For the Empire: Total War building, see Basic Roads (Empire: Total War).
Basic roads are a type of road in Napoleon: Total War.
Description[]
Roads improve communications within a region: goods and, more importantly, armies can move at a better speed along maintained roads.
Some effort is put into maintaining the main roads, improving the carriageway and providing working drainage for rainwater. If nothing else, the building of roads is a useful way of getting some value from the feckless, workshy, and undeserving poor. Honest men who pay their taxes expect some return for their support of the naturally indolent and the unfortunates who have been thrown out of work.
Historically, there was also a military imperative to improve roads, even if the change was from a rutted cart track to a smooth cart track. Troops and artillery require good roads for strategic redeployments and rapid responses to enemy or rebellious activity. It is far easier to haul artillery pieces along any kind of road rather than across country. With the Enlightenment's conscious harking back to the Classical era, there was also a desire to emulate the achievements of Rome, even in something as small as roadways.
General Information[]
Requires an empty road slot in a region, 500 gold and 4 turns. Can be upgraded into Cobbled Roads. Basic roads take between 23-30 turns (depending on tax rate) to pay for themselves; however, their long-term impact is very significant due to their town wealth growth over time. Unlike most other buildings, they cannot be destroyed or damaged.
Building roads in a region causes paths to appear there; these paths are visible on the world map. Armies and agents only receive the movement bonus while on these paths, and the game automatically prioritizes walking on them. Armies can still walk off the roads, but become much slower for it. Roads can help counter the effects of attrition by helping armies move in and out of attrition zones more quickly.
In regards to aiding movement, roads are best built in large regions. Roads hardly benefit movement in small regions such as Gibraltar, which can easily be traversed within one turn anyway. However, the economic benefit of roads make them a worthy addition to any region. Given their large long-term benefits, cheap cost and short build time, basic roads are very desirable for building in the early game.
Like all roads, basic roads are a double-edged sword when it comes to movement: while they allow the player's armies to reach destinations more quickly, the same goes for hostile armies, allowing them to attack deeper into friendly territory.
The Peninsular Campaign[]
In The Peninsular Campaign, basic roads require 250 gold and 4 turns to build.