Roads give movement bonus and NOTHING else?

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
To be fair, Spencer, if you want to prevent an amphibious assault on your coastal cities-then the best defense is a good navy, patrolling the coasts and nearby oceans-destroying their land forces whilst still aboard ship. This again suggests that navy could actually end up being a much more important part of the game in Civ4-which IS a good thing.
Also, Infinite city slease will be of no assistance to defense, as that will simply mean even more cities to defend (not to mention the other reasons for not pursuing ICS anymore!)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I dunno about you but I've always found the naval aspects of civ to be utterly boring. I didnt even bother to build a navy in civ3. If the only reason to build a navy is to spend my time moving them up and down my coastline to prevent invasion in unlikely locations, well I'd rather not (but now I may have to - oh hurrah).

ICS, as first envisioned by SMAC players (I think I first saw it at the greek civ site ), was a perfect defense against a surprise attack. Each city was only minimally defended and developed (city-borehole-city-borehole- etc). With that type of approach, one doesnt need to build and pre-position defensive forces at 'strategic points. Any attacker becomes bogged down amongst the mass of minimalist cities which allows time to build a counter attack.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well I only found it boring, Spencer, because there was often so little point for it. However, if I need a navy to defend my coastal improvements from pillaging, keep my overseas trade routes from being blocked AND to prevent amphibious assaults from my neighbours, then I won't find the naval aspect of the game boring at all.
As for ICS being a good defense, I doubt that it will this time around-given the cost of maintaining cities, the fact that smaller cities with less culture provide less of a defense bonus, and the fact that you do yourself out of a chance to generate great people, then any defensive benefits derived from ICS are more than outweighed by the costs of doing so.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[nbarclay]

For people who can't stand limits on rail movement, it should be very easy to make an "infinite" rail movement mod. Just bump up the rail movement rate from 10 to a number so huge that it won't matter.

Regarding CTP, it's been years since I played, but I'm pretty sure that there wasn't an ironcland "can't move on rails and then attack the same turn" rule. The real difference was that in Civ 3, any move that is allowed at all is possible with even the tiniest fraction of a movement point left, while with CTP, anything more than a 1-tile move required that you have the full movement cost available. So if the unit you're attacking wasn't on a railroad tile, moving on a railroad could leave you with too little movement left to attack it - and inevitably would for a unit with a movement rate of 1.

[nbarclay]

The biggest thing I don't like about a massive reduction in the number of roads is that unless you get the road cost moving from an unroaded tile to an adjacent roaded tile, units are going to be slowed down attacking enemies that aren't on roads. In Civ 3, most of the time, your enemy is on a road so you can kill him and then have full road movement next turn (assuming you're within your own borders) to get back to a city to heal or to attack someone else. In Civ 4, if movement works the same way as Civ 3 but with a lot fewer roads, there will be a lot more situations where units have to waste time getting back on the road network.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by nbarclay
The biggest thing I don't like about a massive reduction in the number of roads is that unless you get the road cost moving from an unroaded tile to an adjacent roaded tile, units are going to be slowed down attacking enemies that aren't on roads. In Civ 3, most of the time, your enemy is on a road so you can kill him and then have full road movement next turn (assuming you're within your own borders) to get back to a city to heal or to attack someone else. In Civ 4, if movement works the same way as Civ 3 but with a lot fewer roads, there will be a lot more situations where units have to waste time getting back on the road network.

But noone forbids you to build roads everywhere, if you feel it improves the tactical viability of your armies. The change is, you are no longer REQUIRED to build roads everywhere, and therefore whether to build the road in a given place becomes a STRATEGIC DECISION, rather than a NO-BRAINER.

This kind of strategic decisions is what we need more of, not less of, in the game, and kudos to Firaxis for giving us this.

[lodgey]

Thinking about unlimited RR movement leaves me thinking about how troop movement would work in the real world. Note that I know very little about real military strategy, so this could all be way off.

I live in Australia, so lets imagine that a large armed invasion force landed on the north coast. Nobody noticed until they arrived (everone in the country was looking the other way for a few months it seems...).

1. Troops already in the area would obviously get straight into the action.

2. The RAAF (air force) would be overhead VERY quickly.

3. Extra forces from other parts of the country would get to the action by different means. I would expect the army to utilise both road and rail - large numbers of infantry would ride in trucks, so they wouldn't travel any slower than the other military vehicles.

I would expect that the troops to arrive fastest would have flown in with the RAAF in step 2, provided that Australia still controlled enough of the airspace to provide a reasonable chance of a troop carrier getting through. None of this, however would take very long, and the attackers would find themselves fighting a decent force before they could take much ground.

The whole thing gets more complex if you consider the time it would take to extract troops that are currently deployed elsewhere. Australia being an island, many of these would come by boat, but many would come by plane (again, depending on control of the airspace).

Thinking about this, removing unlimited RR movement would require more thought given to transporting troops via aeroplane and helicopter. If this is what Firaxis has done, then great, but they need to keep in mind that in modern warfare, I would expect a reasonable group of defenders to hold a city until reinforcements arrive. How many countries keep a couple of batalions of infantry and a few tanks in every city just in case? For that matter, how many modern cities are completely surrounded by a wall? That is, however, a completely different topic.

And how come a lurker such as myself always seems to post such a long message when I actually bother to post something somewhere? It gets longer each time I preview it.

[TomVeil]

To Lodgey:

I'm almost certain that when they rebuilt the Australian RR a few years ago, they set it up so that it could carry troops/supplies easily. The problem is, I think it stops in Alice Springs, and only goes at 80km/h before then, anyway. So the first step would be moving ungodly amounts of gasoline to Alice Springs so that whatever the Aussie version of the Jeep/Hummer is could haul bodies the rest of the way.
I expect that you would also see the US & UK air forces arriving within 24 hours, with their navies coming in to back up the Australian navy a couple days later. Once they arrive, the Australians would beat a false retreat to the highlands, protect the supply line, and wait it out. There's no invading force in the world that could survive the combined force of the US, UK, and Australian air forces.


As for the bit about walled cities, I can only think of: Gibraltar, Ceuta & Meilla, and Cold War-era Berlin. In each case, the wall's main use is keeping the immigrants out.

[Harovan]

Nobody in his right mind would invade Australia.

Actually, almost nobody could possibly invade it.

The only nations able to do it, are allies.

As for the walls, I agree except Gibraltar (no immigration reason here, but it's way too important not to be fortified) and Cold-war-era Berlin, where the wall was not to keep immigrants out, but rather emigrants in (which is the same from another PoV, as it was East Germany who built and owned it).

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by TomVeil
I'm sure there are some nice gameplay aspects, but these new rules are totally unrealistic....I will be among the first lining up to mod this feature back to its classic, correct state.

Totally unrealistic??? All I can do is point back to Sir Ralph's post on the subject. The new system strikes a nice balance between gameplay and realism - and my guess is that air transport movement will provide the player the means to have some sort of unlimited movement benefit.

Perhaps you will have to start doing some strategic thinking in your games now.... (a very good thing to have to do in a tbs game, BTW )

The real beauty of the current system is that the player now has the control to go either way on his setup. Want infinite rails???? As it has pointed out, bump up movement to something like 1000. I will bet that the movement is editable because it is now a finite number...

This was not possible to do in civ3. You could not change an infinite number in the editor, as the infinite number was hardcoded.

Everyone wins with this new setup.

[GeoModder]

There should be a random possibility that RR's don't work for a given turn... never heard of strikes among railroad personel?
All for the sake of realism of course.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Well I only found it boring, Spencer, because there was often so little point for it. However, if I need a navy to defend my coastal improvements from pillaging, keep my overseas trade routes from being blocked AND to prevent amphibious assaults from my neighbours, then I won't find the naval aspect of the game boring at all.

I've argued many times that the protection of trade routes is the reason to build a navy. If that game aspect is brought back then I will have to build a 'deep sea' navy (until I have an airforce).

As for ICS being a good defense, I doubt that it will this time around-given the cost of maintaining cities, the fact that smaller cities with less culture provide less of a defense bonus, and the fact that you do yourself out of a chance to generate great people, then any defensive benefits derived from ICS are more than outweighed by the costs of doing so.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

That may also be true but I think the cost/benefits of ICS will have to be judged once we have the game.

I'm not a proponent of infinite rail movement BTW. I simply disagree with the ability to disembark large scale units (~ napoleanic era and up) anywhere on a coastline.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Joseph
I only defend with 2 or 3 units until late in the game. My thing is to build city improvements first, plus any wonder. Maybe that is why I'm not a great player.

Bad habit to get into, your border cities should be alot stronger at least. Two or three is fine for your inner cities, but I usually go with 5-10 on my frontier ones.

[Willem]

Originally posted by TomVeil
I'm sure there are some nice gameplay aspects, but these new rules are totally unrealistic.

It's a "strategy" game, not a simulation!

It was not and and never has been meant to accurately reflect real life. There are numerous examples of how the game is not realistic, to the point that you shouldn't even play it if that's what you're after. This change just adds more strategy, which in turn is going to make it more interesting to play in the late game. To hell with whether it's "realistic" or not, the focus here is on gameplay.

[Adm.Naismith]

(OT) on defense strategy w/o infinite RR

Originally posted by Willem
Bad habit to get into, your border cities should be alot stronger at least. Two or three is fine for your inner cities, but I usually go with 5-10 on my frontier ones.

How can you support so many units without suffering on economics/research?

[TomVeil]

Originally posted by GeoModder
There should be a random possibility that RR's don't work for a given turn... never heard of strikes among railroad personel?
All for the sake of realism of course.

Agreed. If you play as France, the rails don't work because the conductor is on strike; as Britain, because a train derailed; as America, because the railroad company sold the rails as scrap metal.