the road to nowhere leads to me

[acebelder]

Roads for rep:

Is it better to build a road to a city state when it asks, or just buy the rep?

I've only played with the greek civ where relationships degrade at .33, I'm assuming that for other civ's it's .5/turn

gifting 250g gives you 20 rep with a city state, this would last you 40 turns.

building a road to a city costs 1g per tile. I've never done it because of the cost incurred but using the above numbers would lead me to believe that building a road to the city state it a waste, especially as the game wears on.

examples:
If said city state only requires 5 tiles of road to reach it, after 40 turns this would equate to a 200g expense.
If the road was 8 tiles it would equate to a 320g expense after 40 turns.

that being said, I know that trade unions reduces this by 20%, but consider the game will last for much longer than 40 turns after you've built this road.

(side note: I'd rather see roads just degrade and require a worker and some gold to fix them.)

Roads for happiness:

I've stopped building roads. Even for the happiness bonus from the meritocracy social policy (if you take it).
Rather than spending 8 gold/turn to get 1 point of happiness to connect a city with a capital if you have the meritocracy policy
That being said, is it better to save that gold and buy a colosseum which has 3 maintenance cost, or build a road?
A colosseum gives you 4 happiness, after 100 turns that works out to about 450g per happiness (figuring in cost of colosseum and maintenance (1550+100*3)/4= 462.5)
An 8 tile road connected to your capital would yield 1 happiness, thus works out to 800g per happiness. this doesn't take in to consideration gold from creating the trade route however (which I'm not sure how it's calculated in game). That being said, if the trade route produced 6g per turn a colusseum would still be better after 231 turns.

Other pluses/minuses:
+road helps you move units better
-road ties up a worker for 6 turns/tile (takes a while to build, while the colosseum
doesn't require you to build/buy a worker, and is instant)

I'm interested to hear you opinions on this.

 

[MasterDinadan]

You can remove the roads after you have finished and suffer no penalty to your influence as a result.

 

[Babri]

Roads for rep:

Is it better to build a road to a city state when it asks, or just buy the rep?

I've only played with the greek civ where relationships degrade at .33, I'm assuming that for other civ's it's .5/turn

gifting 250g gives you 20 rep with a city state, this would last you 40 turns.

building a road to a city costs 1g per tile. I've never done it because of the cost incurred but using the above numbers would lead me to believe that building a road to the city state it a waste, especially as the game wears on.

examples:
If said city state only requires 5 tiles of road to reach it, after 40 turns this would equate to a 200g expense.
If the road was 8 tiles it would equate to a 320g expense after 40 turns.

that being said, I know that trade unions reduces this by 20%, but consider the game will last for much longer than 40 turns after you've built this road.

(side note: I'd rather see roads just degrade and require a worker and some gold to fix them.)

Building roads for City State is good if it is under constant threat by barbarians/other civs & you don't have any extra units to station there all the time. You also have the option to remove roads by workers if you don't need them.

Roads for happiness:

I've stopped building roads. Even for the happiness bonus from the meritocracy social policy (if you take it).
Rather than spending 8 gold/turn to get 1 point of happiness to connect a city with a capital if you have the meritocracy policy
That being said, is it better to save that gold and buy a colosseum which has 3 maintenance cost, or build a road?
A colosseum gives you 4 happiness, after 100 turns that works out to about 450g per happiness (figuring in cost of colosseum and maintenance (1550+100*3)/4= 462.5)
An 8 tile road connected to your capital would yield 1 happiness, thus works out to 800g per happiness. this doesn't take in to consideration gold from creating the trade route however (which I'm not sure how it's calculated in game). That being said, if the trade route produced 6g per turn a colusseum would still be better after 231 turns.

Other pluses/minuses:
+road helps you move units better
-road ties up a worker for 6 turns/tile (takes a while to build, while the colosseum
doesn't require you to build/buy a worker, and is instant)

I'm interested to hear you opinions on this.

Keep in mind that for gaining happiness by that social policy you need to connect your cities either by roads or harbour. When you connect your cites they also provide you gold from trade.