Roads are fundamentally flawed in game.

[Maou Tsaou]

This has turned into a "project".
I knew better but oh well...
Anyhoo, gonna open a thread in mods for where this is going in case anyone is actually following any of this.
My loose bowls of consciousness movement stream seems to have washed the roads out.
"Let me 'splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
...
I noticed awhile back that different people "imagine" things in different ways, sometimes quite differently indeed.
I played a whole bunch of AD&D back in the day.
As a result of this I have a notion connected to the term "fireball" of the old MU's fireball, specifically the bit where it was described as a total volume of roughly 33,000 cubic feet or yards.
A fun idea in a dungeon I must say.
I've learned to adjust from that initial "visual" but that's where I start.
More often than not though I find other folks have a different starting point for the idea of a fireball spell be it from another game or a movie or programe.
Now if I'm just swapping damage this usually isn't much of an issue but if I as a GM want to use the 33,000 ft^3 volume for a fireball then I need to go into more detail in describing the spell and its effects than just basic range and damage.
Roads are working alot like fireballs.
...
If only I had a holocaust cloak...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

So I guess I'm saying that paying attention to scale can help in making design choices and ignoring scale altogether can lead to CivV.

I wasn't advocating to ignore scale. I consider scale to be important. My point is that the end goal of scale is not "realism" per se', but rather how well the game plays. I don't think either of us believes for a second that civ V's scaling was good for gameplay .

The best proof of this is cities vs areas that are not cities. In reality, for most of history the areas that are "not cities" can be quite massive for example, such that an empire's territories could even have dozens of tiny tiles between cities potentially. Scaling it that way has implications for everything from stack combat to the simple demand it places on a game system.

The one thing to never lose sight of is that the game runs smoothly and is fun to play. IMO civ IV botched this to some degree by ruining its controls and time between turns; civ V did that more so.

Civ IV's saving grace is its depth. Pretty much every turn-based strategy game's play boils down to choices between options that give differing returns. That is true whether you are playing warlords II, ghenghis khan clan of the grey wolf, civ IV, heroes of might and magic, risk, etc.

MOST of them give incomplete information but allow experience to help players pick the correct option more frequently; how well this is done goes a long way towards how good the TBS is.

After that, the game gains depth based on the frequency of different options having the highest return, and the # of different potential options that can be viable. Even at top levels, civ IV has some different looks possible, though of course viable options on deity are far fewer than noble. However, multiple approaches can succeed even there or in MP, which is a reasonably unique thing about civ IV in the TBS genre; despite its massive gameplay 101 flaws this is truly a saving grace because it is so rare in TBS.

The final piece of the puzzle is to model these choices into something that is both recognisable and interesting to the playing audience.

Of course, it's simple to summarize this way, but rather difficult in practice because you have to combine a proper culmination of this vision with project management issues and sheer programming ability. I don't think firaxis has that in them anymore after seeing the state they've sold V as a "finished" product. Still, it's admittedly not an easy thing to do though nevertheless still good to keep in mind.

EDIT:

How does this relate to roads? Roads in the default game are a rather subtle thing. Vicawoo correctly states that players initially overbuild them, and that IS a choice that affects the outcome of a game (though it's only occasionally made with incomplete information). To some extent, roads are an intended feature to give defending culture a very large advantage (in home territory, your siege moves 2-10x faster than enemy siege until bombers or nukes). They have a clear cost (worker turns, which is absolutely a real cost) which can bite players if they don't recognise it. They actually fit the criteria of good TBS fairly well in my book...at least within the framework of the rest of civ IV (changing this one thing would completely alter how the game plays in ways that less experienced players might not realise, until they get 5 cities burned at once in MP).

A better example of a fundamentally flawed feature would be tech trading. Unlike roads, the choices on whether to trade techs or not aren't subtle. The ROI on tech trades is enormous, and while it helps a rival as well as the player, it only helps one rival when there are many; a situation that can and should be repeated constantly to gain an advantage. Trading one tech for 3 of similar value means that you hand out 100% to 3 rivals and get 300% of that tech cost in return. The incentive to do that is enormous and only delaying somebody's military tech long enough to kill them is a true alternative; but that doesn't apply to more than 1 opponent at a time generally. Comparatively speaking, tech trades are one of the most fundamentally flawed mechanics in all of the civ franchise, as is their successor RA (which suffer from the same considerations).

 

[Great Big Al]

Totally OT here, but I gotta say it.

That's the first time I have ever heard anyone make a reference to Ghenghis Khan: Clan of the Grey Wolf. That's awesome.

 

[Maou Tsaou]

How does this relate to roads? Roads in the default game are a rather subtle thing. Vicawoo correctly states that players initially overbuild them, and that IS a choice that affects the outcome of a game (though it's only occasionally made with incomplete information). To some extent, roads are an intended feature to give defending culture a very large advantage (in home territory, your siege moves 2-10x faster than enemy siege until bombers or nukes). They have a clear cost (worker turns, which is absolutely a real cost) which can bite players if they don't recognise it. They actually fit the criteria of good TBS fairly well in my book...at least within the framework of the rest of civ IV (changing this one thing would completely alter how the game plays in ways that less experienced players might not realise, until they get 5 cities burned at once in MP).

Great points Sir.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.

I got focused more and more on the American Revolution scenario as I kept babbling about roads and scale.
In such a narrow conceptual frame compared to the overall scope of a full game I think adjusting or otherwise modding roads can make a lot of sense.
To make a change to movement spanning the full course of an epic or marathon with the possibility of humans as opponents is a whole other level of scale so to speak.
For all I know if you hand the AI a melee unit with 10+ MP and heavy negative modifiers for off road movement it'll choke on using them.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Totally OT here, but I gotta say it.

That's the first time I have ever heard anyone make a reference to Ghenghis Khan: Clan of the Grey Wolf. That's awesome.

I know it because I played it when I was younger...but I've also uploaded 2 playthroughs of it (one in mongol scenario, one in world conquest with an E charisma leader which was hell ) to youtube a while back.