Civ 5 - roads

[Schuesseled]

@Schuesseled
Not 100% confirmed, but I agree that your interpretation is the most likely.
Bah! What a stupid system - areas with good infrastructure are less productive? And there's no *need* for it! There's already a stick for controlling road sprawl using maintenance.
Looking forward to that getting modded out.

Of course not 100% confirmed as you say.

Honestly i think the tile yield penalty is more effective than maintenance. With maintenance you can increase your road sprawl every time you get a bit richer, with the yield penalty, your going to have only the minimum amount of roads.

And its not going to be too bad. As far as it seems to be roads, take 1 food, 1 hammer and 1 commerce from tiles without going into negatves. (although that is guesswork) so where you put your roads really matter, desert and ice tiles are ideal as they offer no benefits, tiles like plains hill with only one type of yield are the next best sacrafice, tiles with multiple yields are the worst place to build roads. So the best squares should be untouched.

As for rediculous amounts of road sprawl in nutral territory, simply not being able to build roads outside of culture borders would stop that. Although the gaps in between cities in your borders could also become heavily paved, unless one simple tweak is consiered, what if enemies can use your roads to move quickly, that will stop you from building them all over nomans land between your cities.

 

[ruskyandrei]

And its not going to be too bad. As far as it seems to be roads, take 1 food, 1 hammer and 1 commerce from tiles without going into negatves. (although that is guesswork) so where you put your roads really matter, desert and ice tiles are ideal as they offer no benefits, tiles like plains hill with only one type of yield are the next best sacrafice, tiles with multiple yields are the worst place to build roads. So the best squares should be untouched.

I guess it works from a gameplay PoV. Though it's very weird from a, sort of reality PoV.
Think about it.

Engineer: "Alright folks we've been contracted to build a road between these 2 cities. We have 2 options. We can either take the winding way through the middle of that desert. Or we can just build a straight road through those lush grasslands."
Engineer2: "Yup desert it is, who the hell would build a road on grasslands, pff"

 

[V. Soma]

Gameplay must be put ahead of reality - so I kind of like the possibly yield penalty with roads

 

[Ramesses]

Gameplay must be put ahead of reality - so I kind of like the possibly yield penalty with roads

There are some places where breaks from reality are not acceptable. This is one of them.

 

[Songkok]

Actually I would like Firaxis to implement somethings to improve game play.

Natural Ford, "A location where a flowing water is shallow and the bottom has good footing, making it possible to cross from one side to the other with no bridge, by walking, riding, or driving through the water." to allow wheeled and mounted units to cross river, othewise they could only cross a river with roads (bridge).

Natural Harbour, the only places where land units can "transform" into transports other than from cities. It just doesn't make sense that land units can change themselves into transports anywhere they wishes.

Maybe the worker or work boat could built man made Harbour to facilitates addtional places where land units can changes into transports. But since this could only be built within your sphere of influence, if you are invading enemy lands, you could only either uses their harbour, or find a unguarded natural harbour nearby.

Also, from engineering point of view, building roads on flat terrain is definitely much easier than building them on rough (hilly) terrain. So if the game mechanics makes it more worthwhile to build roads on hills (-1P) or grassland (-1F) but not plains (-1F,-1P) assuming that the terrains produce the same F & P as cIV, it is kinda odd to see roads winding through hills more often than not...

 

[Aeon221]

Yield penalty has always been a terrible idea, for exactly the same reasons that a yield bonus for roads was -- arbitrary choice distortion that produced illogical results.

I think maintenance rising as a function of trade income would allow players to build however many roads they need without forcing strange contortions.

And since it's based on an income source that typically balloons out of control in the late game, it'll serve to keep a lid on gold inflation without the risk of accidentally bankrupting the player -- if trade income collapses, so does road maintenance, so you won't be out and out ruined by your roads if you get blockaded. Players spamming roads all over the place, however, would still feel the full force of ROAD RAGGGGE.

 

[AlpsStranger]

There are some places where breaks from reality are not acceptable. This is one of them.

It's going to require a very strong penalty--if roads have a military move bonus--to keep spamming roads from being the best strategy. As much as I hate to simply contradict you, there it is. If it is even possible to afford to put roads over every inch of land then it might very well be optimal due to military response speed. This guarantees that road spam is dead. It's heavy handed, but I approve.

Perhaps a *very* heavy maintenance fee could be exacted for roads in deserts and such. This would mean that you'd be *forced* to go ahead and put the roads in prime land. This seems to be the optimal solution to me. Pay a little maintenance and lose some productivity on prime land or pay 10X maintenance to have a road maintained on tundra or open desert.

I look to Civ5 as the "annoyance eliminator" release of Civ. I really, truly hope we can put the meataxe to road spam and the SoD in one game.

 

[Xzylvador]

If roads gave the same movement bonus to enemy armies (with SoD gone, I see no reason why they shouldn't; with SoD it would be insanely painful, with lesser roads and a more spread out army not so much.), road spam could still be contained. Faster movement for your defenders is a powerful thing; but faster movement for the attackers, especially if they're pillaging is lethal.

 

[Windfury]

Hill with road, 2 hammers, trade route

Spoiler :

Hill on a river, 3 hammers & 2 commerce.

Spoiler :

Hill, no river, no road, 3 hammers

Spoiler :

p.s. all hills are plains

Hi, I'd just like to point out something that might be relevant.
In the Hill with road, 2 hammers, trade route the screenshot is from the French perspective but that tile is in Japanese hands and France is in Golden Age so that might be the difference. It's could be merely reporting what it currently produces for it's current owner where as the other 2 are in friendly and what appears to be neutral hands with the player under a Golden Age and they could be reporting the possible yield when worked, (and owned in the case of the neutral tile).

But another explanation could be that golden Ages are the same as Civ 4 and it merely produces an extra hammer and commerce per tile (that already produce one) and a river is worth 1 commerce usually, and I think that's as fair of a conclusion as Roads reducing Tile yields.

Perhaps I'm wrong but I feel that this should be looked into more before jumping to any conclusions from screen shot parsing. Guessing and speculating are fun, but no reason to get upset over anything until it's 100% confirmed. I see it all over the place on the site, people exploding over the tech tree, the policy tree, even what a road does. It's getting a little bit past ridiculous at this point I think.

 

[Ahriman]

Gameplay must be put ahead of reality - so I kind of like the possibly yield penalty with roads

Except:

Engineer: "Alright folks we've been contracted to build a road between these 2 cities. We have 2 options. We can either take the winding way through the middle of that desert. Or we can just build a straight road through those lush grasslands."
Engineer2: "Yup desert it is, who the hell would build a road on grasslands, pff"

Its not good for gameplay; it gives you incentives for weird distortions, to make sure that you only build roads on tiles you weren't going to work anyway.
[Even only a small tile yield reduction will push them below the value of a specialist.]

You shouldn't be having to tradeoff direct-road routes (for faster unit transport) with avoiding devastating your productive tiles.

It's going to require a very strong penalty

How about 0.25-0.5 gold maintenance cost per road tile? You're not going to spam roads if it eats up half the gold production of your city.

I look to Civ5 as the "annoyance eliminator" release of Civ.

Forcing you to MM road construction so that I do not reduce the yields of the tiles I want to work (rather than just "build road to tile X) does not qualify as an annoyance eliminator to me.

In the Hill with road, 2 hammers, trade route the screenshot is from the French perspective but that tile is in Japanese hands and France is in Golden Age so that might be the difference. It's could be merely reporting what it currently produces for it's current owner where as the other 2 are in friendly and what appears to be neutral hands with the player under a Golden Age and they could be reporting the possible yield when worked, (and owned in the case of the neutral tile).

But another explanation could be that golden Ages are the same as Civ 4 and it merely produces an extra hammer and commerce per tile (that already produce one) and a river is worth 1 commerce usually, and I think that's as fair of a conclusion as Roads reducing Tile yields.

I am very much hoping this is the case. I thought of the golden age issue, but didn't think to check that the different shots might have had a different active player, or be representing the yield of the tile-owner rather than the active player.

But, both shots have "GOLDEN AGE!", which makes me think that *both* shots are in golden age, which rules out the former.
Might still be possible that they represent the yield to the cultural owner, and not to the active player though.

 

[asboethius]

Hi, I'd just like to point out something that might be relevant.
In the Hill with road, 2 hammers, trade route the screenshot is from the French perspective but that tile is in Japanese hands and France is in Golden Age so that might be the difference.

You are absolutely correct. If we do the math, we find that hills, non-modified, give 2 hammers. Being adjacent to a river yeilds an extra commerce. Being in a Golden Age adds 1 hammer and 1 commerce.

So in the first screen shot, we see a non-Golden Age hill, with a road. It provides the 2 hammers and trade route.

In the second screen shot, we see a Golden Age hill on a river. It would normally have 2 hammers and a commerce, but the Golden Age adds an extra to each.

In the third screen shot, we see a Golden Age hill. It would normally have 2 hammers, but the Golden Age adds an extra.

 

[AlpsStranger]

We'll see. If it is just a golden age causing it then so be it. I honestly liked the idea that you had to be careful. At any rate, I trust the devs to come to reasonable conclusions on most of these miscellaneous rules.

 

[awesome]

i like roads everywhere.

 

[Schuesseled]

hmm hadn't considered the possibility that it being in japanese territory could affect the yield display. Guess you can never be 100% sure of anything. im gonna have a look at more vids later see if i can find a hill not in a golden age to compare with. Although that still won't prove anything.

 

[King Jason]

Gameplay must be put ahead of reality - so I kind of like the possibly yield penalty with roads

Except I see no gameplay reason to limit road building. The only negative draw to road-spam is that it's an eyesore to some players, nothing more.

Now, if they were try to enhance the reality of the gameplay by having actual maintenance costs on roads, which is a realistic thing and would add a layer of strategy to road-building, then we're on the right track.

But a design decision such as limiting road yields being justified on the basis of "it's the only way to truly limit road-spam" is simply senseless. There's no reason to limit road-spam other than certain people don't like the look of it.

Desiring a layer of strategy/complexity to roadbuilding is one thing. Tacking on penalties to limit a possible outcome you don't like is another.

 

[Ahriman]

Except I see no gameplay reason to limit road building. The only negative draw to road-spam is that it's an eyesore to some players, nothing more.

Not quite, roadspam also makes roads a bit uninteresting for warfare. No possibilities for blocking/pillaging land trading routes, or using paratroopers or fast units to block/pillage a road and slow an advance. Or advancing fast down a road, but then being slower away from the road, or having congestion issues that mean you can only move so many people down a road/rail line so fast. Or making it so that after racing down a road, it takes a couple of turns to organize and get a decent formation/frontline.

All of these possibilities make movement, placement and combat more interesting.

If we go back to enemies being able to use roads in your territory, we also get interesting situations where the enemy gets funneled down particular invasion routes, even in open terrain.

More tactical terrain differentiation is a good thing.

 

[Schuesseled]

it seems windfury is correct, looking at comparisons between neutral terrority and enemy held territory, there is a noticeable drop in production and commerce by one.

plains have 1 hammer 1 food in enemy lands and 1 food 2 hammers in neutral or friendly territory, oceans squares get 1 extra gold outside enemy territory, etc.

so yes roads don't look like they reduce after all.

Also saw that grassland hills no longer provide food (thier identical to the plains hills) and iron gives 1 production and 1 commerce bonus when its not got a mine or whatever on it. No idea whats its bonus is then. It also said in the yield box "2 Iron" on that tile. Make of that what you will.

 

[Rexflex]

i like roads everywhere.

Your heresy must be purged

 

[Danger]

what would stop you from road spamming inside your neighbours borders and reducing the yields in their tiles?

 

[Ahriman]

what would stop you from road spamming inside your neighbours borders and reducing the yields in their tiles?

Most likely; an inability to build any improvements *including roads* in anyone else's borders.