Commercial Hubs/Harbors nerfed.

[KrikkitTwo]

They should have nerfed Harbors/Hubs/trade routes by making trade routes fixed in cities (which would also reduce micromanagement)

Build a Harbor/Hub.. you get a trade route coming from that city...maybe change a few things to allow a domestic trade route to give some benefit to the city it goes to (if it is going to an undeveloped city)

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Harbors don't have a lot going for them (without mods), their adjacency bonus is pretty weak, a navy is a situational choice, and the buildings are good but not great. If you don't get a trade route out of them they're rarely worth it, and I don't think they can match the generally powerful adjacencies of the commercial hub.

I guess I did not really realize that commercial hubs were always better than harbors. I just always build harbors in cities near the coast so that I can build a navy faster. So, I was looking at the rule that if you only need a harbor or a commercial district now to get the +1 trade route, then why not just build the harbor if the city is coastal? I guess my thinking is backwards from the way you are thinking about it.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

For me, the strategy is clear:

• Cities on coastal tiles: Get CH, because you can already make boats from the City Center. But likely your city will have less productive tiles.
• Cities more inland: Get a Harbour if you want a navy and/or intercontinental trade routes. You'll have more production for those boats too. Else, get a CH.

 

[Magil]

I guess I did not really realize that commercial hubs were always better than harbors. I just always build harbors in cities near the coast so that I can build a navy faster. So, I was looking at the rule that if you only need a harbor or a commercial district now to get the +1 trade route, then why not just build the harbor if the city is coastal? I guess my thinking is backwards from the way you are thinking about it.

While there are situations where a harbor would be useful instead of a commercial hub--they don't take up a land tile, only a useless sea tile, the buildings are okay, and if you really need a navy they help with that--you're now strongly discouraged from building both, which means that a harbor will be built less, since I'll almost always build a commercial hub instead if I can get it on the river. Plus, it discourages you from actually taking advantage of the harbor's adjacency bonus with the commercial hub.

 

[UWHabs]

I still feel it would make more sense for the Harbor to have the +2 adjacency from being next to a commercial hub instead of the other way around, as well as another +2 from being next to a city-centre tile. Sure, it means your harbors can get up to +6 or even +7 with good placement, but I really don't see that as a problem. And yeah, it does mean running the double-adjacency could give you a ton of production from the shipyward, but I don't think having harbors too powerful is really a problem.

Has anyone confirmed if you also have an encampment and are suzerain of Carthage, do you still get an extra +1 trade route as well, or is that also affected by this same edit?

 

[WillowBrook]

Would a set of maritime city states that give bonuses to harbors make harbors worth building? I imagine we'd have to wait for an expansion for that. Or perhaps trade city states should give the same bonus to harbors that they already do to commercial districts.

It does seem to me that the change did little but nerf harbors.

 

[bladex]

i did notice though if you build CH near appealing tiles you get gold boosts

 

[greygamer]

They need to remove gold from the game! Units should be maintained through food, that would lead to farm spam and make harbours way more useful.

 

[Siptah]

They need to remove gold from the game! Units should be maintained through food, that would lead to farm spam and make harbours way more useful.

I feel like I remember that it was like that once in a civ game. Civ II? CTP?

 

[Tacgnol]

What this really kills is the Harbor + CH + city center or other district triangle which was +6/7 gold and made coastal cities attractive as long as there's a river and a dozen or so workable land tiles. Now coastal cities are pretty much directly inferior to inland cities once you have a place to build ships.

For those of you understating the value of a navy, you probably haven't tried it. Sure you can ignore navy and build a huge army, but focusing on ships is very powerful, naval melee units can capture cities, battleships and missile cruisers have 3 range, from mid game on navy steamrolls much faster than land units because your ships all have 5+ moves and no rough terrain and you can bombard heavily fortified cities for a turn without taking any damage, you do need a few land units to take inland cities but once you have wiped out their units and coastal cities its not an issue. That being said you do only need 1-2 cities building naval units and the buildings are really weak, Shipyards in particular, the production scaling with adjacency sounds nice but in practice it is very difficult to even get +3.

What harbors really need to be competitive is some sort of CS boost, just sharing the mercantile one with CH would work, just comparing a +2 harbor to a +3 CH is questionable but when the CH is giving you +11 or +19 gold there's no contest. Some sort of buff to the buildings would be good too, I'd really like to see something like +1 gold from sea resources from a lighthouse, +1 prod with shipyard, maybe +1 food or +2 gold for a seaport.

 

[darkace77450]

I get that they wanted to nerf trade routes, but I can't believe no one in the room when this approach was pitched objected on grounds that the collateral damage to Harbors would be so severe. If the end goal is to have all districts more or less equal in utility they just took a huge step in the wrong direction.

I noticed quite early that people that said coastal cities were pointless played pangea domination games. Of course their value is less there. I only played an island map twice. I normally play continents and with continents the naval domination does work. its just most people like the army domination and I get that, I was also a Panzer Leader player and like pushing the land units around. before that I loved the napoleonics and WW2 hex strategy games.

I always play Continents maps and Domination is the victory I play for least often. When I do play for Domination it's usually as England, but even then I feel coastal cities underwhelming. I still build most of my cities on the coast as England just to mix things up from my other games, but I do so knowing the swaths of virtually barren coastal tiles are a major setback to city development. I still think reefs need to be a coastal terrain feature that offer food and science/culture/faith when worked, but that's a discussion for another thread.

Maybe they should get rid of fish altogether and make fishing boats a generic improvement you can build on any coast like farms

Even if they decide to allow fishing boats to be built on empty coastal tiles I don't see why they need to get rid of fish as a bonus resource. Wheat and rice are still bonus resources on flat land, so I would think the same principle would apply to fish and open coastal waters.

Correct me if I am wrong but the new rule seems to be designed to encourage the player to pick between a harbor and a commercial district. If your city is on the coast, you will want to build a harbor instead of a commercial district and if your city is inland, you will want to build the commercial district instead. So the rule is designed to encourage specialization because up to now, players were ignoring harbors for coastal cities and just going with commercial districts.

Even if my city is on the coast I'm still going to choose Commercial Hubs over Harbors if I can only have one. The extra gold, great merchant points, and Investment projects are all more valuable to me than a bit of extra housing, a pittance in extra food, and great admiral points. There's also the fact that Harbors rely on Commercial Hubs for adjacency bonuses to consider; the opposite is not true.

 

[Herod]

Great so harbours are now in the Don't Bother category along with medics and entertainment districts. If you need a large navy build the Venetian Arsenal, oddly this has to be next to an IZ and not a harbour.

 

[darkace77450]

Would a set of maritime city states that give bonuses to harbors make harbors worth building? I imagine we'd have to wait for an expansion for that. Or perhaps trade city states should give the same bonus to harbors that they already do to commercial districts.

I've actually proposed this very idea before. Maritime city-states giving food to the Capital and every Harbor would be an easy way to mitigate some of the losses cities settled on coasts incur and bring Harbors more in line with other districts.

i did notice though if you build CH near appealing tiles you get gold boosts

Were you playing as Australia? That's part of their UA.

They need to remove gold from the game! Units should be maintained through food, that would lead to farm spam and make harbours way more useful.

An army marches on its belly, sure, but not paying upkeep for a military is only realistic in a conscription system. Professional soldiers expect to get paid. Gold is also used to maintain infrastructure, hire artists and scientists, etc. I don't think doing away with gold is the solution we need.

 

[Leyrann]

Great so harbours are now in the Don't Bother category along with medics and entertainment districts. If you need a large navy build the Venetian Arsenal, oddly this has to be next to an IZ and not a harbour.

Wait, how do you get to endgame domination without entertainment districts?

 

[Furycrab]

I think they are fairly close to being on par as long you don't throw commercial CS into the mix, if you get 2 or 3 of those, Commercial hubs then just get nutty. If Commercial CS either gave less gold or gave the same gold to harbors too, I think it would be a legitimate choice in many cases because the Harbor doesn't tie up an important land tile and the buildings are actually good if it has at least 2 sea resources.

 

[Herod]

Wait, how do you get to endgame domination without entertainment districts?

I often play on Prince/King, never needed an entertainment district although I did build one once.

 

[Leyrann]

I often play on Prince/King, never needed an entertainment district although I did build one once.

But where do you get your amenities from? Or do you play on small maps?

Because when I went for domination victory, at some point I had 30+ cities and some 15 luxery resources. Meant I had 2 luxery resources per city, enough for size 5. Everything beyond that had to come from other sources, for a large part Entertainment Complexes.

 

[Katakanja]

Wait, how do you get to endgame domination without entertainment districts?

I often play on Prince/King, never needed an entertainment district although I did build one once.

To be fair, they are more niche rather than in the 'don't bother' category as you call it. Going for domination is definitely one of the situations where you need them, I'd also say there are times where you need to expand and there aren't any new luxuries available and an entertainment district can offset the amenity cost.

 

[UWHabs]

I've actually proposed this very idea before. Maritime city-states giving food to the Capital and every Harbor would be an easy way to mitigate some of the losses cities settled on coasts incur and bring Harbors more in line with other districts.

I really don't understand why they didn't end up with some way to have one city-state type per district type. So they would just need to add maritime CS to add food to harbors, and maybe add some sort of "entertainment" city-state to add an extra amenity to entertainment complexes (Las Vegas and Monaco as city-states?), and that helps balance things (other than the awkward case of both encampments and industrial zones giving production bonuses that don't always apply).

 

[Herod]

But where do you get your amenities from? Or do you play on small maps?

Because when I went for domination victory, at some point I had 30+ cities and some 15 luxery resources. Meant I had 2 luxery resources per city, enough for size 5. Everything beyond that had to come from other sources, for a large part Entertainment Complexes.

I don't play very wide and rarely have more than 15 cities so my luxuries stretch further, I get extra amenities from trading, cards and GP.