I was referred to Project Gorgon by a friend that used to play a russian MMO that was heavily focused on realistic difficulty. She was painstakingly building a road in that MMO by digging up gravel and moving it one small cartload at a time, then smoothing the dirt (again, with a shovel), and laying down the gravel. Many happy months of gameplay there. (If you're like her and love to role-play carrying gravel. Steam tells me she's probably working on a different dozen Project Gorgon skills by now!)

How about something in that spirit here? Designate a few of the common paths between major areas as player-maintainable roads? (Gain a bit of civic pride, and effectiveness is based on your gradually improving ability to cut stone, craft mortar, and lay stone!) Consume resources to keep roads up and passers-by get a small boost to movement speed? And more frequent travelers accelerate the rate of road degradation? Maybe walking on better roads could make you stay a bit cleaner, too?