Can't use roads during invasion?

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Mines, blockades are great, but how do your defending troops avoid them with no loss of movement?

They have maps, and some auto off switches.

[squid]

This is a very bad idea

Firaxis, reconsider and turn it off.

If you recall during the Civil War, one of the greatest threats to Washington was if the South took it by rail, so as I believe the rail lines were cut.

Rail lines in france are a different gauge, I believe, for similar reasons.

HOWEVER it is always easiest for enemies to use roads as a method of invasion for fastest movement rate.

Civil War troops frequently used roads, and wheeled vehicles certaintly don't want to truck through the jungle. Perhaps reseaching "mines" may be effective, but road bonuses should not be withheld!

[DonJoel]

What is this!!? Of course you should be able to use roads! perhaps not railroad but road! The road is still there right

(and if the ai sucks as much as in smac and civ2 in attacking it will be even easier now if the enemy piles up at your border...)

[Ralf]

Originally posted by DonJoel
(and if the ai sucks as much as in smac and civ2 in attacking it will be even easier now if the enemy piles up at your border...)

This idea is a double-edged sword - but the burden lays mainly on the human player, since he most often take the conquer-the-world initiatives. Good.

Basically, I like the idea of only having complete full-speed access to enemy-roads, after you have conquered the enemy-city controling the surrounding roads. But there should at least be some incentive to use roads anyway. My suggestion earlier was treating both uncontrolled roads & RR:s as roads with only doubled (not tripled) move road-bonus. But I can live with Firaxis variant as well.

Look at it as a new challenge - now your old Civ-2 sleepwalk-routine invasions wont work anymore. You have to rethink your strategies - is that really so terrible?

As for realism - compare with invading foreign contries in "Europa Universalis", which is much harder (and much more realistic) - even compared with Civ-3, it seems. So I dont think you can use realism-arguments against the idea of making invasions slower & harder then it ever was in Civ-2.

[RedWhiteArcher]

IMHO the roads shouldn't be touched during invasions but the railroads are great idea. Although this could be easily implemented in Civ 2 too by pilaging you own RR. Hey hint, pilage the roads too.

Also a great and very easy to implement feature could be the attrition. Just like helicopter in Civ2, every unit outside the borders should suffer damge in precentage depending on what terrain it is on.

[Harlan]

I hope this is something that is editable for scenario makers. In general, I think a good compromise would be to have the movement rate for hostile roads and railroads halved. Keep in mind that turns are a minimum of 1 year, sometimes 25 years or so. So if you can't use the infrastructre at all, it may take several centuries just to reach a city's outskirts! That's no fun, and not realistic. (Having to take "only" 50 years isn't realistic either, but at least its better, and there are good gameplay reasons for some slowdown)

By the way, railroads were not such a big obstacle as many people think. The main example that pops to mind is Russia during WW2. But this is a rare exception: only Russia and Spain AFAIK use narrow gauge rail tracks. In most other cases, railroads could be used effectively very quickly (for instance the German approach to Paris in WWI), and it certainly wasn't a slowdown on the order of years.

[DonJoel]

I hope this is something that is editable for scenario makers. In general, I think a good compromise would be to have the movement rate for hostile roads and railroads halved. Keep in mind that turns are a minimum of 1 year, sometimes 25 years or so. So if you can't use the infrastructre at all, it may take several centuries just to reach a city's outskirts! That's no fun, and not realistic. (Having to take "only" 50 years isn't realistic either, but at least its better, and there are good gameplay reasons for some slowdown

I dont see why people always says what you should be able to do in a year and not. CIVILIZATION uses TURNS NOT YEARS. The years is just for fun, its the turns that counts.
Yes, you should be able to do alot in a year but if you walk down that road you have to re-design a whole new game.

But I do think that you should be able to use roads, not just railroads (for gameplay reasons)

[jdd2007]

the roads shouldn't be touched

there should at least be some incentive to use roads anyway.

Of course you should be able to use roads!

road bonuses should not be withheld!

well well well ... everyone still likes the RRs ( ) but the road idea gets

[Alexander's Horse]

I can't believe some of you morons think this is a good idea

Invaders use the existing lines of communications!!!!! DUH!!!!! This would have to be one of the stupidest game design decisions I have ever seen.

I'd like the Firaxis team to explain to me

a. how "culture" stops an invader from using a road and

b. how you execute a blitzkrieg when you can't use the freaking enemy roads and railways!!!

On the civ time scale, roads and rail should be available to invaders.

SSHHHEEESSSH!

If you ask me, this is a code bug dressed up as a feature.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
a. how "culture" stops an invader from using a road and

It doesnt. Just because you must conquer/control enemy-cities in order to get full road/RR-benefit within city-indevidual culture-borders, doesnt necessarily mean that "culture" has anything to do with it. The main point is that you must control the local area, before you can relax and move at full-speed along these enemy-roads.
Besides - who says you cannot use uncontrolled enemy roads? You can very well choose to move along these roads anyway - it just that you dont benefit from the road-bonus.

The overal idea makes perfect sense to me (although a reduced doubled road-bounus roads/RR:s alike, would be enough - but perhaps customers who dont bother with manuals would promptly report such subtle differences as a bug). A slowed down invasion symbolizes sabotage, sniper harassment, mines, blown-up bridges, removed roadsigns, food/fuel-logistical problems and so on.

b. how you execute a blitzkrieg when you can't use the freaking enemy roads and railways!!!

The blitzkrieg's that one could execute in Civ-2 was in fact extremely unrealistic "ultra-speed blitzkriegs", that (for example) didnt take food/fuel-logistical problems into account at all. It was quite possible to invade & control upto 50-75% of an huge soviet-style AI-empire within the initial turn, before the invaded empire was allowed to fire back even a single shot.
And the AI could never respond in similar ways - thats way beyond what it can possibly do, in such a higly complex, random-map game like Civ. Besides, I think modern blitzkrieg's is still possible, because all modern units have much better move-stats then ancient/medieval ones (obviously).

On the civ time scale, roads and rail should be available to invaders.

The time-scale is a passive backdrop - whats important is the turns. One could just as well argue why it should take 5+ turns (= 5+ years) to move a battleship over a pacific ocean-type of distance, in a generic game, on a computer-generated map. The reason is of course that it would take "forever" to move around each indevidual ship, airplane & ground-unit, if they all had unlimited moves (if moves really was ruled by the time-scale alone).

If you ask me, this is a code bug dressed up as a feature.

I really dont think its that hard to program the default move-bonus rules, this way or that way. Instead they deliberately and purposely designed the rules this particular way, in order to make the game more balanced, fun, challenging and realistic in terms of invasions.

[DonJoel]

I say it again. You should be able to use roads but not railroad, all for gameplay and realism reasons.

[Harlan]

Ralf,
I think the fool who doesn't know the rules would be equally baffled if roads didn't work at all compared to roads working at half effect.

The ultra speed attacks you speak of are the result of unlimited movement on railroads. That indeed needs fixing, but this is going to the other extreme. In Civ3, it would take Alexander God knows how many hundreds of years to accomplish what he really accomplished in 8 years.

Is there anyone who DOESN'T like the idea of having roads work at half effect? Railroads are typically laid down where roads have already been (and remain), so you'd at least need the road half speed effect in the railroad case.

Personally, I think the naval rules are screwed up if ships can only move a few squares a turn. Just cos one thing is screwed up doesn't make it right to have another thing screwed up. There needs to be some compromise, but battleships for instance should move 15 at the very minimum, not 5. Especially since roads and railroads speed up ground traffic, but there is nothing similar for ocean. That level of slowness is just messed up. At least they seem to have fixed air movement this time around.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Harlan
In Civ3, it would take Alexander God knows how many hundreds of years to accomplish what he really accomplished in 8 years.

One can always choose to play a good Alexander-scenario (with adjusted time-scale).

Is there anyone who DOESN'T like the idea of having roads work at half effect?

Well, your variant I would infact prefer as the best choice. I hope they consider changing it. Otherwise one perhaps can tweak this feature through the extensive game-editors we have been promised.

[Alexander's Horse]

You people are talking out of your arses

A road is a neutral terrain feature. Invaders use them, always have, always will.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
A road is a neutral terrain feature. Invaders use them, always have, always will.

Learn from Harlan. Hes also against the idea, but he at least is willing to compromise (= reduced road-bonus).