What if ROADS Were Useful? 

I think the roads should be immortal, unconvertable and affects both players, so it is really more like a terrain than a building

What about buldable bridges? It would needed a bigger investment cost of both, resources and time. And could have wooden (fragile) and stone (strong, but take a lot of time to build) variants. And I personally prefer it benefitting both, friends and foes.

Would be cool if units created "dirt path" terrain by simply walking around, so paths that are often walked by units will automatically become primitive roads, which can then be enhanced by building proper roads on them. Any reason you didn't go for a farm-like building stage though? Would be cool to see the road materialize with different terrains (from dirt to broken road to finished road), and become some kind of dirty broken road terrain when destroyed. Buildable terrain based buffs can be huge game changers in an RTS btw, taking for instance the Zerg creep from Starcraft or the Undead blight from Warcraft III.

I really would love for this to be something that some or all civs could build. I even think that they would be great if a built road applied to all players. I would like to see them destructable with both seige aoe and direct attacks from all units.

This is awesome, Thanks!

roads, bridges - and fishing boats being able to build sea walls/bridges and perhaps towers would all be very lovely and good for the game. bridges should be destroyable - while roads not destroyable per say but most certainly able to be built on such as standard buildings and such which removes the road or portions of it. and roads would be best with the standard of being both a pro and a con for being able to be used by both friend and foe. there should be a max distance for possible bridges however - and docks should be able to be built on the edges of the bridges so that they may also double as a naval shipyard of sorts even if they can't connect to another mass of land or another bridge leading from an opposite land mass.

This is such a great idea! I'd love this plus the ability to build bridges. Sarjents should definitely be able to build them.

AMAZING! 😍Can I add it to civbuilder pls

elite roads should be able to move and build more roads

Buildings connected to a town centre by a road could be slightly cheaper. Units produced in buildings connected to a blacksmith could receive a small stat bonus and buildings connected to a University could research techs faster. Maybe some other small bonuses for connexions to other buildings too.

I think it should give both ally and enemy speed bonus

Consider: dirt paths and the ability to upgrade to stone. Easier and cheaper to build early for a simpler benefit but a costly upgrade later for a major boost if you made the earlier investment in the work. And the romans should definitely have military units able to make them.

Really interesting idea, I like it!

really nice idea with the road, can imagine it having similar effect like caravanserei, but then in Black forrest teamgames u need to have a different type of road that doesent give the bonus so there is no RNG to it

I think roads should increase the speed. Well… that’s obvious all types of terrain should in some way affect the speed of the units.

> next-level city building I tell you, the corpos must hate money because it's been years of us asking for AoE to have Sim City elements, and they don't hear our requests.

Imagine if all foundations had to be linked by road to a town centre to be built faster. Any building not connected to a TC could research and produce a little slower.

I actually kind of like the risk reward feature of having your opponents be able to benefit from the road you build, it would make actually defending them or at least patrolling them a consideration. I might offset it by making them even a little bit more cheaper, or by costing wood instead of stone or something, so it wouldn't be so much like just giving your opponent resources if they happened to take control over a road section you built for a little bit. My one aesthetic question would be are people just going to start mass paving everything, particularly if it doesn't provide benefits to the opponent. I don't necessarily want to play on a game map that's just a huge grid of completely filled in road sections...

This is a great idea! Love this content. Don't agree that it wouldn't impact pathing though, everything seems to impact pathing haha

And add carts units to move infantry at a speed close to cavalry. That will also make the Bohemian gameplay more realistic.

I had the same idea but not for aoe2 well it was for another RTS called sudden strike but im glad im not the only one who thinks terrain in RTS could be made more interesting like snow slowing units desert being hard to navigate by infantry but easy to navigate by cavalry there could be so much to do with terrain however building roads I think would become problematic as someone else said in the comments so I think that its better be a whole new map like couple maps with roads around the player base and in the middle so not to allow abuse wars always had roads being really important targets as proven by some recent wars so making it into something in the game would be more realistic

love the idea

I think it should not affect working villagers. Don't know if it is possible, but would be cool that just moving villagers get the bonus. I imagine this in a competitive game and I know that no roads between parts of the map will be build, just chunks surrounding lumbercamps and mines.

Are you able to determine if a say two buildings had an road connecting them? It could be interesting if various bonuses applied if X building had a road to Y building.

Roads would give players an extra reason to complain about the pathfinding. Other than that cool idea

2:10 Don't be shy give em 30% and include siege there

Do units automatically prefer to walk on roads for longer distances if that's the faster way, or do you have to path them manually to use it? (Also, we could have some other terrains where movement is slower, like in fords, or other "rought terrain".)

I actually really like the idea but somehow just don't see it getting much use in competitive play. Like in a 1v1, the two players are already so close to each other they can traverse the distance already very quickly with mounted units. Also the fact that people tend to just drop production buildings right next their opponents to spam units also makes this road mechanic kinda useless. It'll end up being something akin to the Siege Tower which never gets any use because there is already easier ways to bust through an enemy wall. So what I am saying is the gameplay mechanics will need to be adjusted for this if it were to be used in a compelling way. Like maps would need to get bigger. Other kinds of terrain would have to slow units down to insentivise road building and forward buildings become unviable through some sort of build time penalty.

Roads should be usable by all players IMO

"While there's merit in keeping the game simple, and not going overboard with new gimmicks." **AOE II expansions civs designers have left the chat**

I think roads should affect all units I miss building bridges and maybe defensive moat

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What about negative speeds for swampy areas and such?

Hey I absolutely want to add this into one of my mods, if that's okay. I just don't know how to make them buildable in the same efficient way as walls though, how did you do that?

I've had an idea for a modern-day Age of Empires game, taking place from the year 1929 (the start of the Great Depression) to 2019 (so just before COVID, preventing the game from being too controversial by including current events as playable scenarios). In this concept, vehicles reign supreme, naturally, but with a significant drawback. They cannot travel anywhere that a road is not present (except for specific off-road vehicles), unless the technology Off-Road Vehicles is researched, which still only applies to military vehicles and not Supply Trucks (the Trade Cart equivalent). The building of roads would still be incentivized even after that tech is researched, because vehicles would move faster on roads than on rough terrain. Unlike your concept, roads would become usable for all civilizations, including enemies, and could not be destroyed, although they'd be able to be deleted by the player that built them. The fact that roads would be necessary for most vehicles to move anywhere without a technology researched would mean that cavalry would still have a place in the game, as it would be nimbler, cheaper, not costing any fuel to train and maintain, and could go anywhere.

This could help bad pathing (non pun intended)

Roman Civ Bonus VIa Apia: Marius' Mules march 15% faster.

What's stopping you from spamming road in the middle of the map for infinite kite potential?

I like the idea, but lets be honest: Thats a thing that will NEVER come to aoe2, at least for multiplayer. Its such a big change, that doesnt really have a spot in the game right now in any form discussed in this video. The frature added for the scenarios would be really cool though.

Good idea in theory of making pretty and usable roads for city building, byt the sweaty try hard nerds on ranked ladder are on the cusp of maximum efficiency and would ruin it and turn it into something ugly. Instead of beautiful roads connecting trade routes you'd have multiple patches of random road tiles in mining camps, forage bushes and even random patches in lumber camps as people look for maximum efficiency You'd be playing Yucatan or arabia only to have the whole map covered in roads just so some nerd can have extra 10% speed on his units killing the thematic elements of jungle and desert of those maps Nigas would do a seige monk rush and make patches of roads randomly so their seige can travel faster. All in all. Good idea in theory and for custom scenarios, but should be left out of competitive play. Because competitive players always ruin good things for maximum efficiency (looking at you deer pushers)