Road (Civ7)

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A Road is a permanent network connection constructed on land tiles in Civilization VII and its expansions. Roads instantly connect Settlements within trade range and provide critical strategic benefits, such as eliminating movement penalties and enabling the distribution of yields and Resources between connected Settlements.

Mechanics[]

Roads in Civilization VII are constructed on land tiles to form networks between Settlements. Unlike in previous games, roads are not built tile by tile, but instead appear instantly once certain requirements are fulfilled.

Effects[]

Roads provide two primary benefits:

Eliminating movement penalties[]

Roads nullify movement penalties from terrain. Tiles with roads — regardless of whether they cover Vegetated, Rough, Wet, or other difficult terrain — cost only 1 Movement point to traverse, whereas such tiles would normally end a unit's Movement instantly.

This makes roads particularly useful when:

Preparing to siege enemy Settlements, especially in hard-to-navigate terrain like forested, hilly, or swampy regions.
Improving internal mobility, allowing for faster unit redeployment and defense across your empire.

Connecting Settlements[]

Main article: Settlement (Civ7) § Settlement connection

Roads are essential for establishing Settlement connections. These connections allow specialized Towns to distribute Food and other yields to all Settlements they are linked to — especially valuable for landlocked Settlements that lack access to abundant Fishing Boats or Farms. Connecting them to Towns specializing in farming or fishing ensures a stable Food supply for continued growth.

Settlement connections are also required for trading Resources across your empire. Resources harvested in one Settlement can be slotted into another, providing critical yields where they are most needed — so long as the two Settlements are connected by roads.

Another strategic use involves Hub Towns, whose Influence bonuses scale directly with the number of connected Settlements. In such cases, expanding the road network can significantly enhance the Town's overall effectiveness.

Building roads[]

Roads can connect not just your own Settlements, but also those of City-States or rival civilizations. There are two primary methods to construct roads:

Founding towns[]

When a Settlement is founded near an existing one, a road network is automatically created between them — provided they are within range. This early-game connection improves unit mobility and strategic deployment.

Merchants[]

Merchant units can also construct roads in two ways:

Establishing Trade Routes: Merchants can travel to another civilization's Settlement or a City-State and establish a Trade Route. By doing so, a road will automatically form along the route.
Using the Build Road to Settlement action: This allows a Merchant standing inside a friendly Settlement to target another friendly Settlement within trade range. The road is instantly constructed between them, and the Merchant is consumed in the process.

While the second option may seem expensive early on, it becomes especially useful in later Ages, when Merchants are relatively cheap to train. This makes it an efficient way to expand your road network — connecting new Towns, improving Food distribution, and unlocking various Town-based bonuses tied to road connectivity.

Road pathing and requirements[]

The range within which roads can be constructed is determined by your trade range, which defaults to:

10 tiles in the Antiquity Age
15 tiles in the Exploration Age
20 tiles in the Modern Age

This range can be extended through various game elements, such as economic City-States or specialized Towns.

Importantly, trade range is not calculated as a simple hex radius. Instead, it measures the actual number of traversable land tiles between two points — starting from the City Center tile. Roads cannot cross Mountainous, Cliffs, or marine tiles, which means that regions filled with Lakes or Mountains can obstruct road construction — even between Settlements that appear close on the map. This often creates the illusion that two Settlements are in range when, in reality, they are not.

Terrain blocks road connection (Civ7) — Mountain range and cliffs preventing roads to be constructed between 2 close settlements

This is illustrated in the image to the right, where two Settlements are not connected by a road despite being only six hexes apart. This is due to an enormous mountain range separating them, including cliffs bordered by mountain tiles, which makes crossing impossible. As a result, the road cannot find a valid path around the obstruction, and no connection is established between the settlements.

Road pathing logic[]

Roads in-game (Civ7) — Road pathing between 2 Settlements

Even though roads can be constructed over most land tiles, they follow a clear logic in how they connect two Settlements. First and foremost, roads can never cross Mountain tiles, But they also tend to avoid Navigable Rivers. This is because these require units to embark and disembark, which costs two full turns of movement. Because of this, the game treats such tiles as inefficient, and roads will try to path around them whenever possible.

The route a road takes is essentially identical to the one a unit with 2 Movement points would follow if sent from one Settlement to the other. In fact, players can predict the exact road path in advance by selecting a Merchant or any other unit, moving it toward the target Settlement, and observing the highlighted movement trail. The resulting road will always follow that same path.

However, in some cases — such as when the terrain forces a detour or when your trade range is tight — there may simply be no way around a River. In these situations, roads will reluctantly cross Navigable Rivers to complete the connection, mirroring the behavior of units who are trying to reach the destination in the most efficient way possible.

Ferries and bridges[]

As mentioned before, roads cannot physically span Navigable rivers in a way that prevents movement penalties. When a road must cross such a river, a ferry will be created instead. Ferries still allow the road network to remain connected — so the two Settlements count as linked — but units will still have to embark and disembark when crossing the tile, making travel significantly slower.

To overcome this limitation, Bridges can be constructed over ferry tiles. These allow land units to cross seamlessly without needing to embark, making the tile behave like any other passable land tile. Bridges built over existing ferries are also cheaper to construct, making them a natural upgrade path once the road is in place.

Interestingly, bridges can also be constructed preemptively, on Navigable River tiles that don't yet have a road or ferry. When this is done, any future road built between two Settlements will recognize the bridge tile as fully passable and will prefer it during pathfinding. This lets players manipulate road routes by placing strategic bridges ahead of time, shaping how the network develops before connections are even made.

Railroads[]

Railroads are a special upgrade to regular roads that become available starting in the Modern Age after researching Industrialization. To upgrade roads to railroads, players must build Rail Stations in both connected Settlements. This upgrade visually transforms the roads into railroads, but it does not further reduce Movement costs — units still move across railroad tiles at the same rate as regular roads.

The main advantages of railroads are twofold:

They contribute to scoring in the Railroad Tycoon legacy path.
They enable the teleportation of units between Rail Stations connected by the railroad network, allowing for rapid redeployment across your empire.

Using railroads[]

To activate this system, construct Rail Stations in two or more connected Settlements. When both ends of a road network are equipped with rail stations, all roads between them are automatically upgraded to railroads. Once this condition is met, units can:

Enter a tile with a Rail Station.
Use the Move By Rail action to teleport to another Rail Station (within a range of 20 tiles) connected via the same rail network or any eligible tile adjacent to it.
This action requires at least 1 Movement point and will consume all remaining Movement that turn.

Since railroad teleportation is limited to Rail Stations within 20 tiles, transporting longer distances requires one or more hops over multiple turns — this involves teleporting to or near another Rail Station tile within range, allowing the unit to resume movement through the network on the following turn.

Railroads offer a powerful tool for rapid redeployment, emergency defense, and fast reinforcement across large empires, especially when built through challenging terrain.

Strategy[]

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