I would like to build on some of the earlier posts which suggested the natural growth of a trail system between settlements.  My suggestions are based on my observations from an earlier period of life when I spent a great deal of time living in wilderness areas in North and South America. 

Encampments would spring up naturally around resources (like our cities will).  The better the resources the faster the growth of the encampent (again like our cities).  Given a minimal size of nearby encampments, people start to go back and forth to visit, find romance, tell stories, and trade items they can easily carry.  Therefore the early trail springs up automatically, no investment needed, on a pretty direct route.

If the encampments grow sufficiently eventually traffic will increase to where there are not just people walking but now they want to use a mule to haul grain or ride a horse back and forth.  Perhaps the trail will move slightly to avoid the branches and narrow spots or perhaps the people will cut down some trees to make the trail wider and drop a tree across the creek to make an inprovised bridge.  The trail is now better and faster, minimal work has been put into it, but some work has.  However, it is still a trail, not a road and no investment is needed, it naturally grows when population does.

If the settlement grows to where it is a real town there may arise a need to start pulling carts of food or wagons of trade goods back and forth.  Now we need a wide trail without steep grades and with either fords across the streams or basic but solid bridges.  We can no longer take the direct route across the ridge and wade the creek, we need the longer route over the pass and to the ford.  Rocks need to be moved, potholes filled in, solid bridges built.  Now we can move real quantities of grain, ore, manufactured goods and the gentry in their carraiges.  At this point government usually spreads to the outlying encampments since tax collectors follow the goods.  This level of road requires some investment but not a professional building crew.  Town growth would be slowed if the investment is not made.

The next level is what we would call a road.  The route is laid out by engineers, we lay stones, we spend a great deal of time and money building a real bridge.  This road is much quicker to travel and can accomodate heavy loads (such as siege equipment) and fast travel, such as cavelry.  This kind of road needs to be built by a professional.  It is a significant boost to the economy and connects major cities.

In Summary:

 - level 1 trail, automatic, slightly faster than cross country, no upkeep

- level 2 trail, automatic upgrade on time and population, faster travel, no upkeep

level 1 road, minimal cost, no specialized unit needed to build, faster travel, improved commerce, probably no upkeep, tax bonus

level 2 road, specialized unit needed to build, significant cost, very fast travel, very solid bonus to economy, probably rare to see these except between very large valuable cities after the passage of significant time. 

Roads and building them are boring.  Important (depending on the game mechanism for using them) but ultiamtely boring.

This is NOT SimRoad people.

I would suggest that 'links' be automatic between 'locations'.  Links being paths.tracks.roads,highways....  Locations being cities, shards, special locations, ...

These 'links' need not be visable even until after some population or scouting threshhold is passed, but once a 'link' has become estabilished the player can devote 'resources' to improving the 'link'.  Resources should be tied to technology, and have a cost, either in 'unit' time or city build time.

So at the start of the game you plop down your city and start exploring.  You find a shard a bit away and a mine.  'Links' (probably just foot paths) wear in over a couple turns as we assume that your locals are out and about, and once the link is estabilished you have clickable options for it.  Lets say you want to improve it to the next 'level' (technology based) so you click it and assign some standing 'units' (probably troops) to improve it.  The troops are now assigned to the road, and over the next X-turns they are not available for other tasks (unless you take them off the 'link' project, but then you lose all [some?] of their work) until they have finished the upgrade.  Alternatively (or in conjunction) you create a special building (tile) for your cities which automatically upgrades 'links' around that city upon completion (or over time).

As your technology improves you have more options for what to do with your links, and speed improvements for upgrading them.  Eventually you reach the point where you can even plan your own 'links' and build specialized units (since I assume there will be specials to attach to your self made units) to trail blaze or whatever.

What I hate about roads in most games is that you spam them with zero penalty and zero reason.  I do not think that in a fantasy setting there will simply be roads over the entire worlds.  There will be roads between 'locations', and the wilds will be wild, no matter how big your empire gets, you should still have some wild left in it.  Making roads everywhere should be actively discouraged.  So much so that I think user control over roads should be removed until such a time as it makes sense for the empire (or kingdom I guess) to want to devote true men, material, and technology to the issue.

Honestly I'm hopeful that I'm not worried about roads because I'm more worried about dealing with actual fun parts of a fantasy game.

Well for today anyway

Why do you want direct control for noncity/resource locations?  Who is building or using and maintaining a road to the middle of nowhere?

It's fine to want to be able to do that, but I don't see the point as it eventually leads to road spam.  Though so long as the road building mechanic isn't tied to units building 'necessary' roads I suppose it doesn't matter.  So if people want to play SimRoad they should be allowed to.  Just don't muddle the mechanic to sate this <1% need.

That is a Opinion, my friend. I for one do not find building roads boring. What building roads should be though, is fast. Maybe not the actual construction, but laying them out. It doesn't take me long to lay down a line from point A to point B. More importantly if I want to design my own road network between my cities and other improvements I would put a few minutes of thought into it and where along the road network I would build defenses. That's not boring to me.

Im kind of for a builder/engineer, if he gets to do moore than just build roads, mabe give a bonus to building buildings when stationed in a town, build some kind of fortifications on the fields, you know, more than a use and trash unit.

We need workers. They can be raided and taken as slaves as well, wich is very fun. Workers are fun!!!

I'm OK with any of the main suggestions:  Organic, city built or with a worker type unit.

If we use Organic or city built I would like the ability to choose the path as an additional option.  Organic could go between the cities, but allow the ability for the player to control a path for strategic values.

I like the idea of multiple road levels, fits in with the housing levels.

If we use workers, they need to avoid the problem of being useless late game.  Either a quick way to decommission them that doesn't penalize you too much or be exploitable, or give them a second mission: military or other construction use.  They could be reabsorbed by the city as a type of bonus, like a Civ 4 Great Person.

Magic:  if you can cast a spell that creates a volcano or changes the landscape, how hard can it be to create a road in the same vein?  There should be a spell to create roads instantly in addition to any other method.

I also like the idea of a negative or balancing downside for building roads, especially if there is player control of building them.  In Civ games it is just goofy that you have every single square covered in railroads by late game.  There should be an upkeep cost to the roads for maintenance that is transperant to the player so that the player can determine where the break point is in that building another road is no longer cost effective.

And I've no problem with the player placing their own roads.  I think though that it should come at a higher cost than the 'automated' systems being discussed.  Be it through tech, units, military, magic, or some combination of them.

However, since you mention AI, I'd like to add my thoughts on that

No matter how much credit SD gets for making great AIs, they simply do not seem to get the strategic movement part right.  For that reason I'd prefer to simply remove some of the variable so that the AIs are on a more even footing with the players.  Sure it's fun to figure out how to 'run around' the AI, but once you've figured it out that part of the game is dead because the AI will never figure out a counter for it.

Limiting player choices always sounds bad, but in the case where it makes the AI better I think it can be justified.  I hear what you are saying about defenders advantage, but if the AI is incapeable of using this advantage (and I show my SP bias, I don't care at all about MP and will state that right now) then I'd rather it simply not exist for either side.

Of course the counter is that if you're playing SP, just don't use whatever cheese you don't want to.  I've never liked that argument because I think it allows for what I consider poorly implemented game mechanics, but then again I shouldn't be telling anyone else how to play their games.

So when it comes to roads in Elemental I worry that the same problems I found in GC2 will crop up.  That the AI cannot use them 'correctly' and the player will again have a huge advantage strategically (which is where the AI usually has its hands full anyway).

Perhaps they can build in a setting to allow one to chose either manual or automatic road design, then everyone could perhaps have it the way they want it.

I think that 1 road per City Size should be greatest level of efficiency.

2 roads per city size is OK, but depends on how wealthy that settlement is.

any roads beyond 2 per city size RAPIDLY should decrease efficiency in an expedient downward spiral.

Essentially, a Grande ROME style level 5 City can have 10 roads coming from it and be OK, however if it was a relatively poor level 5 city, and still had 10 roads stemming from it .... we would start to see problems. Beyond that point, roads should start to be rather costly. This would mean that away from cities, in the outlands ... roads are a very rare thing, however in the central locales of your empire roads are relatively frequent. This seems like a good trade-off for me.

To force building more roads should rapidly decrease efficiency. Say settlement level is X. having X roads is absolutely free. Having between X+1 and 2X roads is, say 1 maintanence (as much as a settlement maintanence). Each additional road, every 2X++ road would cost an additional 1 maintanence.

OR if you want it to be REALLY inefficient, then X roads are still free, every road between X+1 and 2X are 1 maintanence, and each road BEYOND that are 1++, so the 11th road would cost 2 maintanence, 12th would cost 3, 13th would cost 4.

Or a middle ground where all roads beyond 2X would cost 2 maintanence. Just depends on how prolific Gold is, and how badly you wish to cut-down on excessive Road-Building.

Honestly, have roads develop automatically based on city size and technology, with trade volume and millitary presence infulencing things as well.

A small town, little trade, early game, with a minimal garrison should maybe get a road to the (assumingly decent sized capital) after maybe 5 turns of being eligible. The road should be little more than a well worn trail.

Down the line, when that small town become a bustling trade center, have it sprout roads to other nearby cities and even a sizable highway to the capital (which could just be the largest city in the area, or the actual capital).

When the little city becomes massive, and its importance is global, have IT be the center for other cities to build roads. Maybe even have roads that we once important fade into minor trails. If the tech is good enough, perhaps have highways paved or atleast cobblestone.

Also, leave in the road building option but make it expensive and take a little time anyway. I should be allowed to build a highway to my  tiny useless town on the other side of the continent, but it should cost me. If a city is really far away from any other population center, maybe building a road could be the only (very expensive) way to connect it. That would help slow the Infinite city sprawn these games end up having.

  Well, roads could be built automatically between structures without the player needing to do anything.  

When the player wants a specific road built, he can manually click and drag the road to whereever he wants to.  I don't know how you can make it any more deep then that Frogboy.

I agree with this as well.  If there's another use planned for roads there might be some problem with this method, but as I understand it now they're only meant to go between cities.  I'd really like to see no manual control of roads at all except perhaps a cost-related option in the mid-to-late game of being able to nudge their paths more optimally if the AI didn't do a perfect job.

Ideally, I'd like to see the player research trade and the caravans would start off moving quite slow inbetween towns.  After a number of turns, a worn path would appear marking the route they have been taking and symbolizing wearing down grass, rocks and other obstacles.  The AI would primarily concern itself with the route of shortest distance while avoiding any major obstacles like lakes, mountains or monster dens.  Then as research permitted, gravel, paved and further road improvements could be paid for increasing the travel rate over those already laid out paths.  It would also be great if the player could choose which paths to actually pay to improve as perhaps the route between your two giant trading towns is critically important, but you don't really care about the speed your caravans move at to and from an outpost of no particular worth.

Ultimately though, if none of that is possible, the one thing I truly do NOT want to see are roads like in the Civ games where they criss-cross through every possible section of land.  I want to be able to enjoy looking at the hills and forests once the cloth map isn't the only option and not see trade veins going every which way connecting any possible place to every other place in the entire world.