Trade Routes and Rivers

Create a new building called "Port" or "Wharf" or something that gives a bonus to trade routes (+50% ?) and needs to be built by cities that are coastal OR river based. It seems likely that there will already be such a building for coastal cities, letting river side cities benefit too seems like a small change to make.

Perhaps more drastically, allow Trade Posts to be built adjacent to rivers from the discovery of trapping, while letting them be built everywhere with Guilds. Would make rivers a source of gold, but not a free one, and create some competition between placing farms and TPs next to rivers.

Letting rivers act as roads would be rarely useful (not often I can build two cities on the same river in the early game), but would be almost OP when you could do it. For this reason, I don't think its a great idea.

Optional said:

Those are just footnotes for me. Already with the way the game is now the importance that rivers had for towns is being ignored. Commercially rivers are extremely vital. They better do something to save rivers. Make at least a market river dependent. Or trade posts needing a water connection or something (although I know that that's probably not going to happen).But with the same argument you also can get rid of the current trade routes (roads between your towns), trade posts, markets and subsequent commercial buildings.

Click to expand...

I don't get this argument at all. If your only concern about rivers currently is the gold, why then would you bother settling on them? You get the Gold from the worked tiles even if your city is not sitting on the river itself. On the other hand, Watermill, Garden (unless you have a lake), Hydroplant plus certain religios beliefs *only* trigger when you sit on the river, so the argument for me goes the other way around - the buildings are what makes you settle ON the river, the gold just makes you want to have it within your radius.

kaspergm said:

...so the argument for me goes the other way around - the buildings are what makes you settle ON the river, the gold just makes you want to have it within your radius.

Click to expand...

Yes, this is the way it is now in the game. I was talking about real life more. My argument is that historically rivers are commercially very important and that you do want to settle on the river in real life. As you say, in the game you can still have the gold when you're settling away from the river. This is a bad reflection of reality. About every big European city I can think of is built on a river, not 100 miles away from it. You lose your commerce then in reality.

Wharf sounds good. Make it cheap and early in game and have that allow for river trade routes or gold from river tiles.

Water, either coast or river, was an absolute necessity for moving Food before the railroad. No wheeled, animal-drawn vehicle can carry enough to make 'food trade' feasible. That's why all really major cities established before the 19th century were on coasts or rivers, and the Really big ones were on or between two rivers (Babylon between the Tigris and Euphrates) or at or near the mouth of a river to combine river and sea traffic (Alexandria, Rome, London, etc )
In game terms, before railroads food trading should require a water route between the cities. And for most of history, the same 'boats' that moved up and down the coast could also move up and down the rivers, so with 'Seafaring' (change the title to Boatbuilding, if you like) you should be able to trace Sea Trade up and down rivers, and (with Granaries) trade Food.

That would provide, in the game, the historical basis for locating cities on rivers and coasts. If you want to augment it a bit, one Improvement by the Classical Era would be a Canal - buildable only on Plains or Grassland or Desert linking the city with a coast or river that provides the Water Route for your Trade. After the Late Renaissance/early Industrial Era and a suitable Tech, you could add Locks and build the Canal over Hill tiles.

There, that potentially adds the Grand Canal, Suez Canal, Kiel Canal, or Panama Canal as one or more Wonders as well.