Unciv Roads: When a City Connection Pays for Its Upkeep

A road can make your army faster while making your treasury poorer. Before connecting a small city, compare the income the completed connection will add with the maintenance of the road tiles needed to create it. A short branch off an existing network can be a better investment than a separate road all the way to the capital.

The numbers below apply to Unciv 4.22.16’s base Civ V – Gods & Kings ruleset, with ordinary roads on your own land and no civilization, policy or other income or upkeep modifiers. The populations and route lengths are hypothetical examples, not a claim about your map.

A city connection is not a payment for every road

Unciv’s Trade Route tutorial uses that name for a city’s connection to the capital. A non-capital city earns connection income when it is connected; adding another road to a city that is already connected does not create a second copy of that income.

The route can run through an existing connected part of your network. Each city does not need its own independent road directly to the capital. What matters is an unbroken usable connection back to it.

Roads also reduce movement costs. That benefit can justify construction even when the connection loses Gold. Keep the two reasons separate: “I need this route to defend the frontier” can be a sound decision without pretending the road pays for itself.

Count maintained tiles, not the distance label

An ordinary road costs one Gold per maintained tile per turn in this ruleset. City-center tiles are excluded from transportation upkeep. Count the non-city road tiles you will pay for, and count a shared tile only once.

For a new project, distinguish the entire network from the additional tiles the project needs. Existing roads remain part of your empire’s expenses, but their cost is not newly created every time another city uses them.

That gives you two useful questions: does the whole network generate more connection income than it costs, and does this particular extension improve the budget? They can have different answers.

Calculate the completed connection’s income

Without modifiers, a connected non-capital city produces this amount of Gold each turn:

Connection income = 0.15 × capital population + 1.1 × connected city population − 1.

This is gross income, before subtracting road upkeep. The capital’s population contributes to each connected city’s calculation; the capital does not receive another instance of this formula merely for being the capital.

With a population-eight capital, the results look like this:

For the population-four city, six maintained tiles cost more than the connection earns. If the city grows to six while the capital and route remain unchanged, that same route becomes positive on its recurring Gold balance.

This is why waiting for growth can make sense for a purely economic road project. It is not a promise that the city will grow quickly, or a reason to delay a route needed for movement. Compare the timing with what your workers could accomplish elsewhere.

Worked comparison: a shared network versus separate routes

Now imagine two non-capital cities, with populations four and five, and the same population-eight capital. Their combined gross connection income is 4.6 + 5.7 = 10.3 Gold per turn.

Suppose you can connect the first city with five maintained road tiles, then reach the second through a three-tile branch from that connected network. That design uses eight distinct charged tiles. An alternative layout uses two separate routes requiring twelve distinct charged tiles in total.

Both designs connect the same cities, so they produce the same connection income. The four-Gold difference comes from maintaining four fewer tiles, not from a special income bonus for branching.

These are alternative route designs, not a claim that every map permits those lengths. Terrain, borders and the positions of your cities decide which connections are possible. A cheaper shared route may also send units along a less convenient path than separate roads.

Judge an extension by its additional cost

Suppose that five-tile route is already built and the first city is connected. The proposed three-tile branch would add the population-five city to the network.

Its additional recurring income is 5.7 Gold, and its additional upkeep is three Gold. The extension therefore improves the empire’s balance by 2.7 Gold per turn, before any modifiers.

Do not subtract all five existing tiles again when deciding whether to add the branch. Equally, do not remove them from the final empire budget: they still need maintenance. The distinction is between the cost of the whole network and the cost of the change you are considering.

Construction has a cost before the route pays

The completed-route calculation is not the project’s entire cost. Already-built road sections can consume Gold while the rest of the connection is unfinished. Until the city is connected, those sections do not unlock its connection income.

Your worker also spends turns building rather than improving another tile. That is an opportunity cost, separate from the road’s recurring maintenance. A positive completed connection does not automatically make it the best use of a worker this turn.

For an economic project, it can be useful to finish one connection rather than leave several cities behind incomplete stretches. For a military project, an unfinished segment may already improve movement where you need it. Decide which benefit you are buying instead of treating every road as an immediate income investment.

Shared routes also share a weak point

A branch only helps if its route back to the capital remains usable. Removing or pillaging a connecting road can break the chain. Before deleting an apparently redundant tile, trace which cities depend on it.

In the shared-network example, a break on the common route could affect both cities rather than only one. That is a reason to consider protection and reliability alongside the cheaper tile count. It is not necessarily a reason to build a second road everywhere.

After a disruption, check the connection itself before assuming the income problem comes from population. An intact-looking branch is not enough if the missing link lies closer to the capital.

Choose the project that solves your current problem

Before assigning the worker, identify the destination, trace a complete route to the capital and count the new maintained tiles. Calculate the connection income, then separate the completed operating balance from the construction time and other work you are postponing.

Revisit that decision when populations grow or the network changes. The best road project is not always the shortest line or the richest city—it is the connection whose additional benefit justifies its actual cost in your current empire.