Egypt has a completely different game cost model to Vikings and Japan. Charging for roads may work in Egypt as the coins aren't used for production, but what is the reasoning for charging for them in the earlier Settlements ? ....
adding my voice to what was said above and pointed out by many already in this thread. Vikings are already badly balanced. Yes they can be completed in the best time for all the settlements, i did it in my main world, but it's extremely time consuming, and no i haven't finished it in all other worlds as i found running vikings on more than one city after a while was taking over my life. one has to earn a living after all. Japan on the other hand was better, it was actually fun and could be without losing sleep or major stressing completed. It was the addition of something extra to the game that with some extra work but without being overwhelmed will get you a nice bonus prize.
but lets not forget that the whole idea of the settlement arrangement, limited expansions one can afford and the random obstacles in it are about the creativity of working around them and having a different settlement solution each time. but this also means constant shifting of buildings, replacing 2x2 by 3x3 or larger, and a continuous way of figuring out how to shoehorn one more building in the space. the roads are the first casually of this rearrangement, specially with no reconstruction mode and as other buildings might be mid production cycle at the time and take hours to rebuild. and lets not forget that time is one of the critical factors here. and im a pc player 95% of the time. lol, did try to rearrange something once in my settlements in the app on the fly and realized the craziness of what i would have to demolish and gave up till i got to the pc.
All this to say that while the road cost in Egyptians might make sense, we'll see, the addition of road cost to earlier settlements makes Vikings, where you are always short on copper just plain unfeasible, and puts Japan probably a step below present Vikings in possible and fun to do. And lets face it most players consider the Vikings just a grind to get through since the attack bonus on the Yggdrasil is sweet and the 8fp on a 3x3 doesn't hurt either.
I started Egyptians in beta, cant say how the balance of coin and loot will work out with no diamonds spent to revive lost troops, specially in the beginning as we are getting used to the troop capabilities, and how much delay there will be between making and having sufficient troops to fight for the loot and the production buildings on standby waiting. but the one thing i can say is that there is a wast difference between a few impediments in the previous cities and the challenge of building around them or finding a way to make the city using clear tiles and the present layout with an impediment on
every tile. add to that the town hall is a whooping 6x8 so any movement of it without clearing at least 2 if not 4 impediments is impossible, not to mention all the extra road needed to go around them and the wasted space, and
the buildings are big, multiple 3x4 & 3x5, 4x6 and a 6x6, without clearing obstacles most of these cant fit since there is at least 2 squares of obstacles in each expansion. for this kind of obstacles a pickax on quest 6 is a joke and a drop in the ocean. the need for multiple military building will probably increase the needed size of the settlement, but even only based on the Viking and Japan expansion at low/lowest cost that is about 7-8 expansions. in those previous settlements you could figure out in most cases a way to have most of those expansions impediment clear. somehow i doubt we will get 8-10 pickaxes in 23 quests if the first one came at quest 6. this then means either more goods spent on expansions, to compensate for lost space, more roads to go around those obstructions, using more coin and taking significantly more time or using a bunch of diamonds to clear the obstructions. Neither option sounds like fun
in conclusion, while i was really looking forward to the new settlement and trying it out and hope that the Egyptians as we move forward are not as tedious/costly as some of the aspects might look at the moment, my first reaction is to forget the Egyptians for a while, and the time it will take to test them and spend the time finishing up any unfinished vikings and japan in secondary cities before the road cost is implemented on live servers, because i don't think it can be done with the road cost and i do want that Dojo.
and there is only so much time in the day.
