Civ 5 - roads

[Ahriman]

So you build a road, and your commerce (or tile output) is reduced?

Probably not, roads will have a maintenance fee.

 

[Frank Drebin]

It is totally ridiculous to have an economic model where improving transport infrastructure *lowers* the economic output of a tile.

Its a horrible idea not because of balance, but because of a horrible break in immersion and realism; improving transport infrastructure has been one of the single biggest causes of rural economic development throughout history.
It is 1000 times worse than archers shooting across lakes.

It would be like if building factories lowered your production, or building universities lowered your research output.

if it works gameplay wise it works. civ really aint no simulation. thats what paradox is for.l

 

[Ahriman]

if it works gameplay wise it works. civ really aint no simulation.

Yes, gameplay is more important than realism. But immersion is still part of the game.

Its ridiculous to expect that realism has no part whatsoever. For example, Civ4 would be strategically unchanged if we swapped the names of the chariots, spearman and archer units, so archers needed copper and were good vs mounted units, spearmen needed horses and were mobile, and chariots were good city defenders with first strikes.
In a gameplay sense, the game would be identical. But it would be ridiculous, and would fail on those grounds.

Having improved infrastructure reduce tile yields would fall into a similar category in terms of "huh, WTH?".

If there were no alternative mechanism to reducing roadspam (which isn't even that big of a problem) then that would be one thing. But there are obvious alternative mechanisms, so using the one that destroys immersion would be a horrible design decision.

 

[warpstorm]

How much of your taxes go towards road maintenance?

 

[Ahriman]

We don't know. I would think it would be a fixed gold cost per tile of roads though, not a percentage of your gold income.

 

[warpstorm]

I was talking about IRL

 

[Ahriman]

Then, irrelevant. The game doesn't even come close to anything like a realistic economic model.

Which is great. A realistic economic model would be insanely complicated, tedious to manage and Not Fun.

Besides, in-game road maintenance could justifiably represent:
a) physical construction of transport infrastructure and maintenance
b) cost of creating and maintaining the vehicles/draft animals and companies that travel on said roads
c) the cost of patrolling said roads and keeping them free of banditry.

So a better question might be: what proportion of ancient Roman government expenditure was on building and maintaining its roading, trade and military patrol infrastructure?

 

[tom2050]

So building roads all depends on if the mobility roads May provide at some point beats out the economic profit they provide by NOT having roads.

If roads provide movement bonus (which they should) then roads will likely be built in some kind of circular fashion around your cities, so you can quickly mobilize forces and outright have a mobility advantage against invading armies. The inner portions of the circle without roads (the in-the-middle of nowhere areas) will enjoy great economic increased output.

Extremely odd, but I guess something like this would be superior to a single road stretching across the globe.

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Then, irrelevant. The game doesn't even come close to anything like a realistic economic model.

Which is great. A realistic economic model would be insanely complicated, tedious to manage and Not Fun.

Besides, in-game road maintenance could justifiably represent:
a) physical construction of transport infrastructure and maintenance
b) cost of creating and maintaining the vehicles/draft animals and companies that travel on said roads
c) the cost of patrolling said roads and keeping them free of banditry.

So a better question might be: what proportion of ancient Roman government expenditure was on building and maintaining its roading, trade and military patrol infrastructure?

I agree with your points but, although simpler, a realistic Roman economic model of road maintenance would still be insanely complicated, tedious to manage and Not Fun.

Someone had some evidence in one of the threads (sorry - don't have it to hand) of a road on a tile increasing commerce but decreasing food yield I believe. I think that's ridiculous if true - both from a realism point of view and a gameplay point of view. Plenty of farmer's fields around me and I don't see a road or two through and across them decreasing the yield any. Takes up something like 1% of the useable land. To have a corn or wheat tile going from 3 food to 2 or whatever makes no sense at all to me.

 

[Ahriman]

So building roads all depends on if the mobility roads May provide at some point beats out the economic profit they provide by NOT having roads.

Yes, but I'm guessing they're trying hard to balance things such that the optimal pattern is to connect your cities (and maybe resources) so that you get the trade benefits, but not to build roads beyond that for mobility alone within your territory.

I agree with your points but, although simpler, a realistic Roman economic model of road maintenance would still be insanely complicated, tedious to manage and Not Fun.

Oh, I'm not proposing anything realistic; the cost would just be a gold cost per turn per road.

I was responding to the (implied) argument that road maintenance isn't realistic because in a modern developed country today not much of our taxes goes to road maintenance.

of a road on a tile increasing commerce but decreasing food yield I believe.

Its entirely possible (likely, even) that the apparent yield difference was simply due to one tile being in the player's territory (and affected by a golden age) while the other tile was in enemy territory (and not affected by Golden age).

 

[Churchdown Yank]

Oh, I'm not proposing anything realistic; the cost would just be a gold cost per turn per road.

I was responding to the (implied) argument that road maintenance isn't realistic because in a modern developed country today not much of our taxes goes to road maintenance.

Yeah - I understand that. And living here in the UK I know the reality of being turned upside down and shaken for the loose change in my pockets for road maintenance (through car tax, obscene petrol tax, countless other taxes, road tolls and lately a system to charge users by the mile).

It's a fact of life - not just in modern times as you point out - and would for me would be a viable mechanic in the game both for realism and for fun.

Its entirely possible (likely, even) that the apparent yield difference was simply due to one tile being in the player's territory (and affected by a golden age) while the other tile was in enemy territory (and not affected by Golden age).

That's ringing a bell. The screenschots with the Golden Age - hopefully that's it and it was a yield boost due to that. I'm trying to catch up with a lot of Civ info...

 

[timtofly]

The latest mockup shows roads between cities:

Spoiler :

The top two cities almost look like they have railroads.

From the tech tree, it seems roads are improvements and built by certain units. They do reduce movement points. They are trade routes. They do not effect the tile they are on production-wise, but they do have a cost associated with them.

 

[xmen510]

I thought I read somewhere that the only benefit a road gives is to connect cities to share resources and that was it. Thus, no need to road spam as no increased movement benefit or commerce increase. Plus the maintenance of said roads to help reduce road spam as well.

 

[Never]

I was responding to the (implied) argument that road maintenance isn't realistic because in a modern developed country today not much of our taxes goes to road maintenance.

It's quite large actually. In the UK we pay £130 a year with an average fuel efficient car. There's around 32 million odd cars in the UK so that's £4,160,000,000 a year. Probably more as well because I'm not sure if that '32 mill' figure includes lorries (they pay considerably more road tax) and also if you have a fancy car or a 4x4 it's also considerably more road tax every year.

I can't be bothered to work it out but UK GDP is what 3-4 trillion. Someone else figure it out but at the end of the day that's a lot of money every year.

 

[Ahriman]

4 billion / 4 trillion = 0.1%.

Also, a high proportion of this is for roads within urban metropolitan areas, not just linking roads out in the countryside connecting cities.

 

[mjs0]

It doesn't change your conclusion...but more precise figures for the UK are here

Basically
Total taxes collected 'from road users' is 45.9 Billion UKP *
Total spending on roads by Government is 8.4 Billion UKP

and from here

UK GDP as of 1Q2010 was running at an annualised 1.3 Trillion UKP

---------------------------

*This presumably includes sources such as the road fund license and fuel tax revenue
(since over 65% of the price per gallon is taxes)

 

[Schuesseled]

I thought I read somewhere that the only benefit a road gives is to connect cities to share resources and that was it. Thus, no need to road spam as no increased movement benefit or commerce increase. Plus the maintenance of said roads to help reduce road spam as well.

you are mistaken, roads give a trade route (thats a gold booster for your cities) other than that nothing has been confirmed, although one can reasonably assume that it will allow for the sharing of resources and likely too benenfitting moving troops.

 

[xmen510]

Ah, sorry about that. thanks for the correction!

 

[V. Soma]

the new strategic map pics "say" roads will be only between cities...

This implies that it will be only for sg. that is happening between the cities - trade.

I wonder if roads will be of any use for units...

 

[tom2050]

I hope they have it so there is a bridge for the roads that go over rivers... otherwise the civ people will have to do some Dukes of Hazzard jumping to get across.

If roads provide no mobility benefit for units traveling on roads, then that would be pushing the absolute limits of gameplay > realism to the extent of stupidity.

THE SOLE MEANING of a road is to provide better mobility. Before roads, goods were still brought from town to town by other methods (wagon, etc). Roads just make it faster and easier for military and domestic alike. I hope roads purpose doesn't solely connect luxuries.