The game is so much more enjoyable ...

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Solomwi
Have I been missing out on the railroad trade bonus all this time?

There is no commerce bonus for RRs in Civ 3. I forget if there was in Civ 2 or not.

[Jon Shafer]

Roads and RRs should cost gold, rather than grant it. Additionally, RRs can only be built BETWEEN cities on a pre-determined path. And they don't give infinite movement, but only allow you to move a certain # of tiles (rather than a multiplier like how roads work now).

That'll limit how many people build...

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Trip

They're different sides of the same coin, IMO.

The main reason people argue in favor of infinite RR movement is having to deal with all the Workers later on in the game.

I think the automation would work fine as long as the human has control over what goes on. He determines what gets done and what the priority is for it to get done (higher priority means more Workers devoted to the task).

Well personally I don't like the automation idea. Whatever the restriction on movement along railroads might be it wouldn't be hard to have local gangs of workers that could cover the needed territory in 1 turn. Plus with a new pollution model things might not be quite as bad as now. That would seem a better approach than just removing workers since they are a possible justification for infinite movement, which for understandable balance reasons you don't like. That's backwards logic.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Trip

There is no commerce bonus for RRs in Civ 3. I forget if there was in Civ 2 or not.

There is a production bonus in Civ2. Indirectly commerce is affected since trade routes could (under certain extremely complex conditions ) yield more arrows when the cities were connected by rail.

[gunkulator]

Another idea for RR: You build RR lines instead of just rails. Each tile with rails connects to no more than two other tiles, excepting city tiles which act as rail line junctions. Cost to move along rails is still 0, however each junction would cost 1/3 movement point. A tile improvement called Rail Junction would act the same way as city tiles.

The real problem I think is not the infinite movement, it's the infinite interconnections. Just because two adjacent tiles have rails doesn't mean they are part of the same line.

Having rail lines would create strategic junction points that could all rail traffic must switch through. Tearing up just a few rails would cripple your's or the enemy's ability to ship units rapidly to the front.

While you could still conceivably criss-cross every square, pratically few people would build rails this way.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by gunkulator
Another idea for RR: You build RR lines instead of just rails. Each tile with rails connects to no more than two other tiles, excepting city tiles which act as rail line junctions. Cost to move along rails is still 0, however each junction would cost 1/3 movement point. A tile improvement called Rail Junction would act the same way as city tiles.

The real problem I think is not the infinite movement, it's the infinite interconnections. Just because two adjacent tiles have rails doesn't mean they are part of the same line.

Having rail lines would create strategic junction points that could all rail traffic must switch through. Tearing up just a few rails would cripple your's or the enemy's ability to ship units rapidly to the front.

While you could still conceivably criss-cross every square, pratically few people would build rails this way.

As long as RRs still give production bonuses then people will still build them everywhere. That is the main application of RRs, along with infinite movement... they give extra production.

I like your idea of only being able to connect RR tiles together (starting from cities), though I still think that units can only move a certain # of tiles along railroads, rather than a certain number of cities. What if you control an entire continent, recently conquered with rail lines in place but only have a couple cities on each side of the continent there after razing everything? You'll still be able to cross the entire continent.

I also think that each RR tile should cost 1 GPT. That is the best way to limit how many tiles are produced.

Rail depots would be another tile improvement that could be built along rail lines, which would give production bonuses to adjacent tiles (or perhaps 2 tiles away?) as RRs do on every tile now. This means there's both an economic and military incentive to build these new costly railroad lines.

[binyo66]

Come on guys. If u want to suggest to firaxis/atari to limit the rr movement, please dont forget to ask them to allow transfering workers by airport. I just cant imagine placing bunch of worker on every corners. Especially by limiting the rr movement, it would destroy the automate clear pollution, which is currently closed to perfect when we have rr.

[Jon Shafer]

And Soren also said that Firaxis was going to whack the current corruption model for Civ IV.

[MattPilot]

Just noticed something:

Disabling RR's doesn't at all negatively affect worker management in the industrial age at all. Infact, it enhances gameplay by giving the player even more strategic decisions to make.

For example, to send workers across your city, the fastest way would be to use airfields (assuming you modded it that way, like me). Although it would use up your airfields turn and your units. Another way of doing it, is using helicopters (hey, they finally got a good use). Pack three workers in a helo, rebase the helo, activate worker and you can do it all in one turn.

Now what if you need workers in an area where you don't have a town? Well, then you need to build up your infastructure by placing airports (hey, this finally got a good use too!) around your country. I'm someone who likes to build cities far away with big distances from each other. To make sure i have access to terrain further away from my cities, i placed airports there. I've also modded it so you can only build cities on a few tiles, making airports in the inhabital areas invaluable to my defense.

Also, i've placed the now-very-useful airports around my production centers, this way i can airlift multiple units from own town to the hot-zone.

Removing RR's was the best thing i ever did to this game. Actually having to work out a good infastructure (which is also easily demolishable by enemy airstrikes if left undefended) for your empire is awesome! I just love the possibilities now

[Antrine]

Thanks for your great Mod ideas Matt, much appreciated!

Trip I think your cost idea would go long way to improve game play. I would add, a cost slidder and play test the effects of 2 or 3 gpt per tile and with 'rail junction points' much more like 15 or more depending on the scenario. I believe building railroads should be much more difficult giving their advantages.

Additionally, why not add costing out other now seemly free upgrades? With only time to build as a factor, plus the original investment which is lost after a worker has been on the job for a millininum or two. Yes, yes I am not arguing realism only some game balance in relation to ease of making so much for not much of anything.

Mines for instance are a valuble asset, shoul they not cost something, at least to build?

[Rommel2D]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
I would like to see an infinite movement but with limitations. The limitation I'd like to see is this a unit must start its turn on a railroad and use up its entire turn to use the rail net.

Any idea if they never tried this because of coding problems, or are they just not open to consideration of altering RRs? Have you ever seen it mentioned to them in an interview?

[hexagonian]

My guess is that they have it in to help the AI react instantly to any threat when the player's Stacks of Doom start getting very large...It basically reduces decisionmaking issues for it.

The AI can then give the appearance that it is acting intelligently.

I would favor replacing infinite rails with a more robust AI/AI alliance implimentation if the player was an aggressive warmongor.

[Harovan]

It's not only the infinite RR movement, it's also the unlimited nomber of units at one tile and the lack of real ZoC. All they are for AI's sake, and all decrease fun in MP games. If the stealth units, the diplomacy and the incredibly stupid AI weren't such a gigantic killjoy, I'd play CtP2 instead, but alas...