This isn't an apology for anything in the sense that I'm sorry. This is an apology in the philosophical sense, a defense of something. In this case, I'm defending the construction of roads as a strategic tool over the use of long tunnels.

I don't see people build roads very often in Ace of Spades. When I do, they're always one step high (and therefore slow), or nobody ever takes the time to maintain or expand them (And so the road eventually becomes useless). This is a damn shame. I would say there is no structure more powerful in the game. Roads can defeat mountain forts if well placed, or allow for the creation of huge intel leads with extremely heavy offensive pressure. They're extremely powerful structures.

But first, what is a road, and how do you make a good road? A road is simply a trench with exposed dirt extending in a straight, usually over mountains or other difficult terrain. Making a road is simple. To start, simply pick a direction and start digging a 2-wide trench. When digging your trench up a mountain, wait for the wall in front of you to become 4 blocks high, then dig out the top two layers of the wall and make a step there. When digging down a mountain, simply use the pickaxe to flatten out the natural mountain steps, trying to make a single step every 2 blocks. This allows the mountain to be run down quickly, while still making it somewhat uncomfortable to climb. It's always important to remember that the speed of a road in controlled by the number of steps, so roads with two-high steps will also be faster than roads with 1-high steps. Once the road is finally built, remember to repair it as it takes damage. People will throw nades onto your road and blocks from the floor will be destroyed, so take the time to stop and fill in the damage. This is very important or your road will become useless and slow to run on.

So, why use roads? Roads, ultimately, are a way to help your team control more space. By allowing faster movement in your territory, but keeping the movement visible, you can move your men to your front line faster. More men on the frontline means more territory means easier intel caps. But why not simply use a transport tunnel? Several reasons:
1. Unlike tunnels, roads are resistant to sabotage.
2. Unlike tunnels, roads can be accessed from any point on the road. Thus they are easier to use.
3. Roads can be guarded and defended much easier than tunnels.
4. Roads are harder to co-opt, unlike tunnels which can easily become the enemy's best friend if found.
5. Roads show on the map and are therefore easier for teammates to find and use.
6. Roads can run directly into above-ground fortifications such as bunkers or trenches.
There's a few more, but I think you get the idea.

So, where should we build roads? Start your road in lowlands where your team spawns and run them to contested mountains or into trench networks near enemy forts. Remember, the role of the road is enable your team to move faster and overwhelm the enemy by reducing the amount of time from spawn to getting to fights. So obviously, your road should end where the teammates would want to fight from, and start where they spawn.

This is good, bump.

Elaborate speech, but to what end?

does road = bridge? Cause them bridges keep on getting sapped by supports

fucking thank you. I think this almost every time I log on. for every bridge constructed there's a dozen awful spade tunnels to nowhere in particular, which is retarded because tunnels do not help to hold ground.

I accept your apology.

I agree in general that roads can be super awesome. Obviously blue needs to get its men forwad as fast as it can.

However, I disagree about the preferred step size for hill-climbing roads (and so does the wiki, IIRC).

I went through a period where whenever I played as green I would tend to build a road up any prominent mountains across the river. I'm not sure this is actually that useful for green; it happened to work well on the first map I tried it because there was a natural "express route" from the top of that mountain into enemy base territory, but generally getting to the top of the front mountains isn't that helpful for green.

Anyway, in my experience, making steps one high and two deep is better than two high, and one high three deep is optimal though generally too flat to be useful in making mountain stairs. This conflicts with your claim that two-high is optimal, and the claim that one-high two-deep is best for descending because it can't be ascended quickly by the enemy.

This is because you can keep your forward momentum while climbing; if the stairs are two-high you have to crouch jump to ascend, losing forward momentum, and if they're one-high one-deep the jump arc is always going to bump the lip of the stairs at full running speed so you can never go forward that fast. With one-high two-deep you can maintain full momentum although I tend to miss every 6-10 steps or so, which is why three-deep is optimal since it gives you more time to time things better.

I don't know which takes longer to ascend the same vertical height (two-deep one-high, or a sequence of two-high steps), but since the goal is to be a road towards the enemy territory, what matters isn't how fast you climb but how fast you're actually make progress in that direction, and these style of stairs definintely are much faster.

I'm gonna point out that I think bridges are stupid. Roads do everything that bridges do without getting sapped, and are faster to make to boot.

If you use the means of creating roads I stated, you'll see that you usually end up with 2-high 2-long steps, or 2-high 3-long steps. And you can maintain speed just as well with the crouch jump as a normal jump. I can run up two-high stairs at near full run speed. The game actually decreases your forward speed the longer you spend falling IIRC, so it's always best to reach the next step at the top of your jump. You don't lose any more momentum crouch-jumping up stairs than you do normal jump jumping. All it does is let you clear more height faster and make stairs easier to build.

It may just be that I suck at crouch-jumping, then.