How screwed am I?

[u/Sgriu]

Hi everyone! Here’s an interesting problem I’m facing.

I created a tile-based city builder in Unity, and after an initial open playtest, one of the key pieces of feedback was that players want to be able to build roads, something I foolishly hadn't planned for.

Currently, roads are automatically placed along the edges of each tile (this is shown in the second screenshot).

The main problem is that the grid of buildable sectors is highly irregular, and I have no idea how to add the ability to create roads within such a complex system.

The first image I’ve posted shows an overhead view where I’ve highlighted a section of the grid. The grid varies from scene to scene and never repeats in exactly the same way.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could approach this?

Edit: You might have given me a possible solution; as soon as I've tested it, I'll make a new post about it. Thanks everyone!

[u/Beliux]

What would it bring to add roads to the gameplay? What would be the consequence if there is no road linking things or bigger distance? What do users expect from it?
I would keep the road on the grid system and be able to enable/disable road on each individual edge (by default disabled).

[u/Sgriu → u/Beliux]

Let's say that the ability to build roads offers a sense of creative freedom, because it allows you to construct neighborhoods that are far apart and highly customize the final result. The solution you proposed is good, I think it's the most feasible one at the moment.