Get Rid of Roads and Railroads!

[polymths]

Many people have pointed out how easy it is to defeat the AI, and how the AI simply is incapable of posing a serious threat to a human player during the endgame. But a fundamental reason for this is the instant speed and the infinite capacity of railroads.

While it might be possible to revamp the Civ roads/railroads, I believe that we may be better off simply getting rid of railroads altogether. More than any other factor, railroads seriously unbalances and distorts the game, and makes the AI's task of invading your home continent simply impossible while making the defense of the home continent entirely easy and worry free.

The reason is simply that with infinite speed, infinite capacity railroads, it is easy to defeat any invasion force that lands on the home continent regardless of deployment or location of military production cities. If an invasion force of 8 units lands near a city and you have have 12 cities each defended by 1 unit, you simply activate each and every unit in all cities, instantly transport them over to the enemy, defeat the enemy force and then instantly transport them back to the original cities, and all of this is done in one turn!

Suppose though that railroads and even roads did not exist at all! If an AI lands near a city defended by 1 unit (or even 2), the AI can definitely take the city. Then the AI can march its 8 unit force and take a few more cities before your home guard can converge on the invaders since it will take some time before your spread out force of one tank in each city can converge on the enemy. Since there are no railroads, the AI might not even need to garrison the cities because even if empty, it will still require some time to reach the cities to take them over. By then those cities might have produced a tank (or two) already for the enemy! And while you have been busy emptying your cities and marching them off to meet the enemy, these cities have now become dangerously vulnerable. Another opportunistic AI sees this and decides now is the time to make it a two front war. Do you now still try to retake those cities leaving yourself weakened for enemy#2? (Remember now you cannot instantaneously defeat enemy force 1 and enemy force 2 in in two turns!)

By simply getting rid of railroads (and even roads), whole new possibilities now present themselves.

1. Deployment of forces for defense
Since it takes time to move units, you have to make decisions about where to concentrate and deploy your home guard. (Assumes of course that it is not possible, say, to mass 10 units in each and every city quickly and easily)

2. Importance of terrain
Despite all this attention to detail concerning movement and defense bonuses of terrain, roads/railroads make it largely irrelevant. Now it matters a great deal.

3. Importance of diplomacy
You've been invaded and are now massing your home guard for counterattack? better make sure another neighboring AI doesn't join the fun before you empty all your units in all your cities to engage the invader!

What a vast improvement in challenge and gameplay if we simply got rid of roads and railroads! Without roads/railroads a mediocre AI could become very challenging indeed!

[MrFun]

I disagree completely!

How can we have a Civilization game without railroads!?

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Never submit to social double standards.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi There,
You make a number of very valid points, Railroads (and to a lesser extent) roads), have always been one of my big problems in Civ II. However, there is a solution that does not require the total abolition of roads and RR.

1) Give all units a "terrain movement modifier" (eg. for infantry it might be: plains=1x, forests =1/2X and hills=1/4-1/8x; cavalry might have forests=1/4x and hills=1/8-1/16x), then simply make roads and RR a modifier of this terrain modifier (eg. Roads 2x and RR=3x). This makes a journey on RR only slightly faster than on roads (which is in turn only slightly faster than unimproved terrain!) It also makes all movement dependant on the unit type (although you could just make a single set of modifiers for all units based on terrain only!) Most important, the AI could still obtain a beach-head before you can muster the Home Gaurd!

2) Roads and Rail should have a capacity rating-this is the maximum stack size you can have moving onto a road/rail tile at any time. You could improve road/rail tiles multiple times to increase the capacity rating to reflect the construction of multiple lines, highways etc. There would be a limit, however, to how often this could be done!
Additionally some units should count as more than one unit for the purposes of capacity. Obviously, infantry and units would be equal to 1, but cavalry and knights would probably be equal to 2 and armour(and mech inf.) units may even count as 3! This puts even greater limits to the number of units you can muster for your defense and has the added bonus of discouraging people from building stacks consisting of nothing but armour!!

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what you think of my alternative suggestions, and thankyou for putting the topic on the agenda!

The_Aussie_Lurker

[TechWins]

Polymyths, that has got to be the worst idea I have ever heard! No railroads I could maybe understand but no roads? Maybe you've had a few too many drinks tonight but I still think you're an idiot for making such a terrible idea. Roads were a big part of history. How do you think Rome was able to be so succesful? I mean I realize it was more than just having a bunch of roads. I feel that railroads should be 1/2 turns, not completely gone, or being free for move.

No name calling please. Sorry I want roads and railroads.

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[TechWins]

Sorry Polymyths If I was a little to harsh.

[Father Beast]

Check the "Improved Road And Rail Rules" in the EC3 list. had some great stuff.

[Cyclotron]

Don't leave 'em out, just make 'em better!

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Zanzin]

No roads and railroads....what a great idea!! (read: sarcasm)

If you're going to chuck out roads and railroads because of the way they impair the AI, lets chuck out every aspect of the game that the AI can't properly understand....I mean c'mon!

The majority feeling on Civ3 is don't sacrifice fun for historical accuray.....but this going just a tad too far!

[Brad]

Do not get rid of roads and railroads. I think that railroads should be reduced in speed (maybe to 1/5 of a movement point), and maybe reduce roads to 1/2, but if you don't like roads or railroads in a game because it makes it easier to defeat the AI, Don't use them.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Guys,
Whilst we are on this whole "Movement Based" thread, am I the only one here who thought that the movement rates of units during the early parts of Civ II, even on roads, was just ridiculous. I mean, when you consider how many years there are to a turn during the ancient and medeival eras, then it's just silly. The only way they can solve this in Civ III is to either

1) Reduce the base number of years per turn to about 5 or 10.
2) Increase the Movement allowance of all units or,
3) Have unit movement and combat occur at a different time rate to that of the normal turn (as is being suggested by the creators of "Clash of Civilizations" for their game)

So people, I've thrown down the gauntlet-what do you think, am I crazy, or do you agree with me? If the former, then why? If the latter, then which of the above suggestions, if any, would come closest to solving this problem...or if none of them will, perhaps you have some suggestions on how movement can be improved!

Yours in Civ,
The_Aussie_Lurker (though I don't really lurk that often anymore)

[Grumbold]

With 1 turn = 1 year I am reluctant to prevent friendly railroad tiles being less than infinite movement. However there have been suggestions that each enemy tile should have to be captured individually to slow down rail invasion of enemy territory. That should allow massive invasions in one turn if they have the extra manpower but not allow a single stack to ride for free all the way to the enemy capital. Perhaps there should also be a reduction in combat strength for any unit which used friendly rail movement for any part of the turn in which it fights - but that would involve a rail/no rail toggle that defies the KISS rule.

[polymths]

The main problem I have with Infinite Speed, Infinite Movement Railroads is that it makes no sense in comparison with the movement rates of aircraft and ships and therefore it is totally out of balance. It also totally negates any kind of terrain effect on land movement to a degree that has never been seen IRL. I DO NOT RECALL in WWII, WWI, that units reinforce from large land distances instantaneously.

The bottom line is this:
Do people want some semblance of tactical level manuevering of units or not? In other words actually controlling and moving individual units like tanks, planes, ships? If so, then I think that the movement rates of all units should together be balanced realistically.

Therefore either we get raid of roads/railroads altogether to maintain this balance or we should simply do away with any kind of tactical maneuvering altogether and just abstract ALL UNITS to have close to infinite movement. That way not only land units using RRs will have infinite movement but also ships and planes.

[Your.Master]

While I think RR's should be toned down, I agree with the logic that land units move too fast. Remember, WWII would only be 4 turns in Civilization II, and there were battles for every turn: on the large scale, railroads ARE effectively instantaneous even if not so on the tactical scale.

What I think is that Airplanes and Ships should get speed boosts with tech. Also, I wouldn't mind if railroads were weakened but game time late in the game had turns that lasted a half-year or a season. That late in the game you'd hardly notice technological progress slowing down.

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by Your.Master on 05-10-2001 04:28 PM While I think RR's should be toned down, I agree with the logic that land units move too fast. Remember, WWII would only be 4 turns in Civilization II, and there were battles for every turn: on the large scale, railroads ARE effectively instantaneous even if not so on the tactical scale. What I think is that Airplanes and Ships should get speed boosts with tech. Also, I wouldn't mind if railroads were weakened but game time late in the game had turns that lasted a half-year or a season. That late in the game you'd hardly notice technological progress slowing down.

The only purpose of timescale is to mark technological progress. There is no way to reconcile that with movement of units nor do I think this is even particularly important.

What matters is good overall balance. Already I see that airports, paratroopers and RRs basically make the whole concept of tactical movement of individual units silly. So like I said, either balance movement of all units to be realistic IN RELATION TO ONE ANOTHER or just do away with tactical movement of individual units altogether and abstract everything the way is done with RRs, airports, and paratroopers.

Using the arguments people have made regarding RRs, why not just have seaports that function like airports with a "chance of fleet being intercepted" everytime you instantaneously transport a fleet???

[Sabre2th]

There is no way you could take roads and railroads out of a civ game like this. Just take away the infinite movement idea.
For Example:
Roads: 1/3 multiplier
Railroads: 1/5 multiplier
Simple

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"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
-Thomas A. Edison

[Pedrun]

No way it is better without them. like everybody said they just need to be balanced

[MazaNaza]

While historical accuracy in Civilization is fun, it is not, as even Sid says, the focus of the game. The face that it takes twenty years for a legion to move one square at the beginning of the game may seem stupid, but the reality of the situation is that the length of the turn is only there to keep technology more or less in synch with the date.

Think about it: when you play at the diety level, the pace of your research stays about with the actual way it went in history. The number of years per turn drops as you progress to reflect the dramatic increase in the speed of technological advancement - it really has no tie to any other facet of the game. The date is not important except as a timer. It lets you know how much time you have left and, to some extent, how you are doing in comparison to other games you've played.

Trying to match up the time increments and unit movement would be an impossibly, and perhaps needlessly, difficult task.

On another note, railroads should be toned down but you cannot remove them (or roads, for that matter) entirely from the game. The infinite movement of railroad is there to portray the lightning fast response times modern fighting forces have. The ability to react quickly to a single threat is not a factor; all that does is force the aggressor to use increasingly imaginative tactics. Wars are no longer fought by two massive forces finding a spot to meet and pounding each other until only one is left. To fight a modern Civilization war effectively an attacker must split the defenders forces using diversions and use unconventional attacks (i.e. spy units). Because of the effectiveness of rails, they become a prime target for an attacker, as was the historical case in WWII. Fast-moving mech inf units can break rail connections to a city before the defender can respond. Isolating your target is the most basic of the war tactics in Civilization.

It is not enough to simply handicap the human player so that the AI can compete - that is what the difficulty levels are for. The AI needs to be enhanced and the railroads themselves tweaked, perhaps, but there is no reason to totally remove them.

In Call to Power 1 & 2 a walking unit without roads was 1 tile, with roads 3 tiles, with railroads 5 tiles. Maybe if Firaxis consider that approach the road and railroads thing would fixed.

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[The_Aussie_Lurker]

On the subject of roads and RR's. Aside from the suggestions I've already given, I also feel that you should not be able to get onto a RR from any point, but must enter it from a city square. This would make using an enemies RR against him much harder, as you'd have to capture one of his connecting cities before you could use it! You could also have a tile improvement that you can build next to a RR, that would allow your units to move onto it at this point (sort of a Rail Depot improvement). This would also have to be captured before you can use an enemy RR. Lastly, RR's should be able to ignore the effects of mountain and hill terrain-as it is assumed that the RR goes straight through (via a tunnel!)
Anyway, as always, I'm eager to hear peoples thoughts on these ideas. I hope to hear them soon.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[Roman]

quote: Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker on 05-13-2001 07:35 PM On the subject of roads and RR's. Aside from the suggestions I've already given, I also feel that you should not be able to get onto a RR from any point, but must enter it from a city square. This would make using an enemies RR against him much harder, as you'd have to capture one of his connecting cities before you could use it! You could also have a tile improvement that you can build next to a RR, that would allow your units to move onto it at this point (sort of a Rail Depot improvement). This would also have to be captured before you can use an enemy RR. Lastly, RR's should be able to ignore the effects of mountain and hill terrain-as it is assumed that the RR goes straight through (via a tunnel!) Anyway, as always, I'm eager to hear peoples thoughts on these ideas. I hope to hear them soon. Yours, The_Aussie_Lurker

I think this is a good idea and could make the use of enemy railways harder.

[imgod2u]

Here's the thing. I think that the more realistic the concepts of the game are, the better play it will be (since it is, after all, suppose to simulate real war and growth, etc). Therefore, may I suggest that we look at how railroads and roads are used in real life, and then apply them to the game.

1) Roads were used by the Roman Empire to racilitate the movement of chariots and such. Units who can take advantage of roads would be mobile units, infantry units shouldn't be able to use it as much. Later on in the game, when hover units (if there are such) become available, roads should be obselete and useless to facilitate the movements of these units.
2) Railroads are not something you can just get on anywhere and be transported. So, therefore, may I suggest that we have a transport unit that can take advantage of the railroads (trains), in which you can put units into and transport them (of course, there'd be a limit to the number of units you can put in a transport unit). Also, a limitation to how many units can be in a stack is also important. And since railroads aren't totally frictionless or give a unit infinite speed, may I suggest that it will not facilitate the movement of any unit other than that of the transport unit (which, should be limited to movement ONLY on railroads).
3) I think there should be some third generation of the road/railroads, just because the concept is cool. Like maglevs in SMAC. So how about having a magtube improvement that will allow infantry units to move faster (as you can't shove a big tank into a magtube).

Each type of road/whatever should facilitate the movement of a certain type of unit. This will also make it possible to make infantry units generally stronger than mobile units, but slower so that they're less effective (don't you hate how an armor unit is just as capable of defending a city as a rifleman unit?) This would make it neccessary to not only think about where to place your infantry units, but also for an attacker to try to lure an infantry unit away so that the main force may be able to take a city (as an infantry unit would be much stronger than the attacking mobile units). The civilization that has faster infantry units due to magtubes will gain a great advantage. Roads, railroads and magtubes shouldn't be mutually exclusive. They should be allowed to exist together, since each only facilitates the movement of a certain type of unit.

[The Rusty Gamer]

Instead of terrain movement per turn, how about a really radical idea and make it terrain movement per year! This would require some adjusting of variables but then the units would (from our point of view) speed up or slow down depending on how many years were passing per turn. Or is this just a bit too radical?

[java4me]

I wouldn't get rid of roads and railroads, I would keep them!!!

In Civ3 the AI can't use your roads and railroads, because there is a thing called borders now that will prohibit them from using your roads, unless you allow them or you are in war with them. But it is kinda of cheap for them to use your roads and railroads when your are in war with them!!!

Anyway, I think that Firaxis should upgrade them in some way!!!

[Sava]

If anyone has read any of my posted topics (very few have) they would have read a solution to this problem. Using railroads requires a TRAIN!!! If Saddam Hussein landed troops in New York, hundreds of thousands of American troops would be transported, mostly by rail, to New York and they would kick his arab arse back to his sh*thole of a country.

If you have the infrastructure in place, you can use it to your advantage. Use your head polymths, the scenario you described is what would happen in real life. Troops from all over the country would be transported, mostly be rail, to the problem area and would neutralize the threat. The thing you are overlooking is that if someone invaded the US, they probably would not be able to use the rail system because they wouldn't control any TRAINS!!

Also, roads should be changed upon the invention of the Automobile because it takes a very short time to drive across the United States. In fact, it is almost faster to drive than to take the rail.

In Civilization's turn based system, railroad's movement allowance needs to be infinite because the minimum turn is a year. And in a year, I can travel across any length rail line. If you people are unwilling to give up your flawed turn based system, then you have to deal with the effects of railroad and infinite movement.
[This message has been edited by SoulAssassin (edited May 14, 2001).]

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-14-2001 03:49 PM In Civilization's turn based system, railroad's movement allowance needs to be infinite because the minimum turn is a year. And in a year, I can travel across any length rail line. If you people are unwilling to give up your flawed turn based system, then you have to deal with the effects of railroad and infinite movement. [This message has been edited by SoulAssassin (edited May 14, 2001).]

FOR THE LAST TIME!
Time/Turn is only for measuring technological progress and cannot be interpreted literally for unit movement! On another thread, I've already proposed that time/turn timescale might be totally gotten rid of and turns simply called turns (with a very periodic year update for effect only).

But this point is BALANCE!
If indeed you hold that since 1year/1turn literal interpretation, then shouldn't ships all other units have basically infinite movement as well. Hell, since 1 turn=1 year, I should be able to instantaneously transport almost any unit!

Again, I say, let it be balanced! If units travelling on trains have infinite movement based on 1 turn=1 year dogma, then ships and planes and almost every unit should have close to infinite movement. I mean IRL, you actually can travel around the world a couple of times even on ships! But is this what you really want????

If you don't like that every unit has near infinite movement and ships/planes, etc have finite movement, then land units should be balanced to be in sync with OTHER UNITS!

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-14-2001 03:49 PM If you people are unwilling to give up your flawed turn based system, then you have to deal with the effects of railroad and infinite movement.

Its not so much a question of what WE are willing to give up, or not. Its instead a question of what Firaxis already have implemented. The game IS turnbased and they are not going to change that. (Good!).

As for infinite RR movement - well, that obviously imbalances the end-games pretty seriously. I want both roads and RR:s, but the movement-rules must be tweaked one way or the other.

Finally: I dont give a damn about that timescale argument. As I said in another thread: I have read somewhere that "those who analyzes humor dont have any". Maybe one likewise shouldnt analyze the realism in strategy-games too much either. Perhaps one tend to forget about having fun playing.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 14, 2001).]

[Grumbold]

It is when you are at war that their use of your railway is important to restrict.

Roads were essential for the movement of all troops, even infantry, because it is faster and easier than tramping through woods and fields. Supply carts simply don't move where there are no roads and you have to use less efficient pack trains.

Embarking only at stations would be sensible but unless you are crossing Siberia or the Amazon there are going to be invisible small town stations two to a tile.

[Urban Ranger]

I personally don't have any problems with units moving at infinite speeds along railroads. This is counterbalanced by their acutal low movement points. So while they can get anywhere fast, they can't fight many times.

Compare this to ships and airplanes.

Also railroads are extremely important strategically. Germany built its railways in anticipation of a two-front war. Some war plans were devised by examining railroad systems.

Let things as they are now.

[Grumbold]

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 05-15-2001 04:11 AM I personally don't have any problems with units moving at infinite speeds along railroads. This is counterbalanced by their acutal low movement points. So while they can get anywhere fast, they can't fight many times.

I believe the biggest reservations stem from the AI being keen to railroad every tile within their city radii and then inadequately guard them. Playing against human opponents you deserve to lose if you make that mistake. Playing the AI you want a rule tweak to make it harder to take the city of your choice having bust through the border guard. Assigning a small but real cost to each tile crossed or by forcing you to 'occupy' enemy rail tiles before another of your units can use them are possibilities for achieveing this. An alternative is to produce such a strong AI that it is redundant.

Your point about infinite sea and air movement is well made. Ships should certainly have comparatively higher movement points in the modern era and airplanes should be able to fly anywhere they want provided they can stop to refuel every 8-12 tiles. The only reason for not allowing them is game balance, which is precisely where infinite rail movement causes problems too.