Rail lines automatically repairing?

[W.Barksdale]

Has anyone come across this?

I could have sworn I successfully cut a bunch of rails a few turns ago, and this turn many of them are repaired. Is there some sort of auto repair probability that has been put in?

[Captain_Orso]

I guess it depends on what you mean by auto-repair. Athena was tweaked many moons ago to take better care of her railroads, meaning, she has a much greater tendency to repair them.

As far as I have seen, she does it the same way you do, with some unit on hand. If she used a small unit, like a militia regiment and the terrain isn't clear or you were not nearby with cavalry there is a good chance you might not have seen her send the unit, and of course you get no information about what she's up to.

[W.Barksdale]

It's a pbem and I am in the midst of a major retreat. I am pretty sure my opponent has not sent forces there to repair as I would have seen them with my scouts. Maybe I'm just getting old / going crazy....

What I mean by auto repair is.... one turn the rail is cut, no units in the region, next turn the rail is repaired... Auto-repair!

Thank you for the response in any case!

[John S. Mosby]

It's a pbem and I am in the midst of a major retreat. I am pretty sure my opponent has not sent forces there to repair as I would have seen them with my scouts. Maybe I'm just getting old / going crazy....

I have no experience with pbem but don't you have access to a replay?
Just want to review the evidence before you're "committed".

[ArmChairGeneral]

AFAIK auto-repair exists, and you are not imagining things. (If I recall correctly this, like auto-garrisoning, was part of the effort to tone down raiding, but maybe it was because the AI couldn't figure out how to do it on her own.) I do not remember the exact percentage, but it gets rolled every turn. Due to perception bias it will feel like 0% chance for your rails repairing and 100% chance for your opponent's repairing.

I am curious whether auto-repair is free or if it costs the same amount of WS as if you had repaired them manually.

[Captain_Orso]

After searching for over an hour the only explicit references I could find were an offhand reference to autorepair from Pocus in the Beta forum and this in the 'Civil War II Updates.rtf' file, "AI will get a slightly higher bonus for railroad autorepair (which is based on the development level of the region)".

So apparently it does exist as ArmChair has stated, but how it works is a mystery, only that the higher the civilization level, the more likely.


EDIT:
Oh, in the strings file there is a text for autorepairing railroad, so if it happens, you should get a message telling you, but probably not your opponent .

[W.Barksdale]

There are no messages. The rail line just fixes itself.

This is a pretty big issue. Perhaps it should be disabled if the AI is not active.

[Pocus]

You have to accept that sometime the civilians also act on their own. Chance to have a railway repaired by them is 1/10 of development level per turn. Perhaps in your current PBEM you suffered from a series of bad luck where your destructions got rapidly repaired, but this is not the norm. The AI gets a bonus on chance to repair, depending of its level.

[John S. Mosby]

In my opinion it appears to be a good feature and makes perfect sense. It adds to the unpredictability of the game and therefore should be left alone. It does however sound like General Barksdale may have experienced some misfortune with that specific scenerio. Such is war! The good news is he is not going crazy!

Thanks Pocus for the clarification.

[Rod Smart]

Just recently I autorepaired my own railroad.

A raider moved into an ungarrisoned small town, and a garrison unit appeared and chased him away. The unit stuck around the next turn, and I used it to repair the railroad. Thus, ghost repair of a cut railroad despite not moving any forces into the area to repair.

[John S. Mosby]

In my opinion it appears to be a good feature and makes perfect sense. It adds to the unpredictability of the game and therefore should be left alone. It does however sound like General Barksdale may have experienced some misfortune with that specific scenerio. Such is war! The good news is he is not going crazy!

Thanks Pocus for the clarification.

[W.Barksdale]

Thank you for the comments. While I disagree with the feature I am very happy (even more so than Mosby!) that I am not going crazy!