Thirded.  I mentioned this in my review thread.  I want to build roads, bridges, and clear forests.  As a mage, I want to be able to terraform the world around me to my liking.  Yes, I would like to be able to build a ring of mountains around my palace.  I want floating castles in the sky!

But roads would be good. 

If rendering gets in the way of gameplay, I want to nerf rendering.

I always thought enchanted roads in MoM were too overpowered. They should have just been 2x or 3x speed of normal roads.

Yes.....   Want Plz....

All great ideas and I agree with them so I'll add more because there is never enough ideas.

On the issue of caravans it has been said before, I'll say it again here. You should be able to add guards to the caravans! At least give them some chance to reach their destination. It would be easy to balance too. Caravan guards cost upkeep add too many guards to a caravan and you'll lose more money than the caravan generates.

Eudamon(OP) mentioned walls, why not have the function to build a wall (upgradeable to different grades wood, stone, etc) around the cities area of influence. When a enemy unit enters the area of influence they will be forced into a tactical battle. The tactical battle map will force the attackers into a bottleneck (the city wall/city gate). During that tactical battle the attackers will be forced to battle (some fraction) of the cities defenders. If the attackers win the battle they have to move on to siege the city. The city will be considerably weaker having lost some of its defenders from the battle at the walls.

Currently I haven't had the chance to use siege equipment in Elemental yet but from that idea it could have many possible uses.

I didn't check these spells myself, but descriptions say they do exactly that - 'raise land' and that one from morrigan spellbook which raises mountains.

Randomly generated roads hurt my sense of order - and efficiency.

I gotta admit, it is easier to build caravan roads with the current system than to have to do the shoveling like in MOM.
Army of caravan + channeler leaves town, teleports next to destination town, next turn the road is complete.

I don't see the problem rendering the actual caravans. A single large town uses a gazillion objects so the caravans couldn't hurt that much?

But when current caravan is destroyed, the roads don't go away, no...?

The fastest way to spread your empire is still an organized monarch tagging a pioneer and caravan along.
Drop city, attach to road network using the caravan. *click*
Yes, it's silly. But that's how it works. =P