When do roads between cities amortize?

[BenRabstar]

I just played the demo yesterday and am wondering on when building a connecting street between two cities.
I did when The cities were at pop 5 and 3 and i needed 6 roads.
So I had 6 gold maintainance costs for streets and got about 3 gold for the trade route.
Does anyone know how to calculate the potential amount of gold you get from a trade route. This would be very needful to estimate when to build the street!

 

[Mutineer]

Well, not having civ 5 yet, but from theory amount of gold from trade is not the only reason to build road. faster trop movement could be a big incentive to do that before it's payed off.

 

[KCMcG]

I had a size 7 city connect with a size 5 city from 4 roads and got 6 gold/turn. I think the closer your cities are the faster it pays off.

 

[Ahriman]

I haven't double checked to make sure that this is true, but one theory around before was that trade route income from city X = min[population of city X, population of capital]

 

[KCMcG]

I haven't double checked to make sure that this is true, but one theory around before was that trade route income from city X = min[population of city X, population of capital]

I may have been wrong about my sizes. I was going from memory, but the second city may have grown to size 6 before I finished the trade route. I'll have to confirm when I get home.

 

[BjoernLars]

Another reason to connect your cities would be the Liberty sub policy of Meritocracy: +1 happiness for each city connected to the capital

 

[Shillen]

Another reason to connect your cities would be the Liberty sub policy of Meritocracy: +1 happiness for each city connected to the capital

And when you get railroad any city connected to your capital gets a production bonus. I'm sure there are other benefits as well.

 

[alpaca]

The trade routes add approximately one gold for each pop in the connected city. The capital just makes a minor adjustment to this so instead of 1 you get 1.1 or so with a bigger capital. At any rate the population in the non-capital city is proportional to the gold income (two citizen cities yield twice as much as one citizen cities).

 

[King Jason]

It may not have a definite mathematical reasoning behind it... but it would make sense to not build a road of X distance until the capital is X population.

So don't build a road of 6 if the pop is 4-5... Again, there's no math behind this, but since the route is all pop-based (obviously with the pop of the other city mattering), it does kind of make sense.

 

[alpaca]

It may not have a definite mathematical reasoning behind it... but it would make sense to not build a road of X distance until the capital is X population.

So don't build a road of 6 if the pop is 4-5... Again, there's no math behind this, but since the route is all pop-based (obviously with the pop of the other city mattering), it does kind of make sense.

This works if you replace it with "until the city you want to connect has x population". Although it should be mentioned that the strategic value of roads can be quite great, especially in case of an attack.

 

[Thalassicus]

Keep in mind you also get the movement bonus, so even if you have a slight financial loss it can be significantly worth it to still build the road.