Roads on islands?

[niplfsh]

First let me say hi to everyone, this is my first post... I've been reading this forum for a while through RTW and now M2TW and you all have been a great help! I have one question that I have not seen addressed, however... is there any point to building roads on islands? Will they increase traffic to/from your ports?

[Dooz]

Indeed they do. In fact, I think the only place roads on islands lead to are ports, so that's pretty much their only purpose. Although I'm not sure how significant the trade boost is.

[Shahed]

Hi Nip... Welcome aboard ! How's it ?

The 1st level roads should increase revenue, yes. Maybe the 2nd too, I dunno I never paid attention as I want my autobahn everywhere, so I always upgrade roads.

It's easy to find out.. do this:

1. Open settlement details for the island
2. Look at the income line carefully.
3. Add the road into the que.
4. If it increases something it will show up in grey.
5. Mouse over again, the brighter items are current, grey is future.
6. Subtract the brighter figures from the future figures.

There.. You have the florin return per turn of that investment, at the current level of development of that settlement. It also depends on the port level in the island, 0 level port = no return, max level port = max return (I think).

Salute !

[niplfsh]

Thanks for the quick replies! That's a nice feature, I was not aware of that... I just added roads to the queue and there seems to be no effect.

[BeeSting]

Hello Nip:

Roads on islands have no effect on boosting trades. But I still build them for aesthetic purpose.

[niplfsh]

I just tested that on a mainland city as well with seemingly no effect as well. Now that I think about it, if I remember correctly dirt roads don't affect trade at all, it's not till you upgrade them... hmm. I guess I'll just build 'em on Crete and see if the paved ones do anything.

[BeeSting]

let me add to be more accurate: if there is more than one city on an island, it will have will increase land trade as with the cities within the island. But come to think of it, there are no islands that has more than one city in mtw2 as it was in rtw.

[BeeSting]

I just tested that on a mainland city as well with seemingly no effect as well. Now that I think about it, if I remember correctly dirt roads don't affect trade at all, it's not till you upgrade them... hmm. I guess I'll just build 'em on Crete and see if the paved ones do anything.

paved ones do nothing either.

[TheFluff]

I notice that roads, paved or dirt, markets and ports sometimes display either nothing (no icon in the display window) or a very small sum of money, while others show correctly or show alot. Its really werid but try building a port in a castle and you'll see what im talking about.

[Nestor]

I am still wondering about the benefit of roads on islands too. I am not even sure if they should be in their building browser in the first place.

The only thing I found useful was when the port is away from the city like in Corsica and Sardinia: it's easier to move units from the city to any ships in the port with a road. Other than that...

[Hengist]

England has actually six cities on the same island. :)

[Wandarah]

Dirt roads most certainly do affect trade!

[chunkynut]

I've built paved roads on the 2 main islands to the west of Italy in my Spanish campaign. I had already built dirt roads (obviously), markets, merchant wharfs and shipwrights. The increase was about 80florins per turn but that will increase as I increase the 'increase in trade goods' buildings.

This was an increase of about 1/8th of my trade income at the time on those islands, much more worth it at the time than the fairground, but not as much as the wharf upgrade.

[dopp]

I have also noticed that roads now boost population growth a little from "trade" (a little cart appears on the pop growth bar). Useful for teching up settlements.