Railroads are just ****

[hexagonian]

Why is it so hard to accept what should be a simple solution - a 1/5 to 1/8 MP for all land units, and introduction of a second tier of tile improvements at the same time, so that RRs do not clutter up the map. Plus a player has to make a decision - construct a network of rails for movement or boost food/production/gold with tile improvements.

And create a city improvement called 'Railyards' to boost a city connected with rails with production/food/gold bonuses.

All he does now is slap down rails on every tile - voila, his butt is covered.

And for those who scream about the lack of realism this may create (geeez, my units have to take 2-3 years to cross my empire using limited MPs) there's enough abuses of realism in civ3 anyhow, so having another one shouldn't be such a big deal.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by hexagonian
Why is it so hard to accept what should be a simple solution - a 1/5 to 1/8 MP for all land units, and introduction of a second tier of tile improvements at the same time, so that RRs do not clutter up the map. Plus a player has to make a decision - construct a network of rails for movement or boost food/production/gold with tile improvements.

Bingo! The problem isn't unlimited movement along rails, its universal railroad coverage. Railroads simply don't cover everything; even in smaller European countries where rails go almost anywhere, they don't go everywhere. In larger countries such as the US, Russia and Canada, sometimes you're lucky if a single rail line runs across a state or territory.

The solution, once proposed by Venger I believe, is to create two city upgrades, an early one to boost the commerce of each worked square and a later one to boost commerce and production. Remove the bonuses from roads and rails and have them simply multiply a unit's movement by 3 and 10 (or 15, 25 whatever). This would eliminate the actual value in spreading roads and rails over every square. Plus, if you really wanted to boost the Commercial trait, you could make these improvements cheaper for commercial civs.

Also, as mentioned before, I think there should be some sort of cost for roads and RRs, 1 gp for every X squares of road and 2 gp for every X squares of RRs. It's just not credible that you can build roads and rails all over the place and never have to spend a dime on maintenance. You have to pay every turn for temples and whatnot, so why not roads?

[Conqueror]

What about a "Train" unit where you could load some amount of units, maybe 6-10, and then move the "Train" to its destination using the railroads and then unload units from it. A bit like transport on the sea, but with bit more movement, maybe around 12 tiles of movement for the "Train" unit.

This way railroads wouldnt be such a game killer in late game, and not free movement, because you would pay upkeep from the Trains, just as from other units, and you would have to build the trains, such spending shields to them too.

And ofcourse the Train unit would be the only one to benefit from the railroads, all other units would treat them as roads, something like this would be a nice mod to see

[YC4B4U]

I don't think Firaxis will be interested in adding too much complexity. But hopefully they will add something to improve the gameplay of Railroads.

I do like the idea of creating railroad stations and allowing movement off of railways only at these points. This would mean that you could bomb the railroads to stop reinforcement - however, what would I do to ensure a good defence, build more railroads for redundancy. Therefore a railroad maintenance cost should be included as suggested. More complexity - less chance of inclusion.

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by YC4B4U
I don't think Firaxis will be interested in adding too much complexity. But hopefully they will add something to improve the gameplay of Railroads.

I do like the idea of creating railroad stations and allowing movement off of railways only at these points. This would mean that you could bomb the railroads to stop reinforcement - however, what would I do to ensure a good defence, build more railroads for redundancy. Therefore a railroad maintenance cost should be included as suggested. More complexity - less chance of inclusion.

Yes, the idea of Railroad Stations is also very good, maybe implemented so that RR Station would be a city improvement, and only allowing units to transport between cities that have RR stations using some kind of RailMove key, like Airlift/Airport thing, otherwise RR would not increase movement, just the normal production/money/food bonus.

[The Pioneer]

Well, I totally agree with RRs being to powerful but I am not sure if Firaxis would try to change it because of the complexity of the issue. One thing that would improve things IMHO would be that the AI should "learn" how to use RRs strategically and efficiently in order to balance the game and make it more interesting. in my experience the AI's lack of using the AI is what makes me lean back once I start building railroads since it's now only a questioon of time!


So long...

[alva]

railroad unit =

loading/unloading, click...click..click

Can't say I like this idea.
Best one i ' ve seen so fare is flat movement points IMO

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Optimizer
You're right. Any suggestions of how to create a better model for railroads?

Concerning sea transport, I would really like a "sealift" which would automatically transport one unit from one port to another.

I like this idea

[Zylka]

Railroads are not what needs changing, but sea needs it according to RR

[kettyo]

In one year (1 turn is a year in civ3) you actually could travel the world around by rail. (though also by ship )

But i'm pretty sure that there'll be some other solution for multiplayer.

[The Puny Celt]

Well, now the developers know that railroads' unlimited movement is a feature that the human player exploits, I guess there's a good chance it will disappear from the next version of the game, just as a lot of the Civ2 exploits were gone from Civ3.

I hope they don't change it though, because the main users of railroads, even for the wargamers, are the Worker units. To me, it's a real relief to build railroads because it lessens the micromanagement nightmare of shifting workers from one place to another. Imagine restricted railway movement in any new version: there's a hill you want your workers to mine 20 spaces away, a railroad connects your workers to the hill but under the movement restriction it takes 2-3 moves to get there (move your half a dozen workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move your workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move...getting tedious?). Then when you get to the hill, pollution has sprung up back where the workers started from, it's causing a food shortage in that city so back your workers go again).

As for the idea of a train unit: imagine loading all those workers in and out fo trains all the time. My mouse finger joints are getting RSI just thinking about it!

[The Pioneer]

Maybe we should do a poll on this question and see what the general concensus is about the issue maybe that could pursue our Firaxis people to something about it in an upcoming patch or PTW?!

So long...

[vondrack]

Originally posted by The Puny Celt
I hope they don't change it though, because the main users of railroads, even for the wargamers, are the Worker units. To me, it's a real relief to build railroads because it lessens the micromanagement nightmare of shifting workers from one place to another. Imagine restricted railway movement in any new version: there's a hill you want your workers to mine 20 spaces away, a railroad connects your workers to the hill but under the movement restriction it takes 2-3 moves to get there (move your half a dozen workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move your workers 8 spaces, end of turn, move...getting tedious?). Then when you get to the hill, pollution has sprung up back where the workers started from, it's causing a food shortage in that city so back your workers go again).

As for the idea of a train unit: imagine loading all those workers in and out fo trains all the time. My mouse finger joints are getting RSI just thinking about it!

Good point, Celt. The limitations of RR transport as proposed by several posters (me included) should perhaps not apply to workers and other non-combat units... even though it might then be a bit difficult to imagine, why... But your are right that it would make the game unbearably tedious in later stages.

BTW - one of the changes proposed (allowing a unit to move any distance along RRs OR attack, but NOT BOTH on the same turn) woud have no impact on this worker movement issue...

[Blake]

I agree a train unit would be awful. We should encourage Firaxis to make less MM rather than more.

[M. le Comte]

Why not a train unit ?

I can't understand why you can't benefit of roads abroad. There is no reason forbidenning your footsoldiers to use the macadam of opponents' engineers. However I understand why you can't use railroad inside the borders of your enemy. You don't have trains to go on it (perhaps the reglementation about the height of tracks is not the same ?)

A train unit would be a hudge improvement. I think its movement should be limited, but not to much. In the reality, you cross Russia in a few weeks by train. Theoretically, you could go round earth by train in a few months. That is to say less than a year. That is to say less than a turn. So movement points must be significative.

But it would add an "infrastructural dimension" that lacks in civilization. In every modern war since the first Worls War in Europe and perhaps before elsewhere in the world (i just don't know), train, that is to say the ability to quickly move units from a front to another, as been at the core of every strategies.

The unit "train" wouldn't be too expensive. There could be several versions of trains, from "boiling water" (i don't know how to say that in english) trains to high speed electric trains, just as there are several types of transports, from sails to troop transports, including galions.

That's all folk.