Are ancient roads permanent?

[Staal]

Thread title says it all really. If a caravan creates the road what happens if you change the trade route? Is road permanent, does it disappear immediately or decay over time?

Will we end up micro-managing our trade routes to build routes? I like the idea of this new mechanic but this would be annoying.

Thoughts?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It seems like they would be permanent (unless removed) I remember an earlier comment that they would upgrade to railroads later.

 

[m15a]

We haven't heard anything about decaying roads. Having to keep rebuilding them does seem kind of annoying without much benefit, so I doubt that's in. Even in terms of realism, since the roads represent major roads between cities, we can imagine that after the traders start using them, they are continually used.

Assuming they don't decay, building roads will only involve sending a trader between the cities you want to connect once (or maybe more than once if you need to manually upgrade roads to non-ancient roads).

 

[AriochIV]

Since we have no reason to assume roads decay, and they don't cost maintenance, I assume they are permanent. Having them decay might be realistic, but I think would be an unnecessary hassle.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Won't this mean that we'll be forced to forego a lucrative trade route (or eight) simply to draw up a road to the new podunk city that we just founded? I suppose if trade routes are plentiful enough, then it might not be an issue (or at least not a major one).

EDIT: And what about distance? It's reasonable to assume there's a cap to the length of trade routes in the early game, so if you forward settle a colony to a remote enough location, it will remain cut off from the rest of the empire for quite some time (we don't know when Military Engineers arrive, but presumably it's in the early middle ages). Coupled with the cheaper units and hopefully smarter / more aggressive AI, this might be a very risky move and rarely worth it.

 

[Jaybe]

City connection gold income isn't in civ6 except via your trade route caravans, and the limit on number of caravans is quite liberal (or limited only by your production of them).

Source: none but my own mind.

 

[rastak]

Won't this mean that we'll be forced to forego a lucrative trade route (or eight) simply to draw up a road to the new podunk city that we just founded? I suppose if trade routes are plentiful enough, then it might not be an issue (or at least not a major one).

EDIT: And what about distance? It's reasonable to assume there's a cap to the length of trade routes in the early game, so if you forward settle a colony to a remote enough location, it will remain cut off from the rest of the empire for quite some time (we don't know when Military Engineers arrive, but presumably it's in the early middle ages). Coupled with the cheaper units and hopefully smarter / more aggressive AI, this might be a very risky move and rarely worth it.

Conversely. if it's a podunk city with no trade why would there be roads?

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Trade Routes Length is based on Distance.

All it could take is 9 or even less turns for a Route from City A that is three tiles away from City B to complete (if not less)

So you could have a "worker route" that builds roads only.

 

[Brutus2]

Won't this mean that we'll be forced to forego a lucrative trade route (or eight) simply to draw up a road to the new podunk city that we just founded? I suppose if trade routes are plentiful enough, then it might not be an issue (or at least not a major one).

Yes, but the duration the trade route lasts depends on the distance of the route so if you have one trader dedicated to road building he might be occupied for only a few turns then you can send him to build the next road. Assuming your cities are somewhat close together the trader will not be tied up for 30 turns like the caravans of civ V are.

 

[m15a]

Won't this mean that we'll be forced to forego a lucrative trade route (or eight) simply to draw up a road to the new podunk city that we just founded? I suppose if trade routes are plentiful enough, then it might not be an issue (or at least not a major one).

Trade routes aren't permanent, so you'd only have to use it for probably a short period of time of you wanted a route between those two cities. And there's not necessarily a need to have roads built right away anyway. I definitely didn't build roads right away in Civ V - sounds like Civ VI roads will be built faster.

Also, trade routes from a developed city to a new city might be the lucrative ones. I'm not sure how Civ VI internal routes work exactly, but I know it's dependent on what is built in at least one of the cities. So either a route from developed city to new city or new city to developed city will probably be pretty lucrative. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd want to have internal routes between your capital and most other cities at some point.

 

[Gali]

Also later on you do get an engineer unit that can build roads. So you don't have to use traders for everything/

 

[Amrunril]

Just to quibble about the terminology, we don't have any confirmation that "Ancient Road" is synonymous with trade-route-created road. It's possible that all roads upgrade over time (essentially expanding on and putting a name to the Engineering and Machinery bonuses in Civ V), and that trade-route roads vs. engineer roads is an entirely separate distinction.

 

[AriochIV]

Just to quibble about the terminology, we don't have any confirmation that "Ancient Road" is synonymous with trade-route-created road. It's possible that all roads upgrade over time (essentially expanding on and putting a name to the Engineering and Machinery bonuses in Civ V), and that trade-route roads vs. engineer roads is an entirely separate distinction.

Well, the road created by the Trader in the E3 video is visually identical to the road identified by tooltip as "Ancient Road" in the first gameplay video, so I'd say it's a reasonable assumption to make that they're the same thing.

 

[killmeplease]

the main reason behind paid roads in civ5 was the road spam of previous versions (or more generally, improvement spam due to worker mechanics)
no more road spam = no maintenance, decay, whatever

 

[stealth_nsk]

the main reason behind paid roads in civ5 was the road spam of previous versions (or more generally, improvement spam due to worker mechanics)
no more road spam = no maintenance, decay, whatever

Yes, it looks like there's no road spam. Ancient roads are built with traders on 1 path only, more advanced roads are likely to require Worker charges, so road spam would be to expensive.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I recall Ed Beach saying that you could micromanage your roads later in the game, if you wanted.

 

[Staal]

Conversely. if it's a podunk city with no trade why would there be roads?

This is what I was thinking might happen. Which would be a bit too gamey for my liking. It would undermine the the original idea really. That is why I almost hope there is road decay so that it becomes a pointless exercise to micromanage your trade routes to build roads. Unless of course the benefits of the most lucrative ones of such that you just can't afford to not use it.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Conversely. if it's a podunk city with no trade why would there be roads?

Every city must have roads for quick military access in case of sudden crisis. Also to transport workers to improve the area, as they become available.

If the roads cost nothing to maintain this time around, I aim to cover every tile with them just to ease the traffic jams that are otherwise caused by 3iupt (as the rules are now a bit relaxed, I think we can call it that ). This may take some time, but I might play as China just to do it as quickly as possible.

EDIT: Added 'i' for 'three identical units per tile'.

 

[Amrunril]

Well, the road created by the Trader in the E3 video is visually identical to the road identified by tooltip as "Ancient Road" in the first gameplay video, so I'd say it's a reasonable assumption to make that they're the same thing.

Well that road was built in the ancient era. The map was too crowded for me to be sure whether it upgraded automatically over time (not that that would necessarily happen in a staged preview even if it happens in game), but its entirely possible that trade routes later in the game will create more advanced roads. Not saying this is necessarily the case, just that we don't know yet one way or the other.

 

[Felis Renidens]

Every city must have roads for quick military access in case of sudden crisis. Also to transport workers to improve the area, as they become available.

If the roads cost nothing to maintain this time around, I aim to cover every tile with them just to ease the traffic jams that are otherwise caused by 3iupt (as the rules are now a bit relaxed, I think we can call it that ). This may take some time, but I might play as China just to do it as quickly as possible.

EDIT: Added 'i' for 'three identical units per tile'.

We've seen that districts and wonders add roads, so no need to spam them, I think.