[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Railroads and AI

[Todd Goodman <tgoodman@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This isn't a comment specifically on the rail unit (though I don't
really like it since IMHO it would add more micromanagement to
the game).

But, don't people send units out to destroy rail and roads when
you're fighting on a continent?

I usually set up a buffer area where I've destroyed all roads
and rail and then station units nearby so that when I see the
enemy move into the area I can attack them first.

Then when I've moved the front line forward I rebuild them
(by that point I usually have a ton of settlers sitting around
waiting to clean up pollution).

For Alpha Centauri I also make sure I've cleared away any
fungus (no sneaking through that for my enemies).

I usually only play against the AI so this may not be useful
against other human opponents.

And yes, if the area is real "hot" I can end up losing units
while attempting to do this.

On Fri, 16 Jun 2000, Daniel Burrows wrote:

> Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:31:55 -0400
> From: Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: Freeciv dev list <freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: Railroads and AI
> 
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2000 at 10:15:30PM +1000, Robert Rendell 
> <rob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> was heard to say:
> > Asher Densmore-Lynn wrote:
> > } 
> > } You know, that sort of makes me wonder -- are railroads in the best 
> > interest
> > } of the defender? *I* would mine the suckers and blow them to kingdom come 
> > if
> > } there were rails in a section of country I was losing...
> > 
> > One mechanism I'd quite like would be if railroads inside a city radius
> > didn't work for invaders - there are still roads they can travel on, but it
> > doesn't seem right that trains are sent out to help hostile troops tromp
> > across your land (and probably right up to your city).
> > 
> > Of course, this would break compatability with Civ, so it would have to be
> > an option.
> 
>   Just to throw this idea out there:
> 
>   Maybe what's needed is a "train" unit -- a ground transport unit which can
> carry some number of units and can only travel on railroads, but only spends
> (say) 1 movement point per turn regardless of terrain.  You could even have
> multiple train types, each with different capacities, speeds (10 MP units :) 
> ),
> defense values (?) and so on.
>   To non-train units, then, railroads would be just like roads.
> 
>   Anyone think this might work?  It'd make railroads much less useful; OTOH 
> this
> might actually be a Good Thing.  And being able to waylay your opponent's
> trains would be fun :)
>   We'd need a couple of new flags -- "railroad-only" and "ground-transport"
> at a minimum.  The "uses 1/3 MP on all terrain" flag might be useful for 
> giving
> the speed bonus--although I think that restricting ourselves to multiples of
> 3 for movement time might not be good in the long run..
> (or can the standard transport flag be used? I'm not up on the ruleset 
> stuff..)
> 
>   Daniel
> 
> -- 
> /----------------- Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx> 
> -----------------\
> |     f u cn rd ths,    |    The only thing worse than infinite recursion     
> |
> |     u cn gt a jb s    |    is infinite recursion.                           
> |
> |    a cmptr prgrmr.    |                                                     
> |
> \---------------------- A duck! -- http://www.python.org 
> ---------------------/
> 
>