Roads

[MrBiscuits]

Indeed but what else is it supposed to be?
This is a 4X game which means your resources/empire size directly represents how powerful you are.
You're putting your production (or spellcasting) capacity against your opponent.
So it comes from the definition of the genre.

Yes that's true, but normally in 4X games it's two big armies fighting it out on the front line. 
The problem is that there are two armies a long way away from each other that move very slowly and by the time they move across the map and get to fight there are loads of new units produced by both sides that are a long way away again. So the end game takes far longer than it should do. What's the point of spending the game getting really powerful summons and heroes that can't really do much?

That can't be helped. The players expect to be able to fight a battle without losing a unit and there are plenty of game mechanics that make it possible. But if a stack suffers no losses then it can take out an infinite amount of enemies without getting used up in the process, so the only thing that limits that is their speed of movement and number of enemies to destroy.

I tried to make it so that the AI forces the player to lose units whenever possible, but that's not an option in case of game mechanics designed to prevent that, like regeneration or heroes.

Yes it's possible to get a stack of doom that wins a lot of battles (although I've never actually had that problem), but I always thought that was supposed to be one of the ways to win. 
And it sounds like an edge case with the right items on the right heroes towards the end of the game. That's when all the aspects of the game come together to make it possible.
For me doom bolts, psionic blast or cracks call seem to kill my heroes before they do much anyway.

Regarding razing, I rarely do it and didn't realise it was the optimum way of playing. I thought that having an extra city would be more beneficial than lettings your stack move on faster afterwards.

[Domon]

 I thought that having an extra city would be more beneficial than lettings your stack move on faster afterwards.

it's a game of strategy and tactics. whether it's best to conquer or raze is up to your evaluation of the current situation.

[teelaurila]

I for one would prefer Myrran roads "mundane" as on Arcanus. And combat roads 1 move per square like grass, as in overland.

How does overland roads to a city translate to city combat anyway? Sometimes there are roads between the attacker and the city if there is road to city, sometimes not? Though this seems consistent between combats in the same city with same roads?

[Seravy]

I think the position of the road might depend on which way the road goes on the overland map? I'm not entirely sure how that works.

[Slingers]

@ MOM roads vs. CIV2 roads
In MOM and CIV2 the possible distance to move units on the overland map increases during the game usually. This happens mainly because of more and more roads, railways (enchanted roads), airports (teleportation, open tower, planar travel). Unit speed up helps the human to keep track and order when the empire gets bigger and turns take longer.
In CIV2 roads and alike are no problem, because it is possible to destroy tile improvements and engineers can build fortresses that double defence.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments...zation_ii/

Roads and towers in MOM have no counter strategy.
Road-type in MOM is determined by the plane and not by the race of the engineer-unit that built it. This most often makes enchanted roads available first later in the game.
 
@ COM roads
Mundane roads grant “Pathfinding” (1MP) which is the minimum movement benefit a road should provide. Those roads follow the landscape, cross rivers with or without simple bridges. The roads are muddy, partly overgrown or with fallen trees in the way. Horses, Giants, Earth Elementals and alike jump around on them!
If right now it is a problem for gameplay to have too many roads, it might help to increase the building time or the cost of engineers. Roads then would appear later in the game and be of lesser importance for rush tactics, isn’t it?
High Men, Klackons, Orcs and Beastmen engineers should build mundane roads on both planes.
Beastmen engineers should take half as long to complete a road section compared to the others.

Only Dwarven engineers should build (on both planes) the strategically superior - Via-Appia-type roads (0.5MP) with stone bridges, tunnels and alike. Such roads are straight, level, smooth and stable. It takes at least twice as long to build such roads. The unit is more expensive.
 
@ Razing tactic
The impossibility to raze capitals (population 17+) would delay this tactic in the late game. To reintroduce loss of fame or another penalty would discourage players from using the razing tactic.
Like this it stays possible to raze unwanted cities that are badly placed or to play Klackons.
Razing a city could also - dependent on the interracial unrest table - lead to fame gain, fame loss or be neutral.
 
@ Unit movement speeds
Artillery should stay slow (1MP), because it is big and heavy.
Dwarves and Halflings should also move slow (1MP). They are half the size!
In compensation they can be more tough than other races - Dwarves because of higher defense and hit points - Halflings because of more figures per unit.
 
@ Combat roads …
… are more fun with 0.5MP !
What about a new town building “Moat” that requires City walls?

[Seravy]

I agree on normal roads providing 1 movement.
I'm not sure if there is a need for a "better" road, dwarven, or enchantment, doesn't really matter. Myrran objects simply look different, roads there are yellow and glowing.
Transportation is done on foot (or horses) so the rood being dirt or bricks doesn't make much difference. It would make sense for things that have wheels, but those are nothing else but the cataplut and steam cannon and we agree neither should be able to move faster.
I can't think of a gameplay reason why having different movement speed on one of the planes is useful and even if the better roads are race specific that STILL limits it to Myrror.

Unit speed up helps the human to keep track and order when the empire gets bigger and turns take longer.

Disagree on this one. Unit speed up helps the human reach, conquer and destroy targets faster, while providing less or no such benefit for AI players. So it's a rather unhealthy game mechanic that basically results in the AI being either weaker or cheating more. It doesn't help keeping track of what you're doing unless distances are already ridiculously short and it helps things arrive instantly or within a single turn at their destination.

Roads provide a (major but easily forgotten) economy benefit in MoM so they need to be accessible and relatively easy to produce - building roads is one of the things that make the difference between playing poorly or well. Building roads is pretty difficult too, because engineers are easily killed in battle so you need to keep them safe.
The cost necessary to make engineers actually slow at building roads would be way too high to take the (very high) risk of losing any in combat and would make the AI vulnerable because they don't defend their engineers.

I have a proper plan for razing, which is to get rid of the end-of-combat razing entirely and instead add a raze button for the city screen. Enabling it sells buildings and population at a very fast rate (like 2-3 of both each turn) and once the city is empty it disappears. So razing stops being possible unless you can hold the city for at least 6-10 turns if it's large. This also gets rid of the frustration the AI causes by razing player cities, as Hadriex demonstrates, some players absolutely hate when that happens. Unfortunately it means the player poorly defending one of their cities is penalized less for their poor strategy but the AI's chance to raze is not guaranteed anyway so this isn't something we can rely on for designing balance in the first place.
However implementing things of this complexity without the source code is difficult and is something that might be better left for a later time.

Dwarves used to have 1 movement in older versions. It's not playable. I tried.

Moat was considered as Drake158's "swamp" code can already create them but I decided against it. Anything that makes it harder for the AI to conquer the human's cities while not slowing down the human's unbeatable doomstacks at all is hurting more than it helps. Also, new buildings can't be done without removing any, unless we make source code. But if it ever becomes possible, a new building that makes it harder to conquer a city might be interesting - but it has to do that regardless of what is attacking. So probably something like "Guerilla Guild : whenever another player conquers this city, they receive no income from it for 2 turns and units that participated in battles attacking that city the previous turn cannot move for 2 turns."
...except, such a building would be seen by players as useless and annoying.  No one is planning for a strategy that involves losing cities. It's way too obvious its only purpose is to help AI players win. So we shouldn't do that.

[teelaurila]

Digressing from roads:
Could existing buildings have influence in city battles? E.g.: Amp towers create channeler effect (useful mostly for banished AIs). Wizard's guild fires spells, weaker version of fortress lightning for the simplest. Would be rather interesting if WG's shot (random) commons based on books, but likely this wouldn't be doable?

[Seravy]

Unfortunately the city data isn't accessible during combat. It's possible to get around it if necessary by saving the building status in advance so I guess it's doable. It does fall under the " Anything that makes it harder for the AI to conquer the human's cities while not slowing down the human's unbeatable doomstacks at all is hurting more than it helps." case though unfortunately. In general making it easier to defend (especially without relying on the garrison units) is a problem because the AI is bad at attacking.
Also it's a bad idea to have one building do multiple things well - economy buildings should not help defending your cities in one package. However we already have a dedicated city defense building : city walls. It might not sound much but it's a very big deal and makes a large difference in the first half of the game. Later, not so much but most other buildings wouldn't either. Maybe an additional level of city walls, that costs a lot more and provides some stronger benefit, could be useful but then we need to come up with an effect that can be effective against typical late game human stacks as much as AI stacks. At the moment I have no good idea for a type of wall that can be relevant against stacks of colossus or great drakes or heroes without being way too overpowered.

[teelaurila]

Alright, thanks for the explanation. Back to roads, hopefully removing the 0.5 movement from roads (combat and myrror) will be a thing in a nearby update?

[Seravy]

Back to roads, hopefully removing the 0.5 movement from roads (combat and myrror) will be a thing in a nearby update?

That's what this thread is for, to help me decide. I don't know yet.