Roads to CS

[Wojciech Rodzik]

Hi,

Is there a reason to build roads to CS?

I haven't noticed any trading bonus....
Supposedly CS will want me to build road to them - I build it, I get influence bonus for completing quest, shall I remove road afterwards (to save upkeep money)?

 

[anandus]

For roads outside your territory you don't have to pay upkeep (if I am correct), also roads increase your caravan range. But apart from that there's no need to keep them, I think?

 

[Makavcio]

I usually remove unneeded roads. The only real benefit of keeping them I can think of is very situational. You can create your trade network using friendly city state's territory if there are no better options.

Leaving CSs aside, what's the deal with unkeep for roads? When I build a road to connect my cities that is partially outside of my territory, I think I pay the whole sum. Whenever my worker finishes his project, my gpt lowers.

 

[DemonMaster]

It depends, if your gtp is bad, then you do what you need to do to change that, although a couple of gold extra for excessive roads is hardly the problem in that case, if you have a gpt of 30-40 or something, then why bother, and if you have gpt of 100+, it becomes just pathetic to bother.

And also, you do pay upkeep for all the roads within your borders and for those that you have built in "the neutral zone" (unless they have changed that lately).

 

[phillipwyllie]

Roads through friendly CS territory to one of your cities still acts as a connection. If that CS is no longer friendly(war or your influence falls below 30) then that connection is broken. Sometimes the terrain dictates that a road must go through CS territory to one of your cities.

 

[beetle]

Roads can also be built before the CS asks for them, which seems like an exploit to me, as the quest still will come up. Early roads can be problem gpt-wise, but if removing them after a quest saves you enough money to be worth the bother, your economy is in serious trouble! If it is worth the opportunity cost of the workers time to be removing roads, you almost certainly have too many workers and should be disbanding them! Units cost much more maintenance than roads in my experience.

 

[Beaver79]

I will have to run some tests but I'm wondering how road maintenance works too.

I'm pretty sure you pay for all roads in your territory and roads you build that are outside of yours or someone else's territory. You also pay maintenance for roads in captured cities.

If you went to war with a civ that only had 2 territories though and you took the capital and burned the second, you would have a road from that capital leading to nowhere. Do you pay for that road outside of your borders? I know you can have a worker remove the road inside of your borders, but he can't destroy a road outside of your borders. You can pillage it, but do you still pay for pillaged roads?

If you go warmongering on a large or huge map road maintenance really adds up even if you aren't connecting them by roads. Sometimes more than your troop cost.

 

[Johnpecan]

For roads outside your territory you don't have to pay upkeep (if I am correct), also roads increase your caravan range. But apart from that there's no need to keep them, I think?

It would make sense that roads increase your caravan range but I don't think this is true. Maybe I just never noticed it. If it is true, do they need to be on the exact path of the caravan to matter?

 

[kaspergm]

Roads don't increase Caravan range, and you do have to pay upkeep for the road you build outside your territory except if it is within the CS territory (friendly or not, afaik.).

Just to clarify some wrong facts in this thread.

 

[DemonMaster]

Roads don't increase Caravan range, and you do have to pay upkeep for the road you build outside your territory except if it is within the CS territory (friendly or not, afaik.).

Just to clarify some wrong facts in this thread.

Just to clarify - roads do extend the range or caravan units.

 

[Browd]

I'm pretty sure you pay for all roads in your territory and roads you build that are outside of yours or someone else's territory. You also pay maintenance for roads in captured cities.

If you went to war with a civ that only had 2 territories though and you took the capital and burned the second, you would have a road from that capital leading to nowhere. Do you pay for that road outside of your borders? I know you can have a worker remove the road inside of your borders, but he can't destroy a road outside of your borders. You can pillage it, but do you still pay for pillaged roads?

Yes, you pay for all roads in your territory (including puppeted and annexed territory) and on all road segments you build in no-man's land. Maintenance on roads you build in someone else'es territory (including CS territory) is paid by that civ. Good question on how road segments in territory of a city you conquered and razed are treated--can't recall testing this, but I suspect it gets treated as no-man's land where YOU didn't build the road segment. Now, if the civ that built those road segments is eliminated from the game, then does no one pay maintenance?

Just to clarify - roads do extend the range or caravan units.

Yep, but only roads in the general direction of your trading partner. Roads operate differently from caravanasaries, which boost range 50% in every direction.

 

[EK834]

It would make sense that roads increase your caravan range but I don't think this is true. Maybe I just never noticed it. If it is true, do they need to be on the exact path of the caravan to matter?

I don't know the exact formula (ie: how many extra tile(s) a road segment adds to a caravan's movement, but I suspect for the first few it might be one, or .5), but they need to be on a path that will reduce the movement cost between your city and a trading partner. If you build a road pointing south, it will be useless to Caravans heading to a city north of yours.

In my current game, I have Warsaw with Krakow about 7 tiles north, and Palenque about 6 north of that. Warsaw couldn't reach Palenque originally, Krakow could, but after I connected Warsaw to Krakow by road, I could send a Caravan from Warsaw to Palenque.