When do you start building roads between cities?

Generally, it seems like a good idea to connect the trade network where needed, but often you won't need to build very many roads to do this. Building long roads takes a lot of time--time that a worker can be doing other productive things, like hooking up resources and building important early improvements like farms, cottages, and mines.

On the other hand, if you don't connect your cities, it becomes a huge pain to move units around. This is especially painful in defense, when you need to ship units in from a higher-production city, and in war, when you need to quickly get units to the enemy. Waiting 20 turns for reinforcements from your production city is a huge drag.

A shot from my current game is attached.

ETA: Sorry, this should be in the parent forum. I'd appreciate it if someone could move it.

Like most things in this game, it's hard to generalise, but if I have resources such as Copper or Iron, after hooking them up to one city, I'd be particularly keen to hook all of the un-resourced cities up as soon as possible to that / those resource(s).

Your screenshot is fairly small, but it looks as though you've hardly done any terrain improvements at all - how many workers do you have?

Oh - you've gone chopping I guess

For me, it's roads first before any improvements. I even build roads to a city I expect to build but haven't built yet so that the settler can get there quicker.

Main reason is to speed up troop movements. Even barbarians could take one of your cities if your troops can't get there to stop it.

On occasions, depending on the city, I might improve a food tile and build a mine but that's all. Depends what the city can use without improvement. This will also allow the settlers to be built quicker. My mentality though is roads first.

Your screenshot is fairly small, but it looks as though you've hardly done any terrain improvements at all - how many workers do you have?

You are correct; lots of chopping has been happening. This is a Huge Terra map. At this point, there is approximately one worker per city, but most of them are tied down chopping important early buildings (like Obelisks) and hooking up resources. Even after I'm done with this, I'll want to get out some basic improvements before I start connecting everything, which may not be happen until after 10 AD.

My mentality though is roads first.

Why? Roads do not benefit you until you are actually going to use them. Improving terrain or chopping forests benefits you immediately. I often don't bother researching the Wheel until the need to hook up resources approaches.

Why? Roads do not benefit you until you are actually going to use them. Improving terrain or chopping forests benefits you immediately. I often don't bother researching the Wheel until the need to hook up resources approaches.

You don't need the Wheel:confused: What about building cottages?

You don't need the Wheel:confused: What about building cottages?

Going straight for Pottery to build cottages very early is a valid strategy, but I find that I usually have enough really good other types of tiles to work in the early game. E.g. if my capital's radius has four special resources of types that I can improve in the early game I won't be working a cottage tile anyway until the city reaches size 5.

I usually go for mining -> bronze working, then the rest of the early worker techs (depending on what resources I have). Fishing if there's seafood, etc. Only after I am using all the other really good tiles do I go wild with the cottages.

To Leifmk

Actually it depends on many things like quality of territory, civ you are commanding, etc :)

Anyway next time i start new game i'll try to go your way

Thanx

At the higher difficulty levels, it can be very important to get a few roads between your cities very early to get that trade income. Also the enabling technology for road building (the wheel) is needed to research the enabling technology for cottage building (pottery). You want to start building cottages very early at the higher difficulty levels. If you don't maximize your commerce output at those higher difficulty levels, then it is difficult to maintain a reasonable research rate while expanding. You might even go bankrupt.

Another reason why roads are important is to minimize the number of unproductive worker turns. If a worker is walking a number of turns from one terrain improvement to the next, then that is very inefficient. A set of roads can minimize this loss of worker productivity.
If you have a few cities, then it also minimizes the number of turns needed for a settler or another unit to reach your frontier cities. This can be important for defence against barbarians or for expanding your empire.

This doesn't mean that I prioritize road building in every single tile, but I wouldn't neglect it as much as you did in your screenshot example either. Road building costs the least amount of time of all the terrain improvements. But it still takes time, so you shouldn't do it without thinking.

The time spent building roads in the early is saved in the quick movement of troops to protect cities when under attack by barbarians, as far as I'm concerned. I always link cities and major resoiurces quickly by roads.

I am not an expert and I am just as much asking for feedback as the OP.

I almost always research BW first. I then usually follow it up with wheel so I can hook up copper and later iron.

I tend to question my strategy early in the game because if I don’t find copper early I am in trouble. I am also really tempted to go IW next in an attempt to find it and settle near it. The early land grab for me is as much about getting resources as it is about getting a lot of cities.

So the techs I think I need early are mining>BW>Wheel> IW (maybe)

But after BW I question everything I do. I wonder if I should get AH or pottery or Ag or whatever just so I can improve my land more. I also wonder if I should go for Alphabet early and trade for techs. I also wonder if I should research all of the lower techs and trade for the higher ones.

My preferred strategy is to attack with swords and axes early before the civs have a high defense modifier to their cities. After this expansion I wait until cats and attack again.

I am never even close to getting a religion or the Oracle.

The biggest problem I have is when I go for IW I find out that I don’t have any within my borders or even close enough to realistically go after. Meanwhile I am kind of stuck in this early war strat.

Roads aren't always my first improvement, but they're usually pretty close.

I need to get Wheel to get to get to Pottery so that I can start dropping cottages -- something I like to do at about the time my 3rd or 4th city gets dropped.

The trade network will also help alleviate happy and health caps that I'll be hitting about that time, as well.

And usually some strategic resource will need to be passed through to at least one other city.

All that being said, I do make some preferential analysis in city placement that allows my 2nd and 3rd cities to immediately access the trade network via rivers or coasts, since that's usually when my workers have the greatest number of demands on them. I'll still get the benefits of a trade network while delaying the road building for a bit.

In fact, I could probably summarize by saying that getting the Wheel early (say one of the first 5 techs researched) is almost a "must do" for me. But actually building roads, and where to build them, is a little more dependant on what's happening in the game.

Usually it’s chopping first, improving resources second and then roads to connect those resources to other cities, especially iron or horses if I got ‘em. Usually I have 5 or 6 cities by the time I start connecting them with roads unless I have an aggressive neighbor or local barbarian problems. Then I might build a road to get units to the trouble spot more quickly. At this point I might put 1 or 2 workers on each city and click them to improve that city, especially if I am at war (which I usually am by then).

I'll note that the point at which cottage-spamming becomes a priority for me seems to have been pushed further into the game as I have gone up in difficulty rating. Because at higher difficulties, the maximum useful city size is quite limited in the very early game due to low basic happiness, therefore it is more likely that my cities will have enough really good non-cottage tiles to work for a while (until I get happiness resources hooked up, etc.) Of course researching the Wheel becomes a priority when I need to hook up those resources, but the techs required to improve the same tiles kind of have to come first.

After a few initial chops (assuming my start actually has forrests nearby of course, from time to time I am treeless for quite some time), my general worker priorities are :
1)Connect my cities for trade purposes. If there are water routes hooking them, that is sufficient at this point.
2)Improve and Connect resources
3)Connect cities for Defense purposes. In other words, any city I didn't connect in 1 due to water routes gets connected by roads.
4)All other improvements.

Later in the game #3 moves up to top priority and since I will have quite a few workers by that point I can afford to pre-build a road to intended city sites.

Circumstances will of course force variations.

I build them after I find a resource.

BW > Wheel > Pottery > Always - and then IW usually.
My workers are busy chopping first. When the chopping frenzy is over and I have 4-7 cities... I'll consider roads. I always just try to settle on rivers - this takes care of the trade route problem. I might need to build 1-2 roads between rivers. If I'm lucky, the iron or copper will be on the rivers as well - no need for roads. I build roads for military defense errr... conquest. :)

I find that in the very early game you simply can't afford to waste worker turns building roads that you don't really need. This doesn't mean you won't need a few roads pretty early on, but you just have to be careful, because the turns it takes to build a road are often better used elsewhere.

In the very early game you can only afford to be building roads that a) link up vital resources (such as copper or horses) so you can build vital military units, or b) link up your cities to eachother for ease of defence and resource access.

After my workers have finished their initial chop rush I'll usualy finish improving all my capital's bonus resource tiles (without bothering with roads), then build a road towards the nearest source of copper/horses. If that copper/horses happens to be within my boarders, so much the better. If it isn't, I'll be using those workers to chop-rush a settler to drop near that resource. Then I'll connect the two cities, connect the resource, and have my workers start improving tiles with other stuff, like mines and cottages.

At this point I usually connect up my health/happiness providing resources if my cities are experiencing health/happiness problems. Then I'll start building a few stratiegic roads towards my enemies, or through defensive terrain along my boarder. Only once all these things are done would I bother dropping a general road grid accross all my tiles.

My first worker usually takes care of the one or two resources within my city limits. Generally that's a food resource and hopefully bronze. By then I have a second city, so I hook up the resources and feed them to the second city. As I spread, I usually have enough workers to hook up new cities and improve around cities at the same time.

A road network is just as useful (if not more so) for the trade income than the troop mobility. Trade routes don't eat 2 food or cause unhappiness and unhealthiness.

A backbone road network has priority for me. It connects ressources, allows fast troop movement and spreads my religion (if I have any).

Question: do roads/railroads on your cottage tiles speed their growth? I remember reading that here someplace, but I can't seem to find it.

If not, do all cottages grow at the same rate or is there some other variable that speeds their growth? I thought roads/railroads were that variable and for that reason, roads are fairly early in my Tech sequence. But if not, then I have to rethink some things.

Roads do not affect cottages.

Railroads only add +1 production to lumbermills and mines.

A good rule of thumb i use is that the very first action of the very first worker each new city produces is to connect the city to the capital via roads.

obviously, too, we don't need roads everywhere b/c they no longer give any benefit, but i still do that? Odd.

roads in the early game? I guess they might be useful for getting my workers to the forests to chop them down ;)

Seriously, roads are great for spreading luxuries/health resources and for troop movements, but in the early game I find I don't have the luxury or need to have them building roads.

I find in general:
at lower levels my cities don't need lux/heath resources right away so my worker are busy doing something else (such as spamming cottages)
at higher levels (emporer) my workers are too busy chopping (often other workers) just to keep up that I rarely have time to build roads -- so as high levels i try to use rivers and ocenas to connect as many cities as i can

to the op, if yorue stuck in a war strat youneed to learn other strategies

I tend to build roads on the squares diagonally adjacent to the capital as soon as there is nothing more obviously productive to do with the worker, for mobility purposes - it doubles the "reach" of any unit in the capital. (There's no advantage in moving horizontally or vertically vs. moving diagonally absent other factors such as enemies or impassible terrain.)

Also as soon as a new city is established, a connecting road is a priority for both economic and military purposes. Often I will build roads in anticipation of founding a city as described by another poster above, as well.

obviously, too, we don't need roads everywhere b/c they no longer give any benefit, but i still do that? Odd.

I dunno. I find the added mobility very helpful, especially when you're moving something other than workers, which now have 2 movement. My rationale is if I can help a unit get somewhere faster, I might as well do so. Besides, it seems that workers can still improve terrain faster than cities can grow, so it's unlikely you'll get behind in improvements if you road the place up.