I love the organic suggestion where paths appear with caravans from one place to another.  They may not take the best route available.  With upgrades coming from technical or needing special materials (stone quary)

But a possible tie in to the Governor options that was posted by Boogie could be added to the roads.  A higher level of governor gives you more control over how the roads are around that particular town he/she is in.  So a level 3 governor can go out and "build" 6 tiles worht of road away from where he governs, lowering the cost of building, etc.  While a level 5 can go out 10 tiles.

That's the nice thing about the organic road concept. Your people make trails as they travel. You don't have to pay anything for them, but you also don't control where they go. You wind up with some kind of links between towns, though not great ones, and possibly not over ideal routes.

If you want control, you pay to have better roads built and maintained. You won't see people spam paved stone roads everywhere due to the upkeep cost to maintain it. So where you build your quality roads becomes a decision, rather then "spam roads everywhere because there's no reason not to".

How about something as simple as this. There's a tab in the city screen that lets you choose trading partners for the city. When you found a new city, it automatically gets added to the list in it's possible trading partner cities and a caravan unit starts to try to make it's way there. When it arrives unmolested a level 1 road is built along the path taken by the trader. If a monster or a hostile player interrupts the caravan unit, then no road is built. That way, a safe path bereft of bandits and monsters will lead to a road being built fairly quickly and easily, not to mention naturally\organically, while a monster infested region requires an escort\ranger group to clear it first.

As more caravans start to go back and forth the road gains in levels, say after 10 trips to and fro it becomes a brick road, and after 50 trips it becomes a roman highway, it might be an idea to have a research requirement for the roads aswell. The roads most used in trade grow the fastest, and the most natural paths with the least amount of obstacles grow naturally to become the most effective and used roads in your empire. No hassle. Heck, there might be no reason to even have the aforementioned tab, why not just make the whole process automatic? When a city is started it automatically starts trading with it's neighbours and a script determines what path the trader unit should take based on previous enclaves and the roads connecting them, not to mention the state of those roads.

If we want to make it even more complicated, the pathing of the traders should adapt as the terrain shifts and forests are cut down and grow up, mountains are leveled and raised and so forth. What i mean is, if a road is not crossed by a trader for a number of turns, the parts of the road that was not traversed starts to degrade in level, until it eventually disappears back into nature. Imagine a road between two cities separated by a local mountain range. The two cities have a trading relationship for 50 turns and the road between them is traversed by a number of traders based on the improvements in the two cities and the size of the two cities. The amount of trade on the road, and on all parts of the road determines the general state of the road. This doesnt need to be too complicated, it just needs to be able to adapt to new road conditions. Say a channeler lowers the center part of the mountain range allowing for traders to pass through the newly created path between the mountain tops. The path the traders take should automatically calculate that it is faster and start using that instead. Eventually a new road is built there as more people travel it, and the road that circles the range falls into disrepair. 

Uh. Didnt seem to be very simple at all, really. I guess i'll summarize the idea : 

Let traders be fully automatic in what paths they take between cities and let trader numbers be determined by the improvements\size of the city. As traders travel a path, a road begins to form, one to and fro makes a dirt road, ten to and fro's make a paved one, so on. If a road falls into disuse or the ones using it frequently fall pray to banditry, then the road should start to decrease in level. As new cities are built, traders should update their paths, and as the map changes and paths are made and blocked, traders should update their paths. Fully organic roads with almost no micromanagement hassle and fairly visible mechanics.

Why not just modify what's already in the game?   Since beta1a there's been a scout item that you could add to your units.  I think all it really does is add sight distance.  But then if I remember correctly there are other things that do the same and cost less.  Point is why not give scouts the ability to  Trailblaze.   Meaning any unit equiped with the scout pack gets increased sight radius/movement points plus the ability to build roads/trails.  This solves a lot of problems as one you can manually direct it's road building if you so choose,  or you can just click on a a city and have him build the road automatically each turn.   Also it's not a useless unit as scouts are necessary at all points in a game (except maybe the very end).  Also having units do the work means an opponent can hinder the roads progress.  Which to me can be important if said road is being buiilt towards your city >.>.

As for making roads more interesting.  I like the idea of the trail upgrading as it's used.  Going maybe from trail to dirt road to cobblestoned.   The first two levels being automatic and free simply from use the last being an researched upgrade.

I also like the idea of side road inns and such.   I think that while many won't want to play "Simroad" if it's in there it'll reward those players that do with a more efficient or safer economy.  It can be as simple as adding the ability to assign a party of swordsmen to patrol/guard a particular stretch or road.  (end to end is easiest)  Keeping the trade caravans relatively safe from roaming mobs.   Auto engaging any group of mobs within 2 tiles of either  side of the road.   The hardest part would be coding the AI to judge whether it should auto engage a larger force or not.    Also it could lead to a lot of unexpected combat prompts that can get annoying after awhile.

It'd also be nice if there was a means of undoing roads via magic.

A big no to organic roads.

Roads have tactical value.

As a King I want to control where roads are built. So I don't want to have a road that opens my city to quick invasion from my neighbours.

With organic roads I would have to station toops to pillage the ever growing weed roads that make my kingdon undefendable.

The only game that got the whole roads/farms/mines/terraforming/fortress thing and their upgrades right was civilization call to power.

You had infrastructure points that you got from cities with a slider setting (this could be set in a city level or in a global way). Then you would spend those points to build anything you wanted either around your cities or next to your existing roads/improvements. Each item would take some time to be built so no instant road networks were possible.

Why is it the best?

-No stupid engineer units.

-Old cities can help with the infrastructure of new cities. This was also possible with workers but the workers had to cross entire continents to get to work and that would take ages.

-It was balanced in both early game and late game.

-It wasn't tedious at all, and was quite fun indeed.

Also as Elemental is concerned, have enchanted roads/improvements as a map spell only in order to make it unique.

I'd like for trails and dirt roads to develop organically, but major roads with good bonuses to army movement would need to be built. Having military units do it would seem the easiest way rather then having a seperate unit for it.

Hmm...

I'm pretty sure the title of Soveirgn means that I do get to in fact control evrything, absolutely.

So Elemental has to be like 'every Civ-Style TBS game'?

I don't think that starting with the organic road system precludes the ability to build your own roads anyway.

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If where they can be built is going to be restricted, I'd like em heading to exterior resource points, other cities, forts, any place you'd need to make a road to, not just between cities.  Preferably allow me to draw one whereever the hell I want to.  Have the game send out a road construction crew from the available population near the path and have them merrily work away till it's finished and I'll be happy as a clam.

In a perfect world, I'd love to have two grades of roads as well.  Roads you build, and roads that end up existing because too many bleeding idiots have walked the same path and taken out the vegetation in their way.  They aren't nearly as nice, but after the thousandth wagon train goes between two cities, there's going to be a path there.

I hate, like on par with politicians hate, having to build every damn road segment in the civ series with a mass of stupid workers that do stupid things if you put them on auto...

I'm very much for the player having absolute control as to how the roads are built. If I want 2 sets of roads (one for efficiency, the other for backup reasons), I would want to be able to make those roads.

We're supposed to get powerful spells, like make a volcano right? What about weaker spells that can change the landscape without so much destruction. If at some point I can make/destroy land tiles, lets say be making them ocean or mountain tiles, I would want to be able to remap my roads without much hassle.

Seriously, if a mountain is the primary obstacle for my road, I would want to fix things later when I get the magic.

In fact, I like the "build road to city X” system. I don't necessarily agree that it gets built instantly like in CivRev and it might use other ressources than gold to build. But just deciding what get's connected with what is enought for me.

But one thing I would insist on, which Civ Rev does not have, is to be able to build road that connects with ennemy cities if your ennemy accept. You might ask to share the price or pay the road for him, but he must still agree to let the road come in (in the case he could feel treathen).

hmm I think perhaps having an Engineer type military unit might be best, it could fight, it could be paid to build roads, forts, etc.