Use of Roads in Hostile Territory

[Nicolas10]

Can Azazell chime in? Did he build any roads to City states or to connect cities?

I don't see how you can only be charged for a road inside one of your city's cultural sphere... seems pretty obvious that without culture bumps and with no distance maitenance costs, you could build a city a long way away. And Greg talked about road cost being an impediment to spreading out.

Either the initial construction cost is high, or the maintenance cost is high; other wie the incentive is to build huge networks of roads in neutral territory. And the realism factor, in addition to the gameplay factor, would seem low if the peasants in neutral lands were maintaining roads.

 

[AriochIV]

Mythical, unseen, small peoples... so, the roads are maintained by fairies? Works for me.

Yes, the same Road Fairies that maintained roads from Civ I-IV.

 

[Thyrwyn]

RE: graphics:

I would guess that the screenshot of the French Empire was either on a dx9 PC or one with integrated graphics. You can tell by the cloud and water effects. Any of the of the other graphical glitches (lack of city markers) can probably be attributed to their system, as well.

Don't know what's up with the cheatcc pic - their system must have been really bad.

 

[Ahriman]

I think there are enough penalties for building cities a long way away (much harder to defend, for example) without needing to penalize you extra for maintaining a road to it.

Remember that in previous civs, more distant (or foreign continent) cities would have more valuable trade routes, representing that trade was more profitable with distant locations, because they traded relatively more exotic goods (cities further apart are more likely to have different endowments and produce different goods, and so have more scope for trade).
Yes, IRL further away means less trade because transport costs are higher, but this isn't much fun as a mechanic.

 

[Polobo]

I think there are enough penalties for building cities a long way away (much harder to defend, for example) without needing to penalize you extra for maintaining a road to it.

OK, but since you ARE penalized if that road traverses owned tiles the question becomes why should running it through neutral territory be treated differently?

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Roads? Where were going we wont need roads...

Oh wait, never mind.

I think that you should still have to pay maintenance for roads you build in neutral territory, after all it is in your civ's interest to maintain the roads.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think that you should still have to pay maintenance for roads you build in neutral territory, after all it is in your civ's interest to maintain the roads.

Determining which road is which would be a pain of micromanagement. Me bet is what neutral roads don't require maintenance.

 

[Polobo]

Determining which road is which would be a pain of micromanagement. Me bet is what neutral roads don't require maintenance.

If their means of calculating road maintenance requires ANY micromanagement at all I'd be extremely suprised. I outline (in post #19) a very straightforward mechanic to handle road maintenance - that incldues neutral territory roads, and I came up with it in about 10 minutes of thinking and don't have the same experience Firaxis has at programming Civ games.

May I politely suggest you think hard about questioning matters of programming efficiency and capabilities if you have never actually done programming before. Saying something is difficult is cheap since you have no need to provide proof/support for your statement. Provide your best possible algorithm (for anything) and say why it is not practical if you really want to make your opinion contribute something meaningful.

 

[Tarkhan]

Regardless of programming involvement, I don't want the AI to be able to build kilometers of roads over my land and be stuck footing the maintenance bill. But I also don't think you should have to pay for roads in enemy territory that you're obviously not maintaining.

:/

 

[Polobo]

I seriously doubt you can build a road in enemy territory. If you claim neutral roads then it is likely you'd want them anyway and you've been saved the expense of building them yourself.

Depending on pillage mechanics you could either pillage the neutral roads before you settle OR, for anything with (or even without) maintenance, you should have the option to demolish/disband it if it is in your territory - even if it takes worker actions to accomplish.

 

[stealth_nsk]

May I politely suggest you think hard about questioning matters of programming efficiency and capabilities if you have never actually done programming before.

Surely you could suggest that, while I have been programming for 18 years (12 years commercially)

The problem here is not related to programming in any aspect - it's purely gameplay issue. And as of gameplay - there's simple example. Let's say we have 2 cities, connected by road. 3 tiles of this road flow through neutral territory. Let's assume these tiles are maintained by the cities owner. Now, one of the cities gets conquered by another civ. Who now supports the neutral road and how many tiles?

 

[Polobo]

Yes, a single "current owner" flag - on each road - for whomever was the last to take ownership of the road. Initially the builder owns the road (can only be built in owned or neutral territory). If ownership changes whoever in tagged as "current owner" has their road maintenance pool reduced by 1 and the new owner has theirs increased by 1 - and the road now is tagged as owned by the new owner. If a road goes "unowned" (i.e., was owned but the city was razed or captured and the road is now neutral) then ONLY IN THAT CASE no-one pays maintenance. As soon as the road is recaptured the new owner pays for it.

@stealth - I see your point now in respect to how the mechanic can result in somewhat unrealistic or unfair maintenance situations but then the question is whether your scenario is common enough to warrant a special cases for road maintenance in neutral territory. I think it is rare enough that - aside from "disowned" neutrals - anyone who builds a road in neutral territory should be stuck paying for it as long as it is never owned. If you really want to stop paying you need to destroy the road.

With a tag added to each road (inexpensive to accomplish) you "could" just add a "owner layer" to - say - a "trade route" view to check which roads are tagged as yours and then look to see which are in neutral territory and should be pillaged/destroyed.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yes, a single "current owner" flag - on each road - for whomever was the last to take ownership of the road.

That's what I call micromanagement hell

There were unpredictable increases and decreases in income, once someone claims other's road. There will be situations there you don't want to own a tile (if it contains a road you use, but not pay for currently), etc.

A lot of complexity for no gameplay or even realism reasons.

 

[Polobo]

Your system doesn't work unless every single road has a flag saying who its owner is.

Any system without such a pool/flag is going to have issues since it is undesirable to look at every controlled tile, and check if there is a road, every turn. So somehow only specific events (gain or loss ownership of a tile) should impact the calculation and thus knowning, for each road, in which pool it is currently being counted, is necessary.

 

[Ahriman]

A lot of complexity for no gameplay or even realism reasons.

Precisely. Much easier to ignore direct ownership of improvements, and just have "ownership" mean within cultural borders.

 

[Polobo]

That's what I call micromanagement hell

There were unpredictable increases and decreases in income, once someone claims other's road. There will be situations there you don't want to own a tile (if it contains a road you use, but not pay for currently), etc.

A lot of complexity for no gameplay or even realism reasons.

Yeah, I'm going to NOT grab a tile (and forgo the food/production) because I would have to start paying for a road I find useful anyway. Plus I'd be leaving it open for the opponent to traverse.

Maybe, but personally I would just mostly ignore specific roads and just deal with whatever maintenance is shown.

I really do get the whole "I would choose not to maintain that road now that I lost my other city" but you probably would still find it of strategic use when you go to reclaim the city. Trade routes are not the only reason to build roads.

I'd program in maintenance as described and only if I felt that it really through off game balance would I make every neutral road have "no owner" and thus no-one paying for it. When the road was built in neutral territory it had value to the builder and thus should be paid for/maintained. I thin that in more cases it will be part of someones culture rather than being made irrelevant - in which case you WOULD be paying for it AND if you then lost it would it go "no owner" (a more common situation in my experience).

 

[stealth_nsk]

When the road was built in neutral territory it had value to the builder and thus should be paid for/maintained.

Look at this from the following angle - if you build a road in a neutral territory it already have a cost. If anyone will declare you a war, you can be sure - he/she already have a unit blocking this road. I'd not risk like that building roads over neutral tiles for 1-2 additional gold. Not saying what once your city grow, these sideways will cost you more than direct roads.

So I'd say there are no exploits here, neutral roads could be unmaintained.

 

[Caeserportugal]

From all the information revealed I think I will avoid building roads on neutral tiles. Some more insight could be told by Azazell.

 

[Polobo]

But early on there is alot of neutral territory if you are not buying culture in a direct line to your secondary cities. But, depending on movement effects, you would be building roads between these cities for both trade and strategic benefits. If those roads cost me nothing then I'd build them on tiles I don't plan to work for a while and benefit - in the early game - from having roads between all my cities that I am paying little maintenance for. Resources to the south but better city sites to the north mean I'll be going south for culture but north for roads.

Unless you are into total-war the early game, where this likely matters the most, is normally peaceful except for barbarians - which you should be preventing from pillaging all roads whether in your culture or not.

If you simply want road maintenance to be a game mechanic to prevent "road rage" then by all means there are enough other offsetting reasons for limiting the number of neutral roads that maintenance is not needed. I'd prefer that the general is that "roads have maintenance" and in only special cases would they not. In fact, I'd rather any road that goes ownerless be "pillaged" and then - when/if it is rebuilt - the rebuilder becomes the owner. If you do not want to pay for it then you also get no benefit from it.

 

[Ahriman]

Another interesting exploit; if you can't pillage/disband roads/improvements (or if the AI doesn't understand how to do so), then you could build a ton of them around the borders of another Civ, which will get socked with the maintenance penalty as their border expands onto the tiles.

Lots of problems like this once you start adding improvement maintenance costs.