Road building is so broken!

[rschissler]

Traders can only move 15 tiles on land. Put a city in the middle. Or, if possible, connect with harbors. Traders have 30 range over sea.

At this point in the game, investing in an expensive settler and building a city from scratch in the middle of a mountain range, just so I can have a trader build a road, doesn't seem worth it. A route over sea doesn't build me a road over land.

 

[Tech Osen]

At this point in the game, investing in an expensive settler and building a city from scratch in the middle of a mountain range, just so I can have a trader build a road, doesn't seem worth it. A route over sea doesn't build me a road over land.

Not saying I agree with the current situation, but it's the only real solution with the way things work at the moment.

 

[Victoria]

if you want to connect C to A or B, you may well end up with a new road that runs parallel to the old road for most of its length

What really annoys me is you can make a road between a & c. Then when you add another from a to b and it does not go through c with your nice trading post there, just counter intuitive and also makes trading posts a joke in many ways.

 

[Tech Osen]

The whole system stinks. And it's also in contradiction to the whole "we want players to make meaningful decisions" philosophy that they used to justify taking away automated builders.

 

[pgm123]

What really annoys me is you can make a road between a & c. Then when you add another from a to b and it does not go through c with your nice trading post there, just counter intuitive and also makes trading posts a joke in many ways.

I like the idea behind the system, but the route finding is unpleasing and this is a good example why. Trade routes should find trading posts. Also, you should get a bonus if the AI sends their trade routes through your trading posts, but I digress.

 

[kaspergm]

What really annoys me is you can make a road between a & c. Then when you add another from a to b and it does not go through c with your nice trading post there, just counter intuitive and also makes trading posts a joke in many ways.

Yeah, that's another classical example. I've said it before, but really what we need is some sort of "connect the dots" interface when laying down roads and planning trade routes. I.e. if trader is in A, I can say go to C and then to B, and possible continue if the range allows it. This should come up whenever I pick a destination city not currently connected to start location by road, with an additional option to manually do this if I want to lay down a new road. Traders should not automatically lay down new roads unless I ask them to.

 

[acluewithout]

I may have said this before, but I think Trade routes are designed with the idea that you’ll always repeat and extend them. So, you go City A to B, and when the route resets, you go City A to B to C, with routes starting off internal (i.e. A and B are internal) but later becoming international (C is international). The changes to TR efficiency seems to play into this.

I wonder if Traders should actually “lock” to particular routes the first time you use one. So, in the above example, the first time you sent out a trader it would be locked as A to B. When it reset, it would have to go A to B again because it was locked, but you would have the option of extending the trader to C (ie A, B, C), but then that extended route would be locked - and so on. I think that would make selecting trade routes a more weighty decision.

If they did that, I think that would justify having a more flexible road system. So, TRs could still make roads, but perhaps you could also just gold purchase other roads between two cities if you don’t have a free TR.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I may have said this before, but I think Trade routes are designed with the idea that you’ll always repeat and extend them. So, you go City A to B, and when the route resets, you go City A to B to C, with routes starting off internal (i.e. A and B are internal) but later becoming international (C is international). The changes to TR efficiency seems to play into this.

I wonder if Traders should actually “lock” to particular routes the first time you use one. So, in the above example, the first time you sent out a trader it would be locked as A to B. When it reset, it would have to go A to B again because it was locked, but you would have the option of extending the trader to C (ie A, B, C), but then that extended route would be locked - and so on. I think that would make selecting trade routes a more weighty decision.

If they did that, I think that would justify having a more flexible road system. So, TRs could still make roads, but perhaps you could also just gold purchase other roads between two cities if you don’t have a free TR.

Hmmm. The dev team could have gone the route of making Traders like Workers (pre Civ 6, not Builders): over time, they establish a trade route between two Trading Posts. Once complete, those trade routes then produce benefits forever (or until pillaged). Meanwhile, the Trader unit now establishes a new trade route, with incentive to expand outward from the new Trading Post to more lucrative markets beyond.

 

[Victoria]

you’ll always repeat and extend them.

There is that trick as Mongols, in the ancient era scout as much as possible, send a trade route to each civ and declare war straight after. When all is peaceful you can trade a rather long way. Its a bit game, requires scouting early and trade routes in a line which just does not happen well, so I guess there is a positive side.

 

[nzcamel]

I don't think road building is broken. I think it's very realistic and makes for great tactical decisions throughout the game. I like the idea that the merchants & populace are doing what they will do; and you as the governance don't have direct control over that. Maybe in the authoritarian governments one should get more tools to direct where roads are built etc. That would be immersive. Along with your trade routes being less effective.

I do agree that if you're trader is going in a direction where it will closely pass (1, maybe 2 tiles away) cities along it's route, it should pass through them; though in terms of me wanting to get roads out for my military that could end up just as annoying as it not doing that!