It was not a regular unit ..... it was a KING!!!

I like all of Climber's ideas in the above post except for two; I don't like the walled road idea at all. to me both unrealistic and unfun. On workers I am not against so much as I am neutral. Whether there are actual worker units or roads just "get built" without creating a worker, both can be fun, so it doesn't matter to me. However, I do not like the idea that workers can be captured and then continue to build something for the captor that he does not have the tech to be able to build. I don't mind the part that they can be captured, just the part that they can continue to build whatever they were building regardless of the new owner's tech capability.

enryu, Reply 104. 

Thanks for liking most of the idea above.  I am not sure what you did not like the "walled road" idea, I'll like to hear.   However, I've made a change about walls and have it updated it with the following:

Man-made walls
Walls are built between cloth map tiles, just like the river in Beta.  And up to 4 walls can be built by workers on 1 map tile.   Most Non-flying units CANNOT traverse to the other side of the wall.   There are infinite configurations possible with other on-tile structures like cities, forts, archer towers, mage towers, etc because walls will automatically connected to these structures.  For example, the Chinese Great wall can be easily simulated by a long row of map tiles made from a “wall+road+wall” configuration. 

Finally, I explain a bit more about why I like workers here if there is a Waypoint mechanism in EWEOM to simply unit's path planning.

No, I don't consider this necromancy. The new population system was merely the missing puzzle piece that could tie all the loose ends.

The new specialist system is the perfect solution.

Players should have the ability to build roads manually, laying out nice road networks where they are needed. The current caravan-controlled way is entirely random and often circumvents the exact spot where the road should be because it can plot a course through 5 cities around that spot... which results in a 3 times longer path when you want to cross that exact bit of map.

Even MoM had manual road building and the planning of roads wasn't a real problem.
I do agree that building workers and micro-managing them to dig out every single tile of road would be dumb.
So lose the workers.

To design a road you need nothing - maybe a basic research tech. No actual unit. Ever.
You click the "build" button and start dragging road lines on the map. That's it.
Deleting roads should also be possible the exact same way but not instantly. So you'd have to protect that highway into your realm when an enemy army is at the gates instead of just "erasing" the road to slow them down.

Now whenever you have unemployed specialists, they are automatically tasked with road building / deconstruction.
Or this could be done with a city improvement. A road master's office. Either way, somehow people are put to work.
 
Starting with the roads you designed first, they start building, slowly turning the ghostly "design lines" into roads.
When a new road can be built, they build this dirt track first.
When no new roads are scheduled to be built, they automatically improve dirt tracks to cobble roads. (provided this has any positive effect at all, such as a trade income or movement bonus = )

That would finally integrate road building into both the economic and military system.
You'd have to make a choice whether to use your population to train military units, produce stuff... or improve your road network, which could benefit both military and economy in the long run.
More choices to make but no massive micromanaging for the actual building. Just drawing a few lines on the map once in a while.

For the truly lazy player (and the AI = ) there should be an auto-build feature, enabled on the options screen.
When a road master's office has been built in a city, it will automatically link up all cities in a way it sees fit. Kinda like the caravans do it now.
Obviously this should spread out from cities with that improvement, giving the player some overall influence regardless.
Whenever the workers run out of roads to build, the next bit of road is planned by the road master.
This always leaves the player the option to plan a road manually at any time without having a big queue of "auto road orders" ahead of this manual order.

Yes, magical roads don't fit into this very well. How big a bonus would that be?
Double? With roads costing 0.5 moves already, that would quadruple the speed on magical roads with a cavalry unit moving maybe 12 tiles per turn.
Justifyable on large maps but on smaller ones that's not much different from a mana-free Teleport.

Enchant Road (and magical roads per se) was a very unbalanced spell in MoM. No need to repeat that. =P

#109 and the 1st part of 108 seem pretty much the same.  Both work for me.

With current movement costs you don't have a lot of leeway in making magical roads even faster.
Roads are 50% so I guess magical roads could be 35% or something.

They'd soon turn into near-instanteous travel anywhere. That was a bad thing in MoM.
They could, however, cost mana upkeep. That would be the same as a low powered gate / teleport.

I'm not sure if "magic system integration" is doable in a cool and sensible way. I don't have a good idea for that in any case.

Well yes it does sound a bit much if it's going under the 50% mark with no mana upkeep.

If that side of things is not practical, then enchanted roads may have other advantages. For example, units taking the road can't be attacked by neutral units. Non-neutral enemy units could suffer a bewilderment that acts as a disadvantage in attacking units on the road. Maybe something like a to-hit penalty or a random chance for loss of combat turn per unit each turn.

More of a stretch would be allowing one unit from the nearest friendly city node connected to the road, to join in a battle taking place on that road tile. Sort of as if that road is being patrolled.

It could also have the effect of increasing the population growth rate, as it helps immigration and emmigration when the roads are safer to travel. That could also lead to improved trade/income as well, so there are some options to consider.

In another game from the way back machine (Outpost), factories could produce road sections, which were stored in warehouses, as long as you had space.  Placing said road sections took a number of your worker population, so if you placed a whole bunch at once, you could tie up your entire population and not get any other buildings built until said sections were complete.  You could also build monorails, etc. as your tech progressed.

Come to think of it, since population is now a resource, it makes sense that you'd allocate a portion of your population to the road project.  To put this in terms applicable to Elemental:

Road Type----Population Required----Bonus

Path-------------------1-----------------+50% movement

Dirt Road--------------2-----------------+100% movement

Gravel Road-----------3-----------------+150% movement

Brick/Cobble/Paved---4-----------------+200% movement

Caravans would provide whatever bonus they provide 'upon arrival', so if they move 3x as fast, you'd get said bonus 3x as often.  Or you could simply increase the bonus by 3x if that's too complex, although I like the idea of 'caravan hunting' for gold, food, etc.

Using this method, you could build as many road sections as you had population to spare.  There probably should be a nominal Gold cost as well (say 1-8 GP per square or mini-square, based on road quality).  Simply click a 'build road' icon, and then click where you want said section.  And, perhaps you could only build paved roads on top of gravel roads, etc... Some materials may also be required for building (clay/bricks or stone).

Said 'build road' icon might be part of the City popup icon on the map, so you can designate which city is providing the workers for said road project.

Bridges (if rivers/streams ever show up again) would take 'x' amount of gold and workers to complete.  Bridges would require materials to build, be it stone, clay, or lumber.

Along this chain of thought, workers (population) would be required for any project you undertake, with the bigger projects requiring more population.  Also, along these lines, you could start as many projects as you wanted in a city (not just one), as long as you had the workers/population to spare.  Plus, once said buildings are built, they'd have a 'staffing' requirement.  Someone has to work the wheat field or do the arcane research, after all!

Outpost had three levels of population - children, workers, and scientists.  All required food of course, workers and scientists could build stuff, but only scientists could work in labs. Scientists were produced by building schools for them to study in, btw.

A similar concept could be used in Elemental (children, workers, researchers, mystics), if you wanted to get that specific...

ive always looked at such things this way - a wheat tile simply means that this place has optimal location for "wheat" so planting this here will increase harvest - and other places are better for other things


not a perfect way of looking at it ill give you as some things dont make sense when looked at it like that.

I havn't read through the entire thread but here's my 2 cents on roads.

You should buildup roads as they were built in reality.

So:

Roads should be created by your people and not by you.

Stage 1:

A citizen will automaticly start finding the best path to you nearest city as soon as it reaches size N. Prioritizing the closest city, then repeating as needed to build up your empire's road network.

Stage 2:

After the road has been set you get small groups of travelers on foot going between cities. They give you very small bonuses and take a long time to reach their destination.

Stage 3:

After a few successful trips from the pedestrian traders you start to get carts. This is the final stage giving you a decent bonus to resources at a higher rate than the pedestrians.