[Birthright] Roads

[Jake Cotter]

Can anyone tell me what exactly roads _do_? I've found some
vague references as to advantages in trade and troop
movement, but what exactly do they do? What bonus to
movement in War Moves? How far, for example, can I move a
unit of Infantry over roads in one War Move?

I'm looking for official rules if possible. If there isn't
anything I can just ad-lib something...

[Mark A Vandermeulen]

On Sat, 2 May 1998, Jake Cotter wrote:

> Can anyone tell me what exactly roads _do_? I've found some
> vague references as to advantages in trade and troop
> movement, but what exactly do they do? What bonus to
> movement in War Moves? How far, for example, can I move a
> unit of Infantry over roads in one War Move?

A road allows units to avoid terrain penalties when moving across
provinces. For example, a unit of Inf., which has a movement rate of 1,
can cross 1 province in one week, as long as that province is a plains
terrain, or if it has a road built upon it. It it is a forest, that
modifies the province movement rate as mentioned and only described very
poorly in the back of the Rulebook (its no wonder you have problems with
this, it took my group a couple of weeks to figure it out). Thus, a
forested province is crossed as though it were two provinces (thus, it
takes 2 weeks for the unit to cross, unless there is a road). Once you get
up to mountains, it can take up to or more than a whole month for a unit
to cross a single province, but if you spend the time and the GB's to
build a road, it can be crossed in a single week. Thus they are handy to
build to allow your units easy access to all parts of your domain, and to
any allies that you have. However, they also become easy invasion routes
when your allies turn against you. They also allow you to build overland
trade routes. If you have no road, the only trade routes you can build are
along rivers (if you build riverboats) or from seaports (if you build
seagoing ships). Thus, it is usual for guilders to pester the province
rulers to build roads (sometimes even offering to fund part or all of the
expense themselves).

Mark VanderMeulen
vander+@pitt.edu

[Paul L. Ming]

> Thus they are handy to
>build to allow your units easy access to all parts of your domain, and to
>any allies that you have. However, they also become easy invasion routes
>when your allies turn against you.
>Mark VanderMeulen
>vander+@pitt.edu


This sounds like the perfect opportunity for a Realm Spell...."Phantom
Road". Where the spell creates a road a hundred feet in front of the army
and 'erases' it 100 feet behind them. Mind you, if your wizard is killed
whan you are in the middle of an impassable mountain range things could get
ugly...;-)

Denakhan the Arch-Mage.

[James Ruhland]

>
> This sounds like the perfect opportunity for a Realm
Spell...."Phantom
> Road". Where the spell creates a road a hundred feet in front of the
army
> and 'erases' it 100 feet behind them. Mind you, if your wizard is killed
> whan you are in the middle of an impassable mountain range things could
get
> ugly...;-)
>
Such a spell already exists somewhere, and it's not a Realm Spell. Or
rather it could be. *digs through mounds of paraphenalia containing spell
descriptions*. . .*time passes*. . .*more time passes*. . .*even more time
passes*. . .
Oh, yah, here it is: Rolling Road, in "Dragon Kings" (the Dark Sun
hardback). It's a "10th level" spell, so it would make a perfect Realm
Spell. Anyhow, it's described on P.111 of that book. For BR use minor mods
would be required, but it pretty much does as you describe.
N.B. many "10th level" spells in "Dragon Kings" can be converted to realm
spells. Others can't. And some are just silly.