where do i build roads?

[sabutai]

hi, i'm a newb

among my other problems i have no idea where to build roads...2 examples

if i have two cities that are connected by the "influence" blob do i need to build roads between them?

if i have iron in a city's influence, do i need to make a road from the iron to the city?

the manual and some things i have looked up about this subject are confusing

 

[vale]

The short answer is: it depends. Rivers act as roads throughout your empire so if your two cities are both adjacent to the same river they are already connected for trading purposes. Similarly if your mined iron is riverside to the same river, it is already hooked up for purposes of resource production. The detailed city screen is very useful for determining the status of a connection. If the iron isn't showing up, or the secondary city is not receiving the empires resources, then you need to build roads. You can piggyback your network off of rivers though to save some time in the early going.

The more thorough answer is that roads are useful for much more than just connecting resources. Rapid movement throughout your empire and beyond can be critical when at war or even to efficiently deal with barbarian incursions. It also even pays to have some parts of it be redundant in case of pillaging.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

hi, i'm a newb

among my other problems i have no idea where to build roads...2 examples

if i have two cities that are connected by the "influence" blob do i need to build roads between them?

if i have iron in a city's influence, do i need to make a road from the iron to the city?

the manual and some things i have looked up about this subject are confusing

You need to build them to connect resources even if they are in the cities influence. The main exception is if they are on a river and the city is on the same river.

In general you won't go wrong always connecting your resources with roads. You need to defend them anyway. Once your critical resources are connected you will also normally want to connect your cities with roads too.

 

[sabutai]

should i connect every recourse, like wine, cows etc?

 

[cabert]

should i connect every recourse, like wine, cows etc?

yep
it's not always a priority, as you may not need the bonus in the next few turns (like when your biggest city is size 2 and you have a health cap of 5), but in the end, you will need to connect them all.
Trading them away is a good source of revenue.

 

[Znabel15]

hi, i'm a newb

among my other problems i have no idea where to build roads...2 examples

if i have two cities that are connected by the "influence" blob do i need to build roads between them?

if i have iron in a city's influence, do i need to make a road from the iron to the city?

the manual and some things i have looked up about this subject are confusing

1. If you see the *recycling*-icon beside the cultural defence bonus, then the city is connected to your trade network, either via road, river or coast.
The "influence" blob as you call it has nothing to do with it.
But in any case I would definately connect the cities by road, because you can then send troops faster in case of an emergency.

2. Probably, unless it`s beside a river, but in any case you`ll get a notification that you have connected the resource once it is online.
If you are connected via river, you`ll get it as soon as the mine\farm\plantation is completed.
Otherwise you`ll get it once the road is completed.
If I am not mistaken you can overlap with road and river, say that your capitol is connected to a river, and copper is one tile away from the river, you only have to build a road from the copper to the river and you are connected.

 

[sabutai]

cool, i finally got the roads thing, now i gotta figure out this wierd combat system and other mind boggling things

thanks dudes

 

[OTAKUjbski]

among my other problems i have no idea where to build roads

In addition to using roads to hook up your cities & resources, I often use roads to hook up to my soon-to-be (or current) military victims.

I think no matter what the time period, the quicker you can get to your opponent's doorstep, the less likely it is for him to build or upgrade better defenses.

Obviously, this can only be utilized when there is neutral ground to cover and can also be used against you. But, if you're rushing somebody, it's probably because their defenses are allowing for it.

I find this especially true with very early rushes where you need to beat cultural defense bonuses as best as possible.

 

[Lugo Moll]

should i connect every recourse, like wine, cows etc?

Hold your mouse over the resource. If the text in the lower left corner of the screen say it requires a route, then build a road to it.

 

[Bradlius]

In addition to using roads to hook up your cities & resources, I often use roads to hook up to my soon-to-be (or current) military victims.
[/I]

And for the non-warmonging, you can build roads to connect to other civs to open up routes for resource trading (and religion spreading).

 

[LucyDuke]

should i connect every recourse, like wine, cows etc?

Not necessarily. Cows right away, as you get animal husbandry pretty early. Wheat, iron, same thing. You can hold off on the "plantation luxuries", and anything else you can't use right away. The wine is useless until you get Monarchy, the sugar, incense, dye, and spices (did I miss any?) are useless until you get Calendar, so you don't need to road those right away. I like to farm these tiles when possible, though, before the tech lets you build a plantation, because of the bonuses.

 

[Maydrock]

I like to road my fronts two tiles deep and then fortify on the second tile. That way stacks can't get at my forces on an initial attack except for horsemen, and if they want to attack my fortified spearman by themselves, then bring it on. It also allows for reinforcements from further down the front to slide over if need be. As far as the horsemen coming across that do an initial two tile jump to try to get at resources, my road work allows me to easily slide back and forth to take them out. No matter where they come through there will be at least one spearman to either side of them.

Edit: Usually the road net will cause them to get hung up pillaging useless road tiles that gives me even a better response time.

 

[Carnage04]

Not to go off on a tangent, but didn't roads in Civ2 give you +1 Gold on the tile and railroads give +1 shield?

 

[OctavianFlu]

sabutai -- I would suggest going through some of the scenarios they have available. I found them quite helpful in improving my game. For example, the Alexander Scenario was good at practicing conquests, the Barb scenario is good for city attacking, and Chinese Unification for diplomacy. I am sure there are better things to do to help, but after finishing all of the scenarios I found myself playing Prince level games from Noble.

 

[cabert]

Not to go off on a tangent, but didn't roads in Civ2 give you +1 Gold on the tile and railroads give +1 shield?

yep, and since it was pretty stupid, it was removed.

Now you get +1 shield from railroads on mines and lumbermills (and quarries in the latest warlords patch)

 

[Ray Patterson]

yep, and since it was pretty stupid, it was removed.

It was pretty stupid, when you were building roads on empty terrain. Now however, you have all these booming towns that are not connected to roads . Perhaps it would be better if a hamlet needs a road to develop into a village...

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Not to go off on a tangent, but didn't roads in Civ2 give you +1 Gold on the tile and railroads give +1 shield?

Didn't CivII also let you build roads on water tiles if your settler was in a boat? Or was that CivI?

Either way, I'm upset they took that out.

 

[UncleJJ]

Apart from the obvious need to link resources to get their benefit; the main reason I build roads is to speed up the strategic movement of my armies and to speed up reserves getting to the front. It makes a huge difference to slow moving troops like axemen and catapults... double speed in the early game and triple after Engineering. There are also benefits moving mounted troops in difficult terrain like hills and woods. Roads are essential for an active warmonger. Later they are turned to railroads for even faster movement. So basically I build roads whereever it will help me to attack or defend better.

 

[Cosmichail]

the sugar, incense, dye, and spices (did I miss any?) are useless until you get Calendar

Not really I tend to either cottage them or farm them. (not incense of course) Cottage dyes and get good commerce right away and then when you have calender change it to plantation. That way you get use out of these resources prior to calender. Sugar for instance on a river farmed will get 4 food so it's useful to still do something with them.

 

[Welnic]

... the sugar, incense, dye, and spices (did I miss any?) are useless until you get Calendar ...

bananas and silk