Civ 5 - roads

[V. Soma]

Er, I dunno, but...

Do we know wheteher roads will give more speed to units,
OR/AND
roads will be for the making of trade routes?

What do sources (articles, Firaxis) tell about this?

I don't remember mentioning speed and roads in one sentence...

 

[McThomas]

I do think roads will give added speed and trade routes like in Civ4, BUT they are gonna cost ya'

Maybee there will be a movement bonus like Engineering or Constructon, with added mainternance?

 

[Samez]

Till now no screenshot shows any roads or railway... it will be interesting to see how they are implemented.

 

[ruskyandrei]

I think some info on roads is already floating around somewhere, but i don't know what it is myself.
I do however hope, roads will be a LOT more expensive to make compared to all previous Civs.

I never liked the endless web of roads that covered the entire world by the end of the medieval period.
Roads should be harder/more expensive to make, this making a road a valuable asset.
Personally i would also like a mechanic like in total war where you could only cross rivers at bridges (maybe not all units should have to, but stuff like early tanks, trebuchets, full plate knights and so on definitely should)

Having less roads would make for more interesting options (the possibility of trade piracy by taking over road segments has already been mentioned, but what about ambushes, say forests reduce the distance at which units inside are spotted by the enemy, and since there'd be fewer roads you'd know where the enemy army was going to march through to meet you)

There's a lot of (wasted in previous civs imo) potential in the simple road.

 

[Rexflex]

I do however hope, roads will be a LOT more expensive to make compared to all previous Civs.

My understanding is there will be a national financial maintenance cost that will reduce road spam incentive, rather than the time-required-to-build "cost" of previous Civs.

The problem that still caused road spam in Civ IV was that in the later stages of the game, it didn't matter how long it took workers to build the roads if they have already built everything significantly worthwhile. Civs I and II even provided financial incentive to road spam. None of them made a financial disincentive, and so any such disincentive in Civ V is going to be a lot more than the zero we've had to date.

There was suggestion in early reviews that roads might adversely change the output of individual tiles with roads, but thankfully later information suggests the national maintenance for roads is the way its going instead. Also early reviews indicated that you would require nearby roads for accessing special resources as per Civ IV, but again this looks like it may have thankfully gone. National cost per tile makes the most sense IMHO. And while there will probably be bonuses in interconnecting cities, even that would probably have some "tipping point" between the maintenance and financial incentive where it only makes sense to interconnect developed cities. Interconnecting undeveloped cities may have similar effects as rushing new cities with Civ IV.

 

[Ahriman]

I think they indicated that roads would connect trade routes (though a harbor could also connect trade routes) and would increase unit movement, but would have a maintenance cost.

It seems reasonable.

 

[Abraxis]

I remember reading on here, long ago, that roads on workable tiles for cities reduced their yield.

It's hard to remember if it was just someone speculating or if this were an actual fact.

 

[Alki]

Roads all lead to Rome. Unless you're playing Civ.. then they go everywhere.

 

[Ahriman]

I remember reading on here, long ago, that roads on workable tiles for cities reduced their yield.

That seemed like it was misreported, and that they just have a maintenance cost instead.

 

[Alki]

That makes sense.

I still half think the 2nd roman UU should be a civil engineer.

 

[Shurdus]

Roads all lead to Rome. Unless you're playing Civ.. then they go everywhere.

Swing and miss.

I am unsure I like the idea that roads costs money in maintenance. I can see it being sensible to prevent road spamming, but when it comes down to connecting cities roads should increase revenue by adding trade routes. To have the value of that route reduced seems a bit moot, but is is acceptable I guess. I certainly would prevent road spamming, but I think that in the end roads like in the early industrious era were a bit a sign of ivilization you know, with towns everywhere it seemed like the roads were only fitting.

 

[AlpsStranger]

I honestly liked the CivRev implementation of roads. Call me crazy I guess.

 

[Alki]

Swing and miss yourself.

We're not talking about roads connecting cities we're talking roads connecting the wilderness which perhaps isn't desirable or realistic.

I can easily have every single tile under my control roaded whether that makes sense or not. Workers are cheap and easy to build loads of them and this is what the road maintenaince is designed to discourage.

 

[Ahriman]

but when it comes down to connecting cities roads should increase revenue by adding trade routes.

They do.

These are not mutually exclusive.

For example, suppose that it costs me 0.5 gold per turn per road tiles.
Suppose that connecting two cities 6 tiles apart gives me 6 gold per turn.

Then, from building that road I get a net increase of 3 gold (=6-6*0.5).
However, building any extra roads doesn't increase the trade route yield; they're either connected or they're not. So every extra road tile I build will make me pay 0.5 extra gold.
If I built a bunch of extra roads that go nowhere, just to get the movement bonus, then that reduces my net gold income.

 

[Aeon221]

I've got this image in my head of clicking a build road button, clicking the start city and holding the cursor over various other cities to see a mouseover readout of the projected total revenue, maintenance cost, and net gain are for each one, picking one and clicking to place the road, whose route is chosen automatically via a shortest path algorithm, and then having worker animations start up along the route to indicate ongoing construction.

While the road is under construction, it would incur double maintenance and bring in no revenue. The revenues and costs of a road could be handled independently of connected cities (as in, no bank modifiers for road trade revenue, thereby giving sea trade a bit of a bump in value), or they could be split up through a weighted averaging of each city's economic weight (so more profitable cities would gain more of the value).

It would also be possible to link any two points, so long as the starting position is either a city or a tile with a road.


Maintenance would be a function of distance and usage, with usage being entirely a function of trade gain -- that way roads to nowhere would have a known fixed cost even without trade. Trade would be a function of the population and the economic power of the two (or more) locations connected.


If I were going to do roads, that'd be how I did it. Slick UI, simple implementation, low user attention required and only high level decisions required.

 

[Ahriman]

That'd be nice, but I'd be a bit surprised to see it.

I'm guessing we will have a "build roads to tile X" command though, as we have in Civ4.

 

[Schuesseled]

Roads certainly won't be spaggethi junctions.

So far what we know is.

Roads will have a maintanence cost. So less is better.
Roads will probably still be used to link up resources. (Thiers a picture of a loan road going from a city to a cow, Assumeably roads still play thier part in resources)
Roads will probably still increase troop movement speed, thier is no reason to think otherwise, a roads only purpose is to improove transport lol.
Roads may not allow further improovements on a tile, I believe I read somewhere that roads not only cost maintanence but also stop you building farms or w.e on a tile, thus Spaghetti Roads will become a thing of the past.

As for trade routes, I'm not sure on that, if roads cost maintanence, you wouldnt want to create huge roads leading to your rivals just to have them not want to give you the resources you need. I believe somewhere it has been confirmed that a harbour allows trade routes with your other cities, but this is no different than Civ4, where harbours gave trade routes on the seas. Roads may very well be needed for trade routes on land. The question, are they worth building.

Suffice to say we will be having a much more conservative road system, more like that of Civilisation Revolution, where you merely connect cities.

 

[Ahriman]

Amusing thought; does this mean no more road construction in open borders territory? So you can't link up trade inside other countries?

Otherwise, you could wreck their economies by road-spamming them.....

So, how will international road trade work; you can't trade by land unless the other country builds a road up to their border?

 

[Aeon221]

Well, if it were being done per the method I outlined above, I'd make the builder shoulder part or all of the maintenance, but in return grant them part or all of the revenue -- with, of course, the option to use diplomacy to nationalize the transportation network.

That way you'd get pros and cons for international development -- it'd be spendy and benefit your opponent's military movements, but if you stay on good terms diplomatically it'd be fairly profitable in the medium term.

 

[Schuesseled]

One assumes the civilisation who builds the road would pay maintanence for the road.

But I guess we won't really know till we get to play or atleast get better previews