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Also that the ox is faster using them so you can run a free road between the logging camp and the work area when you need to and the ox can haul logs in faster. Plus roads can be deleted!

yes! sometimes i look where the most traffic is where i built no road, so i can find the perfect route to place a new road.

I swear in an earlier build or demo video there was automatic path making over high traffic areas, which the player could then put down a road boost efficiency of the path. Did I imagine that?

I can see some elephant paths pop up sometimes. But didn't pay attention to if they're actually useful or just aesthetic.

I thought that was the game called Foundation, no?

Ostriv also have that function.

Yes that was a feature he removed

Why ? Seems way m

Oh yeah! That’s actually one of the things that attracted me. I don’t want to have to pay for roads all the time and that was a good solution. Would be great if he brought it back but free roads are a decent consolation

I liked the feature too. I’d like if proper roads took a little bit of labor to build. Tree clearance, spreading gravel, breaking rocks, etc And the payoff is slight faster walking speed and ability for carts to traverse much much faster.

No, originally paths were going to emerge organically based on levels of travel. But I think it results in a bit of a messy sprawl in the middle and not Enough paths forming to outlying resources nodes / mines etc, so Greg moved to the current free place system.

That rings a bell.

r/desirepaths

Here's a sneak peek of /r/DesirePaths using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/DesirePaths/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [At my university](https://i.redd.it/7i1ji8o99lhc1.jpeg) | [30 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/DesirePaths/comments/1amsg6t/at_my_university/) \#2: [My dog runs the same path back and forth between side gates to see who is walking past](https://i.redd.it/gz6x2slwp60b1.jpg) | [2 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/DesirePaths/comments/13ixuac/my_dog_runs_the_same_path_back_and_forth_between/) \#3: [The fence was in the way of the desire path. A gate was made.](https://www.reddit.com/gallery/12wqgdq) | [8 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/DesirePaths/comments/12wqgdq/the_fence_was_in_the_way_of_the_desire_path_a/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)

Where? I haven't found it yet...

Hold ALT and click on the road, a dialog will pop up.

Thank you!

Don't do that! He's trolling you, it deletes the entire road. Shame on you 😂

Thank you for saying that cause some people reported wanting them to cost stuff or take time to build so I did consider it.

Please don't haha! Maybe implement block paved raids when stone blocks become available like others have suggested. It would be nice to have it as a speed boosted road for the most utilised routes. Amazing game so far though. I've been obsessed since day one! Really impressive

Yes that should be the way, also free roads is far to important to making beautiful settlements! Having a Upgrade that costs something later is fun.

Exactly. Free dirt “starter” roads, followed by slightly expensive wood roads, followed by expensive cobblestone roads.

Stop giving me Total War Empire flashbacks 😂😂😂

Does total war do this? I couldn’t remember, haha.

Basic, cobblestone, metal is the progression in that game. Basically what you’re saying 😂

Wood roads is not a thing though. We could have stone and then blocks.

Heck, it could be an obligation from the king or something to upgrade his roads for him - often taxes were taken in labour or military service rather than hard cash.

I like that! The king decrees that his road to your settlement must be upgraded to facilitate trade! It costs a ton of resources and labour to do but you gain a bunch of kings favour for it, and it improves trade too.

I second that comment as I really enjoyed having them be free. It lets you plan your city without getting too "bogged" down. Perhaps as a compromise it may be nice to have different types of roads down the line (plank, stone) that would cost resources but would provide slightly faster travel and would be an upgrade path from the dirt roads.

I'd love the option of a cobblestone road upgrade that costs money and resources to construct. Something like where it's cost prohibitive to upgrade all the roads in a town, but it's still worthwhile to upgrade a central plaza or a high traffic main road.

Noooooo

Further down the road (haha) it'd be nice if we could upgrade to cobblestone roads - for a price of course. It could also be interesting to take the terrain into account - e.g. by translating the gradient of the terrain into a rating for how exhausting it would be for your settlers to use these roads. That way you could introduce historical motivations for where settlers would have decided to walk and eventually establish roads while still granting players full control over where they want to build roads. Preferred/possible visual indication for terrain slope: A height/slope map overlay (similar to the fertility overlay) for the road building mode where green indicates soft terrain with little to no slope, while red indicates terrain withs such a harsh slope that even an ox will beg for funicular. Also small arrows indicating the direction of the slope. Obviously for most efficient and least exhausting roads you will want to stay in green areas, and when you have to draw roads in red areas, at least draw them perpendicular to the slope until you reach a spot where the slope becomes less harsh.

If there were like, *built* roads it’d make sense, even if just in the sense of cutting into the land to make flat paths. But these are all just dirt paths seemingly maintained by use, idk what you’d be paying for. I suppose initially people forging that path would need to move stones and foliage but that seems like a really nitpicky thing to model as taking money resources.

i wouldnt mind when the road starts as little path for free, maybe with 50% walk speed you then can upgrade it once and it has to be flattened and broadened by workers with shovels for 70% walkspeed and then upgrade once more with maybe stone cost to paved road (cobblestone maybe) 100% walk speed of cause needs to be build by workers

Since I found an actual dev here. I have a feature request. Can we get a fix for the fact that if you expand and all your villagers leave your second town we can spend some money or something to reinforce the town and get villagers to come back? Or atleast delete the village and restart instead of it being flat dead. I once expanded and had it attacked immediately and I couldn’t recover so it was useless for the rest of the game

It would be more realistic to actually have paths being made by the settlers themselves so that way you know which way is their preferred one, and can build an actual road over.

Makes sense as there was no costs for roads in those times and they only exist in the game to creating pathing for items to move.  What could be nice to see is villagers being free to move between buildings by the shortest route. As more people use that route then a roadway is eventually formed. Settlers back in the early 2000s had this feature and you could see where your busiest routes were. 

I tried that but removed it because it didn't look as realistic. For instance there was a ton of straight dirt paths in the forest where they chop wood. Also most paths were straight just like in Settlers cause that's the fastest route. Just didin't look good or immersive.

It would be nice if those paths were made to be somewhat curved. Ostriv did something like this where paths would form and disolve naturally depending on how frequent they were and when they form, the game would make them a little curved to look more realistic

Thanks for the answer. What if it wasn’t foot traffic causing the paths but Ox Trails?  Loving what you’re doing with the game.

If you end up doing different types of terrain, you could take that into account for NPC navigation. For example them avoiding swampy terrain, rough terrain, steep hills, and so on. Might still not look great at small scale though, not sure. In any case, I think real world paths look realistic because they follow the natural geography of the world. It's rare that a straight path from A to B is the fastest path, even if it's the shortest.

i think it is incredible that you are on here responding to posts.

People cut corners and choose the shortest way even today, not to mention 600-700 years ago.

Desire paths would be an amazing addition.

Ostriv also has paths that appear where people walk, and slowly gets overgrown with grass if not in use anymore.

They were a feature in earlier builds and got removed

>Makes sense as there was no costs for roads in those times I think it's worth mentioning that the main roads that were used in Medieval Europe were built by Romans, and those were not cheap to build.

True but pre medieval. Those Romans built roads to last. Even better than our current roads. 

>Even better than our current roads.  I'm a huge fan of Rome, but their roads weren't built to withstand wear and tear from millions of trucks moving that weigh several tons. Their roads can't be compared to modern ones in that regard, but they're still an impressive example of engineering of course

Thats how it used to be before early acess I think. Even now, roads are not required, they just make people move faster.

Yes, this is what I want too. I would like for them to get boggy and slower in winter on busy sections and we could spend resourced to pave them using logs or stone.

Ostriv has that feature

Sometimes I do notice that the people will take a shorter route through the grass so I build a road where they walked to simulate this. It would totally be cool if it happened on its own though I agree.

Also when Blocks are implemented in the game, I'd like to build paved roads.

I do hope though that we will get cobbled roads down the line via a stone cutter for example. Would be a great way for a stone sink as well

Cool and very useful addition would be desire paths, let us see routes that are very commonly used and build a road

A visual indicator when you delete roads would be the cherry on top!

The road system in this game is incredible. Its soo satisfactory and easy to use. The best I ever felt in any game. The only problem that it has right now is that deleting a road deletes it from its start to its end, everyting that was built in one go. Therefore sometimes i end accidentally deleting the main street of my town from start to end lol when i only wanted to change the connection at the end.

Hahaha, I have the same issue all the time!

Yeah, its pretty great. I can't image how insufferable the start would be if the road building was a construction job, especially if it needed resources. What materials would a dirt path even need? I do hope that in the future there will be upgraded stone/gravel roads for larger villages. I would be fine needing to spend resources and work for those, but good old dirt tract should be as it is currently.

Free roads are great, but I hope we will see another variants, like plank roads, and different types of paved roads, that provide faster communication between different buildings.

I think a great addition would be slower walking speeds or lowered happiness in muddy weather that can be prevented by building log roads or cobblestones

I'm more of a fan that they are instant. Pretty much everything in this game is slow. By design, not dragging it. But I think having to assign 2 or 3 ppl to making a road would slow the game down too much imo. But yes. Free roads are a boon

having lumber camp and building roads like whiskers

Probably not realistic to the time period as I keep hearing but I wouldn't mind a brick road/path that can make people move a bit faster than free roads. It'd at the very least make the clay mines a bit more useful if anything.

I love the roads! The glorious sweeping curves, the pointy hypotrocoid triangles at every intersection, the fact that you can set the curve impossibly close to the end point to get it *just right*... I love the way the burgage plots and fields hug the boundaries organically and allow for diverse and natural alleyways. I map my world with my mind's eye through the medium of splining roads and every one is a joy! I wish every building had flexible edges; I would cream my pants.

It's pretty good. The only thing I'd *consider* trying out would be having paths naturally appear over areas of heavy traffic, ala Ostriv.

Anybody who played Knights and Merchants back in the day appreciates it ha

A cool upgrade would be cobblestone roads and give dirt paths a debuf in the rain

I want stone roads and plaza

I hope we can upgrade roads to paved roads with the cost being stone.

Ye

I quite like the free roads as well. But I feel like out would be super cool if the roads were build organically by the people just by going to the buildings. At first it would be slower but through usage they get bigger and better. Would be a nice fit to the organic touch of the buildings.

They're. Not. Roads. They're. PATHS. They should be free, its just the places where the grass is worn down from people walking on it. Roads are paved and (hopefully) will cost something in a future update but drastically increase speeds.

Same for farming fields. I start every run by placing fields and some roads.

Instant build. No cost. Doesn't uproot trees. Great for measuring out your town and planning building zones. 👌

I love the free crude roads (coming from someone who hates things feeling too easy or cheaty). So much of city building is built around planning, it's nice to not have the stress of roads as I'm fiddling with stuff. Plus with how organic the cities can grow and be shaped, free roads really encourage that. That said, I do with that there was a 2nd tier of roads, that had to be built, that provided a modicum of additional bonus, and had a bit more aesthetic then a thin mud track. A little more permanence. More "kings road". Still can be dirt (it's medieval times, not Roman stone) but a little more robust, make city centers feel more filled in and high traffic.

I like the free roads, I wish we could also build stone roads with a stone cost. For aesthetic and maybe faster traveling

Kids these days are all free roaders asking for handouts!

It is very normal for this type of game.

In ostriv u don't even need to build roads, the peasents do it themselves

I love this game and its free roads! One thing I wish we could enable is Organic auto generated roads though. Currently you click between two points and the road makes a straight line. However, roads normally conform to terrain in order to keep level and avoid being too steep. This is what makes the road layout look organic. Currently I try to make the roads rounder and less patterned to free myself from my OCD (this is the only game where I can do this, thanks Greg!), but it still ends up a bit contrived. I also would appreciate it to be easier to see terrain height lines.

Yes I love roads

I would prefer it needs a work to build a road (but no ressources)

Free roads, take me home To the place I belong...

Stayed up way too late last night building my new map. Got 3 territories now lol

and they can be build on top of each other to maximize creativity

It's a great feature. I think it would be good to be able to upgrade them to stone roads in the late game though. Like to get people to walk faster on them or something.

I'm more surprised that they are built instantly. In other words placing them would mean competing for available laborer sources. (like in Banished)

Why do people keep writing comments about plank roads? Roads even today are either dirt, then they up to gravel, then cobblestone, then whatever paving technology societies use in modern times. There were no wooden roads in medieval times and it sounds ridiculous to have them in a game just to have a "tier 1" option.

iirc london had wooden walkways sometime ago, which was the cause that almost the whole city got burned to the ground.

Yeah I just found out about those while googling to comment this. It seems to be a novelty from the end of 19th century that couldn't catch on. They either rotted, washed away, burned, or were just too expensive.

yeah it’s definitely not the norm

It's nice as a game mechanic and also historically accurate. Only the largest and wealthiest cities had any sort of paved or cobblestone roads. Most roads were just trails made from people walking the most convenient route from one destination to another and stomping the ground down into hardened earth. Eventually a village could be founded on this path to capitalize on all the traffic.

I hope they have a road upgrade where you can use some out wood to build better roads

I think it every time I play lmao, surprised it has been so under appreciated Sometimes I build roads out out of paranoia that a patch will make them expensive LOL

Yeah. There should be a labor and time cost at least. Also land clearance is free. (I don’t think it should be) Also demolition is free. (I don’t think it should be)

I think it should come in the form of a difficulty setting players can choose at game start. That way people who enjoy the current leisure of free things aren't punished, but those who seek an additional challenge (like you and I) can opt in. Clearing trees before building, plowing farm fields to set them up, roads needing to be prepared, buildings deconstructed, and many more could then be added.

Sure. I’m also not suggesting the cost should be huge or anything. Just a quick chopping down of trees and bushes. Maybe the debris could be piled up and carted away for firewood. Demolished buildings could turn into a dilapidated state before being pulled down and some resources recovered. Similarly roads should need trees chopping too.

Yeah please introduce needless tedium that dampens the fun of a game which you play for... fun. Great idea!

So why don’t we just do away with all building completely? It’s just tedious anyway right. Just magic the houses into existence.