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 like this idea
when you order to build a road some "workforce" from the nearest town is used (and eventually some resourses) etc etc
simple and nice
I love the organic suggestion where paths appear with caravans from one place to another. They may not take the best route available. With upgrades coming from technical or needing special materials (stone quary)
But a possible tie in to the Governor options that was posted by Boogie could be added to the roads. A higher level of governor gives you more control over how the roads are around that particular town he/she is in. So a level 3 governor can go out and "build" 6 tiles worht of road away from where he governs, lowering the cost of building, etc. While a level 5 can go out 10 tiles.
I like the military unit road building option. Something to keep them busy... don't want military sit idle now do we.
Another option might be to let you buy the road in a city, Like x gold for the road from A to B taking 4 turns. Then in those 4 turns have an animation of the road being build till it connects to the other city.
That's the nice thing about the organic road concept. Your people make trails as they travel. You don't have to pay anything for them, but you also don't control where they go. You wind up with some kind of links between towns, though not great ones, and possibly not over ideal routes.
If you want control, you pay to have better roads built and maintained. You won't see people spam paved stone roads everywhere due to the upkeep cost to maintain it. So where you build your quality roads becomes a decision, rather then "spam roads everywhere because there's no reason not to".
I just want to comment on how people see the roads in Civ4, as my opinion differs greatly from the one I see in these posts. A lot of people seem to think that it is anormal to see roads on every single square in Civ4. I strongly disagree with this. The game is designed to show us each square as being a possible site for a city. Think about it, that means every square represents a LOT of "space" to build on. In our modern world, there is a road (and not a trail, btw) branching off highways every 1-10 kilometers to join a smaller town (just like the ones you can build on the Civ4 squares) even in less populated areas (like Saskatchewan, where I live right now) where roads are surrounded by miles and miles of farming fields. It all depends on how much "space" a tile in Elemental is supposed to take. In Civ4, those squares are maybe 25x25 or 50x50 kms if you estimate the size of a big city nowadays. There is therefore bound to be a road somewhere in every tile connecting everything around it. Especially since your workers build an improvement (be it a hamlet, windmill, mine, etc.) on virtually every tile in Civ4. If cities in Elemental take many tiles instead of just one (which means each one represent less "space"), then maybe there won't be a road in each one of them, but that depends on how you separate the chess board you're playing on.
Oh and btw, keep up the good ideas people, I personnally like many of the ideas people are promoting in this post, especially the "organic" roads. I did like the "worker" idea, but since reading all the other posts which offer a lot more than simple "workers" I must say I'd rather not see them in the game.
How about something as simple as this. There's a tab in the city screen that lets you choose trading partners for the city. When you found a new city, it automatically gets added to the list in it's possible trading partner cities and a caravan unit starts to try to make it's way there. When it arrives unmolested a level 1 road is built along the path taken by the trader. If a monster or a hostile player interrupts the caravan unit, then no road is built. That way, a safe path bereft of bandits and monsters will lead to a road being built fairly quickly and easily, not to mention naturally\organically, while a monster infested region requires an escort\ranger group to clear it first.
As more caravans start to go back and forth the road gains in levels, say after 10 trips to and fro it becomes a brick road, and after 50 trips it becomes a roman highway, it might be an idea to have a research requirement for the roads aswell. The roads most used in trade grow the fastest, and the most natural paths with the least amount of obstacles grow naturally to become the most effective and used roads in your empire. No hassle. Heck, there might be no reason to even have the aforementioned tab, why not just make the whole process automatic? When a city is started it automatically starts trading with it's neighbours and a script determines what path the trader unit should take based on previous enclaves and the roads connecting them, not to mention the state of those roads.
If we want to make it even more complicated, the pathing of the traders should adapt as the terrain shifts and forests are cut down and grow up, mountains are leveled and raised and so forth. What i mean is, if a road is not crossed by a trader for a number of turns, the parts of the road that was not traversed starts to degrade in level, until it eventually disappears back into nature. Imagine a road between two cities separated by a local mountain range. The two cities have a trading relationship for 50 turns and the road between them is traversed by a number of traders based on the improvements in the two cities and the size of the two cities. The amount of trade on the road, and on all parts of the road determines the general state of the road. This doesnt need to be too complicated, it just needs to be able to adapt to new road conditions. Say a channeler lowers the center part of the mountain range allowing for traders to pass through the newly created path between the mountain tops. The path the traders take should automatically calculate that it is faster and start using that instead. Eventually a new road is built there as more people travel it, and the road that circles the range falls into disrepair.
Uh. Didnt seem to be very simple at all, really. I guess i'll summarize the idea :
Let traders be fully automatic in what paths they take between cities and let trader numbers be determined by the improvements\size of the city. As traders travel a path, a road begins to form, one to and fro makes a dirt road, ten to and fro's make a paved one, so on. If a road falls into disuse or the ones using it frequently fall pray to banditry, then the road should start to decrease in level. As new cities are built, traders should update their paths, and as the map changes and paths are made and blocked, traders should update their paths. Fully organic roads with almost no micromanagement hassle and fairly visible mechanics.
I'd say go with a worker unit, but make that unit either able to rejoin a city as population or upgradeable to a different unit type later.
Why not just modify what's already in the game? Since beta1a there's been a scout item that you could add to your units. I think all it really does is add sight distance. But then if I remember correctly there are other things that do the same and cost less. Point is why not give scouts the ability to Trailblaze. Meaning any unit equiped with the scout pack gets increased sight radius/movement points plus the ability to build roads/trails. This solves a lot of problems as one you can manually direct it's road building if you so choose, or you can just click on a a city and have him build the road automatically each turn. Also it's not a useless unit as scouts are necessary at all points in a game (except maybe the very end). Also having units do the work means an opponent can hinder the roads progress. Which to me can be important if said road is being buiilt towards your city >.>.
As for making roads more interesting. I like the idea of the trail upgrading as it's used. Going maybe from trail to dirt road to cobblestoned. The first two levels being automatic and free simply from use the last being an researched upgrade.
I also like the idea of side road inns and such. I think that while many won't want to play "Simroad" if it's in there it'll reward those players that do with a more efficient or safer economy. It can be as simple as adding the ability to assign a party of swordsmen to patrol/guard a particular stretch or road. (end to end is easiest) Keeping the trade caravans relatively safe from roaming mobs. Auto engaging any group of mobs within 2 tiles of either side of the road. The hardest part would be coding the AI to judge whether it should auto engage a larger force or not. Also it could lead to a lot of unexpected combat prompts that can get annoying after awhile.
It'd also be nice if there was a means of undoing roads via magic.
Please anything but worker units. Otherwise, why not just wait until someone makes an Elemental mod for Civ 4?
I think this is one of those areas where a worker will add micro, but will not any "real" fun, that is, fun outside of the joy some derive out of micro for its own sake.
I like the idea of making the road an out-of-city building so that it is customizable, but I don't need extra units around that can be killed and need annoying levels of micromanagement.
I would also be fine with auto-roads as you have had so far. I think the loss of strategic road placement is small enough (I feel that in the default scenario, custom road building will have no appreciable advantage over automated road building) to justify giving it up for the huge benefit of not having to micromanage builder units just to have this one feature available.
A big no to organic roads.
Roads have tactical value.
As a King I want to control where roads are built. So I don't want to have a road that opens my city to quick invasion from my neighbours.
With organic roads I would have to station toops to pillage the ever growing weed roads that make my kingdon undefendable.
The only game that got the whole roads/farms/mines/terraforming/fortress thing and their upgrades right was civilization call to power.
You had infrastructure points that you got from cities with a slider setting (this could be set in a city level or in a global way). Then you would spend those points to build anything you wanted either around your cities or next to your existing roads/improvements. Each item would take some time to be built so no instant road networks were possible.
Why is it the best?
-No stupid engineer units.
-Old cities can help with the infrastructure of new cities. This was also possible with workers but the workers had to cross entire continents to get to work and that would take ages.
-It was balanced in both early game and late game.
-It wasn't tedious at all, and was quite fun indeed.
Also as Elemental is concerned, have enchanted roads/improvements as a map spell only in order to make it unique.
I'd go for having roads between two settlements etched out on a plan line in a 'surveyor' mode that you can enter and the road that is built over time corresponds to the highest level settlement it is attached to, so you'd have good roads between a class three and class one town, but a dirt track between two class ones'. That way you'd avoid low-level towns getting enchanted roads despite them consisting of two huts and a pig-pen. Additionally, things could be added via research such as -
Crossroads- connect a third and fourth route to your road to make a short cut to other settlements. Only one allowed per stretch.
Toll stop- Caravans give gold per passing.
I really want the ability to build to nowhere removed. Therefore the worker-unit thing I don't really like.
I'd like for trails and dirt roads to develop organically, but major roads with good bonuses to army movement would need to be built. Having military units do it would seem the easiest way rather then having a seperate unit for it.
In every Civ-style (TBS) game I've ever played roads are an absolute priority. They are essential for defending your empire, deploying troops to the front line, trade, etc. You have to be able to build them when and where you want. The idea of organic roads sounds innovative and creative, but there also needs to be a way to build them manually.
Hmm...
I'm pretty sure the title of Soveirgn means that I do get to in fact control evrything, absolutely.
Why removed? You need to build roads to nowhere since nowhere is that strategic mountain/mountain pass that must be fortified. And you need the road only on your side in order to send reinforcements to defend it quickly.
So Elemental has to be like 'every Civ-Style TBS game'?
I don't think that starting with the organic road system precludes the ability to build your own roads anyway.
I haven't played the game yet (waiting on pre-ordered beta access) but here is a possible solution:
This simple system will allow players to construct roads and other improvements around their cities without being forced to micromanage construction units. This system will also allow improvements to be (relatively) realistically constructed around cities: the larger the city the more advanced/further away improvements it can build.
Popular thread...
If where they can be built is going to be restricted, I'd like em heading to exterior resource points, other cities, forts, any place you'd need to make a road to, not just between cities. Preferably allow me to draw one whereever the hell I want to. Have the game send out a road construction crew from the available population near the path and have them merrily work away till it's finished and I'll be happy as a clam.
In a perfect world, I'd love to have two grades of roads as well. Roads you build, and roads that end up existing because too many bleeding idiots have walked the same path and taken out the vegetation in their way. They aren't nearly as nice, but after the thousandth wagon train goes between two cities, there's going to be a path there.
I hate, like on par with politicians hate, having to build every damn road segment in the civ series with a mass of stupid workers that do stupid things if you put them on auto...
Here is an example image to demonstrate my system mentioned just a few posts above:
I'm very much for the player having absolute control as to how the roads are built. If I want 2 sets of roads (one for efficiency, the other for backup reasons), I would want to be able to make those roads.
We're supposed to get powerful spells, like make a volcano right? What about weaker spells that can change the landscape without so much destruction. If at some point I can make/destroy land tiles, lets say be making them ocean or mountain tiles, I would want to be able to remap my roads without much hassle.
Seriously, if a mountain is the primary obstacle for my road, I would want to fix things later when I get the magic.
I also like the idea of military units building roads. Given the game fiction of how hostile the wilderness areas are, this seems appropriate. Also fits the empire building / Romanesque theme.
THis would also allow building roads that don't end anywhere. FOr example, you may want a road that ends near an enemy border so you can rapidly shift troops around. You can't do that in the current system.
In fact, I like the "build road to city X” system. I don't necessarily agree that it gets built instantly like in CivRev and it might use other ressources than gold to build. But just deciding what get's connected with what is enought for me.
But one thing I would insist on, which Civ Rev does not have, is to be able to build road that connects with ennemy cities if your ennemy accept. You might ask to share the price or pay the road for him, but he must still agree to let the road come in (in the case he could feel treathen).
Myself, I would go for treating any population not assigned to a military unit and not including heros as a general labour force.
hmm I think perhaps having an Engineer type military unit might be best, it could fight, it could be paid to build roads, forts, etc.
I think I agree with people that say we should have a mix of ideas. Organic roads are a very good and natural idea, generally roads between citys start out as dirt/caravan tracks of traders moving between cities. The traders are going to find the easiest/best route for them between the cities. Generally however at some point, assuming that the cities are growing and prospering, the government will HAVE to invest in building roads to be able to increase the amount of traffic. Governments that choose to ignore this will throttle the trade and merchants will find other more prosperous routes.
I don't really understand the people that say they want absolute control over everything. Honestly thats the boring part, do you really want to have to control every merchant unit? Besides, government doesn't really control those, only military units. Government could influence the merchants by building roads where they choose of course.
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