This was discussed very, very long and thoroughly during the beta stages. Engineering units were not wanted and alternatives were thrown back and forth. Caravan system was agreed on, and it's very unlikely it will change at this point and definitely not to engineering units.

I do agree that the caravan system doesn't work quite as well as was hoped.

Who agreed to the current caravan system? I sure didn't.

What the forums actually liked the most was a combination of "organic roads" (where dirt roads spring up on their own due to normal traffic flow between cities, particularly as the economic system we wanted sent resources around the map to be processed), and better manually built roads that provided more bonuses but had some kind of maintenance cost on them (think a maintained road vs a wagon trail).

The thing with the roads discussion back then is that it was predicated on one of the discussed economic systems also happening. In that context it made a lot more sense to focus on roads because how stuff moved around the map mattered a great deal.

Once the economics were changed to fully global resources, then I agree spending much effort on roads no longer made sense. But we didn't know that at the time of the discussion.

You can also build the caravans to build the roads then disband the caravans... then make new caravans to build new roads.

I find the system works fairly well. Cities are pretty much the only place you would go to anyway. The ability to randomly build a road out into the woods for one time use would be pretty weird and unrealistic. Historically roads were very tied to commerce. Can't see any reason to change the system.

I think it might be nice if wild improvements that are listed as being connected to a given city had a road going from the improvement to the city (unless being "connected" to a city has disappeared in one of the patches).

I want a watchtower building that can be built anywhere in my controlled territory, and I want to be able to garrison it with up to 3 units.

I actually like the Watchtower idea.  In fact, I am astounded we can't build any field fortifications, watchtowers, camps or whatnot, and are completely limited to founding a new city, which then takes a whole 15 seasons to build just one hedge wall.  How about a much smaller army camp you can surround with stockade within a few months?  I want my border forts!

And watchtowers, definitely.  It makes no sense having them only buildable from a city... you don't always need to found an entirely new city, because a watchtower isn't a civil structure in any sense of the word, it is strictly military and it's purpose is to watch over an area of land.  Historically empires and kingdoms would build entire networks of watchtowers, which acted as checkpoints, waystations and naturally, border watch.  Men at a watchtower would watch the land at all times and if they saw an enemy army approaching they would send back runners/riders to warn the military so they could mobilize and meet them with early warning.  Watchtowers might also have an increased line of sight if placed on a hill, and have a lot more sight over plains than they would through forest.  It just makes so much sense, especially since we don't need to build as many cities as we did before anymore.

What about having some zone of control for cities, garrisons, fortifications and units so when they hit the zone of control they lose their remaining movement?

Best regards,
Steven.

How you are able to determine what caravan is what is beyond me.

How do you do that?

Here's my logic (I usually play as Kingdoms):

1. First caravan created goes to nearest city on route to capital (build the road network to support #2)
2. 2nd goes to capital
3. 3rd goes another nearyby city to create road network or it goes to a secondary capital (gildar producing settlement)

If I get the warning that a caravan was destroyed, #1 thing for me to do is note the settlement and then queue up another one there.

Certainly agree tracking caravans could be made easier but it's workable as it stands now.

Okay, I misunderstood your original post.

I thought you meant that you were finding a caravan and disbanding it after certain conditions were met.

I try to send my first to the capital, then the secondary, then a local.

Thing is, what will hedge walls and watchtowers do in FE? They could be completely changed (here's hoping for AoW-style city walls showing up in tactical combat) - or cut entirely like other WoM features have been. Since FE is going to see some major changes to tactical combat, it's not a stretch to assume the functionality of walls and watchtowers will be changed somehow - and not knowing how they're going to work, it's hard to say whether field fortifications of some kind will be a good idea.

Of course if you guys are talking about things that could be added to WoM in patch 1.3+, sure why not, but honestly I'm much more focused on how all this might turn out in FE.