cultural borders do not expand on whales

[RStark]

Hello everyone!

I am little frustrated with my recent game. I have two cities near the ocean. Neighboring 2 naval tiles (but they are not part of the ocean water) which are two tiles away from these cities contain whales.
Cultural borders of these cities continue to expand on land tiles, which do not have any resources, but they are not going to grab tiles with the whales.
I have already discovered Sailing. Maybe now I need to discover Optics so the cultural borders will expand on the right way?

 

[Ajuga]

I guess you can always try and buy the tiles in the city screen.

 

[FeiLing]

You can try to buy 1 water tile adjacent to the whales - then it will recognize the whales as a good tile and expand to it albeit being harder to access (water) than flat land tiles.
Tech doesn't matter for culture border expansion, just how hard the tile would be to claim in reality (they've been trying to make this realistic). Building a Lighthouse however does help, as with the ocean tiles producing more food they become more relevant/valuable and may climb up in the (invisible) queue of border expansion priority.

 

[snarzberry]

It is kinda frustrating how low a priority sea based resources are to border expansion. At least you can buy your own tiles for quite cheap early on and it's not too much of a hassle. What really bugs me is waiting for a CS ally to finally hook up his pearls after like a hundred turns.

 

[CoolLizy]

What really bugs me is waiting for a CS ally to finally hook up his pearls after like a hundred turns.

What's even more annoying is when you have an allied CS that has pearls in its borders but isn't on the coast to build a fishing boat. You will never get the luxury resource (well, unless you take the city so you can use your own fishing boats to connect it).

 

[RStark]

thank you for answers
they would really help me in my game

 

[Resident Mario]

Can't you construct boat improvements on allied city-state tiles?

 

[Agent327]

What would be the point of that?

 

[historix69]

What's even more annoying is when you have an allied CS that has pearls in its borders but isn't on the coast to build a fishing boat. You will never get the luxury resource (well, unless you take the city so you can use your own fishing boats to connect it).

Can You gift a workboat to the CS?

 

[FeiLing]

You can't use own workboats in their territory and you can not gift civilians (workers, work boats, gp).

 

[joncnunn]

Sea resources that are 3 tiles away are often indeed the tiles you need to buy if you don't want a long wait. Another category is most of the natural wonders.

The other option is building a Temple just to increase rate of tile cultural expansion.

I did notice that your workers are allowed to both repair an existing improvement with a CS ally (that had previously been pillaged) and add roads in their territory.