Slitherine

I believe the introduction of the railway movement adds a very nice flavour to the game allowing to shift effort from one region to another but only if carefully planned and timed - really wonderful.
Disappointingly I haven't seen too much opportunity to use it so far - Stalingrad was the only scenario where this could be used with significance.

However, since I dislike the fact that units can be built everywhere (also for the enemy reinforcing any confined city), here's my "brainfart":
Why not setting a flag (whether a city is suitable for reinforcements or not), and from there, any new unit has to be brought by strategic transport (railway) to the front?
Typically, those cities could be at one edge of the map like units come from the homecountry.

A bit like in Avalaon Hills "Russian Front".

Any opinions?

This has been asked for as an option for designers - to be able to set where reinforcements can be placed. At the moment the only way to prevent it is fiddly - in the map editor set the city to have a city overlay but the underlying terrain is entrenchment. Fiddly because if you generate terrain it reverts to actual entrenchment. In short, this sort of thing has been requested but may not be available until an updated Editor is done.

I'm curious, does anyone actually use railroad movement, extensively or, failing that, at all?
I don't. It sounds nice in theory, but for me, it's utterly pointless. But possibly I'm just not seeing the use?
What defeats it for me is the immense time requirement - you need to waste one turn moving into a city hex with rail access, then you waste another turn in which you load the unit onto the train and move it to it's destination, and then you waste ANOTHER turn unloading the unit. That's three turns in which the unit could have been out there doing actual fighting.
Most maps also aren't large enough for this to matter, and you typically don't have frontlines that require shuffling units around - even if you do, the time requirement comes into play again.

So, anyone using this on every mission and with great success somehow? Please enlighten me.
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rezaf

The larger the map the more usefull railtransport becomes. The problem is making the larger maps like 150x150 and above takes alot of time. I have a map of Sicily and I can see the importance of the rail lines I have added since the map is so large.

rezaf wrote:I'm curious, does anyone actually use railroad movement, extensively or, failing that, at all?
I don't. It sounds nice in theory, but for me, it's utterly pointless. But possibly I'm just not seeing the use?
What defeats it for me is the immense time requirement - you need to waste one turn moving into a city hex with rail access, then you waste another turn in which you load the unit onto the train and move it to it's destination, and then you waste ANOTHER turn unloading the unit. That's three turns in which the unit could have been out there doing actual fighting.
Most maps also aren't large enough for this to matter, and you typically don't have frontlines that require shuffling units around - even if you do, the time requirement comes into play again.

So, anyone using this on every mission and with great success somehow? Please enlighten me.
_____
rezaf

Agree 100%

Maybe it's dependant on the scenario design.
On the East Front, the rail movement was of major importance sending around elite-units as firebrigades to hotspots.
Since the engine of a Tiger-tank has a life expectancy of less than 1000km, it was madatory to use railway.
I hope that could be represented in a future DLC Barbarossa.

One thing which was easier in reality: infantry w/o vehicles did get of the train anywhere and didn't need a city. Maybe a feature for the future.

Ritterkreuz wrote:Maybe it's dependant on the scenario design.
On the East Front, the rail movement was of major importance sending around elite-units as firebrigades to hotspots.
Since the engine of a Tiger-tank has a life expectancy of less than 1000km, it was madatory to use railway.
I hope that could be represented in a future DLC Barbarossa.

One thing which was easier in reality: infantry w/o vehicles did get of the train anywhere and didn't need a city. Maybe a feature for the future.

I can't share details about DLC 1941, or the future DLCs... but I don't think you'll be disappointed. Russia is really big, and it seems to have a serious problem with having an abundance of paved roads.

Kerensky wrote:
I can't share details about DLC 1941, or the future DLCs... but I don't think you'll be disappointed. Russia is really big, and it seems to have a serious problem with having an abundance of paved roads.

Thank god for Half-Tracks!?