Why do AI civs always build roads connecting *every* resource?

[Jeff O'Connor]

Forgive me if I'm asking a question and there's a perfectly logical answer, as I am, after all, relatively new to everything, but thusfar, I haven't for the life of me figured out a solid reason as to why you'd want roads leading to, say, farms and cottages.

I mean, is it so that their units can get to them quickly for defensive purposes? Or is there actually some form of benefit outside of that? Because I'll be darned if I 'waste' Worker turns building roads that connect with my hamlets and all that earlier on, when there are forests to chop, new cities to connect, etc.

Thanks!

 

[Monkeyfinger]

I mean, is it so that their units can get to them quickly for defensive purposes?

Yep.

Don't get me wrong, the worker tasks you listed are more important. But if they run out of such tasks, roading over everything is a good a spending of their time as any.

 

[Jeff O'Connor]

Haha, so I realized, I fail at topic titles. Of course they're going to connect every resource... I meant improvements, clearly.

But, righto. I suppose it makes sense in the end. I guess I just need to get better at improving tiles more quickly, because I swear, my opponents are pullin' that stuff uber-early. >_>

Thanks a million!

 

[gallego]

You also want to have lots of different connections between your cities so that you don't get cut off easily by pillaging.

 

[Kesshi]

Hello Jeff O'Connor,

I think the answer to your question is the same reason I do it. You probably already know that while you are moving through enemy territory, you do not receive the road bonuses, but the enemy does. Of course the same applies in reverse. When an enemy is attacking you, usually it will bring a lot of 1 movement units. Even if they can't take the city, they can cause a lot of grief by pillaging useful resources. A well built transportation system (read: roads) lets you quickly respond to pillaging units.

Even if the enemy does bring along two movement units your slowest units will move 3 spaces along roads, catching up to the enemy's quicker units even at the earliest stage of the game. While your faster units will move 6 spaces if you have any. This can easily be the difference between life or death of your frontline cities, or getting to your Iron before the roaming barbarian pillages the mine.

Consider this scenario:

You settled a city to connect to Iron. You find an excellent spot to settle where there is some iron 2n1w from the iron. You mine the iron, and only build a road 1nw of your city. Wanting to protect your iron, you park 2 archers on it, and you have a few archers for garrison duty while your worker goes off to do other workerly things. Along comes an enemy with a few swordsmen. No match for your archer to attack, however there's no way the swordsmen are going to be able to attack your fortified archers on the mountains. So your Iron is safe, right? Wrong. All it takes is a single pillage of the road connecting the iron to the city, and you've lost your iron. had you built more roads (and built offensive units for garrison duty as well) your iron wouldn't have been lost as easily.

I hope this helps.

 

[LlamaCat]

I thought the answer to this question would be obvious to anyone -- roads increase the speed of your movements. But you seem to be implying that the AIs are building roads on just about every tile around cities? I don't see them doing this at all in my games... they road in fairly logical lines to connect resources and in between cities. I don't see web-like road networks covering the entire set of their tiles. Is that what you are seeing?

Related question: WHY is it that you do not get the movement bonus for enemy roads in this game? I've never understood that. In real life there is no correlation. If I am driving down a road in another country that I am attacking (or just visiting) the road would work just as well as my own.

 

[levyavi]

Related question: WHY is it that you do not get the movement bonus for enemy roads in this game? I've never understood that. In real life there is no correlation. If I am driving down a road in another country that I am attacking (or just visiting) the road would work just as well as my own.

I always thought of it as road blocks and land mines.

 

[Deriem]

This AI behaviour can really benefit you!

...

If you have an army of Commando promoted troops!
But really, this gets annoying. In one war of mine the enemy had all their oil and aluminum in the very north of their territory. They were defended by imposing stacks, so I tried to pillage the connecting roads. About a zillion roads connecting them, so that didn't work out so well!

 

[Jeff O'Connor]

Thanks for all the follow-ups, everyone. I got what I came here for, and then some. Just how I like it.

(I swear I'll be knowledged enough in the field of Civilization soon to be a bit less... shortwinded...)

And LlamaCat, yeah, to an extent it was just the obvious explanation. But the civs I've run into thusfar do seem to build roads everywhere -- but then, I'm often noticing this in the modern era, so I guess by then those workers have just gotten that bored.

 

[kazapp]

Related question: WHY is it that you do not get the movement bonus for enemy roads in this game? I've never understood that. In real life there is no correlation. If I am driving down a road in another country that I am attacking (or just visiting) the road would work just as well as my own.

That's because it's a great idea for game balance to deny invasion troops use of defender's transportation.

It would be ridiculously easy to pillage an enemy to death, steal workers all over the place etc etc if you could use his roads. Which, incidentally, makes that promotion (is it called Commando?) all the more sweet.

If the game had featured realistic-sized maps, then perhaps this wouldn't be needed. But it doesn't: unless you play Huge maps, a unit moving 6 steps could walk through an empire in just a few short moves, which not only is clearly unrealistic but makes "frontlines" a no concept.