I'm a newbie when it comes to MoM and I was wondering whether or not it is neccessary to build roads in all the surrounding tiles of a city or just build one straight road to another city?

Any help appreciated, thanks!

Normally it's just best to build roads directly between towns.
However I find it best to place roads directly above, below and to the left and right of the town. This way if your passing by with a full army they don't have to go through the town. This does provide your enemies the same freedom however.


XRX
RCR
XRX

C - City
R - Road
X - Blank or normal tile not built on.

By doing the above it actually allows you to move diaonally from one road to another by forming a 4 point Diamond pattern around the town.

Since the OP is probably wondering whether roads make a difference to tile productivity: they don't. Only forming road links to other cities makes a difference since that gives you a trade bonus.

So all this time I've been doing Civ-style "a road for every tile!" building for nothing? Good to know. Is there a limit to how many link-to-other-city bonuses you can get?

Sadly yes it was not helping beyond any extra after connecting towns.

TIP - Endurance Life Spell really speeds up road building when cast on Engineers. Not just the obvious bonus of perhaps being allowed to build same turn you move but it actually DOUBLES your effectiveness (Dwarfs only get +50% to this). For a quick example on a River or Nature Node Tile it normally takes 5 turns to build a road. With Endurance that same engineer will only take 2 turns.

Dwarf Engineers are so super as they work twice as fast as any others. Basically 1 Dwarf = 2 of any other engineer. With Endurance on the Dwarf he = 3 normal engineers. 2 Enduranced Dwarfs can build a road on any legal tile in 1 turn.

Also a group of 5 normal non buffed engineers can build a road in 1 turn as well. Problem is their darned upkeep. Esp compared to Dwarfs.

For much more detailed info on any more questions re road building check out the wikia page below.

http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Roads

Unlike any other engineers, dwarf engineers are actually competent fighters too. They can defend cities in a pinch.

Nomads get the trade bonus without roads, so they're not needed except for transportation.

You should build roads so your armies don't have to go through your cities, because you can only fit nine units on any map tile, so if your army stack plus the city garrison stack exceeds that limit, the army won't be able to enter the city. In some cases you can split up the army and pass it through the city in pieces, but that's a chore and if you have a full garrison it won't work anyway.

The only limit in terms of linking cities is the number of cities that you can connect to the road network. Every city added to it boosts the trade bonus.

Enchanted Roads (automatic on Myrror, available on Arcanus via a Sorcery spell) increases the trade bonus between cities connected via them in addition to providing free movement along them.

WRONG

Enchanting the roads does NOT increase the trade bonus at all.
The things that really effect the Bonus are the population sizes of the connected towns and if they are same or different race. Check out the Link above for more in depth info.

By the way there is a max cap on the bonus as well.

Still Enchanted Roads are still good for the free movement so it's not that you shouldn't enchant the roads it's just be aware that it will not effect gold income.