Diesel Locomotives

[Badtz Maru]

Does anyone else think that coal should not be a requirement for railroads once Combustion is researched? I was a little disappointed in a game where I had no coal resources at all, I had plenty of oil and other modern units, but no railroads.

Heck, once you have electricity you should be able to build rails with neither oil or coal, as long as they are connected to a city with power.

[Arrian]

I hadn't thought of that... but it's a good point. Once you have combustion (and a source of oil!), being able to build RRs w/o coal makes a lot of sense, and I don't really see a game balance problem (balance trumps realism, but if realism doesn't hurt balance, why not?).

I'm not as sure about electricity... some sort of power requirement seems appropriate. You need hydro plants for power without coal, right? Well, nuc plants too, but that's waaay later. So maybe no rails based on electricity alone until plastics??

-Arrian

[Badtz Maru]

Maybe you could only build rails within the city radius of cities that had power if you had neither oil nor coal. Maybe allow continent-wide rails if you have Three Gorges wonder.

[Ka Plewy]

Maybe the rationale is that you couldn't make the rails without significant amounts of steel (iron+coal). My metalurgical knowledge is limited but I don't know of any other way to make steel. Modern units are governed more by aluminum/oil than steel.

[axi]

Exactly! The crucible process, the Bessemer converter and the Siemens-Martin process all require coal in order to make steel out of iron! The issue lies in the heat required to burn the coal out of the pig-iron, in order to reduce the carbon content of the alloy. This heat is generated using coal. Nowdays, coal is not 100% indispensable, since one can cast steel using an electrical furnace, but that would lead to a product with multiple cost.

Furthermore, steel was quintessential for the railroad revolution. Richard Trethvick, the inventor of railroads, failed in his first attempt because he used bronze rails, which would break under the weight of his locomotive. When he replaced the rails with steel ones, he succeeded to sell his invention.

[Proteus_MST]

Of course then you should assume that without coal you wouldn´t be able to build WW2-era tanks and battleships, as well as AFAIK they also relied on steel for their armor.

[Badtz Maru]

Making coal a requirement for anything requiring steel would make it the most important resource in the game. Having no coal would effectively shut you out of the industrial era.

[Tattila the Hun]

I think it should be possible to use alternative sources for strategic resources, but improvements and units would cost more.

Say, for oil. There are ways to synthesize oil, but those ways aren't cheap. So, maintaining any units that require oil to operate would be more expensive if you don't have a natural source.

As for coal, I'm not sure if wood suffices, does it generate enough heat as it is, but if there is no coal, you find ways to use what you have. So you can build railroads, but it takes longer. And you can build tanks and battleships, but they are more expensive to produce, and slightly weaker, due to inferior steel.

I also think maintaining army should be more expensive at wartime. And military related tech should get research boost.

[Proteus_MST]

Yep, my suggestion would be, that strategic resources are handled like resources for wonders,
i.e. you can build the units without having access to the resource/s but instead of [normal cost in hammers] you would have to invest
n * [normal cost in hammers] if one needed respource is missing or
n * n * [normal cost in hammers] if 2 needed strategic resources are missing.

This would reflect buying enough of the resource to complete the unit or using more expensive ways to generate the resource.

Same could work for railroads, i.e. with access to iron and coal workers would have to invest the [normal building time] to complete railroads on a tile,
but with iron OR coal missing it would be n * [normal building time]
and with iron AND coal missing it would take n * n * [normal building time]

[zombielordzero]

problem with coal as a requirement:

charcoal has been around longer, burns cleaner, and just as hot as coal. so the coal requirment just doesnt fit...

[Diadem]

For a gameplay perspective, being able to build railroads with oil once you reach a certain tech makes sense. Railroad is an extremely important improvement, and not having it can really hurt. An alternative (but not too easy to reach) method of building them would be nice.

[Grenouille]

You also need coal to generate elictricity, until you have nuclear power.

[dannubis]

cokes coal is necessary to reduce iron ore to metallic iron in a blast furnace.

in both the besemer ans the simens martin processes the excess carbon trapped in the liquid iron is burned away using oxigen.

so yes, in order to have an adequate amount of iron to make the railways a source of coal is needed.

[Grenouille]

oops..

[Enigma_Nova]

And there aren't any other ways to turn Iron into Steel?