
3. finite movement/infinite number of units

The results do reveal a favored approach that fans want for the game, but it is not overwhelming toward any particular general direction. Still, the poll reveals that the way it has been (infinite movement/infinite number of units) is not favored, and even when it goes head-to-head with the other general directions, it is slightly favored in one head-to-head comparison and is not in another head-to-head comparison. (You may feel the poll is slanted - I do not, and would not, even if my preferred choice got zero votes)

Fans may have different approaches to achieve these general directions, but the approaches still end up yielding the same end result in each of these 3 general directions. If I want infinite movement/finite number of units, I may have a preference how to achieve it, but if it is presented in a different way than my preference, I'd still favor it over the other two general directions.

[patcon]

Originally posted by hexagonian
OK, I have another question regarding how infinite movement has been implimented in past civ games?

I have never looked at, or been involved in the modification process with civ1/civ2/SMAC. All of those games had infinite movement tile improvements. Was it possible to change the value of those infinite movement items, or was that a hard-coded item?

I seem to recall a (US) Civil War scenario in which the RR did not give infinite movement, but did give better than road rates.

[Toby Rowe]

Originally posted by sophist
Toby, I'm content with infinite rail, but the reason you state only justifies it as long as the AI works the way it does. If they make the AI better in other ways, they'll be able to drop the blatant cheating. Besides, I hate the idea that the game rules might be dictated by the AI's limitations. After all, if you're playing an MP game, there could be no AI involved at all, but you're still held down by its limitations.

Hi mate,

I agreed with you 100% on that.

However, treaties must be honoured, as they were until Hitler arrived.

Troop movements around your borders should be shown graphically and your intelligence service should provide a warning from it in a notification pop-up.

Spying isn't called the second oldest profession in the world for nothing- how the developers meet the cost/intel trade off is another matter.

If the AI isn't going to cheat then I'm for Movement Points, or transport units you've paid for, built and actually based at set points: and that includes ships and air, not just railways.

The one thing the human player can't do is view all bits of his/her empire at all times.

So even when games like "Victoria" give a visual display of troops marching towards a piece of your empire, unless you are looking, you simply don't know.

If spying is significantly enhanced in Civ 4 then instant rail movement will seem like a moot point to us all. Alas all 3 have been consistantly weak in this field.

Toby

[Toby Rowe]

Sophist,

Just a quick comment.

Most publishing houses have now been brought and consolidated into large companies, most developers were entustiasts (sp?) in 1988, now most aren't, they are also large companies within the gaming world.

The bottom line is now shareholders and their reguired profit levels, not playability at all.

Programmers now work to dead lines yet sadly games cannot be contrusted around a date- like a painting it is finished when it is simply is!!

What I noticed in the business section of my newspaper was an article claiming more and more gaming firms are allowing modding as it increases the life span of a title.

It certainly does.

What they forgot to also mention in the article is that the programmers need only develop the structure of a game and thus spend less time costing the company money, and allowing the programmer-fans of a game (like you) to develop all the difficult hard bits of AI they didn't want to pay the in-house developers for.

Toby!

[sophist]

Toby, I won't say you're wrong, but I don't see how that type of development can last. It just annoys people too much. People already make fun of id software, calling their games "tech demos" for their latest graphics engine. Maybe I'm just an optimist.

[Datajack Franit]

probably

[Addled Platypus]

a different railroad thought

to keep enemies from using your RR. You pick the start location
A hot botton to demolish your tracks, x amount of tiles per turn at x gpt

[Straybow]

Yeah, some sort of scorched earth retreat should be possible rather than an arbitrary enemy civ rule.

[binTravkin]

Seems we have a thread-necromancer here..

[Straybow]

Hey, it was on the first page!