Infinite Road & Railroad Sprawl

[polypheus]

One thing that was extremely annoying about Civ1/Civ2 was the infinite road & railroad sprawl situation that would occur.

Because of trade and production bonuses, you had to build roads and railroads everywhere. But of course since most people would build cities close together, you ended up in a situation such that the entire map is covered with roads and railroads!

Not only does this make the land look like an ugly web of road and railroads, it really takes away from gameplay.

With so many roads and railroads, it really becomes impossible to strategically destroy them since they are everywhere.

I hope that in CIv3, the Infinite R&RR Sprawl phenomenon does not occur. An easy way to do this would be to eliminate the trade/production bonuses which create this situation. Another method might be to tax your road & railroad system based on its size.

With a much more toned down network of roads and railroads, gameplay will be much improved! Hopefully Civ3 will eliminate Infinite Road & Railroad Sprawl!

[bagdar]

The roads may become even more important because of enhanced trade. On the other hand, we shouldn't be able to build endless railways, because then our mines would expire... This is interesting!

[Ralf]

Originally posted by polypheus
One thing that was extremely annoying about Civ1/Civ2 was the infinite road & railroad sprawl situation that would occur.

With a much more toned down network of roads and railroads, gameplay will be much improved! Hopefully Civ3 will eliminate Infinite Road & Railroad Sprawl!

In Civ-1 it was even worse: heres a quote from the designer's notes in the old Civ2 manual:
"We thought maps filled with railroads in every square were just plain ugly, so we introduced farmland, supermarkets and super-highways to encourage a more well-rounded approach to civil engineering."

Some further alterations & tweaks to the R&RR bonus system must be added in Civ-3, because above counter-measures is not good enough at all. In Civ-2 railroads on every shield-producing city-area tile automatically gave you increased shield-output.

That meant that each and every city-area forest-, mountain-, mined hill-, desert-, shield-grassland-, plains-tile where automatically prone to railroading. Most grasslands was perhaps prone to improved farmlands, and some plains where transformed to improved farmed grasslands as well. Even so, there was simply to many railroads & roads in Civ-2. Even terrain-types like glaciers could be mined (and after that railroad-beneficial). Tundra + some jungle & swamp could be transformed, and after that railroad-beneficial.

I suggest the following enhanced counter-measures to be added:

- Railroads should now ONLY boost shield-output from mined hills & special resource-tiles.
No benefits on other tile-types; neither trade, food or shield ones. The increased movement-benefit is worthwhile enough in order to encourage the player to RR-connect all his cities, plus perhaps adding some strategical shortcuts & RR-knots as well, for more effective war mobilisations and more secure domestic resource-trade. Also domestic & forreign resource-trade becomes more beneficial with railroads. Once ALL of your cities have been RR-connected you perhaps get some other reward or bonus as well.

- Make building roads through irrigated tiles a slighly mixed blessing:
No roads through irrigated tiles means that the max 50% increased food-output can be maintained. Building roads through irrigated tiles means only 25% food-increase, but you get instead the increased 50% trade-benefit. Railroads through irrigated tiles also decreases the max food-output, but the decrease is NOT cumulative with roads. The benefits from late-game super-highways & supermarket city-improvements (if still there) should only further emphazise above slight difference.

Another method might be to tax your road & railroad system based on its size.

Yes, why not? Roads & railroads have always had a certain maintenance-cost associated with them. Not too much however - just enough so it gradually becomes economically unsound to have half or more of your empire-squares covered with railroads, and 75% or more covered with roads. This factor combined with above tweaks would be enough to finally thwart those ugly end-game spiderwebs once and for all.

[Inverse Icarus]

thats a good idea, taxing the road/rail system.

but is there time to impliment it?

[eNo]

Did CivII RR actually give that much of a bonus? I never built much of those because I used rails for connecting cities (I didn't think it was worth building much more of those. I needed my engineers to clearcut and irrigate all of Asia ). I did have a large road-web but didn't think it looked that bad. After all roads are pretty extensive in real life.

I don't like a road tax too much, mainly because I'm such a fan of roads and such a tax on the early game would probably be annoying but a railroad tax I wouldn't mind too much. Railroads are higher maintenance arn't they?

[Iskandar Reza]

how about taxing the road/rail system, and also an option to not pay the maintainance cost? you can still use your roads, but it'll get ... it'l get..... i forget the word.. you know what i mean.

you can always repay for the maintainance later, but it'll be costlier, since the roads have already been neglected for so long, and it's ... that word eludes me....


arghh!!!!

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Iskandar Reza
arghh!!!!

Im not quite sure what your aiming at, Iskandar, but I think you trying to say that if one allow "feature A" to be implemented one must also allow the whole damn alphabet as well, and then... well, where the hell would it all end?

I dont agree, but OK - fair enough. Lets say we skip the R&RR tax-idea. Any constructive ideas of your own then? Was everything perfect with the roads and (especially) railroads in Civ-2? Whats exactly is your opinion?

[Inverse Icarus]

the roads would DETERIORATE, as in pillgage themselves

[Ralf]

Originally posted by UberKruX
the roads would DETERIORATE, as in pillgage themselves

What the heck is the matter with people in this forum? Perhaps Iskandar Reza was right. Lets scrap the whole R&RR tax-idea, before it goes any further.

[TechWins]

I really hope a better idea has been implemented or will be than this idea. I mean I give you credit for thinking of it but it just seems too complicated. Something I thought of is to have Superhighways as a minor wonder. When you build it your railroad goes up from 1/2 point to infinite movement. Maybe something to this effect could be implemented into the game.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by TechWins
Something I thought of is to have Superhighways as a minor wonder. When you build it your railroad goes up from 1/2 point to infinite movement. Maybe something to this effect could be implemented into the game.

This topic isnt about the move-rate on railroads. Its about how to tweak the game so that it becomes a lot less beneficial to have the lion-part of your city-areas/ your empire more or less covered with railroads. Its just too damn ugly, if not else. The Civ-2 team tried to counteract it somewhat, but the measures they added was far from enough. What about my original ideas:

- Railroads should now ONLY boost shield-output from mined hills & special resource-tiles.
- Make building roads through irrigated tiles a slighly mixed blessing.

[To_Serve_Man]

Constructive Ideas

Here are a few ideas -

• Take away all Road and RailRoad land bonuses and only allow them faster unit movement
• Make other map improvements to supplement the loss of the additional RailRoad shields/additional Road trade arrows
• Tax Infustructure
• Change the way Roads and RailRoads are built
• keep them the way they are in Civ2 but make the art look nicer on the map instead of icky gray lines or wavey brown lines. Maybe smaller, less noticable?

[Ilkuul]

Originally posted by bagdar
...we shouldn't be able to build endless railways, because then our mines would expire...

This is slightly off-topic, but... "our mines would expire"? Did I miss something? Where was it suggested that mines/resources are liable to expire? Aaargh!!

[To_Serve_Man]

One of the Firaxis employees said that resources could be exauhsted in one of the previews. I'm not sure which one though. It wasnt to long ago.

[rah]

Actually I'm surprised at the negative outbursts about too many railroads and roads. Especially from a lot of people that otherwise have posted in favor of increased realism.

If you looked at a map of the Eastern US broken down into squares you would not be able to find a square that didn't have multiple roads and railroads in it. If you looked at Chicago, railroads abound every couple of miles. So it terms of realism, I would expect every square of a city proper to have roads and railroads in them.

Just make them not so intrusive in the graphics and minimize some of the benefits.

RAH