Dirt Roads are key infrastructure for any early settlement, helping define layouts and paths of travel for villagers.
While not strictly necessary for settlement function, completed roads increase the speed at which Villagers are able to travel, improving their ability to flee from wildlife and indirectly increasing efficiency of industry by shortening travel between buildings. Wagons generated by the Wagon Shop will prefer roads when present along routes.
Upgrade Information
Upgrading a segment of Dirt Road to Cobblestone Road confers the following benefits:
- Further increases speed of travel for Villagers and Wagons
Additionally, Cobblestone Roads are one of few upgraded structures (along with defensive walls) that they can be built directly from the build menu instead of requiring upgrade from a lower tier
Basic Strategy
Building roads along expansions out from the core settlement provide a helpful escape route for Villagers that may be exploring further into the wilderness and risk encountering hostile wildlife.
As well, raiders will slightly favor taking routes with roads due to the travel speed increase, a behavior that can be exploited to drive them towards more predictable/defensible entrypoints.
Finally, due to having no resource cost aside from labor, dirt roads can be used to help pre-template areas for ease of future building placement. This is especially helpful for players leveraging City Layouts developed by others.