A choice in the workers menu, to order them to bild streets everywhere

[Willem]

Yes, but it dosn't make the workers to bild streets "everyware". They just connect cities.

No. Once they run out of cities to connect and resources to hook up, they'll build roads on every tile in your empire. If you're not seeing that, then maybe you should assign more Workers to it.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Why not?

Because if units can't pass through cities, you would need to surround every city with roads, what would take too much time and too much maintenance.

If units can go through cities, there would be a problem of congestion that would make you stupidly loose turns of production because there would be one unit in the cities on the verge to create a new unit.

Beside that, I believed that units were not allowed to defend cities anymore, so it would be impossible to put them in a city. Seems contradictory with another information that said that there would be one unit allowed in the city.

Obviously one information is false, as they contradict each others.

Plus, if you think at this, how will you stock your produced units if you wait to have a good force before going to war? I guess you would have to spread your army all over your territory, so that roads would surely lack in many places, if they are limited. So i believe that indeed, roads would not benefit units movement. That, also, is subject to two contradictory informations by the way. The first said clearly that roads was useless for unit movements, the other claimed that roads will be indeed usefull in that regard. I think that we are definitively falling in the sillyness of speculation here, we have multiple informations that contradict each others, again, i'm saying that there are misinterpretations of demonstrations (from journalists) or texts (from journalists and web users)

 

[Chalks]

Naokaukodem - roads provide no movement bonuses in Civ 5.

This means that there would be no need to build roads around cities, since there is no need for units to travel via roads.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I was answering to Ahriman that said "why not" when i said that roads increasing movement would not be logical.

 

[Chalks]

I was answering to Ahriman that said "why not" when i said that roads increasing movement would not be logical.

I'm an idiot.



In that case, you're completely correct.

 

[Ahriman]

Because if units can't pass through cities, you would need to surround every city with roads, what would take too much time and too much maintenance.

When did they ever say that units can't pass through cities?
Its ridiculous to think you'll need to surround the city with roads.

Just think of the city as another unit under 1upt; you might not be able to end a turn in it, but you can move through it just fine.

f units can go through cities, there would be a problem of congestion that would make you stupidly loose turns of production because there would be one unit in the cities on the verge to create a new unit.

There might be congestion if you're moving large armies over a single road, but I do not see how you can possibly conclude that you'll lose turns of production. You can move a newly created unit to any tile in a 2-hex radius - more along the roads. THat's a huge number of tiles.
So how are you going to lose production???

Beside that, I believed that units were not allowed to defend cities anymore, so it would be impossible to put them in a city. Seems contradictory with another information that said that there would be one unit allowed in the city.

I agree that there is some confusion here (though note; you don't need to be able to have a unit *in* a city in order to pass through the city via a road). Though its entirely possible that you'll be able to have one unit in a city (newly constructed, or "merging" it with city) but also not have it defend (like civ4 naval units in a city), or have it defend first (before the city - its camped outside the walls) but with no defensive bonuses. Would still be a bit weird though.

I guess you would have to spread your army all over your territory

Right. Or probably a mix of along your borders and then a central reserve force. Keep in mind that armies will be much smaller than Civ4, so you probably won't have *that* many units.

The first said clearly that roads was useless for unit movements, the other claimed that roads will be indeed usefull in that regard.

I agree again that there is some confusion here, though I tend to believe the "will improve movement" is more likely since it came from a (admittedly potentially translation-mangled) developer interview, rather than a fan report from a convention.
But either case is feasible, and neither has intrinsic game-breaking problems.

 

[Danger Bird]

Why couldn't the developers just give a worker a "shelf" life? Each "city" is allowed 10 workers, and each worker is allowed to do 50 tile improvements, and then the unit is disbanded. Would that not be a smarter AI instead of having to find "something" to do for 100's of turns?

Or, even better, instead of having permanent worker units, just pay money for improvements. (Of course, you could then have a worker graphic appear on the tile for the x turns it takes to build the road/mine, etc. But it wouldn't be a unit, just a graphic that would be replaced by the improvement when done.)

The advantage of paying money is that the human/AI has to weigh the advantages of the improvement versus the advantages of whatever else could be done with the money. Now, building another road has no cost whatsoever because you've got a permanent worker unit, with nothing better to do. But with money (or perhaps population if you have slavery) there is always opportunity cost, as there is something better you could do.

This solution is more elegant than another maintenance cost (best to just have one overall abstracted maintence cost for cities, buildings, improvements, roads, everything - as it is now in Civ4). Also, it is more realistic (most improvements required an input of funds).

 

[timtofly]

Yes, roads will presumably be built by workers.

I agree.

Because they don't have the road art working yet, and it would look really ugly. You can see that in the screenshots they've posted, the road segments on cities are placeholders.

Where is the randomness?
Do you mean "manually"?

In the screenshots there are roads "at random". IMO there is not enough gold being generated to offset the cost of more roads.

No it wouldn't the human player would still spam roads.

As would the AI if both had money to throw away.

That's not how AI works. The AI can easily be programmed to use roads only to link up cities. And the AI builds things based on the advantages vs costs, it will never do something that brings no net benefit, no matter how "rich" it is.

No. Then you'd just build extra workers later on.

My point with the "shelf life" would be only for the AI. Program the AI to be limited in how "much" it does; not by giving it "goals".

Attacking the cost benefit analysis of excess road construction is really the only effective way to limit construction.

For the Human, Yes. Given time and resources the AI can spam as well as the rest of us. Having it consider the advantages vs the cost may slow it down, but IMO not fix it.

 

[Tlalynet]

I'm still not sure of why someone would be against building roads on every developed tile in the first place. Roads are far from free, but if you have enough population in an area to support development then they are not expensive in civ terms either, you should be able to afford major roads everywhere their are cities, farms, industry, or, well, any worked tile improvement. If people think the road graphics are ugly then address the graphical ugliness, but limiting the amount of major roads normally developed seems totally arbitrary.

Having roads doubling or tripping movement was always a bit much, but if we have two moves standard then increasing movement by 1 would not be too much.

 

[Ahriman]

In the screenshots there are roads "at random".

Please link to screenshots with road networks. We haven't seen any, ASAIK.

As would the AI if both had money to throw away.

No. AI doesn't work like that. If you program it to only use roads to connect cities, then thats all it will do.

The Civ5 AI will not use the same improvement construction worker AI as in Civ4.

The AI doesn't start wasting gold just because it has a lot right now.
Don't anthropomorphize a set of algorithms.

Program the AI to be limited in how "much" it does; not by giving it "goals".

Why? That would be an incredibly confusing thing to do.
AI's work by following scripted routines (like "connect all your cities with a road") and doing lots of cost-benefit analysis. You don't tell it how "much" to do, you let it figure that out by giving it costs and benefits of different actions.

Having it consider the advantages vs the cost may slow it down, but IMO not fix it.

Then you don't understand AI. If the AI knows that the cost of building excess roads that don't connect resources or cities is greater than any benefits from doing so, then it will *never* build excess roads - no matter how much gold they have.

 

[timtofly]

Roads for me in Civ was more of a necessity to ward off barbarians. Having troops in your city to keep the citizens happy or for protection, and getting the troops to move to the edge of the tiles being worked to fight the invaders became a hassle unless you had roads. You could wait till the enemy sat on your tiles disrupting production, or you could take your unit out of the city and then cause unhappiness to disrupt your production.

I think that having roads, highways, railroad, maglev should increase unit movement and incrementally with each improvement. There are a lot of commuters today who drive one way to work in an hour what would have taken a whole day by horse or wagon. I personally after taking over a AI civ will destroy all "roads" that do not serve a purpose to be able to enjoy the "view". I also like to see progress. I want to see my magnificent meglev's all over the map, and I expect them to "move" my units fast.

 

[timtofly]

Road on three tiles. One road connects to the city.

Spoiler :

Road on tile.

Spoiler :

Road only on an improved farm.

Spoiler :

 

[Ahriman]

Thanks for the links.

This is placeholder art. It does not in any way imply that worker AI will build roads "randomly".

 

[timtofly]

Why would you call it place holder art? It seems to me that those tiles have been "improved" You see tiles with cows only. In this shot you see horses with a fence and the wheat with no road.

Spoiler :

In the first picture of my last post you can see a wheatfield with a road. Why would they put place holder art in one and not the other?

 

[Ahriman]

Why would they put place holder art in one and not the other?

Because they finished some art for farms and pasture improvements before they finished art for roads.

A ton of the art (city buildings textures, roads, etc) is clearly placeholder.
Check out some of the other screenshots that still have terrible placeholder art for some bonus resources.

The screenshots are just there to build some hype; they don't represent the final form of the game.

 

[Willem]

Road on three tiles. One road connects to the city.

Spoiler :

Wos, that shot is incredible. It almost looks photo-realistic. I'm definitely looking forward to the game just to see what it's going to look like.