I was just playing a nice little game of Civ 3 and this idea struck me.
I often was mad that I had to build cities at certain spots to use an area as a canal.

Hence I thought: There should be a worker option or something that can turn any land tile (except mountains and hill, maybe) in a canal tile, which will function as a land and a water tile at the same time, but cannot be improved (irrigated/mined).
With the discovery of engineering in the middle ages you should be able to build small canals which can only be used by ancient and medieval ships. As soon as you want to pass through with ironclads or such, you have to improve the canal, which can be done as you discover another industrial age tech.
But I think that it should take up some money to build a canal.

Wat do you think?

I like the idea. I too have placed small cities on a one tile isthmus, in order to go from one ocean to the next. I've often thought the same thing. There should be a worker action called build canal.

I like the idea. I too have placed small cities on a one tile isthmus, in order to go from one ocean to the next. I've often thought the same thing. There should be a worker action called build canal.

There should be, but the action shouldn't be avaliable until the Industrial age, should be very time consuming, and only be avaliable when there is only a one or two tile distance to cover.

There should be, but the action shouldn't be avaliable until the Industrial age, should be very time consuming, and only be avaliable when there is only a one or two tile distance to cover.

I disagree. Don't make them too time consuming. But let them cost a lot of money. I think there should be some kind of a canal for early ages, maybe only one tile though. But I think the modern canals should be limited to 3 or 4 tiles. One or two is too little IMO.

This has been proposed soo many times. The problem is that the only real world examples of canals that span isthmuses (Suez, Panama) took considerably more manpower to build than a mere city. In any realistic model, it would actually be cheaper and more efficient to build a city anyway.

also possibly canals to aid in internal movement like existed in the 19th century. however, these should only be able to carry smaller ships.

In any realistic model, it would actually be cheaper and more efficient to build a city anyway.

In Civ it may be more efficient. But I have never ever heard of a canal, where ships could move through the city to get of the other side of it. There still has to be a canal, even within the city!! :-P

In any realistic model, it would actually be cheaper and more efficient to build a city anyway.

Only if the Isthmus is one tile wide, which is rare. I'd like to cross 3 tile isthmuses by the Modern Era, which I think is realistic. The lengthy time it would take for a worker to build one could represent the huge resources needed....say 25 turns or something like that.

The Panama canal is 51 miles long. The suez canal is 173 km, or about 110 miles. On the 256 tile world maps, either of these would be represented by a single tile only.

Three tiles is NOT realistic for a canal.

And what about China's Grand Canal? That was built during the "Middle Ages" (in Civ terms) and spans 1200 miles. The Suez and Panama Canals are short and took a long time because the terrain was extraordinarily difficult (Desert and Jungle/Mountains, respectively). Not all canals are such.

China's Grand Canal never handled ocean-going ships, so isn't really relevant.

I like the idea of canals, but they should be limited to something like one tile except that it cold be extended to three tiles by having a city in the middle of two canals. At least one end be conected to a body of water, and the other connected to a body of water or a city.

I dont see a problem with three tile canals, honestly...

I love the idea, I wrote Firaxis about this when PTW was in development. Let's do it. :D

I don't think this is an idea where the issue of realism really applies. I'm not going to scream at the screen and shout 'NO! The canal is too long! Aaaah!' - there are worse things to react like that at.

The Panama canal is 51 miles long. The suez canal is 173 km, or about 110 miles. On the 256 tile world maps, either of these would be represented by a single tile only.

Three tiles is NOT realistic for a canal.

I agree, but a canal worker action is one of my bigest wishes for civ4. Sometimes an ithsmus is not the best place to build a city for productivity reasons (like if there is wheat on the isthmus that I don't want one of my cities to miss by being on top of). Also a better metaphor for the average canal would be the Erie, which would be impossible to do in Civ3 Conquests. Also I believe two tile canals are feasible whreas three tile ones are not. Also canals should be an industrial age thing (maybe availible with electricity or replaceible parts); medival canals never connected oceans or anything like that; they just allowed small boats to move to non-coastal cities.

f I was going to implement canals at all, Id insist on the following:

- Only buildable on 'flat' dryish tiles with year-round water (no hill/mountain/swamp/tundra/glacier)
- Only buildable on tiles adjacent to the sea.
- dreadnoughts, battleships, and heavy carriers can NEVER enter a canal. They're simply too big.
- subs lose any sub-specific benefits when on a canal tile. They can't submerge effectively.

cities for 1 tile canals are the way to go. you have to keep them protected from enemies, so build a wall. its your canal after all. you dont want the rest of the world gaining faster speeds from point A to point B. if a canal would be an improvement, then you cant build a fort. if you cant build a fort, youll need too many troops to hold the tile. then again, what would happen if that tile is absorbed by a rival civs culture? even if there is a city of yours 2 squares away, your best bet is to build a city with walls, and to garrison your highest defense units into it. that way, youll be gaining strength of the high seas, while everyone else has to cross the bottom of the continent

@ Rhialto: I agree with you on the limits of the terrain where a canal can be built would be sensible. The changes to the subs properties in canal also make sense.

However, even supercarriers and battleships should be permitted to go through canals. The shipbuilders know how wide every canal is, and they design their ships to be able to go through it. They don't want their ships to NOT be able to go through a canal.

@ Stabbing Nirvana:
It would definitely be easiest to build cities inbetween one wide sections in the map. However, we are not always bless with the appropriate georgraphy. That's we invent them with cannals. To fix problems nature gives us.

Canals would also open up to us neat diplomatic opinions:
1. who can use the cannals
2. charges for use the cannal
3. it would give you a monopoly control of an important strategic resource.
4. diplomatic leverage (if you dont do X, you can't use the cannal)

Interesting ideas. I mean, look what happened at Suez.

Yes. There a great diplomatic options that come with this. I love it..

I could totally see this as a great addition to gameplay. . . only it shouldn't be a worker improvement like mining or irrigation. It would be somewhere in between building a colony and building a city, and may be akin to building a small wonder. Maybe instead of workers building it, a city should have to devote its production to the canal, and the further away the city is, the less efficient the production becomes.

It creates a whole new game concept. It can be used for diplomacy, transportation, a resource of sorts, and could even add to your national trade #s.

It'll be a target for your rivals, and a key strategic trading resource. What a fantastic idea. Someone needs to tell Firaxis so this can be added over the next year. :D

I've been in favour of canals and bridges since Civ 1.

If a society can send a ship to alpha centuri, it can surely build a canal as long as it wants, or a bridge across sea spans (like the new bridges between Denmark and Sweden, or New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island).

How about this: for every tile a canal crosses, it costs one worker. You turn the worker into a canal, as it were, but only after 10 turns or so. It should be an expensive and time-consuming task. A land tile (grassland, plains, hills only) could be turned into a canal if it borders a sea zone, or another canal tile. A canal becomes a one-tile sea zone, basically. Land units could only cross a canal if it were bridged.

As for bridges: same formula - one worker per tile to be bridged. e.g. a worker would be placed on shore, would work for ten turns, then voila, he turns into a one-tile sea bridge. Move your next worker onto the bridge, and continue as needed to extend the span. Ships can cross under sea bridges.

Enemy ships/planes/troops can attack sea bridges and canals, destroying them one tile at a time.

Good points in there. But I don't think that destroying canals is realistic. You could blockade them. That would work, but not destroying.
Also, I don't believe that canals should need to be bridged additionaly. I have not seen a canal which was planned to disable crossing it.

Yeh, that does seem a tad silly:

"Wow, look at our wonderful new canal which will pump our economy full of money, give us a great strategic edge and put is in a commanding position of diplomacy!"
"How do we get across?"
"Err....."

Yeh, that does seem a tad silly:

"Wow, look at our wonderful new canal which will pump our economy full of money, give us a great strategic edge and put is in a commanding position of diplomacy!"
"How do we get across?"
"Err....."

How do you cross a canal? On a bridge, or by wading through it. Any canal deep and wide enough to handle an aircraft carrier is going to be kind of hard to wade across, no?

Also, I'm guessing neither of you have been to Ottawa: Canada's capital is divided by canal that is notoriously hard to cross, except for a few bridges.

Sigh.....

I think the point here is that a bridge would be 'assumed' as no-one in their right mind would build a canal without one.....