ANY Way to destroy your own roads?

[ingolfson2]

I know what you're gonna say - just build the type of improvement you want and the old one goes away...

Yeah, but so what if I want to remove one of my own roads? Doesn't WORK, and I hate that.

Call me stupid, but since roads don't provide any benefit except for movement, I do NOT want them cluttering up my whole map, and I want to be able to remove mistakes. I want roads gracefully connecting my towns and ressources. And it's worse when I conquer other cities. What a chaotic mess!



Also, related, is there a way to pillage roads in other civs areas before/without destroying the other improvs?

[Bill3000]

Other than pillaging, I don't think so.

[Axxaer]

Sorry but you're probably in a tiny minority that is more concerned with the look of their empire than ease of transport, so it may not be something which can be done. Also most people would generally have something better to do with their workers.

I don't think you can choose which improvement to destroy in any case.



Eep! Beaten by less than a second! I'm getting too old for this...

[ingolfson2]

I'm a traffic engineer in professional life - that chaos is a personal insult to me! Not to mention my sensibilities ;-)

As for 'nothing better to do' - don't tell me you don't have workers standing around at some points of the game when new improvs haven't come in yet and all squares are already full up to spec. Also, pillaging can be done by any unit, so I should be able to do it with military units too.


As to 'not possible' - I can't believe that it can't be done. At least it should be possible to do it by fiddling with the code - make it so that a military unit can pillage wherever it is on the map, not only on enemy territory. Anybody know how I would do that?

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by ingolfson2
As for 'nothing better to do' - don't tell me you don't have workers standing around at some points of the game when new improvs haven't come in yet and all squares are already full up to spec.

Despite often playing as India, I generally only build one, occasionally two workers per city, and due to warmongering, I frequently find that I have too many cities with underimproved land surrounding them, because I will tend to conquer a player or two next to me before I've finished improving all my other land.

[Rook]

I agree it looks ugly, but having multiple routes to the same place helps in war. It is especially useful when the enemy pillages the road leading to a resource you need.

[Urban Ranger]

You may be able to pillage your own road with a military unit. I know you can do that with other improvements.

[MightyTiny]

As Rook said above, there's a good functional reason for why that "chaos" is desireable; in case of an invasion, you want to be able to bring additional forces in to meet the invaders ASAP - the most direct route available to them. Helps a lot if your whole empire is covered with a network of roads.

So if you don't want roads everywhere, then you are sacrificing functionality over esthetics - which is probably why very few people share your complaint, and which is probably why an option to remove roads might have been overlooked.

But doesn't pillaging destroy roads? Can't you just send a military unit on the square with the road, and pillage it? I assume that you don't want to remove roads from the "fat cross" area of your cities, but rather from squares outside your city radiuses (radii?), which wouldn't have improvements on them anyway, so pillaging would only destroy the roads.

[Willem]

Yeah, I don't understand why you want to remove roads, it's to your advantage to have them everywhere. If an enemy force enters your territory anywhere but on your road network, it's going to hamper your units ability to get there as quickly as possible. If you have roads on every tile, that's not an issue.

[ingolfson2]

I see that no one agrees with me, which rather surprises me (most yes, but no one?) - I consider a well-ordered empire to be a point of pride.

I do use additional roads to provide alternative routes. And in fact, it give me more of a strategy challenge when I am attacked, which I kinda enjoy for the realism.

So could anyone at least point me in the correct direction? Can you use the world editor on a running map (I might switch it to sea and then back or something)? Haven't really experimented with that.

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by ingolfson2
I see that no one agrees with me, which rather surprises me (most yes, but no one?) - I consider a well-ordered empire to be a point of pride.

I actually really like the look of the roads, and empires often did have chaotic roads all over the place so to me it is more realisitic and attractive with them there.

I never liked the old generic straight line roads, but the dynamic CivIV ones are much better.

[RedSox7]

I agree with you, Golf. In CivIII, I removed nearly every unnecessary road. When I conquered AI territory I would send in cavalry to pillage them. I would even think about how to lay roads between my own cities so it would be uncluttered.

I'm not a normal guy though. I would sometimes not develop tiles on a city that abutted an open area, thinking of it as a nature reservation. Weird, huh?

I have not tried removing roads in CivIV yet.

[Willem]

Originally posted by ingolfson2
And in fact, it give me more of a strategy challenge when I am attacked, which I kinda enjoy for the realism.

Well if the realism appeals to you, then almost every tile should have a road on it. Consider that each tile, on a Large map, represents 269 miles of land. There aren't too many regions on earth that don't have a road in a 269 square mile area, especially if there's any sort of human development occuring in that area.

[Soltz]

I've seen the 'pillage' icon show up on horse units in my own territory but I've never tried pillaging my own roads so I don't know if it works or not..

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by RedSox7
Weird, huh?

Yes