Road construction tips

[thungrim]

I can't say I love it, but I see the reasoning behind the new system. It's just another of the interesting changes they made after Civ IV. I'm gonna kind of miss my spiderweb network of roads/RRs that cover the map

When you can start building railroads, let's hope you're making a nice profit overall because RRs are 2x as expensive as roads. The tradeoff is that you get a 50% production bonus if you're connected by rail to your capital - in a big civ with lots of hammers, that could be a huge benefit to override the maintenance cost, but not until you finish the rail line connecting to the capital city.

Hmmm. I didn't know about the extra production bonus. You could probably offset the extra cost of the railroads by making a connecting city or two convert their production into coins.

 

[rallion]

keep in mind that to avoid building roads that span an entire continent you can build a harbor, in the capital or city connected to it, then another in a far away area and then connect using roads from that city. I was in a position where I would have to build like 15 tiles of road to connect one area with another. I believe the maintenance on a harbor is 4 though so this is only useful if the roads necessary are more then 8, or you already have a harbor in which case roads are more then four.

Important addition: You have to have explored a sea route between the two harbors for this to work. I'm playing on a Huge Pangaea map, and this had me really confused for a couple turns before I realized the problem.

 

[UKScud]

I've been really conservative with building roads in my latest game as the cost [as I found out in my first game] is just too crippling. If you have to spend more than 3 gold to connect your cities, then building the harbour and a couple of ships (if necessary) to protect your sea route has to be the better option.

In addition, I found the cost of maintaining the road system of the 3-4 puppet cities I had mid-game really bad, as others have mentioned. It has really affected my view on foreign relations for my second game as India. I decided to place the emphasis on protecting the city states around me rather than conquering my neighbour. I have six cites nicely spaced, and the only roads I have connect the interior cities to seaports. Nothing leads to my capital by road. As a result, my economy is thriving and my people are happy.

So, my tips...

1) If your cities are spread out, try connecting to the capital by seaport. It'll save heaps of cash if you are thinking of the long-term.
2) If you are worried about troop movement, use workers to clear a path through forest. This will not provide the fastest route, but again, think of the cash you will save long-term. How often do you move troops along roads within your empire? If they have to travel, say 20 hexes, from one side of your empire to the other are you really prepared to pay that 100 gold every five turns to maintain them?
3) If you are that worried about troop movement, head to the coast, embark and move by sea. It can be quicker, and its free. [Obviously if your cost isn't safe this is a bad idea...thus my earlier point about investing in a few navy ships]
4) I realize this one isn't for the warmongers amongst you all, but do you really need to conquer that city? If you make it a puppet does it bring in more money than it costs? Unfortunately with no espionage system there is no way to tell. The road system that your rival built now just adds to your costs as well, and probably isn't connected to your trade network so will not be making you money for many turns. Perhaps razing is a better solution [any diplo penalties?] than conquering territory with wild abandon?

It seems to be working for me at the moment.

 

[DalekDavros]

Note that building roads in rough terrain means you spend a few extra turns building the road too (unless you build it during a Golden Age as Persia). Unless your troops are really going to need to travel through the rough terrain, it might make sense to build around it instead. However, I do love building roads across rivers. It'll hamper you a bit until you get bridges, but once you do it becomes an incredibly effective defensive position because you can attack across it without penalty while the invader can't.

I've been really conservative with building roads in my latest game as the cost [as I found out in my first game] is just too crippling. If you have to spend more than 3 gold to connect your cities, then building the harbour and a couple of ships (if necessary) to protect your sea route has to be the better option.

Downsides to harbors:
1. They take a long time to build. In addition to whatever you aren't building during that time, this means that you're losing the trade route income for all of these turns.
2. If they require ships to protect the route, the upkeep costs of the ships will be far higher than the upkeep cost of the road.
3. They provide no mobility bonus.
4. They can't be upgraded to railroads in the late game.
5. You have to build one in the capital too, which is an extra 3 gpt that you haven't mentioned.

Trade route income is approx 1.25 gold per population point in the non-capital city, so a size 8 city could take a road up to 12 tiles long and still break even. Granted, making a profit is preferable, but it's not like roads are going to destroy your economy. With a bit of parsimony, you should always at least break even on (trade income)-(road maintenance).

 

[Augury2140]

So here's a tricksy proposition. So we pay for roads inside our borders and in neutral territory, but not within the opponent's borders? Now suppose we had open borders, workers with nothing to do, and a burning desire to cripple the AI's economy....

 

[UKScud]

Downsides to harbors:
1. They take a long time to build. In addition to whatever you aren't building during that time, this means that you're losing the trade route income for all of these turns.
2. If they require ships to protect the route, the upkeep costs of the ships will be far higher than the upkeep cost of the road.
3. They provide no mobility bonus.
4. They can't be upgraded to railroads in the late game.
5. You have to build one in the capital too, which is an extra 3 gpt that you haven't mentioned.

Trade route income is approx 1.25 gold per population point in the non-capital city, so a size 8 city could take a road up to 12 tiles long and still break even. Granted, making a profit is preferable, but it's not like roads are going to destroy your economy. With a bit of parsimony, you should always at least break even on (trade income)-(road maintenance).

I really never found it a problem, but in order...
1) This is true, but the same could be said of the worker who is building them...if he's building the road network then he isn't building improvements for your land...it's difficult to quantify, so I can't claim for sure that it evens out, but it is true to say that for ever worker building roads, you have lost out on some food, some production and some gold.
2) Again true, but a small navy has other advantages as well, such as protecting those sea resources that could be providing you with 10 happiness (pearls and whales), not to mention the food and gold from the fishes. Again, difficult to quantify...as an attack by pirate ship (of which I'll agree there seem to be fewer in this version) may or may not happen, and I have no idea how you would accurately calculate your losses if it were to happen. I just think that you should be building at least a small navy.
3) True...but then I think that the extra money I had by not building a huge road network payed for the extra troops that kept me safe early on. Because my early strategy resulted in a strong economy when I did start to expand, and tech took me to the midgame I had the money to pay for the road network for the larger empire. My first game taught me that if you connect everything up with roads, the good economy is harder to achieve. [I'll be the first to accept that this may not be a fair test, as there probably were other factors that resulted in my strong economy, but I'd have to have played more games to comment on those.]
5) ? Are you sure? I probably built one in my capital, but I never noticed that I did.

4) In my most recent game I didn't need to get that far. Once I had got electricity I drove a straight line for Globalization in order to build the UN and go for the win. Had I not chosen to go for a diplomatic win...well, I probably would have joined up my cities with rail for the end game...but, by then I had most of my tiles improved and the income per turn to pay for the rail network.

My original point was this...being conservative with your road building in the early game may, and I repeat, may (with no strong empirical evidence presented) be a factor that contributes to a strong economy, and thus a better mid and late game. Harbours, IMO, are part of the process that makes this happen.

It worked for me in the game I completed last night. I'm sure other people have a different point of view on this. It seemed right though.

The other thing I benefited from in my just completed game was to have a corp of workers standing by to pull up roads and rails as my military forces swept across the Aztec continent. Reason: I was razing everything to the ground, but this takes time...and so you are technically the last owner, and thus the person who pays for the roads, even, I think, after the city itself has been razed, certainly whilst that process is occuring. If I'm right about you still paying for the roads after the city has been razed there is a definate advantage to doing this in terms of cost per turn for roads that are perfectly pointless. Don't allow the razed continent to cripple your economy.

Anyhow...that was just my two pence worth.

 

[WuphonsReach]

Well...

I generally delay building my road network until I have 4-5 cities, have a positive cash flow of at least +15/turn, and have mostly run out of tiles that need to be improved in order to keep my citizens busy. Then I'll put every available worker on laying in roads as fast as possible to jump-start a trade network within my borders. That usually results in a positive cash flow even after paying for the road fees each turn.

My issue with point #1 in your list... too often in Civ5 - growth = bad. Even with only 2/3 of a worker per city, my workers can stay well ahead of improving the tiles that will be worked by citizens. Mostly because if I let the cities grow so that they can work more tiles - I run into severe unhappiness issues.