Roads built by workers? Poll

[Arent11]

CIv VI had resources available empire wide. No need for roads.
Did you like resources to need to be connected by a road network or was it better Civ VI no roads innovation?

Building roads is part of the builder's 4X. I want that.

I also want ships I can load with units and have a maritime invasion. That's part of the conquest 4X. I want to be forced to build ships for a maritime invasion & not just be able to "embark" land units.

 

[kaspergm]

Traders making trade routes is one of my least liked features of Civ6. The idea has some qualities on paper, but the implementation is horrible. First of all, as others have pointed out, not having the option to force the trader to go over land is just plain bad game design. Secondly, the fact that you have no option to path the trade to go from point A to B via a set of midway points is both unrealistic and causes a nightmarish road-layout, with traders often bypassing existing roads and other cities by 1 or 2 hexes, which just feels stupid. Thirdly, while I can see that traders creating roads makes sense, this should not be your only way to make roads for most of the games - traders should in fact be considered traders, not road-making machines, which is effectively the choice you are often faced with in Civ6.

My preferred solution would be either back to workers - not perfect, but gave some control - or a project-like feature, where you pay an amount of gold to lay down a road from one city to another, and then the road takes a number of turns to establish (one turn per hex would be the obvious choice, or you could pay more to have it go faster). This could be coupled with the existing trader mechanism, if the routing issues are taken care of - i.e. I don't mind traders making roads, it should just not be the main means of making roads.

Traders building roads was nice to reduce micromanagement, but it would be nice if you could tinker with the route a trader took a little bit, particularly having a toggle to allow or block travel over water, so that you could ensure roads actually got built!

There is a mod called something with Silk Trade Route that makes it so that a trader travels to the target city and back, and then you can assign a new trade route. Huge improvement over base Civ6 mechanism where trader is locked for 30 turns.

 

[kaspergm]

I would be kinda fine (though I don't insist) with builder units being removed entirely and tile improvements being entirely handled via city production, or if you fancy some separate city subsystem ("public works" of CtP). Civ6 was already a step in this direction with the construction of districts from the city itself and roads from trade routes, so why not push this move to its logical end, given that worker units are kinda redundant in themselves, abstract/arcade, and almost no game mechanics interact with them anyway.

Meanwhile subjecting the entire tile improvement process to city economy mechanics would enable devs to get creative with it. Now you can get truly crazy and give one civ the ability to build two farms at X, or transfer % of city science to speed up tile construction etc.

Or even better: let's tie tile improvement process to population growth and pop units ("unstacking pops"). When a new pop unit becomes peasants they build farm and are located on this tile, while some other pop goes to a tile with resource to extract it and specialize in it, and then you send some other pop unit to build mine and become miners, and then you use another pop for public works to make a road etc.

The potential of interesting game mechanics becomes enormous - you handle those pop units and public works differently in despotic monarchy, feudal monarchy, empire, communism, free market democracy etc. And then you add civ unique ways to handle pops and tiles, such as Incan "central planning".

I fully support this idea. My only comment would be: If laying down town improvements are handled through city interface, I would not make it go into the normal "production" line, but instead have it be something you pay an amount of gold for, and then it finishes after a number of turns. So basically you "buy" tile improvements rather than "build" them. I would favor this mechanism so as not ending up with a situation like in Civ6 where you place a new city, and then production time for first improvement is 40 turns ... that's neither fun nor realistic.

 

[GeneralZIft]

What you could do for Road construction is have it be a city project. You have a "host city" and you choose the "Road Construction" city project.
Then what it would do is take you into a screen where you pick tiles to create the path for your route.
Then, depending on the length of the route and production of city, it would produce that route over time.

What I would prefer is if Traders did not build roads at all actually - have it so that players are incentivised to go out of their way to build roads to maximise the profits of their traders.

Maybe even have your roads produce money from other Civ traders using them, in like a tariff system.

 

[criZp]

Roads should be made like they have always been made in every game series except civ: click road tool, drag from a to b, DONE WITH THE MICROMANAGING.

 

[OzzyKP]

Personally I’d be happy to do away with workers altogether and find some equivalent of trade routes or merchants or industrialists build all the improvements so I don’t have to bother with it.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm in the "trader-built roads are fine, but let me fine-tune them" camp.

And I think roads are, on the whole, and underdeveloped opportunity. They just upgrade quietly in the background as time goes on in VI, with railroads as the only option. What about expensive but quick roads, Roman Empire style? What about building a modern system of highways - expensive but boosting commerce, as well as pollution? Maybe your civ goes all in on roads like America and Germany, or maybe it builds a lot of railroads, and maybe it upgrades those railroads to 21st century standards, or maybe not.

I'm a builder, so for me, having more Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon in Sid Meier's Civilization would not be a bad thing. They're probably what, the first-and-third-most played serieses ever for me? So yes, I'll take more of them together if that's what Firaxis has planned!

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Traders making trade routes is one of my least liked features of Civ6. The idea has some qualities on paper, but the implementation is horrible. First of all, as others have pointed out, not having the option to force the trader to go over land is just plain bad game design. Secondly, the fact that you have no option to path the trade to go from point A to B via a set of midway points is both unrealistic and causes a nightmarish road-layout, with traders often bypassing existing roads and other cities by 1 or 2 hexes, which just feels stupid. Thirdly, while I can see that traders creating roads makes sense, this should not be your only way to make roads for most of the games - traders should in fact be considered traders, not road-making machines, which is effectively the choice you are often faced with in Civ6.

I think this gameplay element was to reflect how for most of history, long-distance travel and long-distance trade was conducted almost exclusively by sea and other waterways. The emphasis we put on the wheel and roadbuilding as "revolutionary" technologies, is largely a consequence of the automotive industry and car culture heavily influencing the way we view the concept of progress, society as a whole and world history.

 

[AffineConstant]

I think this gameplay element was to reflect how for most of history, long-distance travel and long-distance trade was conducted almost exclusively by sea and other waterways. The emphasis we put on the wheel and roadbuilding as "revolutionary" technologies, is largely a consequence of the automotive industry and car culture heavily influencing the way we view the concept of progress, society as a whole and world history.

Adequate roads were a monumental engineering achievement of the Roman Empire and many others, roads were very much an important infrastructure vastly pre automobile because transporting by overland is incredibly expensive versus water, and anything that made it easier was welcomed. Horseback, carts, just plain walking, roads made it easier to do and told people where to go, making navigation far easier. People didn't put them in at vast expense, in many cultures around the world invented independently, because they thought they were decorative or something.

Roads maye have multiplied exponentially after the automobile, but the wheel was still a good invetion, and while you needed roads for carts at all (and roads were expensive) whether you used wheeled transport or not roads were still incredibly useful instrastructre to have before then. I'd also like to point out horses were preferred where both horses and camels were available, but horses don't deal as well with a lot of heat as camels. Nor were camels very good at pulling carts. This presenters thesis that camels were somehow superior to carted horses is undercut by the fact that where horses, the animals that could pull carts in a useful fashion, were available they were used to pull carts along roads despite the expense, and despite the fact that horses don't technically need roads just as camels don't.

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Okay, two things:
1. Before the invention of steam power, a surprisingly large portion of all travel and transport on land was done by foot. On that note, it's kind of a myth that it was the horse-driven carriage was what the car replaced, as horse-driven carriages has always had somewhat of niche application. No, it was largely trains & public transport that cars have replaced, and not even through technological superiority (if anything, trains were and arguably still are superior in that sense), but through good old fashioned power struggles and charm offensives conducted by the car manufacturers. That time General Motors effectively gutted america's entire tram infrastructure is probably the most infamous example of this
2. Roads have throughout history mostly been built with military application in mind, up until the mid 20th century (if not still so), with a lot of national motorway projects from that time period being conducted with more easily mobilizing armoured vehicles in mind

Anyway, I've mostly been fine with how Civ 6 handled road building, with my only complaint being that maybe military engineers (and their ability to build roads) should've been pushed earlier in the tech tree

 

[Naokaukodem]

Replayed some of Civ5 BNW and actually I found very fun to build roads between cities, and then later railroads. Problem with the builders charges, is that it may cost too many charges to just build roads. Or they should be free, unless a special unit can build them for free like the military engineer (?) in 6 for railroads. On the worst, maybe Trajan ability for everyone would be ok, especially in mountainous/hillous starts, and even a road connection between every city would be better. I quite don't like the choice of choosing a domestic route just for the purpose of a road vs. more gold early. If the domestic road once completed would offer gold rewards like it just did in 5, then I think it could be ok. (for road connection) In 6 the road system is quite unrealistic and immersion breaker. It just feels plain stupid. (not priorizing our domestic trade network)

It has also to see with the problem of workers vs. builders. In spite of the seduceness of the later, I prefer the former by a far margin. Unless we manage to merge both, which could be achieved by refueling the charges in staying in a city center for 5 turns for example, but that seems silly because too powerful. (you could go for one worker-builder for the entire game. Maybe it would be ok after all, that could be THE worker, and maybe you want a second one in this far aways land you just conquered)

 

[Arent11]

I'm in the "trader-built roads are fine, but let me fine-tune them" camp.

And I think roads are, on the whole, and underdeveloped opportunity. They just upgrade quietly in the background as time goes on in VI, with railroads as the only option.

How about letting people build roads and traders *additionally* create roads if there aren't any already? That would actually reflect the real world.

I think that building mines, roads etc. by units like "builders" is just a part of the builder 4X. Especialyl building outposts and protecting them from barbarians. I think it's much more "boring" to build everything from the city screen.

What I don't like is the constant reassignment of trade routes. Having caravans in civ 1 for long "Marco Polo" like expeditions & abstract "trade" in the background was great. But the countless trade routes of civ6 that have to be reassigned every ~x turns are annoying.

 

[Arent11]

Replayed some of Civ5 BNW and actually I found very fun to build roads between cities, and then later railroads. Problem with the builders charges, is that it may cost too many charges to just build roads. Or they should be free, unless a special unit can build them for free like the military engineer (?) in 6 for railroads. On the worst, maybe Trajan ability for everyone would be ok, especially in mountainous/hillous starts, and even a road connection between every city would be better. I quite don't like the choice of choosing a domestic route just for the purpose of a road vs. more gold early. If the domestic road once completed would offer gold rewards like it just did in 5, then I think it could be ok. (for road connection) In 6 the road system is quite unrealistic and immersion breaker. It just feels plain stupid. (not priorizing our domestic trade network)

It has also to see with the problem of workers vs. builders. In spite of the seduceness of the later, I prefer the former by a far margin. Unless we manage to merge both, which could be achieved by refueling the charges in staying in a city center for 5 turns for example, but that seems silly because too powerful. (you could go for one worker-builder for the entire game. Maybe it would be ok after all, that could be THE worker, and maybe you want a second one in this far aways land you just conquered)

How about just charging 5 gold per improvement? Maybe even have governments/policies that raise/lower the cost?

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, I'm a little bit in all the different camps. Trying to find a system that accomplishes all of this:
-Minimal micromanagement
-Easy choice in where to connect
-Not excessive costs (but not necessarily "free" either)
-Avoid Road Spam

Traders building roads avoid most of the micro, and is good at avoiding road spam, but it complicates choosing where to connect. And then Military Engineers able to build roads for a charge, while they can build railroads for free is weird too. and they have terrible micromanagement with them.

I think what I might like best would be that traders when they move give you a free "ancient road". ie. if you have a trade route, you get a free path through the terrain.
And then builders can build roads on terrain for a cost, and the cost increases depending on the terrain (and era). So a flat road is 20 gold, a road on a hill is 40 gold, forested hill is 60 gold, etc... When you get to a new era, your builder gets a new action for "upgrade road", so you don't get a free upgrade, but maybe just a small fee to explicitly upgrade the road to the next tier. But on the flipside, roads would also have a nuclear plant-like chance, where after 20 (or 40 or whatever) turns, it would fall into disrepair and act like the earlier road type, and you'd have to go upgrade it again. But similar to how traders build ancient roads, whatever they pass over gets a free maintenance. So your primary paths will never fall into disrepair, but if you have like a random path to a remote city that would need normal maintenance.
You'd obviously also need to add the "build road to", "upgrade road to", and "repair road to" options, so that you don't have to manually move builders constantly either.

 

[Arent11]

I think what I might like best would be that traders when they move give you a free "ancient road". ie. if you have a trade route, you get a free path through the terrain.
And then builders can build roads on terrain for a cost, and the cost increases depending on the terrain (and era). So a flat road is 20 gold, a road on a hill is 40 gold, forested hill is 60 gold, etc... When you get to a new era, your builder gets a new action for "upgrade road", so you don't get a free upgrade, but maybe just a small fee to explicitly upgrade the road to the next tier. But on the flipside, roads would also have a nuclear plant-like chance, where after 20 (or 40 or whatever) turns, it would fall into disrepair and act like the earlier road type, and you'd have to go upgrade it again. But similar to how traders build ancient roads, whatever they pass over gets a free maintenance. So your primary paths will never fall into disrepair, but if you have like a random path to a remote city that would need normal maintenance.
You'd obviously also need to add the "build road to", "upgrade road to", and "repair road to" options, so that you don't have to manually move builders constantly either.

Something like this but maybe improvements should automatically have roads or act as roads. So you only have to build roads on unclaimed areas between cities. Would reduce micromanagement & help city defense (moving fast in borders of city)

 

[Ordnael]

Traders/Caravans lay down the paths with optional player assistance, one time city projects improve the paths inside city perimeter into roads and so on (costs scale according to the number/length of paths), a separate project improves a path from city a to city b (can be done by either city) and then you could have a civilian engineer with unlimited build charges which spends money on road projects and so on.
But preferably I don't want another mechanic to micromanage (too much or without clear rewards).

 

[Naokaukodem]

How about just charging 5 gold per improvement? Maybe even have governments/policies that raise/lower the cost?

5 sounds reasonnable at start, but very low later. Yet another scaling cost thing ? Hmmm. With this system, maybe charging maintenance costs would be ok, especially for roads. (nobody "works" roads (but the traders I guess), so either you have to dedicate some thing to maintain them, or charge maintenance automatically when they are not "worked" (there is no trade route anymore passing through))

I think a mix of of Civ5 trade connection giving gold and roads costs with domectic trade route creating roads could be good. Additionally, connections to several cities gives more gold, not just connection to capital.
As to international trade routes... I think that preparing roads for a future invasion is a little bit to powerful and cheesy, and there's the problem of maintenance here. I guess a player would have to pay only for the portions in its territory ; as to the roads in "empty" lands, they may decay quickly. But what if a destination player doesn't want to pay ? It shouldn't mind if the road links two of its cities I guess, but what if there is 3~4 sections that are useless to him and doesn't want to pay ? Could the charge be for the sending player ?

Or totally another philosophy : the roads are the masters of colonization and conquests, they are the veins of the country, they never disappear unless pillaged, they offer view in empty lands, and trading posts form on it on regular points. Those TP can transform into neutral cities that you could annex militarily or diplomatically. (gold gifts ? Reminds of tile purchase, except the core city would be more expensive - with however hard discounts compared to 6) We can imagine that a road would be disconnected of any trader unit, while still representing trade. They would be of unlimited amount and could create spontaneously between two neighbours.

I guess the two philosophies could coexist for domestic and international trade routes.

 

[aieeegrunt]

None of the "pool" options fit my preference. I would like Traders to automatically build roads, but I also want Workers to be able to manually build as well. Sort of like the Civil Engineers in Civ 6, but earlier in the game instead of having to wait several Eras.

Traders building roads plus builders using a build charge to build a road is something I’ve tested and I think it’s the best system

The trader automates 90% of the tedium and micro, but the builder charge allows you to fine tune it, or if you really need a road built somewhere you can do so at a significant cost, so you don’t get the “road everywhere spiderweb” of previous titles.

One thing I would really, really like to see is a Call To Power style mechanic where improvements can be “bought” with gold, hammers or faith in addition to hard building them with workers.

This would get rid of SO MUCH MICRO. You could have some interesting mechanics out of this as well, where certain civics or governments unlock the ability to purchase improvements, or only certain governments can use certain yields. “Capitalism” can only use gold, “Communism” can only use hammers, etc

 

[Arent11]

I have to out myself that I *like* to build roads in Alpha Centauri and I *like* to load my units into ships.

Maybe I'm weird.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I have to out myself that I *like* to build roads in Alpha Centauri and I *like* to load my units into ships.

Maybe I'm weird.

Man sinking an enemy transport loaded with tanks definitly felt like such a huge win.