What good are roads?

[Cannon Fodder]

Citizens just seem to ignore them entirely... Dirt or stone. Shouldn't a road offer a travel speed bonus in order to encourage their use?

[c0ri0lis]

I also wondered about this as I was expecting such a system, where the better the road material the faster the speed bonus.

As far as I can tell roads just provide happiness to settlers who walk on them. But as you pointed out, settlers cut corners by path finding efficiently.

This also annoys me on an aesthetic level. If I build a Tavern in the middle of the intersection of a crossroads with a door on each side settlers will just start moving through it rather than taking the roads around it so making them superfluous. This also gives the drawback (albeit minor) that my roads which are decorated with Statues and Trees for the happiness they provide are now being avoided.

The cutting corners over industry is also a pain. Earlier this evening I noticed that settlers will come off the road to walk across my Fishery as the path was shorter. The only way to avoid this was to put a fence around it which while being more aesthetically pleasing is a real pain to add after the fact; resizing the fishery puts it out of action for ages. I should have thought to fence around it before, but it feels more like I'm working around an annoyance rather than just "playing the game".

Calculating settler paths the prefer roads either directly or by giving them a lower movement cost would be a good fix. Or at least increasing the movement cost of pathing though rooms.. In all honesty I would enjoy a Dwarf Fortress style system where you can assign high, medium, and low traffic areas to inform the path finding.

[Scribonius]

This annoys me too. Currently they only seem to give happiness, 50% of the bar for dirt and 100% for the others, although enough to make it worth it. Also the awe from fancy roads is useful.

[Gamatron]

I'll see if I can encourage road usage a bit more. Crowding is also a thing, as citizens will avoid tiles that are walked upon often, encouraging wider roads.

[Cannon Fodder]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

I'll see if I can encourage road usage a bit more. Crowding is also a thing, as citizens will avoid tiles that are walked upon often, encouraging wider roads.

I wish that was what was going on, but I only have a population of ~100 right now, and 3 stone roads going vertically to an area of remote ore and clay, and they still opt to walk between roads, diagonally, or alongside them. The only ones that seem to use the roads are the ones that work, sleep, and use recreational services along a given road.

[deMangler]

Originally posted by Gamatron:

I'll see if I can encourage road usage a bit more. Crowding is also a thing, as citizens will avoid tiles that are walked upon often, encouraging wider roads.

Thanks - one aspect of this game that would really add to my pleasure is more road usage by my citizens.

[madpraxis]

The beta version they work great. They tend to prefer any kind of road over non-road, as long as it's somewhat near their path. And fancy roads are amazing. Zoom, little people, zoom.

[LeNi]

I suggest to try and funnel them with fences. thats what i usually do. you watch where they go off road and block it off with fences. if u want to extend just remove the fences.

[Whiskiz]

yeah fences are great for directing peeps on roads and also block areas to certain races, say if those areas have rooms built in materials those citizens wont like

[LeNi]

Originally posted by Whiskiz:

yeah fences are great for directing peeps on roads and also block areas to certain races, say if those areas have rooms built in materials those citizens wont like

Didnt even think about that. but how do you block certain races? just a section for each race? like far away?

[Whiskiz]

just make it so their area and services are closer than others are

for example you can have a woodcutter field with services right next to it that you dont want the woodcutters using, by fencing the woodcutters off with the one path from it on the other side leading to that races services and area first, right there, before exiting out of there

say you want bug woodcutters but going back to using cave rooms - have woodcutters fenced into caves, services in the caves, then a different entrance/exit to the cave

just make sure there's enough services in each area or they go longer distance looking elsewhere - but that's an issue regardless

it increases gameplay depth a bit more in a way, but gives you less control

[LeNi]

Can we get a that implemented easier mb? controlling where races prefer to live in the city?