Everything costs a lot in EB. Have you looked at other factions? It's not vanilla anymore.

We don't have control over road placement - but we can affect them in some ways. We just are totally inable to place them exactly where real routes were. The best we can do is to make sure roads go to the adjoining provinces. If there are obstructions, we can help fix those problems, but we will not try and make a road go exactly like a real one did, because the game just places the roads where it wants to (as long as stuff isn't in the way).