Should I spam roads?

[anandus]

I'm playing the Inca's and am very tempted to spam roads, but then I wondered: Does the enemy benefit from my roads as well? I don't want to facilitate an easy invasion.

 

[kaspergm]

I still don't see it as necessary. Restrictions in games are there to force decisions. You value CS alliances and research agreements over increased mobility, so you pay the price of less gold available for roads. The problem isn't that they cost money, it is that you are unwilling to pay for them regardless of cost. You could just as easily argue that research agreements shouldn't cost money, because it is a perk for maintaining friendly relations and you shouldn't be penalized for it.

I'd understand if it were necessary to build tons of strategic roads, but I'm really struggling to think of an example where I'd have to pay more than 10-15 gold, tops, on extra roads. A single puppet or traded resource is enough to cover it. The money is available, you just refuse to use it on roads.

I think this was very well put. I myself generally don't feel it's much of a problem, yes there are times during classical era if you do rapid early expansion where roads will really take a toll on your budget, but then again, there should be a price for doing heave early expansion, so I think that's perfectly fine.

When that is said, one could argue that one of the Liberty policies might either a) increase yield of trade routes or b) decrease Road cost by a bit, but then again, we have that policy in Commerce, and while it might come a bit late (or rather perhaps, many players have a tendency to de-preoritize Commerce?), having it appear double would probably just make Commerce even less of a priority than it is.


As a PS. I would say that when I play, I usually look to which of the three policies - the one in Commerce that saves me road maintenance, the one in Order that saves me building maintenance, and the one in Autocracy that saves me unit maintenance - that will give me the greatest revenue, and the one in Commerce almost always comes out in the bottom as the one that saves me least money - so turning that around, road costs usually don't eat a very big part of my empire budget, and I usually put down quite a lot of roads.

I'm playing the Inca's and am very tempted to spam roads, but then I wondered: Does the enemy benefit from my roads as well? I don't want to facilitate an easy invasion.

No, you don't get movement bonuses from roads in foreign lands when you are at war. If they capture your cities, they will get the bonus though (and the expence for maintenance).

 

[Greizer85]

I still don't see it as necessary. Restrictions in games are there to force decisions. You value CS alliances and research agreements over increased mobility, so you pay the price of less gold available for roads. The problem isn't that they cost money, it is that you are unwilling to pay for them regardless of cost. You could just as easily argue that research agreements shouldn't cost money, because it is a perk for maintaining friendly relations and you shouldn't be penalized for it.

I'd understand if it were necessary to build tons of strategic roads, but I'm really struggling to think of an example where I'd have to pay more than 10-15 gold, tops, on extra roads. A single puppet or traded resource is enough to cover it. The money is available, you just refuse to use it on roads.

Maybe you're right and I just need to get out of my present mindset and start laying down more roads. But the benefits of RAs and CS alliances are very concrete and immediate - whereas with roads the benefit is a *potential* one that's minor enough in any case, compared to the prohibitive cost at the time it'd matter (10-15 gpt in the early game is a virtual fortune). Now if the cost was, say, slashed to one third (so 0.33 / road tile), I'm sure I'd build some more roads, but I'd still prefer it if you could have a small amount for free.

Free RAs wouldn't make much sense because there's not enough variance for meaningful decisions to be made (other than who to get it from, but I think the benefits don't vary much based on advancement); free CS alliances (per era maybe) could work but would feel a little weird due to immersion issues. Free roads, otoh, well, they're maintained by people pressed into service (in despotic kingdoms and fascist paradises), or by citizen volunteers (democracies; a little less efficient).

Edit: How about 'emergency roads' - roads that are only active (and begin to cost normal maintenance) in war time? You could have 5 of these tiles per city, so with 5 cities that's 25 emergency road tiles. They'd be colored differently on the map and maybe take less time to build, being very rudimentary. Ofc a long war could end up bankrupting you if the AI would refuse to make peace... As they often do on the higher diffs. Maybe this creates more problems than it solves. I just want more roads in war-time dammit, no matter the means (but the cost certainly matters!).

@kirbdog: That is a novel idea, but at least on Immortal the SCs spam their units in a way that totally prevents movement through their area, allies or not. I've always thought that allied units should be able to stack, at least in peace-time.

 

[Babri]

Maybe you're right and I just need to get out of my present mindset and start laying down more roads. But the benefits of RAs and CS alliances are very concrete and immediate - whereas with roads the benefit is a *potential* one that's minor enough in any case, compared to the prohibitive cost at the time it'd matter (10-15 gpt in the early game is a virtual fortune). Now if the cost was, say, slashed to one third (so 0.33 / road tile), I'm sure I'd build some more roads, but I'd still prefer it if you could have a small amount for free.

Free RAs wouldn't make much sense because there's not enough variance for meaningful decisions to be made (other than who to get it from, but I think the benefits don't vary much based on advancement); free CS alliances (per era maybe) could work but would feel a little weird due to immersion issues. Free roads, otoh, well, they're maintained by people pressed into service (in despotic kingdoms and fascist paradises), or by citizen volunteers (democracies; a little less efficient).

Edit: How about 'emergency roads' - roads that are only active (and begin to cost normal maintenance) in war time? You could have 5 of these tiles per city, so with 5 cities that's 25 emergency road tiles. They'd be colored differently on the map and maybe take less time to build, being very rudimentary. Ofc a long war could end up bankrupting you if the AI would refuse to make peace... As they often do on the higher diffs. Maybe this creates more problems than it solves. I just want more roads in war-time dammit, no matter the means (but the cost certainly matters!).

@kirbdog: That is a novel idea, but at least on Immortal the SCs spam their units in a way that totally prevents movement through their area, allies or not. I've always thought that allied units should be able to stack, at least in peace-time.

You always have the option to mod such a feature in (emergency roads).

Personally I don't feel that there is any need to spam roads, besides it looks ugly. You can still build few extra short branches to your road network system without crippling your economy & that is usually enough. For further protection you might use forts which are free of cost & garrison them with infantry fortified, which would exert ZoC.
I did that once as Rome against the Alexander shared border & it surprisingly worked very well.


Sent from my HTC One V using Tapatalk 2

 

[Browd]

Also, remember that you can remove road segments after their utility has passed. Build the roads you need for military purposes and then remove them when the need passes. 12 road segments that you only need for 20 turns will cost you 240 gold - the proceeds from one luxury sale (plus the worker turns to build and then remove the road, of course).

 

[Heretiv]

Stop building and delete the workers