We really want to avoid having to build “workers” or some other construction unit to build out of city improvements. But at the same time, we’d like it to be more interesting than simply clicking “build road to city X”.
What do you think?
I for one would like to be able to build forts on the roads and or Inns for long adventureres travels. Something more cosmetic than just a line.
Maybe also build traps on the roads. You could have builders buiolding your roads and have a magic builder putting traps for you.
I would enjoy that.
As for the mechanics I think you need units buiding the roads otherwise you could not stop somebody from building them. It would also be fun to be able to destroy roads. Destroy brideges over water and things like that.
I would like to build on some of the earlier posts which suggested the natural growth of a trail system between settlements. My suggestions are based on my observations from an earlier period of life when I spent a great deal of time living in wilderness areas in North and South America.
Encampments would spring up naturally around resources (like our cities will). The better the resources the faster the growth of the encampent (again like our cities). Given a minimal size of nearby encampments, people start to go back and forth to visit, find romance, tell stories, and trade items they can easily carry. Therefore the early trail springs up automatically, no investment needed, on a pretty direct route.
If the encampments grow sufficiently eventually traffic will increase to where there are not just people walking but now they want to use a mule to haul grain or ride a horse back and forth. Perhaps the trail will move slightly to avoid the branches and narrow spots or perhaps the people will cut down some trees to make the trail wider and drop a tree across the creek to make an inprovised bridge. The trail is now better and faster, minimal work has been put into it, but some work has. However, it is still a trail, not a road and no investment is needed, it naturally grows when population does.
If the settlement grows to where it is a real town there may arise a need to start pulling carts of food or wagons of trade goods back and forth. Now we need a wide trail without steep grades and with either fords across the streams or basic but solid bridges. We can no longer take the direct route across the ridge and wade the creek, we need the longer route over the pass and to the ford. Rocks need to be moved, potholes filled in, solid bridges built. Now we can move real quantities of grain, ore, manufactured goods and the gentry in their carraiges. At this point government usually spreads to the outlying encampments since tax collectors follow the goods. This level of road requires some investment but not a professional building crew. Town growth would be slowed if the investment is not made.
The next level is what we would call a road. The route is laid out by engineers, we lay stones, we spend a great deal of time and money building a real bridge. This road is much quicker to travel and can accomodate heavy loads (such as siege equipment) and fast travel, such as cavelry. This kind of road needs to be built by a professional. It is a significant boost to the economy and connects major cities.
In Summary:
- level 1 trail, automatic, slightly faster than cross country, no upkeep
- level 2 trail, automatic upgrade on time and population, faster travel, no upkeep
level 1 road, minimal cost, no specialized unit needed to build, faster travel, improved commerce, probably no upkeep, tax bonus
level 2 road, specialized unit needed to build, significant cost, very fast travel, very solid bonus to economy, probably rare to see these except between very large valuable cities after the passage of significant time.
Counter-Question: Is the problem that road building appears to be tedious, or the problem that you do not want an additional worker unit?
Here is a another counter-question: What choices should be involved? In other words, a terrible aspect of Civ is that there was a point at which your workers had nothing to do. There were no real strategic choices to be made, since there was no reason not to build roads and railroads everywhere.
Do you require a Carpenter unit to build a forge in a city? I think not.
Therefore: Let roads be able to be constructed, but there are no units necessary for it. "Build Road to X" is fine, as long as you have a slider (or other means of variable input) indicating how many resources you want to invest -- e.g. how fast the road will be built. Perhaps you can also "guard" the "workers" (who will not exist as individual units) by also clicking on a slider to mark how many "soldiers" (pick from a pool of available military units in the city) who will be assigned guard duty to minimize chances of random event: "Your construction workers have been attacked by trolls and have been sodomized to death; road work on road to PQR discontinued." That way, there are strategic choices to be made, but no additional micro and no pesky worker units.
Roads and building them are boring. Important (depending on the game mechanism for using them) but ultiamtely boring.
This is NOT SimRoad people.
I would suggest that 'links' be automatic between 'locations'. Links being paths.tracks.roads,highways.... Locations being cities, shards, special locations, ...
These 'links' need not be visable even until after some population or scouting threshhold is passed, but once a 'link' has become estabilished the player can devote 'resources' to improving the 'link'. Resources should be tied to technology, and have a cost, either in 'unit' time or city build time.
So at the start of the game you plop down your city and start exploring. You find a shard a bit away and a mine. 'Links' (probably just foot paths) wear in over a couple turns as we assume that your locals are out and about, and once the link is estabilished you have clickable options for it. Lets say you want to improve it to the next 'level' (technology based) so you click it and assign some standing 'units' (probably troops) to improve it. The troops are now assigned to the road, and over the next X-turns they are not available for other tasks (unless you take them off the 'link' project, but then you lose all [some?] of their work) until they have finished the upgrade. Alternatively (or in conjunction) you create a special building (tile) for your cities which automatically upgrades 'links' around that city upon completion (or over time).
As your technology improves you have more options for what to do with your links, and speed improvements for upgrading them. Eventually you reach the point where you can even plan your own 'links' and build specialized units (since I assume there will be specials to attach to your self made units) to trail blaze or whatever.
What I hate about roads in most games is that you spam them with zero penalty and zero reason. I do not think that in a fantasy setting there will simply be roads over the entire worlds. There will be roads between 'locations', and the wilds will be wild, no matter how big your empire gets, you should still have some wild left in it. Making roads everywhere should be actively discouraged. So much so that I think user control over roads should be removed until such a time as it makes sense for the empire (or kingdom I guess) to want to devote true men, material, and technology to the issue.
Honestly I'm hopeful that I'm not worried about roads because I'm more worried about dealing with actual fun parts of a fantasy game.
Wow this is clearly the MOST important issue in the game.
Personally I like the mixed idea best. Its annoying to have to build roads from city to city which is a nessesary part of the game. But I still want to give road benifits to other places.
I dont like workers, unless they are automated but manually assigning tens or hundreds of units indavidual orders is annoying.
Having the game automate the obvious connections like between citys or close resources would be nice but I still want to have direct control for other non city locations for example.
Well for today anyway
Why do you want direct control for noncity/resource locations? Who is building or using and maintaining a road to the middle of nowhere?
It's fine to want to be able to do that, but I don't see the point as it eventually leads to road spam. Though so long as the road building mechanic isn't tied to units building 'necessary' roads I suppose it doesn't matter. So if people want to play SimRoad they should be allowed to. Just don't muddle the mechanic to sate this <1% need.
So far this idea works for people who want to make their own roads and those who don't want to bother with them... And it was on the first page
That is a Opinion, my friend. I for one do not find building roads boring. What building roads should be though, is fast. Maybe not the actual construction, but laying them out. It doesn't take me long to lay down a line from point A to point B. More importantly if I want to design my own road network between my cities and other improvements I would put a few minutes of thought into it and where along the road network I would build defenses. That's not boring to me.
No kidding! We're all full of opinions, but thank you for pointing out that my opinions are different from yours. As if that probably wasn't clear from our earlier posts.
However, the issue to me isn't about it being boring or not, I fully admit that it is necessary to have roads. The question is how to make the game mechanic controling them present the user with meaningful choices. Allowing road spam (whether you would do it or not) is not providing a meaningful choice. Taking away a certain amount of freedom (or requiring tech/magic to access that freedom) in exchange for streamlining the mechanic such that it allows for choices to be taken without engaging in what alot of people apparently consider needless micromanagement (yes even tracing out your road route is probably needless since 99% of the time you're going to do it the same way) seems worthwhile of consideration.
You seem to want a SimRoad minigame in Elemetal, I can do without it, though I don't much care if it is in it so long as I never have to play it.
Im kind of for a builder/engineer, if he gets to do moore than just build roads, mabe give a bonus to building buildings when stationed in a town, build some kind of fortifications on the fields, you know, more than a use and trash unit.
Well, I don't want a SimRoad mini game, that I think would be boring
What I do want is the freedom to be able to use my roads defensively. If I wanted to design choke points in my road system I could lead the enemy where I want them and only need to guard key points. Perhaps I have 3 cities in one large area of the map, and four in another. The 3 closest cities would connect to each other with one road a piece leading to a "hub". That hub would branch off and lead to the other four cities farther away, connecting to their hub.
On a side note, something I notice with a lot of AI's in games like these is once they hit a road they tend to stay on it as it's the path of least resistance. Even if going through the woods to attack a city is closer, they'll stay on the road that extra one or two steps along the way instead of deviating through the woods like a human player would. With strategic road planning this can be used to the defenders advantage.
The last thing I want is for a simple road system to be over-complicated. You are right also in stating that probably 90% of the time my roads would be a simple line from point A to point B. Still there would be those times like I describe above or where the land simply might now allow a simplistic road structure, perhaps needing to lead through a mountain range where I can place a outpost to guard the road. At this point the player would need to be able to place their own roads.
We need workers. They can be raided and taken as slaves as well, wich is very fun. Workers are fun!!!
Indeed, you set the Blueprint for the Road. This can be a series of blueprints, or it can be a curvacious line drawn by the maps. You could use a "smooth design" option to remove minor redundancies to increase effieciency (aka remove the kinks in a drawn road-map, although wider meanders that are stragecially placed will remain the same).
Basically you can pick a city, plot out the Road course, and then it will be slowly built based upon the availability of Resources needed for Road Construction. (Stone, Cobble, Mortar, Gravel?? perhaps Asphalt roads will be a high-end tech to make roads travel significantly faster). This way, the entirety of the Road contruction is built by the city.
An alternate idea is to Build Inns at certain points between two cities, assuming that Caravans will path-find themselves to the Inns, creating a "dirt road". Perhaps dirt roads will not form naturally between cities like previously assumed, although will begin to form as Armed Caravans will pathfind themselves to Inns. Maybe if Cities are close enough together (farm from city X is only 3-5 tiles from the barracks of City Z) then a caravan will naturally caravan on its own ... however the most likely of cases is that the construction of Rural Inns will be the first way to form a dirt pathway.
The benefit to Dirt pathways is that when you DO pick city X to build road Y, the road will be much cheaper for every mile that overlaps the Dirt pathway. So a road that is merely an "improvement" of the dirt pathway is a full 50% cheaper, while a road that uses half of the Dirt pathway, and an equidistant half of new roadway, will only be 75% cheaper in contruction cost/speed.
I think this idea (the first combined with the second) would be the best choice. As long as your Inn is within 8 tiles of nearest city tile, Caravan will reach it and make a dirt pathway in the process (to give an example). If such pathfinding/caravan-created-dirtroads is not possible, then simply have the City build a road created in a similar way as a Sim game .... sounds like the best decision to me.
As for basic road speeds, depends on how you handle movement. If its complex, I would say a Dirt path is a 30% increase in speed, a paved road is a 60% increase in speed, and a WIDE paved road is 100% increase in speed.
-I understand opinions may vary.
-also, certain seige units should probably require some sort of roads to travel upon. (if we even end up using seige)
-if enemy military units occupy the zone, construction of road is placed on Stasis and the next in the build que is built. To build a road, you need for the road-zone to be either Neutral Occupied, or Occupied by your own soldiers. For every turn that the road-zone is otherwise occupied, is a turn your city is building something else.
I'm OK with any of the main suggestions: Organic, city built or with a worker type unit.
If we use Organic or city built I would like the ability to choose the path as an additional option. Organic could go between the cities, but allow the ability for the player to control a path for strategic values.
I like the idea of multiple road levels, fits in with the housing levels.
If we use workers, they need to avoid the problem of being useless late game. Either a quick way to decommission them that doesn't penalize you too much or be exploitable, or give them a second mission: military or other construction use. They could be reabsorbed by the city as a type of bonus, like a Civ 4 Great Person.
Magic: if you can cast a spell that creates a volcano or changes the landscape, how hard can it be to create a road in the same vein? There should be a spell to create roads instantly in addition to any other method.
I also like the idea of a negative or balancing downside for building roads, especially if there is player control of building them. In Civ games it is just goofy that you have every single square covered in railroads by late game. There should be an upkeep cost to the roads for maintenance that is transperant to the player so that the player can determine where the break point is in that building another road is no longer cost effective.
The exsisting select town to town style works. You might incorporate the Click and Drag, with nodes (every click drops a node thus allows a directional change at siad nodes along the route.
Once in place, the route could then be improved via the Govenor or City Level system in place already. I add a Gov., he sees trade growth, he knows the roads should be improved (bonus to commerce), a pop up comes up. Gov of Town X wants funds for Roads? (cost and turns for improvement listed) (Y/N).
Roads would upgrades, at least graphically over time (noted turns required to do the upgrade) either over the total length, or creep along from the originating city to the connector (use caravans as the update/upgrade medium).
The roads level can be given 3-4 settings (a choice for the Coders) and witrh each upgrade requested by the local Gov. the cost of maintenance goes up as well.
Crazy road builders who like really nice stone roads have to pay the price but get goods moved better, vs the spend thrift who can live with slower caravans with the trade off being the availability of more liguid Cash/Gold for other things.
So, as the Player, I just have to agree with the Gov. to spend resources on improvements. (1 click) or not.
Simple, effective and the choice is the players.
And I've no problem with the player placing their own roads. I think though that it should come at a higher cost than the 'automated' systems being discussed. Be it through tech, units, military, magic, or some combination of them.
However, since you mention AI, I'd like to add my thoughts on that
No matter how much credit SD gets for making great AIs, they simply do not seem to get the strategic movement part right. For that reason I'd prefer to simply remove some of the variable so that the AIs are on a more even footing with the players. Sure it's fun to figure out how to 'run around' the AI, but once you've figured it out that part of the game is dead because the AI will never figure out a counter for it.
Limiting player choices always sounds bad, but in the case where it makes the AI better I think it can be justified. I hear what you are saying about defenders advantage, but if the AI is incapeable of using this advantage (and I show my SP bias, I don't care at all about MP and will state that right now) then I'd rather it simply not exist for either side.
Of course the counter is that if you're playing SP, just don't use whatever cheese you don't want to. I've never liked that argument because I think it allows for what I consider poorly implemented game mechanics, but then again I shouldn't be telling anyone else how to play their games.
So when it comes to roads in Elemental I worry that the same problems I found in GC2 will crop up. That the AI cannot use them 'correctly' and the player will again have a huge advantage strategically (which is where the AI usually has its hands full anyway).
Perhaps they can build in a setting to allow one to chose either manual or automatic road design, then everyone could perhaps have it the way they want it.
In case there is a road upgrade mechanism from trail to "highway", level upgrade should be limited by city level. The upgrade to the highest type of road should only be available on a road between 2 level 5 cities.
A kind of matrix on city sizes could be set or a rule like Max road level = Min city level between city A and B.
My 2 cents.
Edit: changed rule example.
I think that 1 road per City Size should be greatest level of efficiency.
2 roads per city size is OK, but depends on how wealthy that settlement is.
any roads beyond 2 per city size RAPIDLY should decrease efficiency in an expedient downward spiral.
Essentially, a Grande ROME style level 5 City can have 10 roads coming from it and be OK, however if it was a relatively poor level 5 city, and still had 10 roads stemming from it .... we would start to see problems. Beyond that point, roads should start to be rather costly. This would mean that away from cities, in the outlands ... roads are a very rare thing, however in the central locales of your empire roads are relatively frequent. This seems like a good trade-off for me.
To force building more roads should rapidly decrease efficiency. Say settlement level is X. having X roads is absolutely free. Having between X+1 and 2X roads is, say 1 maintanence (as much as a settlement maintanence). Each additional road, every 2X++ road would cost an additional 1 maintanence.
OR if you want it to be REALLY inefficient, then X roads are still free, every road between X+1 and 2X are 1 maintanence, and each road BEYOND that are 1++, so the 11th road would cost 2 maintanence, 12th would cost 3, 13th would cost 4.
Or a middle ground where all roads beyond 2X would cost 2 maintanence. Just depends on how prolific Gold is, and how badly you wish to cut-down on excessive Road-Building.
egads, double post ...
Honestly, have roads develop automatically based on city size and technology, with trade volume and millitary presence infulencing things as well.
A small town, little trade, early game, with a minimal garrison should maybe get a road to the (assumingly decent sized capital) after maybe 5 turns of being eligible. The road should be little more than a well worn trail.
Down the line, when that small town become a bustling trade center, have it sprout roads to other nearby cities and even a sizable highway to the capital (which could just be the largest city in the area, or the actual capital).
When the little city becomes massive, and its importance is global, have IT be the center for other cities to build roads. Maybe even have roads that we once important fade into minor trails. If the tech is good enough, perhaps have highways paved or atleast cobblestone.
Also, leave in the road building option but make it expensive and take a little time anyway. I should be allowed to build a highway to my tiny useless town on the other side of the continent, but it should cost me. If a city is really far away from any other population center, maybe building a road could be the only (very expensive) way to connect it. That would help slow the Infinite city sprawn these games end up having.
i really like the idea of organic roads as well. it seems to me that for the most part the merchants in the ancient and medieval times were prob the ones that built most of the roads, considering they gained the most profit from it.
also the roads should find the easist, not necessarily the quickest as most people would naurally gravitate to a comfortable and easy path around a mountain instead of over it(unless the mountain chain was just to long).
i think that roads should upgrade automatically overtime based on how profitable, well traveled, city levels connected, or even by special spells cast on them.
finally i think that caravans would need protecting. bandits, wandering monsters, and other such things would attack the roads periodically. this could be offset by either dedicating military units to patrol the roads, upgrade merchant guilds with caravan guards, or have your governer do it by putting "protect roads" higher up on his priority list on roads going to and from his city. you could also have spells protect the roads as well, such as a spell that would put magical everburning lights that illuminate the roads at night thus decreasing banditry.
Well, roads could be built automatically between structures without the player needing to do anything.
When the player wants a specific road built, he can manually click and drag the road to whereever he wants to. I don't know how you can make it any more deep then that Frogboy.
I like the idea of a trail developing out of use between cities. having the ability to upgrade these roads would be nice. Not to important to me whether it is a specific unit, a reasearch, or a military unit.
A specific unit-- an engineer that builds all types of thing would be okay.
research--you could have it once two points are conected through a natural trail as discussed. City to City, farm to city, etc. You have the ability to research to improve that road. That way you are getting the benefit a "natural" road be developed, but can improve it if you choose.
military--military units were used for construction all the time. a castle game i played once had the grunt infantry build moats.
The reverse should also be true if roads developing naturally though. If a road starts develping between two cities, and one of those cities is destroyed. The convoys and traders would not be walking on it as much so the road should gradually fade away.
I agree with this as well. If there's another use planned for roads there might be some problem with this method, but as I understand it now they're only meant to go between cities. I'd really like to see no manual control of roads at all except perhaps a cost-related option in the mid-to-late game of being able to nudge their paths more optimally if the AI didn't do a perfect job.
Ideally, I'd like to see the player research trade and the caravans would start off moving quite slow inbetween towns. After a number of turns, a worn path would appear marking the route they have been taking and symbolizing wearing down grass, rocks and other obstacles. The AI would primarily concern itself with the route of shortest distance while avoiding any major obstacles like lakes, mountains or monster dens. Then as research permitted, gravel, paved and further road improvements could be paid for increasing the travel rate over those already laid out paths. It would also be great if the player could choose which paths to actually pay to improve as perhaps the route between your two giant trading towns is critically important, but you don't really care about the speed your caravans move at to and from an outpost of no particular worth.
Ultimately though, if none of that is possible, the one thing I truly do NOT want to see are roads like in the Civ games where they criss-cross through every possible section of land. I want to be able to enjoy looking at the hills and forests once the cloth map isn't the only option and not see trade veins going every which way connecting any possible place to every other place in the entire world.
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