King of the Road

Before I began playing Civilization 4 by myself, I had a friend show me the ‘ins and outs’ of the game. He told me the basic idea of the game and gave me pointers and tips on building a successful civilization. One of the things he told me was to build roads.

At the time, I didn’t really think about his advice: build roads. I was absorbing so much information at once, it went in one ear and out the other. Now, from having played Civilization several times, I understand his advice and its wisdom. Roads, roads, roads are so important! I like to keep several ‘spare’ workers about, just to develop roads connecting my cities, farms, hamlets, windmills, etc.

Building roads gives you distinct advantages. Obviously, people can move around quicker. This is important when you need more workers to develop land over yonder, or you need to move troops pronto! to another city, or you want the random wise person to inhabit a different city. It increases the mobility of your culture, which is important for resources to be able to spread.

Also, it would be a good idea, if declaring war on one of your neighbors, to build a nice road leading into their land. It takes so much less time to get your troops into their country, so complete conquerization is quicker.

The Romans understood the importance of roads- hence the saying “All roads lead to Rome”. They developed a complex system of roads to aid travel, which helped them
economically, as merchants, traders, and farmers could travel faster,
culturally, as travel was easier for old wise men and people of an important nature
And militarily, as they could have highly mobile troops.

Lucky for America, Dwight D. Eisenhower also saw the importance of roads. He developed the Interstate Highway System during the Cold War so that large cities could be evacuated quickly in case of a crisis (wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#Presidency_1953-1961) This also has aided America in many ways, as the roads have proven to be critical to the country’s connectedness.

So my advice for the game, I suppose, would be to learn from the civilizations that have done pretty well for themselves in the past and the present. Develop roads.