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When "Upgrading" a road to paved roads, the planning seems to slavishly follow any existing road. Even if there is a path that is significantly easier.

In my example the dirt road went over 6 tiles of Glaciers, costing 18k to upgrade to paved road.
I could cut that down to 1 Tile, just with a small redirect:
South, 2 South-west, South, South-west until you hit the dirt road down there.

We now have the option to remove any leftover dirt-road pieces for almost nothing. It would really help if we could do that.

Dirt road Image:

My ideal case would have looked like this (using dirt roads, as I lack IP for a full paved one):

It would be really helpfull if road upgrades would not follow dirt roads throuh terribly expensive terrain. After all, those roads may have been placed for free (map generation, AI) and so were not placed properly.
If a general rule would be a problem, this could be hidden behind a Modifier Key (Shift, Alt, Ctrl)

It would also be nice if the map generation and AI free Roadbuilding could at least try to avoid glaciers and other hard to build terrain.
Maybe get a "direct" and a "cost efficient" route, and pick the cost efficient one if it crosses roughly the same amount of hexes? Not more the +10% maybe.

It would make sense for it to hug the dirt road if you got a discount for paving an established road. I've just been removing dirt roads if they annoy me or look like a weird racetrack.

Agree ramnblam... a new road is as expensive as upgrading a route... feels off...

This will remain like this for the upcoming v1.04.

However after that I am planning to severely decrease the cost for constructing one road type over another. Which will need it to stay like this.

Best wishes,
Vic

I like that!

ORIGINAL: Vic

This will remain like this for the upcoming v1.04.

However after that I am planning to severely decrease the cost for constructing one road type over another. Which will need it to stay like this.

Best wishes,
Vic

The simplest way would be to add a fixed Trailblazer penalty to each terrain type, that you pay no mater wich road/rail you are putting there first.
For upgrades, following the existing road would be inherently the cheapest way - no additional trailblazer penalty.
If it stays at a percentile modifier, chances are really good that going the originally cheaper way would be cheaper even with the Upgrade.


And I still think the original path-drawing should at least consider the cheapest route before going for the direct one. With Morac there were two cases where the cheapest and most direct route were the same amount of Hexes overall, or +1 Hex over 15 in total.
So the road would have looked a lot more sensible overall.

ORIGINAL: Vic

However after that I am planning to severely decrease the cost for constructing one road type over another. Which will need it to stay like this.

Nice, I was hoping for that.

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

The simplest way would be to add a fixed Trailblazer penalty to each terrain type, that you pay no mater wich road/rail you are putting there first.
For upgrades, following the existing road would be inherently the cheapest way - no additional trailblazer penalty.
If it stays at a percentile modifier, chances are really good that going the originally cheaper way would be cheaper even with the Upgrade.

This makes the most sense to me, since to build any kind of road or rail through terrain the first time should naturally account for modifying the terrain if required (e.g. building bridges, tunnels, etc.). It would mostly make sense for this initial "trailblazer" fee to be mostly waived for future roads.

However, I say "mostly" because IMO there should still be some terrain modifier applying in less-than-ideal terrain - e.g. there might already be a dirt road with a bridge there, but one would expect a paved road to be larger and any bridge it traverses to be much sturdier (e.g. to handle heavier loads, not wear out as fast, etc. since paved roads allow more more Logistics points, therefore it's implied there's more traffic).

But in general, the largest fee should be for the first road through difficult terrain - IMO it's a fair tradeoff of realism vs. gameplay/QOL and potentially reduces/eliminates issues with automatic road creation.