I just started to think about immediately hooking up new cities. U sually divert a workers attention immediately to building the road, but is this necessary? I also find that I usually don't make many cities, have them far apart, and thus make the workers road a lot longer, but i geuss that that is a personal problem...The health and happiness aren't needed in new cities, and the 1 extra commerce isn't, either. Does anyone else think that it is not worth it to immediately connect cities? It will of course need to be done, but is it necessary in new cities?

Does anyone else think that it is not worth it to immediately connect cities? It will of course need to be done, but is it necessary in new cities?

Maybe not very new cities, which still need a Granary, let's say. But, ideally, all cities are connected so that you have access to strategic resources everywhere, allowing every city to build troops when not focused on the few other tasks it may be worth assigning them to so early in the game.

Well it isnt 1 coin but 2, for your first city that is...
Lets say your capitol at the start is 8 coin from the Palace and 3 coins other source... thats 11.
The new city is 1 or 2? coin lets say 3 even. thats 14 total...
Adding in 2 commerce = 2/14 or 1/7 or 14% extra research power.... that adds up...
That is if you dont have a gold mine or something to do at your capitol for the worker to work ;)

Well, there are several cases in which it is necessary:
- if you play on higher levels, the happiness and health cap are really low, and you'll want to hook up any ressources very fast
- if you have copper in your second city and want to also build an axeman for defense in your capital you'll have to link them. Also, it's good to have roads in order to be able to bring reinforcements if the barbarians decide to throw everything against one of your cities. Build the roads on plains too, so as not to get any penalty, and try to go round the forrests/jungle and not to cross any rivers.
- if you have marble or stone in another city than your capital and need it to build a wonder in the capital

Also think of building roads to forrests you pre-chop so that when you have to go back there to finish it you won't lose turns. Of course, if you have a lot of improvements that you can use (meaning mostly food so that the city grows fast and uses the newly improved tiles) you might want to build those improvements first. But in this case a better strategy would be to chop more early workers and then build improvements.

The extra commerce from the trade-routes created by connecting a city is a nice thing in the beginning, it does much to offset their maintainance cost.

However, whether it is good enough to warrant the construction of roads at the expense of other improvements is an interesting question. Generally, I'd say not, you'll get more benefits from extra food and hammers from other improvements, especially if, as you said, your cities are far apart.

The fewer roads required for connection, the more profitable it becomes. I'd estimate about 6-8 worker-turns of investment are required to connect 2 cities, and your gain is only going to be +1 commerce. Many other improvements can give you an equal or better commerce bonus for fewer worker-turns, but connection does have the advantage that it does not require any tiles to be worked.

The commerce benefit to connecting your cities is going to be greater in the early-game, but that is also when the benefit of building other improvements is at its greatest too.

Extra commerce from trade is not a sufficient reason to divert precious worker-turns away from other development projects. There are however many other reasons for roading-up your empire, like an integrated defense network and the spreading of resources. When you do these however, the trade-commerce is an added bonus.

There are also other ways to connect your cities, like coastal access and rivers. These can open up your internal trade-routes at a relatively low cost (at least in worker turns, it may require tech diversion though for the coast).

Ultimately though, +1 commerce per city is not a compelling enough reason to waste too much effort trying to achieve merely that.

(There, I actually addressed the question he asked.)

I usually build 2 cities in addition to my capital, improve a handful of tiles in each, and then hook up the cities. If I have copper, I'll hook them up asap so that my cities can start building axemen for defense.