How do you prioritise your rail network?

[Cort Haus]

I like to mix my defensive network with focus on the one or two cities to ramp up thru factory, coal plant and wonders - for the Uni Suff, ToE and Hoov.

[vmxa1]

Ususally I am worried about war and go for defensive areas first. Areas bordering others and then tie cities that will be making troops. If it is clear that I have time or I am currently making a wonder I will get to the wonder city quickly.

[DAVOUT]

I answered link all cities, but I see that more from an offensive point of view than for defense, because I am always at war when railroads are build.

[Solver]

The bulk of Workers immediately goes to build an effective transport network, but my 3 or so most important cities have got a few Workers improving area around those. Shortly before Steam Power, I get additional workers out, because I want every square covered in rails ASAP.

[Jamski]

How embarrassing (shift-A) is what I tend to end up using, unless I'm playing a tiny or small map. And it seems to work OK. I just want to get every square RR'ed, and that's what I get (eventually)

-Jam

[GarP2]

I usually link for defense first, as there is almost always war happening or about to happen during this period. There is nothing quite like Railroad guns (cannons then later artillery) to take the wind out of an attack.

GarP

[Agathon]

I link all my big cities out to my borders.

[Dominae]

Key cities get special attention. Then all cities get connected ASAP (in a Minimum Spanning Tree type of way, if you know what I mean).


Dominae

[cumi]

Connect all the cities, then each city gets a worker and CTRL-SHIFT-I. When done, SHIFT-A.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Maybe I'm just not playing in a tough enough world yet (regent), but I find that I don't need to link all my cities right off the bat, to get my troops to the front, which the reason I most often hear cited for doing so.

Instead, I assign two workers per city "fixing them up" with rails and that gets the job done. One worker if the civ is industrious.

I railroad everything. Everything.

[Panzer32]

I work on defensive network, but route the RR through tiles that will give me more production. Then I go for pure production, then RR every tile.

[Catt]

I usually create a transport link among all cities (key defensive / offensive points get priority), then improve specific cites with a goal of either food or shields (food where growth has been constrained, shields in wonder cities and those cities who need a boost to get a regular build a "turn reduction.") Eventually everything is RR'd.

Like Solver I tend to pop out a bunch of workers from size 12 cities (or otherwise growth restrained cities) before Steam Power, and pre-position worker groups in teams to start the rail network right on the discovery of SP (with fingers crossed that I have coal, of course ). Once RRing is done, the excess workers are absorbed back into cities.

Catt

[Fosse]

Half of my worker force railroads production squares in any wonder building cities, the second half starts in the capitol and connects toward the currently active front. Once all cities are connected by one rail line, and once my important cities are maxed in production, it's Shift-A.

[badams52]

Same as Catt

Except while I am linking, I might also get some worker teams to improve production and/or food (railroading irrigated desert tiles).

[Cruddy]

Well, it depends. If I can build hospitals then the extra food is more important to me, but if not then all cities linked is my favourite option. But I rarely bother railroading forests - and I plant a lot of forest, because it helps with global warming later on.