Update September 26th: in a new build of Citadelum: Prologue, road type does actually affect the speed. This article has been updated to reflect those changes.
In city builders, providing road access to your commercial buildings, service providers and people's residences is a big part of the game play.
In most city builders, at least the strategically inclined ones like Anno or SteamWorld Build, you are offered several types of road. Each with their own look and feel, but also their effect on the city.
In Citadelum: Prologue, 2 types of road are available. Let's compare these 2 and find out if it matters which one to build.
At the moment, Citadelum (at least the Prologue) offers 2 different types of road.
The first type of road you can build, is Rural road. This type of road looks... rural. It doesn't offer more than a sandy path.
Rural road costs only 10 silver per tile, so it doesn't dig in your stockpile of resources.
The second type of road you can build, is Paved road. These are made of paving stones and already look a lot more like a road than the rural one.
Paved road costs 20 silver and 1 stone per tile. Keep this in mind when paving your city, as it does cost double as much silver than the rural road.
In the Citadelum: Prologue build menu, a third type of road is shown. This is Premium road, available at Prestige level 6.
As we can't get any higher than Prestige level 4 in the Prologue (demo) of Citadelum, it is not known yet what the cost of this type will be. My guess is that premium road will cost 40 silver (double of paved road) and 1 stone brick (instead of stone) for that more premium look and feel.
In the aforementioned Anno and SteamWorld games, the type of road actually affects the speed with which people travel across it. In Anno 1800, a warehouse worker walks 1/3rd faster on paved road than they would on dirt roads. Incredible, right?
Other games implement similar mechanics. That does raise the question: in Citadelum, does it matter what type of road we build?
I put this to the test. My test subjects were:
The only difference between the two sets of logging camp and warehouse, is the type of the stretch of rural road connecting the two. The left one is of type rural, the right is paved road.
The buildings and roads used for testing the type of road on its speed in Citadelum: Prologue.
With my trusty stopwatch at hand, I let the warehouse workers race and clocked them several times. I used the pick up and drop off as signals. These are indicated by a red -3 appearing above the logging camp and a green +3 above the warehouse.
The results were surprising in a few ways.
Update: This is the part where this article is updated. In earlier builds, road did not affect the speed. In the current (and probably all future builds), speed actually does affect the speed.
The timings were quicker on the paved road than on the rural road.
On the rural road, it took them 18 seconds from the moment they loaded the cart at the logging camp to the moment they unloaded the cart.
On the paved road, it took them 15 seconds from the moment they loaded the cart at the logging camp to the moment they unloaded the cart.
It did definitely matter if the warehouse worker was crossing the rural road or the paved road. This means the type of road in Citadelum does affect the speed with which people travel on it.
Actually, it is a 20% speed boost on paved road. That's definitely worth the upgrade price!
What was even more surprising: the weight of the cart doesn't affect the speed either.
I tried this with 3 separate situations:
It took the warehouse workers either 18 (rural) or 15 (paved) seconds to travel to and from the logging camp every time. It did not matter if the cart was loaded and if so, how much.
Another way a nicer looking road could have an impact on your city, was that it might influence the desirability of an area.
Of course I tested this as well.
Ends up: it doesn't. Paved roads do not make an area more desirable than rural roads. Only decorations have this power.
The above information leaves us with a clear answer to the question: which road should you build in Citadelum?
The answer is no longer as simple as 'whichever you like'. Because actually, it does matter which type or road you use. But, only for the carts travelling on the road.
That means that:
The other real difference is how the road looks in your city. It looks silly if your Plebeians would be walking around on paved road, while Patricians are stuck with a muddy rural road. But even then, apparently they don't even care about that.
If you care about the aesthetics of your city and have enough stone and money, you should definitely consider choosing the paved road over rural road. But that is the only reason why you should consider it. Other than aesthetics, the type of road has no impact whatsoever.
