Roads and rails

[graeme]

Hi,

It just stuck me as very strange that railways are actually built on top of roads! Also when you pilage/bomb a railway the road is uncovered underneath and in perfect working order!

Surely it would be better for roads and railways to be completely seperate. And perhaps building a railway ontop of a road should actually take longer.

Any ideas to stop the endless encroachment of rail into the country side would be welcomed as it is very ugly

I would prefer that railways are only uselful when they actual connect two cities together, this should benefit the commerce for the cities involved plus possibly some food bonuses (maybe would act as a granary).

Also is pollution generated from railways/roads? And what happened to motorways?

Graeme

[Cookie Monster]

Having a countryside filled with railways in Civ3 is a bit unsightly I agree. But the benefits that railways bring you is too great to ignore. Still it does seem strange to pillage a RR and have an intact road underneath but the system works so what can you do?

[zulu9812]

Doesn't pillaging/bomabardment of a tile without any units on it remove all tile improvents? I bombarded a tile with road and irrigation on it - both were destroyed.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by zulu9812
Doesn't pillaging/bomabardment of a tile without any units on it remove all tile improvents? I bombarded a tile with road and irrigation on it - both were destroyed.

Normally yes, but for some reason when you have a tile covered with a rail only the rail gets pillaged. You have to pillage the other improvements again.

[Alex]

Yes, the "spaghetti" railroads are ugly and messy. A better solution, IMO, would be to extend automatically the benefits of railroads to all tiles into the city radius when the city is connected to a rail line. Also, railroads should not give this free movement bonus. It is somewhat strange that a land based unit can zip instantly through the continent while ships take 50 years to go from north to south, for instance.

The only problem with the automatic bonus to city radius is that we would need to have some sort of visual clue that the unit is moving through railroaded squares.

[Jawa Jocky]

IMO you should not get infinite movement from rail. Maybe 20 spaces would be more reasonable. Actually this idea sucks never mind.

[Bella Hella]

yeah, even in SMAC the mag tubes (equivalent of RRs) didn't give you free movement.

[Grrr]

The free railroad has been a cornerstone of most Civ strategys, they can't just get rid.

[Tuberski]

Yep, you would have far more people complain about the loos of free movement than we do about free movement.

[Cyclotron]

The only thing uglier than railroad sprawl... would be roads AND railroads both clogging my tiles together.

Keep it as is, please.

[Inverse Icarus]

roads and irrigation/mines are considered ONE improvement for bombard/pillaging purposes. you must pillage a railroad and THEN the stuff under it.

[zulu9812]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
The only thing uglier than railroad sprawl...

There's a terrain mod which puts buildings at every road/railroad crossing. It looks really cool in the modern age. Urban sprawl. Yeh!

[notyoueither]

If they don't modify how RRs work for unit movement, MP warfare is going to be very one-sided on the side of the defender.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by zulu9812
There's a terrain mod which puts buildings at every road/railroad crossing. It looks really cool in the modern age. Urban sprawl. Yeh!

I've got that one.

If unlimited movement is such a pivotal strategy for some people, maybe they should have just included a cheat option in Civ III like they did with II instead...

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by notyoueither
If they don't modify how RRs work for unit movement, MP warfare is going to be very one-sided on the side of the defender.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing, in your opinion. I personally think its a good thing, as (if your hypothesis is true) it will make games longer and more entrenched. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on the individual's perspective.

I still think that it won't make it much more difficult, as long as you can open multiple fronts, the attacker should gain some penetration, someplace.