If I need workers, I need to go out, find them, and offer proper terms for them to agree to work for me. I don't need to get a degree on how to do it, or ask scholars and specialists "how do I get the more awesome heroes? If you don't know yet please go back to your studies and let me know as soon as you do" (at least not until bureaucracy takes over).

It normally is a very natural process. If you have little to offer, only desperate people will be wanting to work for you. If a position next to you is regarded as prestigious and safe, then you'll attract more of the capable/proven ones.

At least this is how I see it.

In fact, building roads could be as simple as a button on the city screen that says "build road to", and it shows your gold cost, materials cost, and upkeep cost, and VOILA! a road auto-magically appears.

mqpiffle, I think a simpler solution to the far away outpost risk system might be better. Outpost upkeep could be relative to both how far the outpost is from your nearest town and how far away it is from the nearest ZoC that has a town inside it.

This would mean that it is cheaper to have outposts inside your ZoC than out in the wilderness (logical), and it is cheaper to have outposts near a town than far from a town even if inside your borders (logical again). I think the road-under-attack system might just be kind of annoying or at least not that much fun.

But I still support having roads in the game and maybe some bonuses to outposts connected with roads (reduced upkeep?).

There are plenty of ways to handle defense of roads/caravans without making the user move troops around constantly.  As long as theirs a logical system that allows the player to make those choices without adding to the micromanagement then requiring roads/caravans to connect cities and outposts adds to the game.  Just off the top of my head:

1. Caravan's have levels like cities.  Level 1 is an undefended caravan (dude in a covered wagon).  Level 2 is that same dude with a few hired swords.  Level 3 is full armed caravans.  Level 4 is a nationally patrolled road defended by soldiers equal to the most common unit type in your kingdom.
2. Cities have an upgrade that allow patrolling of roads.  Require the upgrade at both ends for full patrolling or make the upgrade at each end create stronger patrols.  Caravans are defended at the expense of population and maintenance.  
3. Outposts near a road act as a ZOC patrol sort of thing. 
4. The ability to garrison troops in a road just like in a city.  Those troops are then assigned to road patrol.  This has the added benefit of allowing you to shift resources to dangerous roads and away from those that are protected by virtue of being in the center of your society.  

Any one of these allows us to keep the (in my mind) useful and interesting need to connect the disparate parts of your empire somehow (river, road, coastline, etc) while also removing the WOM nightmare of protecting the roads by moving troops around or parking them in enough locations to protect the road.  They also add potentially interesting tactical battle scenarios where you could potentially set up a battle type where the objective isn't just attacker vs. defender but attacker vs. defender trying to protect something (where the attacker could be successful not just by beating the defender but by reaching a point and then escaping without dying).  

If you want "harassable" trade routes, maybe implement it in a way where if enemy occupies your trade route (road in practice), the revenue will be cut down 20% per turn. If the route is open, it will rise 5% per turn until the maximum value of the route is achieved.

This way defending your roads would be important, but you could not lose a caravan. Losing caravan units is just boring (rebuild it, send it to destination and get it killed again... who bothers). Also, an enemy unit that manages to sneak in would not cause a lot of havoc in single turn. From coding standpoint this should be somewhat easy to implement, too.

Wouldn't the best way to harass trade routes be to attack the outpost and wipe them out? I feel little need for any connection to an outpost because there is also no connection between cities. Why would an outpost need something that a city doesn't? If you are worried about realism, this is a fantasy game. If you are worried about lore, the goods are either delivered by a third party merchant guild or teleported, whichever is cheapest for that location. If you are worried about gameplay, the current mechanics are better than anything else suggested here. 

I am not supposed to say anything but the real fanboys got it before turkey day. 

For some reason Lord Xia opted for the Pony instead. That was also a choice. 

But yes, immersion is an issue. I have a borderline alternate dimension kind of imagination. I never have a problem with that sort of thing. I would be all for a bit of logic lore game mechanic that doesn't cripple the AI or make outposts useless due to micromanagement, but until Derek stops tazing everyone in the office every time they think of a solution, I am going to assume there is a merchant guild. I will even post a backstory for them on the forums and mention them in my quests. The merchant thing also solves the upcoming boats dilemma. 

As I am sure Newton said, "Life is a puzzle, sometimes you have to force a piece in where you know that it fits."

This is the kind of thing that makes me wish you guys lived closer. You'd totally get along with us.

I don't want to go on a tangent here but you read these articles by developers who say you shouldn't visit your own forums.  But the thing is, I make software BECAUSE I like online forums.  Every product we make, even the non-games, have community sites around them. I just like this kind of discussion a lot.

Thats good to hear.

Can we assign guards to them?

Can we have an option to have our caravans controlled by the AI?  I often forget that I've built a caravan,  or I send it out in a certain direction and then forget about it, and since its not part of the normal "find next unit who hasn't moved" command, it ends up sitting there for yonks.  It would be good if we could just have a setting we could turn on to leave it up to the computer to manage them for us.  Civilization lets you do the same thing with workers where you can leave them automated.  They often did things that pissed me off, but at least it was optional that I didn't have to micro-manage them.

No.

I simply tend to like strategy games that involve certain strategic decisions to impose a certain amount of strategic depth which leads to certain strategic consequences which must be dealt with strategically in order to advance in the strategic game.

If there's nothing to do than why bother doing it?

BTW thanks for the reply Brad.

What I'd like to see with caravans is that they deliver the bonuses when they reach your destination- gold for one side, something else for the other.

You can build improvements to routes to increase the yield.  Trading within your civ just provides gold though.  Trading outside your civ provides same gold but also other resources. 

Amounts would be based on levels of cities, bonus resources (impacts what you get), safety of route (yields increase safely for each safe journey, based largely on distance of route- the more the better), and upgrading routes .

Caravans do get auto-rebuilt, but it resets the safety counter.  Upgrading a route gives guards to caravans, but costs gold and materials.

I'm pretty sure seanw3 was joking.  No one currently has the beta other than Stardockians.