When should you build roads?

[thadian]

i remove all AI roads to nothing, and ALL of my roads are in a straight line from one point to another. To be honest, i don't build roads at all until i have a small army. even when i have 3 cities, my workers can move about them just fine without roads. If i have a lot of hills i might build a few early to circumvent the movement penalty. Otherwise i don't build roads at all until i have my improvements made and GPT coming in. That way when a completed road reduces my GPT i monitor my resources better.


The big thing that made me go from prince to emperor - road management. it was my whole problem all along. once i fixed the issue in my gameplay, i started getting dividends of 20+ gpt instead of -20gpt.

If you have to have a city some 8-12 plots away - take the waste and build a road to it NOW. but if you have 3-4 cities in proximity of each other and your not getting invaded then you don't need roads. also, there is no stack of doom so you can keep your army on border cities instead of hiding them inside a city with 1-2 false stacks. this reduces the need for roads because your troops are already on spot.

 

[TomMcV]

(Strategic) Roads might cost money but they also save you money - a good road network means your empire needs less units to defend itself. And I will build "unneccessary" roads across difficult terrain near the border of a powerful enemy. When they DoW it is incredibly useful to be able to get troops quickly into a defensive line on hills, or travel through marshes where the enemy cannot.

Altho, given how bad the AI is maybe this road building is completely pointless..

 

[timtofly]

After you build a few markets.

 

[TPQ]

I always seem to build them too early and they crash my economy.

I usually wait until my capital is size 6 to start building roads so it'll be size 7+ when my core cities are connected up.

Sometimes it's worth running a deficit for roads if there's a good strategic reason for them, but otherwise I usually try to hold off until they'll at least pay for themselves through trade route income.

Arabia is a civ where it's usually feasible to get trade routes up as early as possible.

 

[terminus467]

A lot of people seem to be saying "Only connect once it is profitable". I'm not really down with that. I'd say that there are plenty of times when you should connect before it's profitable. First of all, you don't know if your workers will be available later when the city IS profitable (and you'll be kicking yourself for not building the road earlier). The second thing to take into account is the mobility that roads give you. I always play MP as Rome and while I'm gearing up for war with a neighbor I'll start building roads from my capitol (at least to the city closest to my enemy) and it allows me to get troops there very quickly. I think it's totally worthwhile for offensive and defensive reasons, not to mention that it also lets your workers get around quicker.

 

[pennjersey83]

I seem to start building roads around 600 B.C. when I have 3-4 cities.