There are only 8*30 work days in a Oly year. If a road needs 20,000
labor for annual maintenance, that is 83.3 laborers working on it nonstop
to keep it up--167 gold in upkeep costs per month, plus stone. I'd
hazard that maintenance (versus rebuilding it!) would be cheaper, maybe
only 1/3 as much. But the idea of having to pay through the nose to
build a smooth, easy route through the mountains, that is appealing.
On Wed, 7 Sep 1994, Nazgul wrote:
> To go back to the roads discussion, here is a system that echoes some of
> the ideas proposed so far. Roads can be built in levels. Each level of
> road reduces the time to travel either N-S _or_ E-W by one day, to a
> minimum of 4 days. Each level of roads costs 20,000 effect and 1000 stone
> (twice that of a castle). Hence, many levels of road can be build through
> a mountain (effectively cutting a tunnel through it) while only a few can
> be built on plains (and only a few need be). Every road declines in
> effectiveness one level each game year (through wear and tear and
> weathering). A road can be attacked just like any other structure to
> damage it.
>
> In fact, you could treat a road just like a structure, requiring move
> orders to use the road's ID number to gain it's benefits, and allowing a
> noble to move into a road to 'own' it and block usage of it unless a toll
> is paid (much along the way a ferry operates under the current rules). A
> single stretch of road could be considered one structure even though it
> runs through many provinces.
>
> This whole idea would probably take a lot of code to implement, but I think
> would add quite a bit to the long-term game. Imagine one merchant debating
> on whether to pay a toll and make it to the next city in 20 days, or to
> avoid the toll, take a longer time to cross the mountains, and maybe risk
> getting beat by a competitor.
>
> Marlin
>