What's better? An extra resource or a coast spot?

Ehh. Coastal cities aren't as good as some people here are saying. As Wodan pointed out, base coast or ocean tiles aren't very valuable. This ain't Civ III where naked coast or ocean tiles were pretty good if the city had a harbor, commercial dock and offshore platform. In Civ V, sea resources are pretty much the only sea tiles worth working.

I can think of only three other reasons to have coastal cities - to build ships, to build coastal wonders, and sea trade routes. These are all good reasons, with the last one being the most important. But if you already have, or can have, another coastal city or cities capable of building wonders and ships and running trade routes, then this city does not need to be coastal. Much of the time you'll only need one coastal city to run all your trade routes from, anyway.
 
On the contrary. 2 good coastal city are better than 1 land + 1 coastal most of the time due to internal routes. If you have your capital on the coast you better have a very good reason to put the expansion inland and sacrifice OP cargos.

However, of course, a terrible coast city isn't interesting :)
 
Wodan said:
Coast spots are not automatically good. Consider that an ocean tile is on par with a mountain or plain desert tile, and coasts are almost as bad. In almost all cases you'd rather work a specialist than a non-resource coast tile.

So, consider that a coast spot with 50% water has just removed your available city tiles down by half! This starts to put it into perspective.

The best coast spots have many resources and minimal (ideally ZERO) non-resource water tiles. Plus, the more resources, the better seaports are.

Is a city spot with 50% water or less, zero water resources, even worth it? Especially if it has a lot of hills and no river/lake, and few land resources? I suggest to avoid that spot... there are surely better places inland to put your cities.

So, this thread might be better if it asked, "What's better? An extra resource, or a coast spot with few non-resource water tiles?" Or similar.

ps also keeping in mind that a critical strategic resource, or 2 lux resources you don't have, is generally always a good spot regardless of coast or land.
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It's not that often that any city besides your capital works more than 18 tiles, certainly not before Industrial. Because you pretty much want to work a specialist slot over any non-resource tile.
 
Calouste said:
It's not that often that any city besides your capital works more than 18 tiles, certainly not before Industrial. Because you pretty much want to work a specialist slot over any non-resource tile.
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You'd always want to work a specialist slot over, say, a grasslands farm? Your specialists would starve if that was a general rule. :lol:
 
LoneRebel said:
You'd always want to work a specialist slot over, say, a grasslands farm? Your specialists would starve if that was a general rule. :lol:
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Or maybe I just settle cities where there is bonus food available so I don't have to work crappy tiles?
 
Calouste said:
Or maybe I just settle cities where there is bonus food available so I don't have to work crappy tiles?
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That's a lot of bonus food, eh?

There's really no need to exaggerate to make your case.

Nothing wrong with plain grasslands freshwater farms post-Civil Service, or plain grasslands non-freshwater farms post-Fertilizer.

Acken said:
On the contrary. 2 good coastal city are better than 1 land + 1 coastal most of the time due to internal routes. If you have your capital on the coast you better have a very good reason to put the expansion inland and sacrifice OP cargos.

However, of course, a terrible coast city isn't interesting :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I should amend my previous statement. If your capital is coastal then you should have a second coastal city to send internal routes to it. If your capital happens to not be coastal, then I don't know if two or more coastal cities is really necessary.
 
I only settle cities in good spots, so coastal or not doesn't matter to me, but I would probably take coastal over a resource, the extra gold from trade routes will make up for it since you can just buy a colloseum and zoo, never underestimate the power of sea resources though, even fish end up being a monster resource with lighthouse and seaport
 
LoneRebel said:
Yeah, I should amend my previous statement. If your capital is coastal then you should have a second coastal city to send internal routes to it. If your capital happens to not be coastal, then I don't know if two or more coastal cities is really necessary.
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If I plan to do a coastal city (when capital isnt) I just seriously consider a second to interfeed each other.
 
danaphanous said:
I love coast, but it's sad if there are no water resources. I'm thinking of changing my mapscript just because all the coastal resources seem to have dissapeared. :) I've had plenty of games where I just could not get more than 1 sea resource in any coastal spot nearby. On those games I have to balance by picking bays or such which minimize water tile numbers. :(
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I've had many a game where I settled in place only to later discover that there were a couple sea resources in my capital's 4th ring. Thanks a bunch, mapscript! "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man a fish resource just out of reach, watch him throw his computer out the window!"
 
And even if there are many sea resources (on my last game my capital had two land luxuries + 4 whales, 2 fish and one crab - with all standard game settings) the really big problem is just how expensive it is to use all those resouces. If you have only sea luxuries, chances are the AI will attack you while you're held back building work boats.

And the boats are also so easily pillaged, and you have to build the work boat again...

Sea starts should be buffed, and the exploration tree is not quite it. After all, historically, we all know that sailing should be necessery for greatness :)
 
shaglio said:
I've had many a game where I settled in place only to later discover that there were a couple sea resources in my capital's 4th ring.
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That annoys me. That's why I usually set starting visibility to 5 or 6.
 
Wodan said:
That annoys me. That's why I usually set starting visibility to 5 or 6.
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huh, I didn't know you could do that. I'll have to explore the code when I get home from work.
 
shaglio said:
huh, I didn't know you could do that. I'll have to explore the code when I get home from work.
Click to expand...
Advanced start-options mod from the workshop.
 
shaglio said:
I've had many a game where I settled in place only to later discover that there were a couple sea resources in my capital's 4th ring. Thanks a bunch, mapscript! "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Give a man a fish resource just out of reach, watch him throw his computer out the window!"
Click to expand...

Whenever that happens I just open up firetuner and move that one fish in 4th ring hex into 3rd ring hex and I just act like a fish migration happened then move on xD

Otherwise I would lose sleep over it.
 
Sometimes a coast is a liability. If you can't actually develop your water presence to a certain point, those cities just become takeable by sea. You settle the coast when you have to, to try and build that water presence, but sometimes it's a lost cause and you have to make it harder to siege the city.
 
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