Railroads are just ****

[King of Rasslin]

Insert the ugliest negative title you can think of. Railroads are teleporters that instantly move your units across the world in an instant. I don't like it.

Suddenly, when they are built, the need for strategic positioning of your troops is gone. You don't need a navy as badly because ships do not zip across the map. You make a lot of cavalry and tanks and never think about it. I hate this.

To Firaxis, and the PtW team: Please change this! They should be limited in how many people they can transport. They already give food and production bonuses. A nation without coal shouldn't be doomed, and that is the way it is currently. Please reduce the effectiveness of this brain dead style of late game playing. It would highly improve the late game part of Civ 3 that many feel lacks any sense of real strategy, besides making a lot of 3 movement units and seeing who has a bigger stack.

Anyone with me, we must band together and combine powers, or we will never defeat railroads! Go go Apolyton!

[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.

[King of Rasslin]

RRs give free food and production, they are already very powerful! I think they should give 5 moves to a unit with 1 movement, but function as roads for mobile units. How can you transport a cavalry division or a few dozen panzers by rail? It isn't practical. They are designed for foot soldiers. I think this would make infantry, paratroopers, and marines better. Mech infantry shouldn't replace infantry because infantry is not obsolete even today.

[Cyclotron]

I'll agree with this. Railroads should be reduced to 1/5 or 1/10 movement. I think, however, that this should apply to all units and should not restrict cav, tanks, etc.

[King of Rasslin]

Tanks and cav have too much of an advantage. They should pay for their bulk because they have so much power.

[Jaybe]

How can you transport a cavalry division or a few dozen panzers by rail? It isn't practical.

Totally disagree. This is where railroads SHINE! The efficiency of using rails over hundreds of miles FAR outstrip the use of roads with heavy equipment. Fuel efficiency (and associated mechanical breakdowns), especially. Just ask the US Army.

I also would prefer a non-infinite movement on rails, perhaps just a static 20 tiles (regardless of Movement Points), in addition to non-rail movement.

OTOH, I see how any rail movement bonus is totally arbitrary, and 'infinite' simplifies the AI planning immensely. It also goes hand-in-hand with the defender's advantage of the attacker losing road/rail benefits.

[Cyclotron]

Rasslin, I think that mobility is the major advantage of a tank. Why would you want to purposefully weaken it? You might end up with a strange situation where troops actually move faster in the industrial age than the modern age simply because you want to power down tanks. The disadvantage of tanks is their high cost and many resources needed... whether they are balanced or not is a different argument, but it seems arbitrary to go about balancing them with railroad speeds.

[Theseus]

I gotta chime in here... infinite movement is absurd, and negatively impacts game-balance.

What was the Civ2 movement ratio for RRs?

[Cyclotron]

Civ2 also had infinite movement on rails.

[Keeper of Hell]

If you're talking realism (as the guy with the "Cavalary can't move by railroad" line apparently was) RRs make perfect sense, as it would take a lot less than a year for a unit to move across a country. This is why the rather restricted movement range of naval units makes little sense- modern warships taking upwards of five years to make their way around a land mass? But if you're talking gameplay, then I've definitely got to agree. Not only does it remove any need to defend smartly on your own part, but the way the AI uses RRs is incredibly annoying (ever tried a late Industrial /infantry amphibious assault, only to have your units decimated by cavalry that comes in, hits, then retreats to a city halfway across the continent? Not fun at all.)

[Thomas Paine]

Unrestricted railway transportation portrays one of the game's most accurate representations of how industrialization revolutionized the logistics of modern warfare and trade. This is especially true when viewing each "turn" as representing one-to-five years. I would find no rules of physics violated by allowing machines and personel to be relocated within such a generous timeframe within one's own national borders. Seems a no-brainer, really... .

What "bothers" me is the molasses-slow movement of infantry units. It seems a bit whacky to begin a coastal D-Day infantry invasion in the industrial age, only to have the enemy research mechanized infantry by the time you reach their capital. Talk about a long walk!

I know, I know - this was implemented in the interest of game balance etc. etc. But you've got to admit, it would have made for some interesting variations on history. Hitler sets out for Poland in 1939, and arrives in 1954... .

[Optimizer]

The production bonus should be removed, shouldn't it?

[Inverse Icarus]

i would just make it so citiex connected by rails had the "airlift" ability. you would only get the 1/3 movement bonus on them, but you could teleport instantly to a city, wasting ALL your MP.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Civ2 also had infinite movement on rails.

Yes. However, they took the first positive step by not allowing you to rail around in an enemies territory. All that is left is to abolish the unlimited number of units using the unlimited movement on freindly rails.

[notyoueither]

PS. I really like how the general idea of how they have limited air transport (dependent on the number of cities with airports).

I would limit rail movement to a number of units equal to the number of cities connected to the rail net. If I had my way.