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

[Chalks]

They're seriously going to sacrifice an incredibly important strategic element for the sake of aesthetics? Unbelievable, If Firaxis is taking THAT direction, I just might not get the game.

It is really weird - I agree. Although I think not getting the game because of it might be a bit over dramatic!

I wonder if they're going to abolish river and coastal trade routes if that is the only purpose of roads. Otherwise you'll get to the modern era and no coastal or river cities will need to have road connections because their trade goes via the water. That would be very weird.

We shall see, they might still allow rapid unit transport over roads or something but just do it differently - it would certainly be nice to see some sort of transportation benefit from roads! Who knows. Hopefully we'll be seeing more information released soon.

 

[Ahriman]

roads in civ represent MAJOR roads, that take a lot of money and production to maintain

Yes, this is true... but somewhat irrelevant. The economic benefits from major roads are always larger than the costs of maintaining them.

I think that making roads reduce tile yields in order to reduce roadspam does much more damage than the problem they're trying to fix.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry, but in what way did CivIV "fail"? To the best of my knowledge it was the best selling version in the franchise to date. This thread again highlights a common theme that's emerging-a belief that the developers are a bunch of morons, & the added belief that the developers should be doing everything in their power to make the game as *EASY* as possible for the player-instead of making it a greater *CHALLENGE*. Seriously, if you guys don't like a challenging game-then might I suggest you go back to CivII or CivIII, 'cause that sounds like its much more up your alley.

 

[Thyrwyn]

It's not aesthetics - it's game play. An improvement that appears in every tile is an unnecessary improvement. I have no problems with removing it. I will wait and see how I feel about the new implementation, though I am more inclined to trust the developers at this point.

 

[the343danny]

I have my doubts whether roads dont improve movement; I only heard they hurt the tile. Source?

BTW, guys, dont think like its still Civ 4, perhaps a road next to a tile makes the tile count as connected. You dont have a highway going right through a winery, it goes somewhere around it.

And about the gameplay thing, I hated how many roads there were in Civ 4, not just for aesthetics. It ruined modern land wars a lot. For one, whats the point of me sending in paratroopers to pillage some roads so my landing party doesnt get crushed when there seems to be 10 other roads that will let your enemy send troops at you out of nowhere. Even out of that naval invasion scenario, units popping out of nowhere killed strategy.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Sorry, but in what way did CivIV "fail"? To the best of my knowledge it was the best selling version in the franchise to date. This thread again highlights a common theme that's emerging-a belief that the developers are a bunch of morons, & the added belief that the developers should be doing everything in their power to make the game as *EASY* as possible for the player-instead of making it a greater *CHALLENGE*. Seriously, if you guys don't like a challenging game-then might I suggest you go back to CivII or CivIII, 'cause that sounds like its much more up your alley.

If you refer to my post i didn't say Civ4 failed (although i think it did but it's not the topic), but that roads in Civ5 hurting production of all sorts would be again a strategy based on fail. But now that i know that it will only connect trade between cities, like the ability to build swordmen in connected city, i'm retracting.

It ruined modern land wars a lot. For one, whats the point of me sending in paratroopers to pillage some roads so my landing party doesnt get crushed when there seems to be 10 other roads that will let your enemy send troops at you out of nowhere. Even out of that naval invasion scenario, units popping out of nowhere killed strategy.

Roads being useless for movement will make for sure the paratrooper a very useful unit!

 

[Shurdus]

Also keep in mind that every unit now has a standard movement of 2, reducing the need of any bonus that a road may provide.

 

[Ahriman]

I have my doubts whether roads dont improve movement; I only heard they hurt the tile. Source?

One of the PAXEAST reports said that roads didn't increase movement speed they reduce tile yield, provide resource connection for adjacent tiles, and they provide connection for trade routes.

Also keep in mind that every unit now has a standard movement of 2, reducing the need of any bonus that a road may provide.

There is a strong need for defenders to have superior strategic mobility relative to attackers.

My guess is that defenders get "roads" speed bonus everywhere in their culture, not just on the "major roads" highways.

Though I'm reallay bothered by the idea of roads reducing tile yields, I wonder if this is partially designed to encourage naval trade rather than land trade? So you only build roads to connect non-coastal cities (because of the tile yield degradation) to your network. Which greatly increases the value of naval blockades, and increases the need for a navy.

Another possibility is that the roads only give a tile yield penalty in ancient ages, and that in modern time these give a bonus.

 

[Shurdus]

Where did people read about roaded tiles getting a lesser yeild? All I heard was that there was a drawback to having too many roads, I heard nothing about what a road meant for the yield of a tile.

You still need roads for defensive purposes, and besides that you need it for trade routes. I would assume that at some point you want roads between major cities, so I take it that you can road the tile sin such a way that you will not road over your best tiles, or at least not over the tiles that your city will actually work. Keep in mind that cities can work a greater number of tiles now. A road or two will barely matter until the late game. So what if roads should indeed decrease the yield of a tile?

 

[Ahriman]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=359099
It looks like the penalty might only be for bonus tiles, not for normal tiles. Its unclear.

In which case, no problem, but also no real reduction in roadspam.

[Maybe the idea is; suppose you have a wheat resource. Without roads, it leads to lots of local food production, but can't be traded away. With roads, its now part of your trade network, but the food is being moved elsewhere, so the local bonus isn't quite as large. Pure speculation.]

The whole "you wouldn't want many roads" seems to imply to me that they probably don't boost movement rate, which means that you don't need them for defensive purposes.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=359099
It looks like the penalty might only be for bonus tiles, not for normal tiles. Its unclear.

In which case, no problem, but also no real reduction in roadspam.

[Maybe the idea is; suppose you have a wheat resource. Without roads, it leads to lots of local food production, but can't be traded away. With roads, its now part of your trade network, but the food is being moved elsewhere, so the local bonus isn't quite as large. Pure speculation.]

The whole "you wouldn't want many roads" seems to imply to me that they probably don't boost movement rate, which means that you don't need them for defensive purposes.

Actually having Roads be an exclusive improvement like Farms/Mines makes sense (a tile can have a farm OR a road but not both). Especially if they 'connect' neighboring tiles as well.

If they are understood to be Major roads, you only want them going from one city to another (unless the city is coastal in which case you can just have a sea connection)

In Civ Rev they Forced you to only build Roads between cities (it was the only way to build them) If Roads replaced other improvements, then you would only WANT to build them between cities... which seems like a good way to improve it.


As for the movement bonus...That could simply be "developed tiles" ie EVERY developed tile allows units to move slightly faster (so if you want to move faster and still get food, build a string of Farms...and get better 'road tech')

So the "Roads" that speed up movement could be assumed, but they don't provide connection.

Or maybe they need to be railroads before they provide a movement boost
Or maybe road provide no movement boost, but 'developed' terrain has no movement penalty (ie you can go through forests and hills without using up your whole movement)

 

[Ahriman]

Actually having Roads be an exclusive improvement like Farms/Mines makes sense (a tile can have a farm OR a road but not both).

This is pretty weird from a realism perspective (how much space do you think roads take?), and I don't really see a need for it from a gameplay perspective either.

I think my design would be:
1. Roads don't increase movement rates. Every tile within your borders (or maybe your idea, any tile that has an improvement on it) gives bonus movement.
2. Roads are needed to connect cities and resources to the trade network.
3. Roads have no impact on tile yields.
4. Increase time taken by workers to build roads.

So, basically the same as Civ4, except that no tile yield bonus from railroads, and no movement bonus from roads.
Railroads would just increase the movement speed bonus everywhere, it wouldn't otherwise affect economy, and you wouldn't have to separately go create a network of railroads with workers.
Thus, there is no reason to spam roads everywhere; you gain no particular advantage from doing so (except redundancy in having trade disrupted I guess).
But there is no particular disadvantage, other than worker time, to doing so either.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This is pretty weird from a realism perspective (how much space do you think roads take?), and I don't really see a need for it from a gameplay perspective either.

I think my design would be:
1. Roads don't increase movement rates. Every tile within your borders (or maybe your idea, any tile that has an improvement on it) gives bonus movement.
2. Roads are needed to connect cities and resources to the trade network.
3. Roads have no impact on tile yields.
4. Increase time taken by workers to build roads.

So, basically the same as Civ4, except that no tile yield bonus from railroads, and no movement bonus from roads.
Railroads would just increase the movement speed bonus everywhere, it wouldn't otherwise affect economy, and you wouldn't have to separately go create a network of railroads with workers.
Thus, there is no reason to spam roads everywhere; you gain no particular advantage from doing so (except redundancy in having trade disrupted I guess).
But there is no particular disadvantage, other than worker time, to doing so either.

You would still tend to spam roads.
If you had extra worker time, they would build extra roads... as Backup. (assuming roads can be pillaged)

I agree its not 'realistic' but if you assume
1. "roads" in a realism sense are part of Every developed tile, or every tile in your culture
2. "roads" in the sense of a major transport network have gameplay effects that prevent other gameplay effects like having the tile totally devoted to food production from taking place(especially if they 'connect' tiles that are adjacent to them.

Then roads make sense as an improvement that replace other improvements.



So things I can see
1. Roads Replace other improvements
2. Roads worsen tile output (in some other way)
3. Roads give no movement bonus, just connection, And cannot be blocked or pillaged
4. Roads have an actual significant cost besides worker time (it costs 20 gold to put a road on a tile, or a road costs 1 gpt to maintain)

3 is possible, but the problem is if they can be blocked or pillaged I will build roads in every tile, particularly in vulnerable areas, if I have excess workers (which I probably will at various points)

 

[awesome]

i don't really mind the look of tons of roads all over the place, but i guess that's just me. anyway, making roads hurt more than help doesn't sound like a very good idea at all to me.

 

[Ahriman]

You would still tend to spam roads.
If you had extra worker time, they would build extra roads... as Backup

Sure, if you had extra worker time, but you'd still be less likely to end up with roads on every tile than in Civ4, particularly if you doubled or tripled the build time for roads. The benefits from building more roads would be very small. So the real problem is that there is nothing else/better for workers to do, and that their upkeep costs are trivial.
So maybe just increase worker upkeep cost, to make you better off by disbanding the workers if there is nothing valuable to build than by sending them on road building duty?

Maknig roads unpillageable as you imply would also tend to reduce any incentive to build more roads at all.

1. "roads" in a realism sense are part of Every developed tile, or every tile in your culture

Yes, this is fine, this is implied in my proposal.

There's something nice about having it in every developed tile, but then there's the possibility of needing to build wasted improvements in tiles that aren't in the BFH of any city in order to get the mvoement bonus.

2. "roads" in the sense of a major transport network have gameplay effects that prevent other gameplay effects like having the tile totally devoted to food production from taking place(especially if they 'connect' tiles that are adjacent to them.

This just makes no sense given the scales we're dealing with. A massive 16 lane superhighway is still maybe 50 meters wide, in a tile that represents many km.
Building a superhighway doesn't have any real impact on food production, or commerce, or industry.

I agree that these are the most obvious options:

1. Roads Replace other improvements
2. Roads worsen tile output (in some other way)

These just fail the basic logic test.

3 is possible, but the problem is if they can be blocked or pillaged I will build roads in every tile, particularly in vulnerable areas, if I have excess workers (which I probably will at various points)

I realize this problem, but I think its probably better to attack the issue of excess workers.

4. Roads have an actual significant cost besides worker time (it costs 20 gold to put a road on a tile

A small gold construction cost seems reasonable. 20 seems high, but its hard to know given we don't have a feel for the overall economy size.

Again, we need to be sure that the cure isn't worse than the problem. Roadspam really isn't that big a problem.

 

[gingerbill]

It would be good to get rid of having roads/rail on every square , does seem strange that roads would hurt a tile , hard to comment without more information , well without any information .

 

[MrBanana]

Very literal way of doing thinking about this: there is more farm space with no road, the one with a road cutting through it.

 

[Ahriman]

Very literal way of doing thinking about this: there is more farm space with no road, the one with a road cutting through it.

How much land do you think a road takes up?

On a hex with 10km sides (area = ~260 km2), a 50m wide road running up 2 of the sides (length 20km) takes up roughly 1km2.

So a huge superhighway is taking up ~0.4% of the land area.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This just makes no sense given the scales we're dealing with. A massive 16 lane superhighway is still maybe 50 meters wide, in a tile that represents many km.
Building a superhighway doesn't have any real impact on food production, or commerce, or industry.

You're using 'Scale' Realism in a game that only allows 1 unit per tile. and only allows many units to move 2 tiles every year/several decades

If a single unit of tanks can stop a single unit of infantry from taking up a tile, than a single 'focus on transport corridor' on a tile can stop a single 'focus on farming' from being on a tile.

If 1 unit per tile is OK for the sake of gameplay, then so is 1 improvement per tile.

Also this would substantially improve coastal areas (perhaps a road could even connect to a coastal area)


I feel making "Road" an actual improvement (with 1ipt rule) would be simple and allow interesting tile micromanagement gameplay. (just like 1upt could lead to interesting tactical gameplay)

 

[Chalks]

My main issue with the concept is that to be quite frank, in heavily populated areas in the modern age, there ARE roads everywhere.

Sure, there aren't highways or train tracks everywhere, but there is a web of roads over every modern inhabited area of the planet.

In Civ spaghetti road systems "looks ugly", true, I can concede that - but "looking ugly" is as far from a gameplay problem as its possible to get so how on earth does it make sense to implement a gameplay solution?

If roads everywhere looks ugly, then improve the graphical representation of roads everywhere.