Destroying Roads

[ardandy]

Can someone tell me why the decision was made to not let you destroy a road improvement on a tile inside your area?

If I take over someones land I always get annoyed at the gazillions of roads in every square. I'm fickle and like things nice a neat etc so always end up concentrating on destroying road improvements before taking a city (assuming enemy is pretty much destroyed by then).

Is there any other way other than world builder to do it?

 

[nmcul]

It does amuse me that the developers made a point that they wanted to eliminate the need to put a road in every tile on the map... And then they wrote an AI that does that anyway.

 

[Willem]

It makes perfect sense to do so, it gives your armies alot more mobility. I always put roads on every tile, it makes it alot easier to move my units around.

 

[AlphaShard]

I agree with Willem, it gives flexibility to your units and also doesn't make that one road your sole connection between various cities.

 

[Scoottr]

The only downside to havin a road on a tile is it reduces the probability that a forest will grow back there.

Its messing looking but serves a good strategic purpose....nothing worse than missing getting that cavalry unit in a city being attacked by one movement point because it had to make a detour around a gap in the network.

 

[AlphaShard]

The only downside to havin a road on a tile is it reduces the probability that a forest will grow back there.

Its messing looking but serves a good strategic purpose....nothing worse than missing getting that cavalry unit in a city being attacked by one movement point because it had to make a detour around a gap in the network.

That's assuming there's any forest left around said square. Besides after Ancient+Classical era I'm not depending on choping anymore. Which is around when just about all my city tiles at least are roaded.

 

[fenrus]

That's assuming there's any forest left around said square. Besides after Ancient+Classical era I'm not depending on choping anymore. Which is around when just about all my city tiles at least are roaded.

Still might be handy for a forest preserve. There were a few times I wished I could destroy some roads.

 

[nmcul]

What annoys me is that there's no way to order your troops to destroy enemy roads when there's anything else at all on the tile. You'd think that being someone's immortal king would garner enough respect for them to shut up and listen to your orders, but I guess their squirrel-like attention spans won't permit them to obey commands properly. Civilization II got it right, here, but for some reason pillaging has become something you have little control over.

 

[Ghpstage]

The only downside to havin a road on a tile is it reduces the probability that a forest will grow back there.

Thats not the only downside.
Enemy spies can use your roads/rails and if you could pillage them then you could channel spies along paths covered by your own spies for detection purposes (and avoid roading short routes from your important resources to enemy lands!).
IF the AI was capable of using the Commando promotion on non spy units then being able to pillage roads/rails would become a much bigger issue.

 

[fenrus]

How many times have you seen a Commando promotion on a non Spy?

personally, i have never used that promotion. nor amphibious.

 

[lshockley]

I'm with ardandy, the road spam annoys me too. What I do is cut all the road leading to the city I'm attacking, and then reconnect them the way I want to once the city (and some or all of the workable tiles in its big fat cross) are mine.

Also, there are two other benefits: 1) it helps with the first-wave counter-attack - mounted units just can't sail up to my city from the next city over, I actually get a chance to see them coming. And 2) this disconnects the resources that are technically in my BFC, but not in my cultural borders, so the AI can't enjoy them without re-working them. And normally the campaign has resumed before that happens,

The only downside is that I have to have some workers handy to repair the damage. With good planning, I can usually have a stack of lightly guarded "domestics" - missionaries, settlers, workers, and sometimes great people - to whisk (preferably sail) into the city once it's mine. Of course, in a hasty or surprise war, that means my home cities need to get a few workers out, but there's usually enough time during the initial revolt to build a worker somewhere, and at least get it on its way to the new city.

 

[rabidveggie]

I see no reason not to build roads everywhere. Spy's are crap anyways and espionage has no effect on my strategy at all. With roads everywhere no matter where they attack from you can pick when the battle takes place. They cannot pillage with impunity, my workers have easy access to my whole nation, and if i wish to reinforce a city the enemy cannot sever my road connection with one stack. Forests later on can be a liability for the defender as an opponent can retreat to it to regroup or prevent a counter attack after a battle.
The only viable reason to not building roads everywhere aside from appearances is if I'm falling back its easy to sever the enemies supply route, but if I'm losing cities like that chances are I'm done for already.

 

[King Flevance]

I see no reason a "pillage road" command shouldn't be in the game. (And have it work on your roads or their roads.) I can pillage my own mine/farm/etc. by a misclick as it is, so convenience isn't the reason. I allowed commando to unlock meaning it shows up in quite a few games earlier and in multiplayer its a good idea to do some traffic control. But now I gotta figure out how to mod a button for this in. And I don't know how to.

 

[Silu]

I see no reason not to build roads everywhere. Spy's are crap anyways and espionage has no effect on my strategy at all. With roads everywhere no matter where they attack from you can pick when the battle takes place. They cannot pillage with impunity, my workers have easy access to my whole nation, and if i wish to reinforce a city the enemy cannot sever my road connection with one stack. Forests later on can be a liability for the defender as an opponent can retreat to it to regroup or prevent a counter attack after a battle.
The only viable reason to not building roads everywhere aside from appearances is if I'm falling back its easy to sever the enemies supply route, but if I'm losing cities like that chances are I'm done for already.

Roading every tile makes you ineligible for certain very good resource spawn events. All of the Spice, Silver and Deer popping events require a completely non-improved, non-roaded tile. For me this is reason enough not to roadspam

 

[ardandy]

I think I'm more bothered about the aesthetics than anything else! Not the point of the game I know but I like a nice efficient looking empire!

 

[catfish99]

I see no reason not to build roads everywhere. Spy's are crap anyways and espionage has no effect on my strategy at all.

This may be world and level dependent. I do know I ahve played Pangea maps on Prince that involve a ton of spy fighting - almost to the point where you just want it to stop.

 

[Willem]

Roading every tile makes you ineligible for certain very good resource spawn events. All of the Spice, Silver and Deer popping events require a completely non-improved, non-roaded tile. For me this is reason enough not to roadspam

It's rather foolish to base your strategy on some random event that may or may not occur in a game.

 

[Silu]

It's rather foolish to base your strategy on some random event that may or may not occur in a game.

Err... what? I'm not "basing my strategy around it", I simply stated that the benefits from roadspam are so marginal that even a chance of getting good random events win those. Also note that every good event you make eligible makes the bad ones less likely to happen. If you read the whole post you might notice that the guy I answered to said "I see no reason not to roadspam", and I gave a reason.

 

[cdcuase]

Although a far simpler game, civ rev took care of the road spam problem by not having workers create the roads one tile at a time... you create a route to a city instantaenously in an option in the city screen (at a cost of gold). The ability to make a road anywhere on the map doesnt exist.

Maybe a future version of civ should do this? Afterall we only require roads from city to city and to acquire resources. The fact our armies are slowed down due to a lack of roads actually mirrors real-world problems faced by armies. And it makes capturing cities that are hubs of road networks far more important.