[PvK]

Road networks are not the same things as fortifications. The "anti-mad-castle" folks wouldn't like another reason to put a castle everywhere.

I'm with Cohen that if added, roads should be a seperate thing and based on terrain. I'd also add that a seperate road should be needed for each direction. It shouldn't be one cost to build roads everywhere in a whole province.

In general though I think the absence of road construction is ok. The game is about destruction, war and sorcery, and taking time to construct world-spanning road networks seems out of place (and too fast, though the huge fast forts are that way too). The graphical element would be messy to add to the game's freestyle maps.

Also it would reduce the importance of terrain to be able to remove some obstacles this way, even if it took a dozen turns (which many players would no doubt whine about if it took so long anway, even if it's only one year of game time. I can hear it already: "Waah! Roads are very useless if they take so long to build an Autobahn through the Alps!").

Perhaps though, adding them as a map feature would be good. Some provinces could be connected by road, removing the terrain's effect on travel between them.

PvK