Anno 1800: How to Delete Dirt Roads and Paved Streets

Getting rid of things in Anno 1800 isn’t always intuitive. Some things can be deleted with a key press, while others require an extra tool. It confused me when I started playing. If you’re here, you’re in a similar boat and wondering how to delete dirt roads and paved streets.

How to Remove Dirt Roads and Paved Streets in Anno 1800

All you have to do to delete or remove dirt roads and paved streets in Anno 1800 is select the demolish tool and choose road tile. The demolish tool is the hammer icon on the right side of the bottom toolbar.

With the tool selected, your pointer will turn into a hammer. Whatever you highlight will turn red, letting you know you can destroy it. Click a dirt road or paved street tile and press the left mouse button. Click and drag along the path to delete multiple tiles at once. If you’ve chosen too many squares simultaneously, you can press the right mouse button to cancel the selection.

While you can destroy ships and building by selecting them and pressing the Delete key, that doesn’t work with roads because you can’t select them. Once they’re placed, only the demolish tool works. You can move them and rotate them like buildings, but only the hammer will do to remove them.

What’s the Difference Between Dirt Roads and Paved Streets?

Dirt roads are the first roads you’ll have access to when starting a game in Anno 1800. As you build your settlement larger and larger, you’ll unlock access to Workers, which includes access to paved streets.

These cobblestone tiles offer better transportation and access for your citizens. Carriages will travel between warehouses and production buildings faster, and firemen will respond to fires faster. It also expands the range of your administration and leisure buildings.

For example, you can build houses further away from markets. To test the effectiveness of paved streets for this guide, I constructed a house 50 tiles away from a market. Its Supply Stable was at about 44% with dirt roads. Changing those dirt roads to paved streets increased the Supply Stable to 92%. I paved my entire city trying to get it to 100%, but paved streets don’t solve all proximity issues.

But that’s all I can say about how to delete dirt roads and paved streets in Anno 1800. A final note is that you can paint dirt roads over with paved streets without deleting them. However, I would destroy them instead since you receive $2 for each dirt road tile you remove. You get nothing by painting over them.