Road building.

[TLF]

Can a worker be ordered to build a road from one square to another square a few squares away with just one order (like in Civ 4) or do you have to build it square by square issuing orders for each square like in Civ 2?

 

[Zefyrinus]

I'm not sure, but isn't there a "build road to" order? You have to go to the options and check the box that says "show advanced order buttons" or something in order to make that button visible.

 

[Sparthage]

Yeah, there is.

 

[dze27]

Ctrl-R and click on the tile you want to build a road to.

 

[TLF]

Thanks.

 

[Opies]

holy crap there is? Damn I wish I knew that haha

 

[Bartleby]

I'm not sure I'd trust the AI to find the best path.

 

[dze27]

Also, Ctrl-Shift-R does the same thing for Railroads.

I use these all the time. The AI chooses the fastest path, so if there is a hills or grassland tile to choose from it will road/rail the grassland. There is one sort of situation that is a bit difficult to explain in which it doesn't do exactly what you want. Basically it ignores partially-roaded/railroaded tiles as part of the shortest path (i.e. even it would be fastest to send the worker to the tile already being worked on to finish it off, it will start from the current tile if the path from the current tile to the destination tile is the same length). The easy workaround is to send groups from the same tile to road to the same tile. (I hope that made sense.)

 

[kirie]

@Bartleby
the AI actually pretty good doing this, since they can calculate every move on tile, like river crossing, which sometimes I miss it

the problem is, it really bad if you have railroad since it always find fastest way, so if you want made straight 4tile road they just create one since that way is the fastest

 

[darski]

I like the "road to" action as I like connects more than even the commerce. I especially like it for railroading. I usually have all my workers surrounding my capitol by the time I get rails and I just order them in bunches to "RR" to points of my empire. I play on small or tiny maps so I can get away with this generally.

I prefer to have my entire landmass on a rail system and then I go back for special tiles. I want to be able to get my troops anywhere as quickly as possible.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

that's a typical way to rail an empire.

 

[darski]

that's a typical way to rail an empire.

Really?... most people say they choose individual tiles and work cities rather than empire building.

Well good - I'm normal for once

 

[Raliuven]

Really?... most people say they choose individual tiles and work cities rather than empire building.

Well good - I'm normal for once

Why not do both? Connect your rails through your special/bonus tiles. Not sure if this is typical, but I usually have a backbone that runs the length of my empire. From there it branches out to cities off the main line. When I chose where to make the branches, I take into consideration the location of the special tiles. I try to pick up as many of them on the way as possible if it won't mean a huge delay. Once you get rails it is rarely a matter of life or death to connect everything in the next 2 rounds. Delaying a few rounds so you can connect your cities and pick up special tiles seems worth it to me. It might be a matter of splitting hairs at that point. You'll eventually rail everything, so a few rounds for either goal probably won't have a huge overall effect.

By the time rails arrive, I usually have stacks of workers waiting in key locations to start the backbone. Really, once that is in place, Cavalry can effectively be anywhere in your empire in 1 round.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I try to get a rail backbone from one end to the other. I then rail individual tiles. Flat land first (fastest build), then hills, then mountains (takes forever), and finally forest when I run out of other things to rail.