Persistance of Roads: Academic Study on Roman Roads

[Trav'ling Canuck]

In fact, I'd love to see terrain have more negative influence: deserts, tundra, rainforest/jungle and swamps were practically impassable to trade unless there was a river to follow or technology improved. In addition, having a Trading Post/City in such places meant not only that Trade Routes could be longer, it sometimes meant they were possible, and it always meant that their value in goods transported went Up, sometimes dramatically - and so you get 'desert cities' like Palmyra or Petra or the Taklamakan city states getting rich off the trade that flows through them.

The treatment of desert in recent iterations of Civ baffles me. That's harsh terrain, not a highway. Same is true of tundra.

I'm also not sure where marshes provide as much food as farms.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The treatment of desert in recent iterations of Civ baffles me. That's harsh terrain, not a highway. Same is true of tundra.

I'm also not sure where marshes provide as much food as farms.

Marshes provide more, at least before modern mechanized/bioengineered agriculture. Aside from useful plants, wetlands are home to immense quantities of fish and waterfowl - the protein per acre is the highest of any natural environment.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's interesting that you see city centers where the roads intersect. It makes sense, even if the roads were built for military reasons they'll still foster trade. I know Atlanta, GA was originally just a railroad junction, and the community grew around it. Usually cities form near large bodies of water but the rail road hub was important enough at that point to create a city. As far as the game mechanic goes I feel like we've lost something now that roads are automatic and builders are instantaneous. I liked being able to place roads where I wanted them and I liked that they were a time investment. Having said that I'd love to see river movement, even if it were only for land units and maybe a special unit like the Longship.

Movement would be nice, but the big influence of rivers is the waterborne Trade. Even a dug-out canoe with a couple of paddlers can carry more than any back pack or pack animal, and for longer distances per day. At the very least, Any 'generated' trade route should try to follow a river for as long as possible, and where it leaves or meets the river there will be a settlement where cargos are transferred and traders gather to buy and sell cargoes.

Then the railroads made it possible to move any amount of goods to anywhere there was a railroad, and virtually all limitations on city settlement locations disappeared. This is another major change on the map that not showing railroads and their effects in Civ VI lost. Even if bringing back railroads graphics would be Too Much Effort, there should be Industrial Era Roads (change at Steam Power Tech perhaps) that reflect the Effects of railroads.

Finally, to quote an old Population Geography professor from 40 + years ago, if you want to plot where historical settlements were, Follow The Water. If there is no water for people and plants/animals, there will be no settlement. If the water dries up, there will be an Ex-Settlement. Therefore, any starting location in Civ in an Oasis-less desert, or riverless/lakeless plains or grasslands, or any Tundra, is a Fantasy and has no place in a game that purports to represent 'history'. This is why, on average, I have to Restart every Civ VI game at least 3 - 9 times to get what I consider a valid starting position...

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Marshes provide more, at least before modern mechanized/bioengineered agriculture. Aside from useful plants, wetlands are home to immense quantities of fish and waterfowl - the protein per acre is the highest of any natural environment.

If that's true, should there not be high density human populations near marsh lands? I'm not familiar with any. My understanding is that marshland usually supports one of the lowest density of humans, perhaps in part due to malaria.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Reading the article i would draw the conclusion that people have known the best places to put cities for a long time and that the roads allowed them to flourish. Perhaps what they mean is the other towns because ex-settlements.

 

[acluewithout]

Movement would be nice, but the big influence of rivers is the waterborne Trade. Even a dug-out canoe with a couple of paddlers can carry more than any back pack or pack animal, and for longer distances per day. At the very least, Any 'generated' trade route should try to follow a river for as long as possible, and where it leaves or meets the river there will be a settlement where cargos are transferred and traders gather to buy and sell cargoes.

Then the railroads made it possible to move any amount of goods to anywhere there was a railroad, and virtually all limitations on city settlement locations disappeared. This is another major change on the map that not showing railroads and their effects in Civ VI lost. Even if bringing back railroads graphics would be Too Much Effort, there should be Industrial Era Roads (change at Steam Power Tech perhaps) that reflect the Effects of railroads.

Finally, to quote an old Population Geography professor from 40 + years ago, if you want to plot where historical settlements were, Follow The Water. If there is no water for people and plants/animals, there will be no settlement. If the water dries up, there will be an Ex-Settlement. Therefore, any starting location in Civ in an Oasis-less desert, or riverless/lakeless plains or grasslands, or any Tundra, is a Fantasy and has no place in a game that purports to represent 'history'. This is why, on average, I have to Restart every Civ VI game at least 3 - 9 times to get what I consider a valid starting position...

In fairness, Civ VI does tip its hat to the importance of rivers to trade, by giving Commercial Hubs a +2 adjacency from rivers. That can then get very powerful if you have a city and commercial hub at a river mouth, letting you build the city centre and commercial hub in a triangle for lots of extra adjacency. I know the commercial hub / river mechanic doesn’t totally cover the importance of rivers, but in the overall context of the game I think it’s actually probably okay.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

If that's true, should there not be high density human populations near marsh lands? I'm not familiar with any. My understanding is that marshland usually supports one of the lowest density of humans, perhaps in part due to malaria.

Exactly. While some of the earliest fixed settlements in Europe were in marshlands (Switzerland lakeshore, the English Fens, Denmark and Frisia) once agriculture developed you could get more sustainable food from plowed fields without the danger of 'hunting/fishing out' the marshes. That, plus the marshes invariably (even as far north as the British Isles) harbored 'bad air' (Mal Aria).
However, even so Alexandria in Egypt, Rotterdam and Amsterdam, and Contanta in Rumania are all on the edge of what were once major marsh areas (somewhat drained today, especially in Belgium and Holland). In these cases, admittedly, the locations are more for the Trade opportunities (river mouths) and reed building materials (Alexandria) than for the food sources.

In fairness, Civ VI does tip its hat to the importance of rivers to trade, by giving Commercial Hubs a +2 adjacency from rivers. That can then get very powerful if you have a city and commercial hub at a river mouth, letting you build the city centre and commercial hub in a triangle for lots of extra adjacency. I know the commercial hub / river mechanic doesn’t totally cover the importance of rivers, but in the overall context of the game I think it’s actually probably okay.

I would characterize it as 'lip service to the concept' rather than 'okay'. Trade Routes using rivers, even if only represented by putting a Commercial Hub next to the river, have distinct characteristics not represented by 'adjacency bonuses':
1. Before railroads, they were the only way of transporting Bulk Cargo like food.
2. The amount that could be carried in a single load was several orders of magnitude greater: from 2-300 pound animal load or 1 ton wagon load to 30 - 1000 tons by ship (the Romans had 1500 ton capacity grain freighters on the North Africa/Egypt to Rome run: nothing as large would be seen in Europe until the late Renaissance!)
3. The speed of travel was again, an order of magnitude greater: 20 - 30 kilometers per day by wheel or hoof IF you had a decent road versus 200 - 300 kilometers per day by sail even at 5 - 8 knots (a reproduction Bronze Age sailing craft easily averaged 7 knots while crossing the Black Sea end to end).

All this, for me, calls for a much greater Advantage to river/sea Trade Routes than a +2 Adjacency Bonus, no matter how much you manage to multiply it by adroit placement.