Roads, Resources?

[Alus415]

Hi,

My first game in the civ series was civ5 and I recently started playing civ4 , now in civ5 roads have a high upkeep so i usually only build roads to connect my cities for trade routes , my question then is should I do the same in civ4 ? reason why i ask is because the workers in civ4 on auto build tons of roads and I'm wondering if there is a high upkeep for that ? Should i let them build away or just connect my cities?


Second question is in civ5 you could get the resource as long as you owned the tile and improved it even if there was no road connecting the tile to your cities , in civ4 do i need to connect them with roads otherwise I won't get the resource even if I improved it?

Thanks!

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

First of all, it's almost never a good idea to automate your workers. The computer will have them do... um... stupid things. A lot. However, in this case the computer isn't steering you wrong. There's probably better things for your workers to be doing than spamming roads, but it won't hurt.

Now to actually answer your questions: Roads have no upkeep in Civ4. I think the only things that cost you maintenance/upkeep money are 1) the size of your empire (how many cities you have and how big they are), 2) the civics you're running, and 3) your military (number of units and whether or not they're in your land). Later in the game, things like corporations and inflation start affecting your economy, but I digress... roads, buildings, and tile improvements don't cost you anything once you've built them.

As far as connecting the resources, most of the time you will need a road. The only exceptions I can think of are water resources (sail a Workboat to it and build fishing nets, or whatever- this will hook up the resource to the closest city) and resources on a river. For instance, if you farm some Corn that's upriver from one of your cities, the river hooks up the Corn and you don't necessarily need the road.

Now, if you improve a resource and one of your cities is working it, you'll see the increase, you just might not have access to the resource. If your capital has a gold hill in its BFC and you mine it, you'll see the big increase in commerce. But you won't see the gold resource until you put a road on the mine and connect it (with other roads or rivers) to your city. Connecting cities to your capital works in much the same way, but they can also be connected if they're both on the coast. However, even if the cities are hooked up for trade using rivers/coastline, you generally want roads between your cities anyway, for ease of movement throughout your empire. If your Workers are just sitting around with nothing to do, spamming roads is usually not a bad idea, you might as well have them doing something.

Hope this all made sense. It's late and my brain is off.

tl;dr: Roads are good, build them a lot.

 

[lymond]

A lot. However, in this case the computer isn't steering you wrong. There's probably better things for your workers to be doing than spamming roads, but it won't hurt..

Actually the computer IS steering you wrong and it will hurt in the early game. Worker turns are vitally important in the early game and the management of them is one of the keys to success. Automated workers just don't do the right things. They will road a tile with a special resource on it before improving it, which is butt wrong. You want that tile bonus asap. A lot of other quirky things happen that are detrimental as well.

What you want to do is improve specials in your BFC (Big Fat Cross - the 20 tile workable are of a city), then chop some forests to get out more workers and settlers. Have one worker create a direct route to the new city to establish a trade route which provides additional commerce to the empire to help offset the additional cost o the new city.

Road spamming comes later when your workers are idle. At that point I may put select the auto-trade route mode which will have them pretty much create roads everywhere. However, that is general at least not until mid-game or so.

As Mulatto mentioned, do note that if a resource is on a river in your BFC (or cultural borders) you get access to it immediately. So don't waste turns placing a road on that tile if the resource is hooked up. Rivers also connect trade routes between cities if the cities both lie on the same river. This is automatic if the cultural borders touch, but you will need sailing if they don't. You can also place a road to the river from the city tile if it is not directly on the river - this will connect it too. Lastly, take note that Sailing will connect trades routes between your cities if the are coastal and also foreign cities when borders are opened (which are more lucrative). Just make sure you are busting the fog on the coast with your warrior or scout as fog will block the route. (This is why it is recommended to send a unit along the coastline for scouting after you do the initial circular scouting of your starting location to identify good city spots.

Definitely head over to the Strategy and Tips forum and browse around or ask question. You will learn a lot over there.

edit: Glad to see your are trying out Civ IV. Many of us here tried CiV and abandoned it pretty quickly. Civ IV is fantastic.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I agree with what the others said. I only want to add to TheMulattoMaker's comments on what is involved in upkeep. Besides number of cities and city size, the distance to the capital from the city adds to its upkeep. The farther away it is, the more the upkeep costs.

 

[totalepicness]

Now i know why i lose money after making some colonies...

 

[civvver]

Now i know why i lose money after making some colonies...

Colonies as is overseas? If you check out the maintenance on those oversea cities they get an even bigger penalty added, a colony maintenance. So yeah, colonies cost a lot. This was added in BTS. In regular civ4 it doesn't matter what land mass the cities are on.