Too much micro for me.. I don't want to have to design my roads tile by tile...  I really only want to have to make super important roads..

double post, sorry.

yep excellent post, workers begone...you clog up the joint. I say click and drag and get a research/logistics time frame depending on the terrain/treasury.

nice, ninja'd or not I like it, maybe not as a road creator but definately to enhance trade and questing heroes skills.

Option 1: Caravan unit to establish trade route between cities, which will automatically build road.

(Idea behind is that the road will automatically created due to increased foot traffic between cities.)

Option 2: Pioneer, Scout, Inspector or whatever unit to scope out the route and establish roads that will connect cities.

(Idea behind is that someone is certifying the road between cities.)

Option 3: Cartogrph Guild,  Vistitor Center or whatever improvement to build road to any city that has the same improvement.

(You get the idea...)

Im for yes for builders but roads do grow organically on their own.

Roads automatically grow between cities. Maybe with research and a permanent alliance setup you can hook up roads with allied cities too.

In time roads will be fully updated, (just an idea that poped up will there be research for better roads?) but if ya really need those roads to get build faster you can place a builder near by and the road will get done faster. Also builders can build custom roads so you can make some fancy highways where ever you want them.

I do like the organic road construction idea. It just makes sense for basic dirt trails to appear as commerce moves from city to city. Even roads hundreds of miles long can be made with sufficient migration (Oregon Trail).

Commerce hubs attract roads towards them, which in turn boosts the commerce of their immediate neighbors which encourages further roads. I do like the concept of a commerce building that has some sort of road++ bonus. Eg, an inn generates 5 gold per turn (which slightly increases the rate of rates coming towards your city) but maybe it has a 10x road-modifier so it generates roads like a Palace would.

This has a few issues from the higher level (if the first thing you built in a city was an inn so you could get roads faster... why should that help? Who would visit an empty, farmless town with 20 people just to see an inn?) and also from the gaming level (that inn takes up a spot and would probably be deconstructed as soon as sufficient road-worthiness has been attained).

However, when an element of control is needed (I really need a road from city A to city B soon, I can't wait 50 turns for one), you should be able to force roads to be built using superior tools and materials (like stone).

Another thing is that as cities get larger, highwaymen and other nasties might start to harass your merchants... this is bad upgrading your road to a nice, stone road would be a part of making it more... official and "patrolled". You would invest X amount of gold and then a VERY SMALL amount of gold per second to maintain it. This would include repairing broken segments as well as "patrolling" it.

On the other hand, improving your roads should instantly grant a population and/or commerce bonus so the cost of maintaining the road should be insignificantly small in comparison to the possible revenue gains unless it goes through like the Dragon Infested Mountains of Death.

TL;DR

I want roads built automatically, and slowly. Improved roads should be built on top of existing roads and should require some input from the player but no unit should be required, just a small user interface from the city management menu.

+1 Vote for organic development of roads.

Perhaps such roads can be broadly divided into trails and "official" roads

Seeing that in most cases roads either link resources to urban centers and /or link trade hubs, allow the caravan/miner...etc equivalents carve out trails, with movement and trade bonus accruing based on freqency of road usage and how long such trials have been established for, think the Silk road for example.

Player should be able able ofc to alter the paths taken by these units.

Drawing from medival references, as "official" roads were often built by the state, we can simulate this by having the player spend resources to build such a path. The cost can be balanced by having such "King's Highways" generate toll income/ increased trade income. The Roman highways could be the real world analogue.

Some ideas :

If you want roads that are built automativally then you'll have to create a "road designer". A new UI, where you give a starting point, some waypoints, a finish point, then click "GO" and the road will be built automatically.

Some rules : a road MUST begin from a tile with already existing road (or a city if you have no road at all)

Other idea : each tile has a "track" level. Each time a unit walks through a tile the track value increase by 1. When you design roads, tiles with a high track value will get bonus in constructing time, and cost less gold. Moreover, automatic "tracks" radiates from a cuty to available improvements within reach. If town A has a mine within 5 tiles, then each turn the track value of tiles wetween city and the mine will increase. It simulates the fact that citizens will try to search for nearby resources.

Maybe levels of roads would be useful : simple track, flat track, paved track, etc... Each one giving some speed bonuses to caravans. Military units could use the road bonus IF you research the "logistics" tech or something like that.

Other idea : You do nothing. Cities will automatically snake to nearby "interesting" things. You have no control over it. Unless you research some tech that would allow you to give goal : "I need a road to that location", then the nearest road-tile would extend to the point onf interest. Or nearby. If there's a mine near the goal you gave, and the nearest city has already a lot of mines (and so we can asume they like it) will build a road to the mine instead of your point of interest. But you could assign some of your dynasty children to take care of that. You would get the exact result you want, but at the cost of a children being stuck verifying things.

I like the beginning of Riskith's idea but i am not so sure i want to use my military force to build roads, sounds too much like painful micro managment to me once you empire go big (remember civ 4 once you conquered 20 city ?)

So once the first type of road would have been build organically as Rishkith say, you can click anywhere on the road and clik on a "upgrade to real flagstone road" for money, industrial production, whatever that will launch the upgrade processus with automatic workers spam from some place and start working (they can be attacked and need to be protected if you are in a unfriendly area). You can also decide to increase the speed of the process by hiring more workers with more money.

In the same way, you can decide to build a road from tile x to tile y through some checkpoints (from your city to the fronteer you have with your neighbour you are at war with to speed up reinforcements for example) in the same way and it will also cost money to send automatic workers that would have to be protected.

So you still have the organic road idea with the possibility to make a raod anywhere you want without micro managment.

I find that the best of ideas.

Maybe, if you want some more player involvement, have some unit training called engineer. These not only give you a bonus for city siege, but can also have a kind of enhance road button. If you click it, the engineer will follow the road and on each tile will take some time to make it better. He will do so, until the road is done upgrading, or until you say so (its a bit like workers do it in Civ4). Just an idea which includes organic grows, military and worker stuff.

Edit: Some more ideas:

Trail - builds like Wintersong said, automatically

Dirt Road - upgrades automatically from Trail if at least one end of the road is a 'Town'

Stone Road - Need Research (Engineer), Need Querry. Build Engineer and let him upgrade from Dirt Road.

Enhanced Road - Need Research (Advanced Engineering), Need Querry, Need School / University. Build Engineer and let him upgrade from Stone Road.

Enchanted Road - Need Research (Enchant Road), Need Herotype Unit with magic ability, Send him to Enchant Road as upgrade from Enhanced Road.

I'd rather not upgrade roads with purchased road types, as Cuddlelump and others have suggested.  Elemental is a game about magic, not paving, right?  (There's probably room for spells to augment roads, though.  Didn't Disciples 2 do things along those lines?)  Organic roads sound better and better to me.  If the gameworld is intended to evolve into a recognizable heroic fantasy realm with a handful of big cities and a scattering of little hamlets, a simple road network without a lot of evidence of central planning is a great fit.

One other thing: in Civilization, the endgame involves roads and railroads plastered over every inch of land.  I think even the furthest endgame of Elemental should be major roads only.  The map at the front of a fantasy novel has roads from feature to feature, not crosshatching the entire world.

+1 Organically build roads. Best idea so far.

In addition: Upgrading roads should be something you have to research. The upgrade of every single road should cost resources. But no workers should be necessary.

I like the idea of organic road building as well. Simply give each square a "road rating", and have different factors add and substract from this value. Stuff adding could be nearby cities and stuff like units and trade passing through. Once the value gets high enough a road is automatically constructed. Subtraction could be from bandit, enemies and monsters plus a small automatic amount each turn. The automatic substraction will ensure that roads not being used fall into disrepair and finally disappear.

In order to give the player a bit more control you could introduce spells affect this system. I for once can imagine spells like a Form Road instantly forming a road between two city, or an Enchant Road spell removing the substraction of "road rating" thereby preventing disrepair and stabilizing the road.