Fix roads across major river crossings/straits

[Stuffinacan]

Currently, if you happen to make the wise tactical decision to build roads across Major Rivers, and somehow straits, the game will punish you dearly with grave sights such as these:

^This is why we can't have nice beautiful roads

^ Note the newly paved road that cradles the oceans floor, proudly built -somehow- by Brigantic engineers

^Perhaps a more reasonable island-""bridge"", yet still impossibly and needlessly straight

My suggestion is the game should distinguish between straits and river crossings. Armies may not build roads across straits for obvious reasons, and that roads built across major rivers shouldn't break immersion and look incredibly unnatural.

 

[Bennet_17]

Wanted to post the same.

 

[XSamatan]

Maybe a ferry station at the crossing?

 

[Nostalgium]

The ferry station idea is amazing, especially for straits. Either way, I support this. It makes the Nile Delta in particular look absolutely ghastly.

 

[Bennet_17]

A few more screenshots.

These straight lines that came with 2.0 Marius are just ugly.
I assume it is a bug or at least this change was not intended.

Would love to see a fix/change

 

[brty941]

I believe the Poe river has a bug on one of it's crossings were a bridge appears but 100% agree with this

 

[Nostalgium]

I believe the Poe river has a bug on one of it's crossings were a bridge appears but 100% agree with this

AFAIK they all do, it's just that the bridge is placed on the bottom of the river, usually too deep to be visible. I've seen at least one such sunken bridge.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Adding roads to a beautiful map was a difficult problem since the beginning:

Imperator: Rome - Map Mock-ups

I did these mock-ups for the game Imperator: Rome. I worked with Art Director Fredrik Toll to define a suitable look for the map. I did not create the roman legionnaire model.

nilsw.artstation.com

It seems roads are drawn for the player to know that the connection has been built. EDIT: but we could have that with a road map mode, or the Atlas Map Mode and leave the map beautiful with roads that make sense.

 

[Nostalgium]

Adding roads to a beautiful map was a difficult problem since the beginning:

Imperator: Rome - Map Mock-ups

I did these mock-ups for the game Imperator: Rome. I worked with Art Director Fredrik Toll to define a suitable look for the map. I did not create the roman legionnaire model.

nilsw.artstation.com

It seems roads are drawn for the player to know that the connection has been built. EDIT: but we could have that with a road map mode, or the Atlas Map Mode and leave the map beautiful with roads that make sense.

It's not a problem with roads in general though. I love Imperator's roads meandering about. But specifically roads built across straits will draw a completely straight line between the cities. They often don't even intersect the crossing, and are sometimes drawn across multiple bodies of water as with that one province in Scythia Taurica. It completely breaks with the aesthetic of roads otherwise in the game.

 

[Bovrick]

I assume the straight lines are the result of an absence of whatever manual meandering they have in place for existing land-only roads, broken by the expansion of major rivers, so it just needs updating in the same way land roads were?

 

[Bennet_17]

I assume the straight lines are the result of an absence of whatever manual meandering they have in place for existing land-only roads, broken by the expansion of major rivers, so it just needs updating in the same way land roads were?

Well, major rivers were added long ago and the assumed bug of the completely straight roads just came with 2.0
Before 2.0 roads across major rivers and crossings looked "normal"

 

[Bovrick]

Well, major rivers were added long ago and the assumed bug of the completely straight roads just came with 2.0
Before 2.0 roads across major rivers and crossings looked "normal"

Cool, so hopefully any legwork is mostly done. It's not something I personally notice unless pointed out to me, so I wasnt sure when it bugged out.

 

[Bennet_17]

Okay, so I was testing the "Roma Invicta" mod which adds a lot more major rivers .
And I discovered that the streets over the new crossings look normal while the ones which are from the base game still have this completely straight look.

You can see the screenshots

 

[Licarious]

Okay, so I was testing the "Roma Invicta" mod which adds a lot more major rivers .
And I discovered that the streets over the new crossings look normal while the ones which are from the base game still have this completely straight look.

In all fairness I was kind of lazy when it came to creating the road paths. You can go in by hand and add several points between each city and move those by hand.
It looks like settlements that are directly adjacent automatically generate and place those points in good positions. So, there is probably some sort of bug going on in the map editor when it comes to roads across strait crossings.

 

[Godd_Howard]

Oh boy this one really bugs me I wish it was fixed. It's not a major problem but it does put your brain in a weird spot sometimes and me no like when brain go hurt.