Uriakai

Here comes my problem. I was thinking about starting a lego City (MOC) and my biggest problem is the baseplates and layout. When i saw the price of the road baseplates,i fainted (Almost), Like how much do i need to pay just to make some roads!? is lego crazy? Ive also searched on Bricklink, and still, prices are high, even if i find them cheap, i cant buy them because the seller only has one of them! and when i find alot of them (over 50) they cost like 7-8USD, its crazy. I also need those Green (Or Gray) baseplates to put buildings on, but they are also very expensive, dont want to use like 100$ on some baseplates and the worst thing is that every seller has his own "Cart", so i cant buy things from multiple sellers. Is there a cheaper alternative? I saw a video on youtube where a dude made roads from Duct tape and two-sided tape, its nice, but i am scared that it will look bad in my layout. Ive heard about the "Tile" thing, but it will cost even more for the tiles than the road itself (And i need another baseplates to put the tiles on). Lets say i found out how to get the roads, but what about the normal Baseplates? What is the cheapest shop/store i can buy them? Hope you can help me, in any way.