One of my players has asked for expenditures for road building. It seems he would like to build a network of roads to tie his estates together more efficiently.

How much do you think this would cost?

Based on Book of the Manor, p. 18:

Normal (dirt) road: £1 per mile through fields, £2 per mile through forests.
Paved (Roman) road: £5 per mile (I'd add +£1 going through forests).

In short, this is likely prohibitively expensive for joining any estates save if they are in the same county.

The utility of it is somewhat suspect, too. You probably already have dirt roads crisscrossing much of the countryside, more that are shown in the big Logres maps, as evidenced by comparing the Salisbury map to the Logres map. Off the top of my head, the dedicated road might shorten the distance up to a third, which might be useful, but that means that within a scale of a single county, that is less than a day's travel, still.

Also, I happen to think that the movement rates of a road vs. path etc in KAP 5.1 are way too pessimistic. If you are riding across a field rather than trying to drive a wagon, you don't need a road. It is just when you are in a forest that you will have real problems with pathfinding and underbrush.

Estate has the same prices on p77.

I'm in agreement with Morien on the travel savings as well. Fields don;t slow down riders all that much. What gets them is not knowing the way and becoming lost. The path you know always goes somewhere. In the fields you could go around a hill and ride off course. Hope someone has good Hunting. ^^ One exception I would make is for messengers and hard riding when it starts getting dark knowing you are on a road means you can go much faster.

For an army though it makes a huge difference. Oxen are slow and they are bringing the food. They can do 3mph on a dirt road in good conditions. Over uncleared waste and furrowed fields forget it. Footmen on the march get a benefit as well.

The speed of riding on a horse through a field depends on what is planted on those fields. A hard packed field of grass is the same as a road, but a freshly plowed field is much harder to get through. It is the same as wading through a fresh patch of snow. You tend to sink into the soil easier. Not to mention the possibility of holes and such that may cripple your horse. A wise man will not ride hard through fields. It may seem shorter, but faster it is not. Going on a hard packed road is much easier. Of course if the road is in bad shape you will reduce your speed as well.

If you are going through wild lands the underbrush and grass is much different than a simple plowed field. The ground is much more uneven and this gives a higher risk of hurting your horse. IF not yourself as your horse falls and breaks its leg.

If you want to go through the wilderness you will probably use the tracks made by wild animals like the deer and boar (they tend to use the same paths each time). Not sure what it is called in english, but in dutch it is called 'wildwissel' or 'wildpad'.

As for creating your own roads between estates means you probably cross other people's land and they have to agree to it. Not to mention the yearly cost it will take to keep the roads open.

When I say fields I mean non-arable land including meadows and pasture. I should be more specific.

The wild animal paths are called 'game trails' where I'm from.