Railroads are just ****

[Dida]

RRs giving infinite movement rate is ridiculous. It removes the need to place your unit strategically.
RRs should give either 3+X of movement rates or a flat movement rate for all units, let say, 10 for all units.

[Capt Dizle]

I think the game should have little sappers that tunnel underground and blow stuff deep up in enemy territory. Then, the tunnels could be used to move troops in. We would need some way to get them there fresh though, crawling in tunnels is hard work.

Probably be best to make some new units. Barrel makers to make, well, barrels. Packers to well, pack in the troops. Then pumpers to pump the tunnels full of water, the pressure of which would shoot the barrels of troops through. We could do a neat animation of the barrels popping up out of the ground and smashing back to earth with the troop landing on its feet firing!

Of course such a tunnel could only work if it originates from a tile with a river until electricity. But, duh, you knew that.

[ixnay]

I would give RR's 1/16 movement and production/food bonuses for all cities connected to your capital. This would encourage people to build up a rail network, but not plant railroads on every square.

[Blake]

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.

Good solution. It would make it much harder to repel invasions... altough cities could still be super-stacked.
The idea of them making infantry movement faster is also good. Prehaps infantry could get 1/9th movement cost on RR.

I think the game should have little sappers that tunnel underground and blow stuff deep up in enemy territory. Then, the tunnels could be used to move troops in. We would need some way to get them there fresh though, crawling in tunnels is hard work.
...

[NeoStar]

Originally posted by Jaybe
...Just ask the US Army.

Or the Prussians (Germans). After all, they were the first to use railroads for mobile warefare during the Franco-Prussian war.

I agree with you all, in theory. In reality, I've been spoiled by civ2 and civ3 and as I found with my brief stint with CTP2 it would get very annoying...

I think it should have been capped BUT railroads with no limits have been part of civ strategy for too long.

Originally posted by Thomas Paine
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!

Yes-that is ridicolous. 'Infantry' should be able to procure transport on the way to battle with horses/jeeps/trucks - whatever!

They should have 2 movement, but that would be a tank... I have a feeling they lowered the tank (from civ2) to only 2 because of the Panzer (3). A 4 point panzer would have been too much.

[Boris Godunov]

I think the answer is to limit the number of units you can move freely on your rail network per turn. After all, in the real world, rail transportation is limited by the number of railway cars available. Perhaps notyoueither's idea of limiting it to the number of cities linked is a wise one.

[King of Rasslin]

"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."

The strength of the tank is its power. It already have 2 movement, and is very powerful. Modern armor is too easy to use and very unfair because the winner is whoever has a bigger sod. I am glad there is average scoring because the modern era is messed up as it is.

I would go with Uberkrux here.

[Chronus]

As much as I love Civ 3, I must agree that the infinite RR movement does take out a large strategy factor.

I think they should be 1/6 the movement (i.e twice as effective as roads . . . nothing fancy). Even this number, however, may be too much. That's 18 tiles in one turn for your modern units! This would cover most of the continents I've seen. Perhaps it should only be 1/4?

The idea of "airlifting" a unit from one city to another connected by RR seems like a good idea. Two questions though: will each city have the ability to only handle one unit? (too restrictive, in my opinion) . . . and . . . can this be easily done with "stacked" units?

[GabeRivers]

Some thoughts

I agree with the suggestions that rail movement should be limited. Anywhere from 10 to 20 tiles would be fine. I do not agree with the suggestion that rail movement should not apply to mobile units, such as tanks and cavalry. This would be unrealistic, as military history clearly supports such movements.

One thing I would do in order to force strategic defensive deployment would be to allow troops that are unloaded from transports to retain their normal movements when they are unloaded. Requiring them to wait a turn renders them dead meat. In my current game, Germany has landed 3 boat-loads of tanks and MI positioned against a city and poised for attack. Of course, I've been able to easily wipe them out before they could take any action. If they had been allowed to move when they first landed, I would have had to have been well defended or I would have been in trouble.

[Jon Shafer]

I agree with everyone else here. Along with the lack of better use of naval combat/sea routes, the problem with 'teleporting' railroads is my biggest problem with Civ 3. I beg of Firaxis to make that editable in PtW... it just takes so much strategy out of the late game, and will make MP defense nearly impossible to break, since humans know how to use defense much better than an AI can.

What I think should be done: Limit the distance and number of units that can move in a railroad per turn (no doubling/trippling movement), and make it cost 1 gold or so to move it (railroads don't run for free you know).

Unfortunately, I highly doubt these changes will be implimented in PtW.

[Saurus]

You are all correct, I think.
Everyone has a point in a way or another.

We really should be able to EDIT the properties of railroads (and other terrain improvements as well)
in the editor so that every one could modify railroads to their liking.

Personally, I HATE railroads as they are now.
It gives the human player too much of an advantage.
In addition it is extreamly ugly whit the railroad-spider covering every possible space on the map.

If there would be anything to do about it, I would instantly remove food/production bonus the railroad provides and reduce its movement bonus from unlimited to 1/6 moves.

I would re-introduce farmlands and introduce the concept of advanced mines...oh, but sadly this is just a dream...=(

-S

[Destroyer]

Railroads should offer a flat bonus to all units. not a times of the movement rate.

Why whould a tank move 3 times as far as infantry for example? Trains all move the same speed

Perhaps speed.movement could be determined by current tech level.

[alva]

To be honest, I don't see any simple sollution to this.
Allthough I've seen a couple off good suggetions, it's
gonna be pretty difficult to change it. You would almost need to redo the whole game IMHO.
Still I hate it and consider it a gamebreaker.
This is where I usually end my games and start a new one.

[star mouse]

I also agree that infinite movement for railroads is overpowered. The movement rate for railroads should be editable, like it is for roads, with 0 = infinite movement.

One thing I liked about the CTP/CTP2 series was how railroads (and their futuristic replacement, maglevs) did not confer infinite movement. In CTP/2, I think roads were 1/3, railroads 1/5, maglevs 1/10. A movement-3 unit could go 30 squares in a turn, but the movement was not infinite, and you were forced to position your troops carefully throughout the game.

[kring]

I agree RR's are way too powerful as now implemented. Limiting them, or giving us the ability to limit them, would be nice. You could just stick it the same place as the road move setting in the editor.