The "Place Road" spell is currently a Summoning Spell, therefor you need to have at least one summon spell book to have a change at obtaining it.

However i quite often forgo all summoning spells because i simply do not use them, thus select no summoning spell books. This will cost me the possibility to get the "Place Road" spell.

In my opinion the ability to create roads should be available to all, since it is more related to empire building / logistics than to a magic discipline. I therefor request that the "Place Road" spell just like the "Summon Ship" spell be made an universal spell. Or possibly even be made available to all sovereigns at the start of the game.

In one of the dev stream Scott even mentioned that "Summon Ship" could be make available through a City Wonder, in that case "Place Road" could be treated similar.

Or possible an improvement that gives units the Build Road ability, or one that allows to train a dedicated unit that can perform that function (eg an engineer).