Idea about RailRoads

[MattPilot]

Exactly. And i love some of the suggestions made by others. Of course my original idea was just a rough draft and has some faults as pointed out, but combined with the other suggestions it would make for a nice change IMO.

Personally, what i'd like to see is more strategic decision making in the industrial/modern age.

When you first start out, you gotta make tough decisions. Do i want those swordmen on this side of my empire or on the other? where is the enemy going to attack from? I often lost a city because i didn't have my guys at the right place at the right time.

[Inverse Icarus]

there should simply be a multiplier for railroads like there are for roads. if the multiplier is set to 0, it means infinite movement. boom. thats patchable.

[Antrine]

Alright!!! Let me at it.

[Gen.Dragolen]

MattPilot,

Been toying with the idea of a different improvement and the Train Station would be perfect to act as a harbour or airport. And yes, getting the ability to change the movement cost from 0 to something more reasonable like 1/8 or something like that would be an excellent addition to the editor. Afterall, the code is already there to make for infinite movement.

And I keep thinking that building roads should be in a similar vein: make it so you need Construction to build them so they would be like the Roman roads. Then take away to trade benefits and only make it so that they increase movement. Alot.

This would also make a need for a 'trade route' so that the luxuries can still make it around...

Excellent fodder for modding.

D.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by MattPilot
... or remove the Build Railroad Flag from the worker.

Nope - without that flag you can't select the "terraform" strategy (so the AI won't use them). I think it would be a problem if the AI didn' use workers.

Look in the civpedia entry for Coal in the Rise of Rome conquest if you don't believe me

[Antrine]

Thanks for the heads up skywalker. For now, I am putting the flag back on, for generally making things more difficult for the AI to implement is working backwards. I VOTE NOW TO HAVE the C3 EDITOR MODIFIED TO GIVE CONTROL OVER THAT ZERO MOVEMENT RATE FOR RAIL. That said, I think a new building improvement and concept of ‘Train Station’ is most wonderful, however practically most likely an idea for another game be it CIV IV or whatever.

In the mean time I am going forward testing a moded unit for I hijacked a leader to be a Railroad Engineer that will be available for build with Steam Power. He will cost more and move better than the ‘worker’ and be restricted mainly to laying rail-lines albeit three times faster than the ‘worker’. Nevertheless, in game time this will still not be faster as I upped the worker turn time to a base of 30 turns. So hoards of ‘workers’ or gangs can still lay track but very slowly, while an investment in expensive Railroad Engineers will pay in laying track three times faster than any one worker.

Just ideas I can work with now and that not knowing how the AI’s will fare. Converting all roads to track in latter game play is I believe mostly only feasible with smaller maps and resulting lesser-sized empires. In my mods this is not a factor for all maps are custom big huge sprinkled with fewer however, sprawling empires that sometimes barely get the roads in place. Therefore, to speed game development I pre-laid all main roads throughout the world. This works nice and the AI’s just add to it here and there.

[Kuciwalker]

If you only give him the railroad ability (and road), he won't be used by the AI. If you give him all the worker abilities, you won't be able to only make RR faster (and for him to be able to RR, normal workers would have to be able to RR too - disabling a worker ability is all-or-nothing).

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hmmm, I wondered how long it would take for the 'Infinite RR' issue to raise it's head once more !!

My solution, which I HAVE mentioned before, is threefold:

1) Give roads, RR and other tile improvements a 1 gpt COST!! This will force players and AI alike to REALLY think about where and when they build these improvements, and eliminate the 'mining grassland' and 'RR sprawl' so common to the game!!! Also, to make things interesting, RR should have a 2 gpt cost-to help differentiate them from Roads!

2) I have long advocated the Rebase option for ground units, if an appropriate city improvement exists in both cities!!! How about if it were made available for roads-as well-and limit the number of cities you could rebase between according the the movement rate of the unit! For instance a 1mp unit could only rebase to the next city, wheras a Panzer could rebase to a city which has 2 cities in between!! This number could be halved (round up) if you don't have a railway station in the city you want to rebase to)! Also, the MP's of the unit would determine if you had any MP's left after the rebase!

3) Lastly, Roads and RR's should give your connected cities a commerce, production and food bonus based on the number of cities connected to your empire via a road or rail network-to reflect the internal movement of goods in your nation! For instance, if you have 20 cities connected up to your 'internal trade network', then a newly connected city should gain a +2 bonus to food/production and trade, if hooked up by a road, and a +4 bonus if hooked up by RR!!

Anyway, those are MY thoughts on the issue-but I'm glad to see the issue being debated again-and I hope Firaxis do something about it soon!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Oh, and another thing!!

I also think there should be a rebase facility, working the way I mentioned above, for naval units! This would help balance naval and ground units after the advent of RR's!! A naval base tile improvement should also exist for placing on remote islands and the like-in the same way as airbases!!

Yours, T_A_L