Barbarians and Paved Roads

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Is there any way to make barbarian factions build paved roads and other stone buildings? I just miss them when I play a barbarian faction... What are the steps that I have to take and how can I do this without any problems?

[Red Harvest]

You would have to add them to the build queue by adding the "barbarians" culture to the paved roads entry in export_descr_buildings.txt and you will probably need to add an appropriate description under "paved_roads_barbarian_desc" in export_buildings.txt. There might be more things to mod for it as well.

I'm not satisfied with the way RTW handles the first non-paved level roads. For one thing the description lies to you, it gives no trade bonus for the first level (and is actually listed as zero within the file.) Yet the first level of roads would have been necessary for any real trade even if they were just simple passes. And the barbarians apparently had roads (hence the use of chariots and carts.) Archaelogical finds have included some corduroy roads through bogs and such that preceded the Roman conquest. So it would be nice if barbarians could at least be given some sort of specialized improved dirt or corduroy road type of option for upgrades. Something with a small but useful trade bonus seems appropriate (perhaps half that of paved roads.)

I haven't looked to see how mods have handled this.

[John I Tzimisces]

It bothers me more that factions like Pontus and Armenia don't get paved roads in certain mods...it doesn't make very much sense to me at all that eastern factions wouldn't get them...

barbarians almost certainly had roads...paved roads is another question. I mean, its more likely they had paved roads, but not the specialized, well built highways the romans had.

[Red Harvest]

I agree, and I nearly mentioned the eastern factions aspect as well. I'm not as well versed in what level of road development they had. At least the Eastern factions have some caravan upgrades to partially compensate.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

It bothers me more that factions like Pontus and Armenia don't get paved roads in certain mods...it doesn't make very much sense to me at all that eastern factions wouldn't get them...

barbarians almost certainly had roads...paved roads is another question. I mean, its more likely they had paved roads, but not the specialized, well built highways the romans had.

The greeks, egyptians, eastern and others more "civilized" peoples actually had paved roads. I am not talking about barbarians with highways, because the specialised roman roads were only roman and the paved roads technology (not necessarily the advanced knowledge the romans had) was widespread across the world.

Anyway, thanks for the tips :original: .