Connection confusion

Could someone explain me how my overseas cities get their "connected" status?
Building a harbour in such a city does not provide connection immediately. After dozens of turns one of such cities acquires connection, but some other cities never get it despite the fact that harbours have been built in them.
Thanx for the clarification.

You need a harbour in your capital or a city connected by road or rail to that capital.

Same with your overseas cities. If they are connected to each other by land, only one harbour is needed. If they are not connected by land, they need a harbour.

Any city with a harbor should be connected to the capital immediately (as long as the capital also has a harbor, or is connected by road to another city with a harbor). If that's not happening, then the only thing I can think of is that there's an enemy unit blocking the connection.

You also need a visible unbroken path of water tiles between harbors for the link to work.

docbud said:

You also need a visible unbroken path of water tiles between harbors for the link to work.

Click to expand...

lol, I don't know how you would get a city that didn't have that docbud. This isn't Alpha Centauri where you get randomly teleported by artifacts occasionally. However, a possible scenario is: you passed through water that is now blocked by another player's territory. harbor link will not work until you get open borders or explore another path.

One way I find connections to appear randomly late-game is it was blockaded by a nearby barbarian ship (harbors don't work if they are near). The boat left or was killed sometime later and the game announces a "city connection was established!" Like it was never there before. What it should say is: "the blockade has been lifted and connection was restored!"

Happens frequently in pre-Astronomy periods -- found a city and build a harbor when coastal tiles were open, but since then a civ's culture borders have extended to block the coastal route. In that case, you can either get Open Borders to restore the city connection, or research Astronomy.

Even if you already researched Astronomy, if the only path to open sea is through another civ's culture borders and you don't have open borders with that civ, no city connection.

^^Thank you for explaining, Browd.

@danaphanous: I never played Alpha Centarui.