Road construction tips

paradigmx · Sep 24, 2010

Anybody have any specific tips on optimal use of roads, from what I can tell, because of the expense of roads, it's more important to plan your routes.

- build roads over hills and through forests and jungles instead of grasslands or plains if possible to minimize travel time for your units in those areas
- link cities first and foremost, the trade income usually pays the road maintenance
- build roads to your front lines to minimize travel time for reinforcements
- your workers can remove roads, use that to eliminate some costs due to roads that no longer serve a purpose(ie. an old war front line)
- Roman legions build roads, don't waste a worker on road construction if your playing as the romans unless all your legions are held up in combat.

Some additional questions about roads that maybe someone can answer

- Can you get open borders with another civ and destroy their economy by road spamming in their borders
- do roads linked to resources give any bonus or have any purpose

Feel free to add anything else you have learned about roads as well, they are a much more important mechanic in V than they where in any previous Civ from what I can tell.

James009 · Sep 24, 2010

Question: Do we pay for our "Puppet" roads?

I'm very interested to hear more road tips. My first attempt at a mod was to reduce the road maintenance costs by 50-75%.

paradigmx · Sep 24, 2010

James009 said:
Question: Do we pay for our "Puppet" roads?

I'm very interested to hear more road tips. My first attempt at a mod was to reduce the road maintenance costs by 50-75%.

If I understand the mechanics right, then yes we do pay the Puppet road costs as the puppet's territory is ours, the same way we gain their culture, tech and gold income.

Aurelius321 · Sep 24, 2010

It's not whose territory the road is in. Each segment of road is paid for by the civilization that built the road, regardless of cultural borders. This question was asked in one of the 2k forums and 2kGreg answered.

trezno · Sep 24, 2010

So if I build up my gigantic empire and get attacked by my worst enemy, which then leaves me with a couple of cities. Do I then continue to pay upkeep for all the roads I have built untill this day? It will certainly make it much more difficult to come back after something like this.

oPlaiD · Sep 24, 2010

Aurelius321 said:
It's not whose territory the road is in. Each segment of road is paid for by the civilization that built the road, regardless of cultural borders. This question was asked in one of the 2k forums and 2kGreg answered.

So that means that city the stupid Japanese built on my roads in between my empire and the city I just took from isn't paying upkeep on them? How the heck are my road workers supposed to keep maintaining them when I don't even have open borders with him?

Rishara · Sep 24, 2010

I remember in the demo they stated that roads in neutral territory were paid for by whomever built them, so I don't know about someone else's territory. It wouldn't make sense for you to still have to pay for roads after they take your city. Are your workers allowed to build roads in their territory if you have open borders? I know you can for city-states, and of course I assume you pay for those, but has anyone done it for one of the regular civs?

Thyrwyn · Sep 24, 2010

Aurelius321 said:
It's not whose territory the road is in. Each segment of road is paid for by the civilization that built the road, regardless of cultural borders. This question was asked in one of the 2k forums and 2kGreg answered.

Greg's response was in regards to oads in neutral territory - the builder pays. If the road is within someone's territory, they always pay regardless of who built it.

dannythefool · Sep 24, 2010

That's how I remember it as well.

MeatUnit2 · Sep 24, 2010

trezno said:
So if I build up my gigantic empire and get attacked by my worst enemy, which then leaves me with a couple of cities. Do I then continue to pay upkeep for all the roads I have built untill this day? It will certainly make it much more difficult to come back after something like this.

The Tutorial specifically addresses your question. If your territory is taken by an enemy the maintenance cost of the roads in that captured territory is assumed by the enemy. That's all it says.

Presumably the converse is true, and that when you capture territory containing enemy built roads you must assume the cost of maintaining the roads in your captured territory as well (along with building maintenance costs.)

This, again presumably, explains why your population is happier when you opt to make a captured city a puppet, as these maintenance costs don't devolve onto your citizens in your empire, but remain as a burden with the captured city, and while you cannot tell a puppet city state what to build or not to build, you don't have to pay the maintenance either. That makes sense to me, anyway.

Ahriman · Sep 24, 2010

This, again presumably, explains why your population is happier when you opt to make a captured city a puppet, as these maintenance costs don't devolve onto your citizens in your empire, but remain as a burden with the captured city, and while you cannot tell a puppet city state what to build or not to build, you don't have to pay the maintenance either. That makes sense to me, anyway.

This isn't how it works. Puppet cities are "yours" in almost every sense. The territory of a puppet city is the same as the territory of any other one of your cities.
You pay the maintenance costs of all roads near puppets, and you pay maintenance cost of all their buildings.

The "realism" reason why you don't get such a happiness hit from puppet rather than annexing, is by annexing you are removing local autonomy and pissing off the local populace by installing foreign rulers. Eg: Vichy France was easier to govern than it would be had the Germans annexed it and installed German administrators everywhere.

MuteWolf · Sep 24, 2010

keep in mind that to avoid building roads that span an entire continent you can build a harbor, in the capital or city connected to it, then another in a far away area and then connect using roads from that city. I was in a position where I would have to build like 15 tiles of road to connect one area with another. I believe the maintenance on a harbor is 4 though so this is only useful if the roads necessary are more then 8, or you already have a harbor in which case roads are more then four.

I haven't been building roads for war. Seems like a bit of a waste unless I plan on connecting that city by road anyway. Just seems like a lot of money and worker turns for not a ton in benefit.

bobbyboy29 · Sep 24, 2010

Alright here's a nice road tip. To use roads to benefit your economy you have to build them from one city to your capital. However, as you build your roads you incur maintenance on them without receiving any benefit until the cities are finally connected. So in the time it takes you to create the link it may cost you 20-30 gold!

To alleviate this what you can do is first build all the roads to within 1 turn of completion, and then quickly finish them off (it may be helpful to have more than 1 worker to finish the roads even quicker). This will take a few more worker turns but you will definately save a good amount of your precious gold!

Pragmatic · Sep 24, 2010

When Roman legions upgrade, do they retain their ability to build roads?

Reason I ask is, when I send my scouts into the Ancient Ruins, occasionally they find a cache of advanced weapons. I've had a Scout upgrade that way to an Archer, then a Crossbowman, then a Rifleman. (Ran out of "goodie huts" around then.) And during all those upgrades, they retained the Scout's ability to have no movement penalty due to terrain. (Archers, Crossbowmen, and Riflemen, all moving two tiles per turn, no matter whether they're going across grasslands, or crossing rivers and hills...)

WuphonsReach · Sep 25, 2010

Here's a sample road network in one of my games (Fractal, Large). I've over-drawn the road network using a big purple line to make it more obvious.

Kagoshima to Osaka (in the lower right) road did not exist for a long time until I was making over 20 gold/turn regularly.

The roads from London to Warrick and Newcastle were laid down by the AI - and the AI did a good job.

Note that Satsuma-Kyoto is not highlighted in yellow any more. That road used to be what the trade network ran across, until Satsuma added in a Harbor. Now the trade traffic apparently goes via sea lanes to another city with a Harbor (probably Nara or Kyoto).

aguds · Sep 25, 2010

Noob-road question: So should I not build a road on every tile I have an improvement(i.e farm) on? Is it sufficient with a road in the adjacent spot? Or do I not need roads to farms, mines etc. at all?

General_CFR · Sep 25, 2010

And does the AI on higher levels pay less for the roads?

thungrim · Sep 25, 2010

aguds said:
Noob-road question: So should I not build a road on every tile I have an improvement(i.e farm) on? Is it sufficient with a road in the adjacent spot? Or do I not need roads to farms, mines etc. at all?

In previous civs you'd need to connect special resources within your borders with roads. Also in previous Civs, roads granted a trade bonus to a tile.

In Civ5, roads are exclusively for travel. Because roads also have a maintenance cost, it is advised that you use them only to link cities. It is strongly advised that you use them only where you NEED them. Roads are still important for trade though. If you can trace a road from a city to your capital (even if you go through other cities) it counts as a trade route and brings income in per turn.

LOVE the new way they've done roads in Civ5. LOVE IT

aguds · Sep 25, 2010

thungrim said:
In previous civs you'd need to connect special resources within your borders with roads. Also in previous Civs, roads granted a trade bonus to a tile.

In Civ5, roads are exclusively for travel. Because roads also have a maintenance cost, it is advised that you use them only to link cities. It is strongly advised that you use them only where you NEED them. Roads are still important for trade though. If you can trace a road from a city to your capital (even if you go through other cities) it counts as a trade route and brings income in per turn.

LOVE the new way they've done roads in Civ5. LOVE IT

Thanks man. I was making spaghetti roads like in Civ IV - and that was probably why I never had that much gold. So restart game it is

shinkicker · Sep 25, 2010

thungrim said:
In previous civs you'd need to connect special resources within your borders with roads. Also in previous Civs, roads granted a trade bonus to a tile.

In Civ5, roads are exclusively for travel. Because roads also have a maintenance cost, it is advised that you use them only to link cities. It is strongly advised that you use them only where you NEED them. Roads are still important for trade though. If you can trace a road from a city to your capital (even if you go through other cities) it counts as a trade route and brings income in per turn.

LOVE the new way they've done roads in Civ5. LOVE IT

I can't say I love it, but I see the reasoning behind the new system. It's just another of the interesting changes they made after Civ IV. I'm gonna kind of miss my spiderweb network of roads/RRs that cover the map

When you can start building railroads, let's hope you're making a nice profit overall because RRs are 2x as expensive as roads. The tradeoff is that you get a 50% production bonus if you're connected by rail to your capital - in a big civ with lots of hammers, that could be a huge benefit to override the maintenance cost, but not until you finish the rail line connecting to the capital city.

Road construction tips

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