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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:28
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Well, I said it at CivFanatics, so I may as well say my peace here too  !
My vote is for Unlimited Movement but Limited Capacity .
To summarise my proposal, whenever you connect a city up to your trade network, with a RR, you recieve a set number of Capacity points-based on the size of the city connected, the tech level of your rail system and the presence of specific improvements/wonders. Capacity points indicate the maximum number of units you can move on rail each turn (though some units might use up more than 1 CP). As you use up CP's, though, your per turn income drops-for that turn-as you divert your Rail system away from supplying the needs of your civilian economy.
This would be especially important if you are having to pay a fixed maintainance cost on railroads as well.
Lastly, civs mobilized for war pay half cost for using CP's to move units, wheras peace 'mobilized' civs pay double.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:28
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Well, to be fair (and at the risk of blowing my own trumpet  ) My system allows the realism of railroad movement to be retained (and, at the same time, keeping out unneccessary micromanagement) whilst still improving the gameplay element of railroads-by introducing a strategic element in deciding what units you are going to send to the front, and how much of your civilian economy you are prepared to sacrifice for war.
Also, as CP's are generated for only the first connection of a city to the rest of the nations infrastructure, it prevents any major exploits, highlighted by other posters, to the limited capacity per tile approach.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999
time: 23:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Modo44
If you have a year (which is the shortest Civ turn), you can do it with ease. This has been demonstrated many times in many wars, especially (as numbers at a time go) during WWII. |
The way years are marked in civesque games is only there for a point of reference tied into tech levels and generally remains somewhat true to history. However, the system of how time is portrayed in relation to unit movement in civesques games is totally unrealistic - and not only in the modern age, but throughout the game.
Ancient/Medieval age units did not need hundreds of years to move from point A to point B in the real world (and if I are attacked, this inconsistency really sticks out in my mind) - but this is the norm in civ. Even moving from city to city via roads takes years.
If you do not have a railway in place, it will take several years for an infantry to move through several jungle tiles - even during peacetime. Hey, I could crawl faster than that...
This is why I'm more concerned what turn I'm on rather than what year I'm in.
Last edited by hexagonian on 29-06-2005 at 18:09
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sophist
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I like infinite movement on railroads. I think having centralized military forces that can respond rapidly to threats anywhere in your empire is a good thing because 1) it's realistic (yeah yeah yeah) and 2) it improves gameplay by making wars more fluid. In the modern era, issues that might have led to war in previous times are settled before a shot is fired (partly) because the speed of a response makes the cost/benefit of war a lot easier to calculate, so one side is a lot more likely to capitulate. In previous times, a small nation could take on a much larger one and win because, even though the larger nation might have a much, much larger military, communication and transport were so slow that their effective force was whatever was garrisoned in that region. By the time reinforcements arrived, the attackers could be entrenched or have reached their goals (plunder, punishment, etc.) and departed. Napoleon attacking Russia in 1812 was no better off than Alexander attacking Persia in 320-something BC, but Europe in WWI and WWII was able to mobilize much, much faster. Transport and deployment are so much faster these days that quibbling about whether they're 30 times faster or 40 times faster is pointless and arbitrary; just go with infinite and leave it.
That's not to say the civ1-civ3 model is perfect. Infinite movement can be too powerful. I think rail blight is ugly, not to mention unrealistic (yeah, yeah). The advantage of rails (in the real world) is that they are fast, efficient, and high-capacity. The disadvantage is that they are inflexible and expensive to lay. I mention this not because I am a realism nut but because that kind of trade-off is exactly the sort of thing that leads to enjoyable game play, at least if it's implemented properly. I don't agree with changing the rules of the game solely because of AI limitations, though; the solution for that is to make the AI smarter, not to make the game less capable.
I also dislike the rail production bonus. The rationale for the bonus is that railroads improved access to markets; you could more easily bring Ukrainian wheat to German markets than before. That's true, but Egypt was the breadbasket of Rome, so it's obvious that rail wasn't the sine qua non for such advantages. Regardless, it uses an intra-city mechanism (boosting local production) to model something that has inter-city benefits. If my cities can trade with each other better because of railroads, that shouldn't affect each city's local production, just the flexibility with which it can trade it. The trade model is a separate discussion, but I wanted to justify "I don't like it."
Enough blah blah blah. How do I think it should work? Worker units build railroads as they do now. However, the railroads they build cannot split or join except in cities. Each rail segment is part of a longer point-to-point connection, not a standalone rail line. You can only get on a railroad in the city (you can get off anywhere, though). Railroads offer no production bonuses, but do improve connectivity for trade (both arrows and movement of resources). Railroads should take considerably more time than they do now to construct. Railroads are not an upgrade to roads, but rather a separate thing; you will be able to have a railroad and a road on the same tile, or a railroad and no road. When a unit passes through a city by rail, it takes a movement hit.
The movement cost in cities is to slow you down a little bit (and has significance in my trade model). You can imagine that to represent congestion, switching trains, slowing down to pass through populated areas (noise and danger), or what have you. 1/3 sounds best for that to me (consistent with roads), but I'm open to suggestion. So if you're moving from Turin to Milan to Florence to Rome to Naples, you expend 1 movement point total, regardless of how far Turin is from Milan, Milan from Florence, Florence from Rome, or Rome from Naples, because your rail line passes through Milan, Florence, and Rome for a 1/3 hit three times.
The advantage over the "train station" city improvement is that it reflects more what is happening: intermediate infrastructure is being built. Airplanes just use the air, so airlift style operations work fine for them. Trains move on the land, though. This is a good thing for strategy, because it means that railroads can be blocked or destroyed from outside the city for them to lose their benefits. Train stations are too hard to get to in cities. It's also too damaging to destroy them. If I destroy the train station in Osaka, it's cut off from Tokyo, Nagasaki, Yokohama, and all the other cities. That seems to be too great a vulnerability. Leaving rail as something on the ground means that I have to destroy the individual links between Osaka and the other cities to cut the city off. That seems much better to me from a strategic perspective.
With this model, you won't have a tank winning one battle and then moving instantaneously to fight another battle a continent away the next, because it will have to return to the city to get on the rail line and it will have to transit numerous cities to reach its destination. You can build in redundancy if you like, but you won't end up with the same rail blight. You can build an "express" from Turin to Naples if you like so you don't slow down through Florence and Rome, but that will take your workers time.
Rail shouldn't work like roads or airlift because they're fundamentally different things, both in the real world and as far as game play goes. Roads are flexible but have lower capacity. While the roads themselves may be very large, each quantum of cargo must be driven independently. You want 200 loads of stuff to go from Hamburg to Prague by road? You need 200 drivers. You want 200 loads of stuff to go from Hamburg to Prague by rail? You need 1 driver (well, with backups etc.). Airports are even more flexible but have even less capacity, due to the infrastructure, limited cargo space of aircraft, and the need for pilots. Air travel is for dense things that need to travel fast, like people, packages, and papayas. Anything bulky that can wait a while to get there is much better served by sea or land travel, like cars, computers, and canned corn.
To summarize.... The advantages of railroads should be in trade, supply, and deployment, but nowhere else. I think game designers are and should be hesitant to add features that are "just like X, but without Y" because that adds complexity without depth. Rails, roads, ships, and aircraft should all behave in substantially different ways so you have to think about how you want to allocate your production and worker resources and what transportation medium you want to use in a particular case.
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Atahualpa
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Hawthrone
Mar 1999
time: 06:28
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Just a minor thing, but you know that what would probably emerge is a hub system... like this
And after the Hub is constructed, if you don't put maintenance costs or such and the workers have nothing to do.. it will become what is shown in the next picture... point-to-point so your system would only slow down the process of connecting with railroads.. the maintenance thing could be very difficult to balance though...
 Attachment: ic_hub.gif
This has been downloaded 98 time(s).
Last edited by Atahualpa on 30-06-2005 at 02:27
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jw32767
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quote:
Originally posted by Atahualpa
Just a minor thing, but you know that what would probably emerge is a hub system... like this
And after the Hub is constructed, if you don't put maintenance costs or such and the workers have nothing to do.. it will become what is shown in the next picture... point-to-point so your system would only slow down the process of connecting with railroads.. the maintenance thing could be very difficult to balance though... |
And that's different from how real life works how? =) I think it fairly accurately models the real train network.
Another option to fix the roll-off-the-assembly-line-in -boston-and-counterattack-in-california problem is a movement point cost to entrain. The time to move a unit by rail is almost all in mustering the rolling stock and crossloading the cars. Plus, a unit is rendered combat ineffective while getting on or off a train or boat, at least until they can reorganize, hence the movement point hit.
Say 1 mp to board a train but still infinite movement. It's simple, clean, and allows mobile units to still have limited effectiveness after being strategically moved. You could do the same for planes/boats too. To prevent people from just entraining their strategic reserve and leave them sitting like that, you could automatically detrain all units at the end of a turn.
If you give a +1 mp bonus for being elite like smac did, it'd add an even more useful bonus for having elite infantry troops, in that they would be able to hop off a train and counterattack.
EDIT: I didn't make it clear that I support moving the production bonus that rail lines generate to another improvement/building. The AI won't build them all over creation that way making offensives more difficult and if you increase the build time for rail lines to make them somewhat painful to build, players aren't going plaster the landscape with them either.
Last edited by jw32767 on 30-06-2005 at 03:06
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sophist
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Atahualpa, that's a really handy drawing. That's exactly what I meant. I have no corresponding visual, but compare that to the current situation where you have the entire landscape carpeted with railroads and tanks using railroads during battles (so to speak). The drawing embodies exactly what I was trying to say about railroads being about connecting cities just as much as they are about moving units.
We can avoid the second situation in two ways. One is by making workers and building railroads more expensive. That could mean requiring more time, more resources, costing money, or any number of things. You can still do it, of course, but once you have your skeletal network in place, it'll be hard enough that you'd only do it selectively. The other way to avoid it is by not allowing railroads to cross, though that does hurt the realism.
I don't know what you mean by "neighborhood connecting cities." Railroads might not be a perfect hub and spoke system, but they're certainly a lot more hub and spoke than roads.
As far as they AI goes, I'm 1) confident they can figure it out, since it's a simple model 2) unwilling to sacrifice good game play due to limitations of the AI. After all, civ4 will ship with working multiplayer.
jw32767, I want to keep the idea that going further costs more. The cost is no longer in motion, though, but in navigating intersections, which you have to do frequently. Such costs exist in the old road days, but were hidden because it was an immense PITA to just get from point A to B in the first place.
Compare the postal service to the Internet. In the postal service, first you have to drop the letter at the mailbox. Then it travels to the local hub (5 hours). They examine it (2 seconds) and decide to send it to a regional hub (10 hours). They examine it (2 seconds) and decide to sent it to a different local hub (7 hours). They examine it (2 seconds) and decide to send it to a local mailbox (24 hours). The exact same issues exist with the Internet, except it's like this: packet goes to local switch (2 nanoseconds). Switch examines packet (100 nanoseconds) and sends packet to router (5 nanoseconds). Router examines packet (200 nanoseconds) and sends it to another switch (10 nanoseconds). Switch examines packet (100 seconds) and sends it to another machine (2 nanoseconds). In both cases, you take a hit both from moving and from routing, but in one case, moving dwarfs routing, and in the other case, routing dwarfs moving.
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by Atahualpa
I don't like this too much, because increasing the cost will also increase the time until the skeleton is in place... |
I guess I see that as being also a good thing. I don't think Spain had anything quite like it, but the building of the Trans-Continental railroad in the United States was a monumental undertaking. I think it's a little strange that in civ3, I could completely railroad my entire civilization in just a few turns. It makes for an abrupt transition from one era to another to go from a road network to a rail network in such a short time, and provides an unbalanced power advantage to the first civ to discover steam power. Slowing this down would make the user think more about where rail is most essential and blunt the power of railroad initially. After all, weren't we talking about how railroad is a little over-powered? It should take you decades to finish the job.
Also, think about this.... if you have 25 cities, each 6 tiles apart, you'd probably have to build on the order of 150 segments of railroad to connect them in a skeletal fashion. To make a fully-connected system, with each city connected to each other city, would require railroading many times as many tiles. Look how much more red there is in your second diagram than the first. The costs could be tweaked such that it takes 10-20 years to do the first and another 60 years to do the second. It's quite possible that it would take about the same time to do a skeletal system in civ4(5?) that it took to do a complete rail carpet in civ3. That's fine, though, because you no longer gain any benefit from a rail carpet, so you'd move on to bigger and better things.
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jw32767
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quote:
jw32767, I want to keep the idea that going further costs more. The cost is no longer in motion, though, but in navigating intersections, which you have to do frequently. Such costs exist in the old road days, but were hidden because it was an immense PITA to just get from point A to B in the first place.
Compare the postal service to the Internet. In the postal service, first you have to drop the letter at the mailbox. Then it travels to the local hub (5 hours). They examine it (2 seconds) and decide to send it to a regional hub (10 hours). They examine it (2 seconds) and decide to sent it to a different local hub (7 hours). They examine it (2 seconds) and decide to send it to a local mailbox (24 hours). The exact same issues exist with the Internet, except it's like this: packet goes to local switch (2 nanoseconds). Switch examines packet (100 nanoseconds) and sends packet to router (5 nanoseconds). Router examines packet (200 nanoseconds) and sends it to another switch (10 nanoseconds). Switch examines packet (100 seconds) and sends it to another machine (2 nanoseconds). In both cases, you take a hit both from moving and from routing, but in one case, moving dwarfs routing, and in the other case, routing dwarfs moving. |
I guess I see historical rail movement as more like the post office, but with the bulk of the cost actually packaging the item for shipping. Getting guys on and off the train in good order is much more costly than switching them through rail junctions.
To continue with your analogy it's more like:
7 days to get the packaging material together, 10 hours to get the item into the packaging, 10 hours to get to the main rail hub, 2 hours waiting for switching, 30 hours to get to the destination's local hub, 2 hours waiting for switching and 10 hours to get to the destination.
The big upfront cost is finding the right number of cars of the right type nearby, which is more in line with having a lift limit system wide. However, that sucks for playablity. Though I suppose you could build rail units much like naval transports. Give them infinite rail moves, some number of mp, but have it cost them 1 to load and/or unload, same with the transported unit. *shrug* just throwing ideas out there =)
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:28
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Except on most maps the tiles are on the order of a hundred miles across. Have you ever seen a rail map? In most areas of Europe or the eastern US there would be many ways to cross a 100+ mile area.
Some years ago there was a railroad bridge in MS or LA that was struck by a barge. Traffic was rerouted all over the southeast US to compensate. Small rail sidings around where I live started handling consist transfer work.
Second, rail is not an intra-city anything, unless you're talking about a subway/commuter rail. The city in Civ is an abstraction, it is a region larger than all but 2 States in the US, larger than 187 of 235 countries (based on 21 100x100mi tiles).
The production advantage reflected in RR is the ability to move bulk material over large distances cheaply. Without the RR there would have been no great logging boom in the 1800's (both in terms of shipping and demand). Most of the mineral strikes in the Rockies would have been completely unfeasible to mine without RR to move ore to distant processors or to move copper and silver bullion to cities quickly and securely. If we were still moving coal by ox-cart we would never have had an industrial revolution.
In addition, the same technology that enables rail enables steam powered pneumatic tools for mining, cable skidding for timber, steam power for mills, excavation, dredging, etc.
If anything, the increase in extraction and industrial production is vastly understated.
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Kaak
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i like the unlimited rail movement!!!
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
Except on most maps the tiles are on the order of a hundred miles across. Have you ever seen a rail map? In most areas of Europe or the eastern US there would be many ways to cross a 100+ mile area.
Some years ago there was a railroad bridge in MS or LA that was struck by a barge. Traffic was rerouted all over the southeast US to compensate. Small rail sidings around where I live started handling consist transfer work.
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I was sacrificing a bit of realism in order to keep it simple. But I can handle realism. Tell me this... in the real world, have we stopped using roads since the invention of railroad? Of course not. They both have their place. Yet the way civ works, railroads completely replace roads. Railroads and roads have different advantages and disadvantages in the real world and they should have different advantages in the game. That's not (just) because of realism, but to balance the game and make the player think about what he/she wants in a given situation and add depth to the game.
quote:
Second, rail is not an intra-city anything, unless you're talking about a subway/commuter rail. The city in Civ is an abstraction, it is a region larger than all but 2 States in the US, larger than 187 of 235 countries (based on 21 100x100mi tiles).
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That was my point.
quote:
The production advantage reflected in RR is the ability to move bulk material over large distances cheaply. Without the RR there would have been no great logging boom in the 1800's (both in terms of shipping and demand). Most of the mineral strikes in the Rockies would have been completely unfeasible to mine without RR to move ore to distant processors or to move copper and silver bullion to cities quickly and securely. If we were still moving coal by ox-cart we would never have had an industrial revolution.
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I know what the rationale is, I just think it's a bad one. Railroads didn't make it possible to dig more ore out of the ground or to cut down more trees. The ore and the trees were the same as before. The mining and logging processes were the same as before. Railroad didn't affect things at that end. What railroad did was make it easier and cheaper to ship ore and lumber long distances. That made it more cost effective to mine and log at such great distances from the main markets, which led to much greater mining and logging. But it didn't actually improve the ability to extract ore from the ground or chop down trees. There may have been related technologies that did that, but it wasn't the infrastructure of railroads that did it.
quote:
In addition, the same technology that enables rail enables steam powered pneumatic tools for mining, cable skidding for timber, steam power for mills, excavation, dredging, etc.
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That's better modelled as a consequence of Steam Power and other scientific advances. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have some mechanism for increasing production around that time, I'm just saying that doing it in Civ with railroads is a poor way of doing it.
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:28
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quote:
Originally posted by sophist
I was sacrificing a bit of realism in order to keep it simple. But I can handle realism. Tell me this... in the real world, have we stopped using roads since the invention of railroad? Of course not. They both have their place. Yet the way civ works, railroads completely replace roads. Railroads and roads have different advantages and disadvantages in the real world and they should have different advantages in the game. That's not (just) because of realism, but to balance the game and make the player think about what he/she wants in a given situation and add depth to the game. |
Up until the 1950s many state highways were still unpaved. Almost all interstate commerce was by rail. We have not gone back to using the old, 2 lane, barely paved roads. In the US we have stopped using roads. What we use most is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. It is, in Civ terms, equivalent to Rails.
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I know what the rationale is, I just think it's a bad one. Railroads didn't make it possible to dig more ore out of the ground or to cut down more trees. The ore and the trees were the same as before. The mining and logging processes were the same as before. Railroad didn't affect things at that end. What railroad did was make it easier and cheaper to ship ore and lumber long distances. That made it more cost effective to mine and log at such great distances from the main markets, which led to much greater mining and logging. But it didn't actually improve the ability to extract ore from the ground or chop down trees. There may have been related technologies that did that, but it wasn't the infrastructure of railroads that did it. |
Not true, because without rail there would be no market except the local markets. There would be no great Texas cattle ranches because there were only a few cities in Texas. Rails created access to national markets, and thus mines and timber became more lucrative and expanded greatly.
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:28
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quote:
quote:
Second, rail is not an intra-city anything, unless you're talking about a subway/commuter rail. The city in Civ is an abstraction, it is a region larger than all but 2 States in the US, larger than 187 of 235 countries (based on 21 100x100mi tiles). |
That was my point. |
No, you said:
quote:
Regardless, it uses an intra-city mechanism (boosting local production) to model something that has inter-city benefits. If my cities can trade with each other better because of railroads, that shouldn't affect each city's local production, just the flexibility with which it can trade it. |
You are still, in essence, looking at the city as an urban development rather than a large region with centralized economic ties. There is no inter-city benefit to rails in terms of production. City A doesn't gain more shields of production because a tile in City B's radius has rail.
"Local" production is on the tile level. Anything that improves the tile is local only to itself, not to the city. The city proper is the distribution/industry center and the nearest tile is a hundred or more miles away. Shipping timber that far isn't very economical, and so finished goods are the predominant trade with the city proper. After rail comes to that tile bulk goods can be cheaply shipped for use in the urban factories.
Cities do trade better with each other because of rail. For Civ2, if two cities are within 23 tiles and connected by a recognized rail connection there is a +50% bonus to the trade route.
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
We have not gone back to using the old, 2 lane, barely paved roads. In the US we have stopped using roads. What we use most is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. It is, in Civ terms, equivalent to Rails.
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Except we still have and use railroads. Also, there are many interstate roads and inter-metro roads that are not part of the highways system. Additionally, this system only appeared after WWII, or, in civ terms, at the end of the Industrial era and the beginning of the Modern era. As such, I'm pretty sure that the designers of Civilization did not mean the interstate highway system with the game concept called "railroad."
quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
Not true, because without rail there would be no market except the local markets. There would be no great Texas cattle ranches because there were only a few cities in Texas. Rails created access to national markets, and thus mines and timber became more lucrative and expanded greatly. |
Er... how is that different from what I said?
quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
You are still, in essence, looking at the city as an urban development rather than a large region with centralized economic ties. There is no inter-city benefit to rails in terms of production. City A doesn't gain more shields of production because a tile in City B's radius has rail.
"Local" production is on the tile level. Anything that improves the tile is local only to itself, not to the city. The city proper is the distribution/industry center and the nearest tile is a hundred or more miles away. Shipping timber that far isn't very economical, and so finished goods are the predominant trade with the city proper. After rail comes to that tile bulk goods can be cheaply shipped for use in the urban factories.
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Ok, I get you. I think we may have different scales in mind. I don't think that a city represents anything larger than an average American state, and quite possibly smaller, as the average American state is roughly the same size as the average European country (Texas is bigger than France, according to an obnoxious bumper sticker). As such, I still think rails are more significant for trade between (civ) cities than they are within the region. You mentioned Texas cattle ranches. Well, those weren't getting sent a few hundred miles to Oklahoma or Louisiana. Those were getting sent to the Midwest and East Coast. You mention mining and lumber. Again, those commodities were getting sent across multiple states.
quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
Cities do trade better with each other because of rail. For Civ2, if two cities are within 23 tiles and connected by a recognized rail connection there is a +50% bonus to the trade route. |
I did not know that. It's a little hackish, though; exactly 23 tiles, no more, and an exactly 50% bonus, no more. I prefer something that varies more with distance and has no upper cap, and (of course) replaces the per-tile bonus. The game would be balanced, of course, in the end so that you would have roughly the same amount of money and science, but you'd have railroads as connectors, not as wallpaper.
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Straybow
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SG(2)… gone but not forgotten
Jan 1970
time: 23:28
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quote:
Except we still have and use railroads. Also, there are many interstate roads and inter-metro roads that are not part of the highways system. Additionally, this system only appeared after WWII, or, in civ terms, at the end of the Industrial era and the beginning of the Modern era. As such, I'm pretty sure that the designers of Civilization did not mean the interstate highway system with the game concept called "railroad." |
Well in Civ there is no difference between the roads of 4000 BC and the roads of 2000 AD. Ox-carts weighed no more than a couple tons, and that's what ancient roadbuilding methods could bear. Modern tractor-trailor rigs have loads of sixteen tons per axle. Modern asphalt roads are built in much the same way as railbeds, up to three feet of graded gravel and paving courses.
I don't know how old you are, but I remember riding through the mountains on US 19 before the Interstate, crawling in a long line of traffic behind a big truck. When I was in college I drove US 19 when very little of it had been upgraded to 4 lanes, although it had been straightened and regraded.
Before WWII the only practical way to ship things was by train. Now the majority of our interstate commerce (other than bulk payload) is by truck. The way we use our highways (yes, more than just the Interstate system, but all those other roads have been completely rebuilt to near-Interstate standards) is equivalent to RR before WWII.
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sophist
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quote:
Originally posted by Straybow
Well in Civ there is no difference between the roads of 4000 BC and the roads of 2000 AD. Ox-carts weighed no more than a couple tons, and that's what ancient roadbuilding methods could bear. Modern tractor-trailor rigs have loads of sixteen tons per axle. Modern asphalt roads are built in much the same way as railbeds, up to three feet of graded gravel and paving courses.
...
Before WWII the only practical way to ship things was by train. Now the majority of our interstate commerce (other than bulk payload) is by truck. The way we use our highways (yes, more than just the Interstate system, but all those other roads have been completely rebuilt to near-Interstate standards) is equivalent to RR before WWII. |
I would happily see modern roads in Civilization. If that's really your thesis, though, you shouldn't be advocating for a change to railroads but rather their elimination and replacement by the similar highways. But that messes up the timing of railroads at the beginning of the industrial era. Maybe the civ designers thought it was pointless to have highways replace railroads. Maybe that's the solution to it all.
I'd be happy to see a "paved road" improvement that split the difference. Perhaps you start with a dirt road, which has a movement cost of 1/3 the terrain's normal cost; i.e., 3/3 = 1 for mountains, 2/3 for hills, 1/3 for grassland, etc. Then later would come paved roads (with Construction?), which require stone and reduce that to 1/3 move regardless of terrain (what roads are now). Those roads would take a lot more time to build, though, so you'd basically only build them to connect your cities, and only where you needed to span rivers, cross mountains, etc. Then when you discover Steam Power, you can build a rail network that allows infinite movement between cities as I outlined above. Finally, with the development of the Automobile, you can build the highway, which allows unrestricted infinite movement, like the railroad in Civ3 and before. I realize that creates 4 types of movement infrastructure where there are currently 2, but, if nothing else, this discussion has demonstrated that the 2 we have right now are too much of a simplification.
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29-06-2005 06:46
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