No "Road Spaghetti" in civ5

[Robert]

Yesterday gaming blog Kotaku already wrote a story about the GDC demonstration of Civilization V. Today they continue this story by zooming in on "road spaghetti", or better, the lack of.
Stephen Totilo noticed the lack of many roads on the maps, even in the late game. About the early game Totilo said: "you’d expect to have a single road", but "this type of clean look appeared even in the more evolved communities I was shown."



In turns out that Firaxis is trying to give roads more meaning. "Even a single road will have relevance and feel as special as a key highway does in the real world." Eventhough he did not got many answers, Totilo writes: "they prepared me for a Civ that will not wind up, in its end game, with a spaghetti tangle of roads networking a major nation and its big cities."

Read the article on kotaku.com

[pauli]

heard that before.

[Robert]

civ4

[MikeH]

Would have been nice to get a more convincing picture!

[MikeH]

I mean, there's unlikely to be road spaghetti in any version of Civ when you've only built one road.

[Robert]

So far it's as with civ4, early on we only get ancient age screenshots. Apparently there were late-game screens at GDC but apparently nobody made pictures or a movie of that. (prohibited?)

[Felch]

Just thinking about how the armies are now so spread out, it seems like that would encourage huge road networks. Assuming that roads still give movement bonuses, that is.

[pauli]

it'll be interesting to see how they try to increase the opportunity cost of building a road this time.

massive time investment?

maintenance fee?

consumes a worker?

precludes other terrain enhancements?

[rah]

IT would be unrealistic to have it preclude other terrain enhancements, since improvements encouraged roads and roads encouraged improvements.

[Garth Vader]

Maintenance fee would be more realistic. Another possibility would be a cost to construct as well.

[rah]

If the road has other values than Maint. might not be enough to deter.
Currently in CIV IV roads are critical in defending your empire. Since enemies destroy the road they're on when they attack, it's to your benefit to have roads in every square to assist defending. Now if that's not an issue then it's different.
And the though of a few warriors pillaging an expressway has always amused me.

[Boris Godunov]

Hmm, I wonder if they adopted the CivRev mechanic for roads (you pay a lump sum to build a road between two cities you own, with no option to build them elsewhere).

[rah]

How did they handle resources since building roads to expedite their use is pretty basic in reality.

[Boris Godunov]

There are no resources in CivRev. There are tile bonuses that effect the city production on that tile, but that's it.

[Garth Vader]

If the road has other values than Maint. might not be enough to deter.
Currently in CIV IV roads are critical in defending your empire. Since enemies destroy the road they're on when they attack, it's to your benefit to have roads in every square to assist defending. Now if that's not an issue then it's different.
And the though of a few warriors pillaging an expressway has always amused me.

That's why I build them everywhere. If there was a cost associated with roads it might not be worth it to road areas that aren't likely to be attacked.