Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Ludomero]

For now roads are mainly cosmetic. Building them helps to increase some skills, it may be nice to have them in the landscape but it is almost all, the advantages they are supposed to give being ridiculously small.
25% gain of speed in the best case is not something which could lead to construct them.

First we have roads alternating directions very often for it is easier to follow cardinal directions (north, west, south or west) and in this cases this 25% gain doesn't compensate the increase of distance induces by those zigzaguings.

Even so we forget those badly built roads the road's interest is not obvious, those 25% gain (in the best case) being obtain by an exhausting lead of a horse, chariot,...

1) It is not worth following those roads, the possible advantage being too tiny in comparison of the extra attention demanded for that.

I suggest to increase a great deal the speed on the roads, especially for the carriages and chariots, not only it would give roads real interest but it would also be more realistic.

In reality most of the time roads helped carriages to have a much bigger gain of speed than just 25%.

I suggest a gain of speed of at least 100% for the earth roads and 200% for the paved roads.

2) In addition of increasing the interest of the roads for its users I was wondering of a way of increasing their interest for their builders.

Why not giving the possibility to the guilds to give or not access to the roads which are on their territory (crossing the roads would be of course OK but not following them)? One could also introduce an automatic taxation for the use of the roads going trough a guild's territory.

Building a good network of roads could then lead to profits.
However I think it could work only with large territories, which means either increasing the claim's size, either having a territory linked to a claim but much larger than it.

3) One could also add a protection status for a road on a guild's territory, attacking somebody here giving the concerned guild special tools to hunt the criminal (such as tracks on the ground and possibilities to enter buildings where the criminal could hide, the criminal being visible long time after disconnection)

[JohnValentine]

It's a player issue IMO, not a mechanics issue. Building a road doesn't make you a good builder, having 400 points in a profession doesn't make you a good builder, taking the game mechanics to it's limits based on the tools you are presented and building highly technical/efficient/pretty infrastructure because of it, makes you a good builder.

The issue and observation you've made about the inefficiency of roads is a real world issue, with real world solutions, that are applicable within the context of the game. ^.^

[IvanGray]

I wouldn't mind a slight speed increase, but not to the degree you suggested, mainly because it would pose enormous balance problems for combat, due to magnifying speed bonuses.