I don't have Warlords. Please inform me if this has changed or if a similar thread is posted somewhere else. This is also pretty useless on Arch maps.

My theory regarding sea or ocean squares is that they are completely useless (obviously its hard to avoid them. just bear with me for a minute). Consider this. They provide at most 2 food and 4 gold with the collosus and a financial civ. They mainly provide 2 food and 2/1 gold for sea and ocean squares, respectively. This means that they are only useful in the beginning for commerce and when all your tiles are pillaged (at which point you've already probably lost). After all, a cottage on a grassland it makes the same as an ocean square, WITH NO GROWTH. The only good reason to have them in your city radius is for port cities and food bonuses. Food bonuses are the only MAIN reason to have a city on the water. A crab and fish city can be very good. But I just don't think it's worth it in the long run. BTW, I have never seen a cuttable forest on a water tile. Another good reason to avoid.


Yes, this is a terribly written argument. Live with it.

I fully agree, but trade routes are more valuable in coastal cities.

its also hard to invade another civ on another continent when you cannot build boats...

Coastal squares aren't so bad. I like to keep as few sea squares as possible within a coastal city's radius. This way, I get all the bonuses of a coastal city (harbors, able to produce ships, etc.) with few of the drawbacks. It should also be noted that some of the best food resources are on the water, so having a couple fish/clams/crabs within your city radius more than makes up for having lots of sea squares in your radius.

Additionally, I'd rather park a resource-grabbing city plopped in a wasteland (in a bunch of deserts, tundra, etc.) near the water so it can grow rather than dropping it in the middle of nowhere, where it's doomed to forever remain tiny. At least on a coastline, each sea square (with a lighthouse) can feed itself.

Coast/ocean are bad in the long term. In the early game, they are decent, especially if you are financial. However, I find that it is better to found cities at an inlet so you can get the Harbor, Lighthouse, etc. but also minimize ocean squares. Peninsula cities are usually not very useful.

Good financial cities can be made on the coast, specially one with 1 or 2 bonus food resources, cottage everything else, try to keep water tiles to sea only, and let the trade routes flow in. If the city grows large enough, you can have 5 trade routes each earning 10 gold per turn, thats 50 plus all the multipliers (Grocer 25% + Market 25% + Bank 50% + Wall Street 100% = 200%, thats an additional 100 gold! So that city is earning 150 gold just from trade routes.

I don't find them the most productive citys and certainly some of the least flexible, I try to get one coastal city for a few ships but even the benifit of a harbor doesn't really kick in until late medieval times anyhow so it isn't a priority. If I have the luxury of choice I try to found them in little bays that offer the most amount of land to work on, but as a previous post mentioned, seafood resources definitely make a city viable.

With Great Lighthouse and Collosus the coastal cities are huge. Playing with a financial civ and getting 4 commerce with no requirement to build infrastructure is a big plus. It basically means that the city can pay for itself immediately.

Try playing islands with HC (fin / ind). Build these two wonders - forget a CS slingshot - its weak in comparison. Everywhere you find a food resource, build a city. Keep doing it as fast as you can. Seafood is ideal since you can just whip a workboat, but any food will do. No need to terraform. No need to slow down your growth to wait for courthouses. Just expand as fast as you can.

Build order is typically workboat (if required - better to build elsewhere) ->lighthouse->granary->harbor->marketplace all built with slavery. By the time you can build the marketplace it will net more coins than the courthouse will save.

Later on you can follow up with cottages where you can, but the great thing about the coast is it is productive immediately. The extra trade and quick start you can get with coastal cities can outweigh what you lose by having less cottagable land - at least until astronomy.

Note, I said that this theory is pretty useless on arch maps- you may find 1 in 1000 maps that have ONE city site without a water square. Of course, on water maps I play tiny islands, so I might be wrong on this. HC is AGG/FIN on vanilla 1.61 which I wrote this on. I've done something like that before with Qin, though. I totally forgot about trade routes. :blush: Whoops.

Coast/ocean are bad in the long term. In the early game, they are decent, especially if you are financial. However, I find that it is better to found cities at an inlet so you can get the Harbor, Lighthouse, etc. but also minimize ocean squares. Peninsula cities are usually not very useful.

Except for a vital canal.

The thing about coastal cities is that it's quite possible to have multiple seafood tiles in one city (especially enemy capitals), whereas multiple wheat/pig/rice/sheep tiles are rarer. One of the better GP farms I've ever had was a Spanish capital I rushed since Izzy and I were alone on the continent. 4+ seafoods with pigs, IIRC, and its fair share of flatlands for irrigating. A coastal city probably won't beat a multi-river desert city with a dozen floodplains/grasslands, but they can work in a pinch.

Water certainly makes for poor tiles in the long run, but the outcome of games is frequently decided well before "the long run" is even on the horizon.

A coastal city can generate 4-8 commerce the very moment it is settled. Subtract for upkeep, and you just got a couple free beakers. In short order, that city is size 3 and is pulling 8-16 commerce. With the occasional whip here and there, the city can be covering its own costs and generating 20 extra beakers in the Classical Age, when it really matters. That's not bad for a city with no bonus resources and isn't pulling workers away from other important tasks.

With the financial or organized traits, I usually pack my coastlines with cities as densely as possible, since they are actually paying for themselves. I definitely try to get one coastal city for every inland city, just to cover the sizeable upkeep while roads are getting connected and cottages are being developed.

Late in the game, all of those coastal cities are overshadowed by the inland ones, but who cares? They are still making money, and they aren't using up the inland tiles.

Building on the coast early is just free money. Take it.