Agreed.  There may be strategic reasons for wanting a road somewhere, or not have a road somewhere, so I'd like to control road placement.  Whether it's built by a worker unit or 'city population' isn't important to me (although I like the idea of being able to capture enemy worker units -- it's a good strategy and opens up many possibilities).

This subject came up a long time ago and I had a similar idea.  Keep it automated but still have something on the map that can be interrupted by military actions.  Make it similar to your caravans, when a road is built spawn a little worker unit and have it start building the road.  The military option is also a good idea though.

Either way please let us plan our roads and not limit them from only city to city.

I like this too. A road should grow based on how much it is used, giving it more bonuses making it easier to travel on (travel farther on more advanced roads)

However, to create them, I think roads should be able to be drawn on the map, like if we were using paint (or click and drag). To be able to craft roads around mountain ranges, rivers, and such if we wish (it would provide a lot of strategy). Unfortunately, it might be hard to integrate this in a TBS. If this were an RTS I could see it being done a lot easier. But its the only idea I like so far, nothing else even comes close to capturing my attention. Everything else I've read has been done to death. We do NOT need workers/worker units in this game, that much I can agree with.

Pretty well every version of organic roads suggested has had two classes of roads: the ones that are built on their own (by whatever mechanic that happens), and the ones that you build explicitly. So yes, you can manually build roads. But some mining town won't stay cut off just because you forget to build a road there, the traders are going to back and forth (because they want to sell all that mined ore in bigger towns) and the traffic will make a trail without your intervention.

Effectively it better models real life. There's roads that are there because the rulers decided to build them, and trails through fields or forests that are there because that's just a route people take frequently enough to carve them out.

I think making a unit specifically for building (ie the engineer) would be strange because the unit recruitment in Elemental will be very free, you can recruit 4-1000 people. I don't want to have to be that picky about how many engineers I recruit. To keep it simple, allow any unit to act as an engineer, building roads, forts and whatever. This way if you just want a quick road built you could just recruit some weaponless, armourless peasants to do the job, or send off part of a city garrison. Easy.

Options. Give me a few different ways to build a road. I guess the problem with this is even though you have options you will be almost required to use a certain way at times in the game, ie units to build in the early days because money is tight and magic weak, and I see that Stardock is trying to get away from "workers" because some people feel unhappy about having to move units to build roads. Personally I see no problem, in fact in Civ IV worker management, not just movement but recruitment, makes the game more strategic.

Paying maintenance on roads? My god how dull! As stated before "I don't want to play SimRoads". People complain that "worker" units are boring and tedious, but they want to include road maintenance? Cinders and Ashes!

Those are likely different people. Besides, you're not playing SimRoad. There's no traffic management,  no mass transit, etc.

And what's wrong with upkeep on roads? There's upkeep on lots of other things, and a good paved road is a LOT more expensive to maintain then a town hall is. It just cripples senseless road spam, you're not going to cover every single tile with paved roads (or railroads in Civ speak) if it actually costs something to do so. You'll put them where it makes tactical or economic sense to do so, which adds gameplay decisions. In Civ railroads wind up everywhere because it's free and the workers have nothing better to do anyway.

The upkeep idea was paired up with the idea of multiple road tiers, so you only pay if you want better roads that confer bonuses of some kind. A dirt trail beaten down by traders doesn't cost anything, but it's also not as good as paved road.

Whatever you do, don't let us pave the entire map. Civ4 always has a tendency to turn into World of Roadcraft when I play, and I end up with roads on every tile I can reach safely. If the whole world is covered in roads, you may as well not have roads at all.

I remain completely persuaded by the organic road concept.  The objections to it are terrible ideas.

"I should have control over everything."  Have fun micromanaging which foot your armies lead with when they start marching.

"Military units can build roads."  All the trouble of using a worker, plus you tie up your soldiers doing worker stuff.

"Basic roads can be organic, but advanced roads should be built." Reducing organic roads to being primarily a cosmetic representation of trade, with "real" roads having road problems that organic roads are an attempt to avoid.

"The Romans built roads."  The Romans had wooden spoons too, but nobody's proposing gameplay about it.

"I need to control roads because they're tactically important."  There will be other ways to move fast.  Haste spells, gate spells, magic carpets, forestwalking, plain old cavalry.

"There should be many manually-controlled graduations of road capability."  Great, now roads are a major expenditure and building and customizing them is a large part of playing the game.  What is this, Elemental: Railroad Tycoon?

"Manual roads will be optional, so they should definitely go in."  If manual roads go in, they'll have a design influence over everything associated with roads.  Magical travel options may be neglected, as may ways to build an army for mobility.  Movement speeds and trade revenues will be balanced with the knowledge that there are manual roads, making organic roads less important than they ought to be.  If roads have a cost in labor, resources, money, etc., that cost will be figured into the system for those things (e.g., towns should produce X gold, but if roads are in, towns should produce X+Y gold so that the player can spend Y on manual roads).  Optional or not, manual roads should be excluded.

One wrinkle I want to add to organic roads: the road network should use existing roads where possible.  A new connection shouldn't develop a road in a straight line from A to B if there's an existing road it could tie into instead.

I do think roads are a liability sometimes.  Generally, in games with roads the enemy can use the roads you build, and the reinforcement corridor from your capital to the front lines is also a highway for invasion if the enemy can get to it.  Roads also let the enemy know where your points of interest are -- follow road, discover city.

But these liabilities are good.  As roads flourish in the endgame, they'll be a modest nudge toward conclusive engagements.  There won't be hidden capitals that you have to hunt all over the map to find.  And on the defensive, rather than security by obscurity, you'll have to confront the enemy to win, whether it's with magic, diplomacy, or your army.  A common complaint in games like this is that the endgame bogs down.  In addition to their other advantages, organic roads will help focus the endgame.

i believe that the organic road idea breathes life and uniqeness into the world.  it gives each game individuality when you take off the iron gauntlet and let people rule themselves to a certian extent.  i would love to see a road be built on its own and then down the road some enterprising AI entity put an inn on that road somewhere to only be destroyed by a giant or something because it was to close to his home in the mountains.  this sort of thing would really make each game come to life on its own.

Having the game just make roads for you is not a meaningful choice either btw.

As Raven said roads should be tactical choices. In Civ4 enemys can't use your roads but if they did you would probably try and incorperate them into defensive terrain. Oh look a meaningful choice!

Either way I would like road building to be painless and fun. Not a horride click fest nor a automated system I have no control over.

Civ 4 is the absolute WORST possible example to use if you're trying to say roads should be tactical choices. Roads are only a choice in Civ in the early game. Past the early game every town has to be connected to the other towns to get resources effectively, and later in the game all you have is a giant carpet of road/rail spam.

It's the exact opposite of tactical choice. In fact it typically gets to the point where workers are on automation and doing the road spam for you. Honestly if we get anything like how Civ handles roads, I'll consider it a disappointment. They created a great example of what not to do.

Civ4 was an example of how NOT to do roads. Its horibly micro intensive (unless you trust the automated mode...) and they are a requirement rather than something you decide is good trade off.

It was just a very basic example of the fact you can make roads dangerous as well as useful. I.e. a reason you might want control over where a road goes.