Do you ever build "defense roads"?

[Smote]

A "defense road" is a road meant to improve your tactical options, and improve existing tactical bonuses such as interior lines, which let you concentrate your forces more quickly than an attacking opponent.

It is defined from a typical road, because it does not help to connect cities at all. They are great for siege weapons, allowing a move or two before shooting.

So, who uses them, and in what situations?

 

[LamaGT]

A "defense road" is a road meant to improve your tactical options, and improve existing tactical bonuses such as interior lines, which let you concentrate your forces more quickly than an attacking opponent.

It is defined from a typical road, because it does not help to connect cities at all. They are great for siege weapons, allowing a move or two before shooting.

So, who uses them, and in what situations?

I usually build bridges over pissing off rivers but nothing else that

 

[noncognosco]

It is not a bad idea but the financial maintainence aspect just doesn't seem worth it. If you are in a situation where you are really worried about fending off invasion you probably can't afford the 1/tile. If you can afford it you probably have a good enough economy that you can afford to just go on the offense and crush the AI.

 

[GfxJG]

Nope. Just rush-buy units in whatever city's being threatened.

 

[Monthar]

Road maintenance is too high to bother with this.

As far as moving siege units faster, I usually don't even bother with them until artillery, unless I'm gifted one from a CS. If all siege units started with 3 range, because they are too weak against melee and the 2 range means they're always within range of melee in order to attack. Also they need to removed iron requirement for cats and trebs and require the iron for cannons, then I could see using them. You're much better off using your iron for swords/longswords.

 

[CivMcNut]

Unless you have a lot of idle workers and an outstading economy, I really don't think it's worth it to go build a lot of roads for the army. They cost too much to maintain. I will sometimes remove useless roads from conquered territories to save money, other times I will keep conquered roads even if they don't form a trade route for the military. This would be my reason for my vote of seldom using roads for defense.

 

[Bibor]

I always build "defensive" bridges. I can't imagine proper non-aggressive defensive without them.

 

[vexing]

i'm really never in danger from AI at a point this would be reasonable to do. i do try to plan my oriignal road construction to allow easy access to either side of rivers.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

While roads primarily enable commerce, I have indeed reinforced interior lines with roads (and railroads) to better achieve mass early in a fight but more importantly to shore-up defenses against opportunisitic former-allies-turned-invaders.

 

[stryfe]

Often I don't build roads beyond what I need for trade routes. Ocassionally I do though.

In my current game I was warmongering for a long time and had grown to about 21 cities in 1200AD when I decided to make peace and let my happiness catch up enough for my cities to grow a bit bigger.

My empire had a bit of a C shape near my border. The reason for the gap with no cities was a decent sized desert. I was a little concerned about my speed to move units between the north leg of the C and the south leg. I built a road that was about 7-8 tiles long to bridge the gap. Within 10 turns I was double DoW'd and was happy I built the road.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Whenever I want to defend a good bottle neck tile, I always make sure I put a road to it, so that I can switch out an injured unit quickly.

As for people not using seige until they can build artillary - that's foolish. At the very least, your catapults can be gaining experience, so that when you upgrade them to artillary they're truly scary. It's not that hard to get double-shooting cannons at epic game speed, without ever putting them in danger of being attacked.

 

[Airey]

So, who uses them, and in what situations?

use them; remove them after war with excessive worker captures
more in MP though, overkill vs AI
re what situations: pretty much like everyone else

 

[Dentalfury]

I don't think I use defense roads in a classical sense, i.e. roads to nowhere to improve rapid response time. I try to make my road systems multi-functional. Especially when it comes to maintaining trade routes. Can't even remember how many time the AI has plopped a city in the middle of the worst patch of land in my empire that just happens to cut a trade route.

 

[Uniform Sierra]

I don't need these roads. When I settle a city, I make sure it's in a decent defensive location. Never settle a city on a hill surrounded by open terrain.

I combine hills, mountains, and forts to make impregnable cities. I try to keep my military at a constant size. I don't purchase units with gold. I like to make a good sized military that's big enough to lose a few units in defense, but not big enough to suffer financially.

Once you lose a strategic tile, the enemy can use that road as a hub to get to you quicker, or attack you from a longer distance. I don't think the 1 GPT is worth it.

 

[Numi]

I tend to build roads out from my cities towards the AI cities that are good enough to potentially capture (only if they are pretty nearby of course, and only in my territory). Either way, if they attack you, you can arrange a defense faster, if you attack them you can arrange an attack quicker. If you can't afford a couple roads that MAY just save you some units or time (both of which are made even more critical in harder difficulties) then you should figure out your financial problems first.

 

[basta]

I build 1 hex stub bridges over rivers at frontiers where an invasion may come to get easier movement and like Numi I enjoy the affrontery of building a road to the target's first frontier city when massing an invasion. You can then quickly complete it and bring a trade route online...but then that would be an offensive road.

 

[Uniform Sierra]

Numi, what do higher difficulties entail? In the menu it says they receive advantages, what kinds?

 

[alpaca]

Numi, what do higher difficulties entail? In the menu it says they receive advantages, what kinds?

Mostly production, happiness and unit maintenance.

@topic: I use them sometimes if I know I'm going to defend at a certain city, they are especially worthwhile in hills or as bridges because you can easily move artillery to react to enemy movements and still shoot in the same turn. If I don't expect a large attack in a specific location, I don't tend to build them.

Edit: Here's a good example of some defensive roads in our Deity succession game from a couple of months back: http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6516/rb336large.jpg

 

[TheDice]

I will keep any pre-existing roads from captured AI territory for ease of movement, but generally use captured workers to remove them (if they won't serve trade route purposes) once it's no longer a contested battle front. In some cases I'll build roads to allow seige weapons to move-set-shoot in the same turn.

 

[joncnunn]

Under current rules; I never build a defense road.

I may sometimes give a border city a direct connection to two cities closer to the core instead of just one, and if I'm extremely confident that in the first few turns of a planned offensive war I can take over the first AI city on the other side may partially prebuild the road connection to it but that's about it; maintence is just too expensive to justify building roads to nowhere.

I haven't seen the AI go overboard with it's roads, so their road network is usually kept intact unless I'm burning down some of their cities in which case I'll disconnect the road to the ruins.