Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads.

Theov · Aug 29, 2014

Hi.
I was tired of building roads everywhere just to add the +1 commerce.
I also think it makes every empire look the same, as it always ends up looking like a spiderweb of roads and rails.

"Why don't all tiles have one more commerce to begin with" I thought "...and make roads solely for faster travel and for trade networks." Still a vital part of the empire. Defending the roads that connect now becomes a part of the strategy.

With workers being less important, I think a large part of the edge that the human player has over the AI goes away. And I think it makes Republic a bit less effective also. I think this balances the game really well and want to try it out.

So... I tried to edit it in the editor (just +1 commerce for every terrain that would have +1 if it would have a road; take away the commerce bonus of a road), but I ended up with workers that couldn't build roads at all.

It can't be that hard to do, but I don't see it.

Does anyone know how to do this??

_ghost_ · Sep 1, 2014

this is not possible.

the 1+ gold is directly linked to the road-tile improvement. u get the +1 com for every road build. and if there is no 1+ bonus then on that tile its impossible to build road.
thats it

Quintillus · Sep 1, 2014

Indeed, the ability to build roads is tied to the terraform bonus of roads not being zero. It can be two, it can be four, but it can't be zero.

As an experiment, I tried setting the commerce bonus for roads to -1, and setting the base commerce from terrain to be one higher. Unfortunately, the AI didn't realize that building roads everywhere was actually detrimental in such a case, and kept building them just like it always does. So, while you could perhaps set the bonus to -1 for a humans-vs-humans game, doing so in a game vs. the AI would actually increase the human's advantage.

And thus also, even if you could get roads to give 0 commerce bonus, the AI would still build them everywhere, so whether it would reduce the human advantage is questionable.

Note that you can't set roads to a negative bonus in Firaxis's editor, but you can in my editor once you set the safety level to be lower.

ahman · Sep 1, 2014

Theov said:
I was tired of building roads everywhere just to add the +1 commerce. I also think it makes every empire look the same, as it always ends up looking like a spiderweb of roads and rails.

Look at a small land piece of a developed country in Google Maps, it has a spiderweb of roads. Except maybe around the outer cities (in northern Sweden for example).

Theov · Sep 2, 2014

ahman said:
Look at a small land piece of a developed country in Google Maps, it has a spiderweb of roads. Except maybe around the outer cities (in northern Sweden for example).

the cities themselves, but the highroads connect, they don't connect every piece of farmland from 4 sides.

I just thought it was redundant to build it everywhere.

Buttercup · Sep 2, 2014

In terms of historical reality, yes, people built roads everywhere, well... from the Romans onwards. Before the Romans went OCD on roads people mainly had the same method of road creation as animals, in that creatures just all followed the same route, thereby naturally carving out a known route, similar to modern footpaths.

It was the Romans who really started pushing for the whole 'gravel that track' process, mainly to enable their legionaries to walk further faster (and not get lost etc).

The next really big changes weren't until the 19th Century when Messers Tarmac invented Tarmac and Messers Steampower invented Railroads.

After that, the next big change was multi-lane highways.

And this is where the Civ series falters on the historical 'angle'. Gravel roads aren't really that great a mobility improvement and neither is railroads, per-se, but the real big changer was Tarmac and multi-lane highways.

Also, Railroads don't really ever replace roads in real life, they're an addition. It's the Railroads that should just be city-connectors, and even then they tend to be V-shaped rather than full webs, aside from hyper cool countries like Holland.

There is a certain element of truth that the old gravel roads would increase commerce over dirt-tracks, as wagons became more feasible and populous. But the idea that wine couldn't be transported to the town without a gravel road is somewhat ludicrous.

But it's a game, not reality. Like everything, in-game roads are just metaphors for a bigger picture. In-game roads might look like they don't actually go anywhere, but they are going somewhere, they're going to a metaphorical small-town or whatever.

However, the devil is in the detail, and, yes, the +1 Republic bonus is somewhat over-powered (to say the least) and, yes, from a gaming perspective, it's somewhat tedious having to OCD road building just to get the initial +1.

Theov · Sep 4, 2014

Buttercup said:
In terms of historical reality, yes, people built roads everywhere, well... from the Romans onwards. Before the Romans went OCD on roads people mainly had the same method of road creation as animals, in that creatures just all followed the same route, thereby naturally carving out a known route, similar to modern footpaths.

It was the Romans who really started pushing for the whole 'gravel that track' process, mainly to enable their legionaries to walk further faster (and not get lost etc).

The next really big changes weren't until the 19th Century when Messers Tarmac invented Tarmac and Messers Steampower invented Railroads.

After that, the next big change was multi-lane highways.

And this is where the Civ series falters on the historical 'angle'. Gravel roads aren't really that great a mobility improvement and neither is railroads, per-se, but the real big changer was Tarmac and multi-lane highways.

Also, Railroads don't really ever replace roads in real life, they're an addition. It's the Railroads that should just be city-connectors, and even then they tend to be V-shaped rather than full webs, aside from hyper cool countries like Holland.

There is a certain element of truth that the old gravel roads would increase commerce over dirt-tracks, as wagons became more feasible and populous. But the idea that wine couldn't be transported to the town without a gravel road is somewhat ludicrous.

But it's a game, not reality. Like everything, in-game roads are just metaphors for a bigger picture. In-game roads might look like they don't actually go anywhere, but they are going somewhere, they're going to a metaphorical small-town or whatever.

However, the devil is in the detail, and, yes, the +1 Republic bonus is somewhat over-powered (to say the least) and, yes, from a gaming perspective, it's somewhat tedious having to OCD road building just to get the initial +1.

Agreed on all, but my biggest things were A: the time-consumeness of laying down the roads and then the deja vu when you lay down the same network with rails (can be auto'd for large parts, yes) ... and B: the aesthetics.

Ataxerxes · Sep 8, 2014

Buttercup said:
But it's a game, not reality. Like everything, in-game roads are just metaphors for a bigger picture. In-game roads might look like they don't actually go anywhere, but they are going somewhere, they're going to a metaphorical small-town or whatever.

That's actually truer than you might think. If you look at road maps of the Midwest, the roads form a grid pattern and at almost every intersection there is a small town. Each town generates commerce from serving the farmers nearby.

RS8 · Sep 9, 2014

That 1+ bonus from roads is what makes Republic so good

There's no reason to use the other governments except in very specific circumstances

Feudalism in a cultural victory for example, or Monarchy when being at war constantly from early on

vorlon_mi · Sep 10, 2014

Could you mess around with fractional values for the commerce boost, or does it have to be an integer? By making some terrain types have a commerce bonus of 0.1, others with 1.5, still others with 2, you could give the human an incentive to build roads preferentially on some tiles than others. Since they are all > 0, the AI might still build roads everywhere though

Theov · Sep 12, 2014

RS8 said:
That 1+ bonus from roads is what makes Republic so good

There's no reason to use the other governments except in very specific circumstances

Feudalism in a cultural victory for example, or Monarchy when being at war constantly from early on

read my first post

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads.

Theov

Deity

_ghost_

Warlord

Quintillus

Archiving Civ3 Content

ahman

Warlord

Theov

Deity

Buttercup

King

Theov

Deity

Ataxerxes

Deity

RS8

Chieftain

vorlon_mi

Emperor

Theov

Deity

Similar threads