(7-VT) Canals for 1-Tile Inland Cities

[Flamingcheesepie]

Current situation: Canals require all tiles to be adjacent to water to function as canals, including the City itself. This means that a City settled 1 tile inland cannot be canal'd at all, but a City settled 2 tiles inland with Ocean -> Land -> Lake -> City can.

Proposal: Cities settled 1 tile inland are allowed to be canal'd using a Fort or Citadel (or related unique improvement). That is, if the terrain is Ocean -> Land -> City, a Fort or Citadel on that Land tile allows for canals.

Reasoning: It is strange that Cities further inland are allowed to connect to the Ocean, but Cities just 1 tile off are not.

Balance implications: Inland cities that are mostly unassailable by navies can now create naval units, which can move into the canal and fight. Not a huge deal, because that tile will be fairly exposed, and allows the ships to be attacked by land units.

Currently at higher difficulties, some people have suggested that settling inland is already the optimal play due to safety, as some styles cannot commit to a navy to defend coastal cities. This does buff that playstyle, but if you already cannot afford a defensive navy, allowing these Cities to build them does not matter.

Note that this does not allow building naval buildings (Lighthouse, Harbor, etc) in these Cities.

 

[pineappledan]

This would be a disaster for naval offensive usefulness. Absolutely catastrophic for the relevance of a navy. Big No.

 

[Rekk]

Please no.

The rule is each part of the canal must touch a body of water. Please don't start adding exceptions.

 

[Tekamthi]

iirc there is a mod option somewhere in the VP config files that allow longer canals to be enabled -- this is good enough imo.

I think the issue if nothing else is that AI cannot plan out long canals the way human can, it can barely figure out the 1-plot canals. I'm not sure if they can pathfind effectively through longer canals, too

In a perfect world where we have super-smart AI that can plan things out long-term, I'd love to have longer canals.

 

[azum4roll]

It's not possible to handle. What happens to the ship stuck in the city when the canal is removed?

I'd consider any proposal to add non-water-adjacent canal to be out of scope.

 

[CppMaster]

Why cities 1 tile inland can't be cannaled? The cannal would be adjanced to a water tile. Bug?

 

[azum4roll]

The city isn't.

 

[CppMaster]

But works when there is a lake? How does it make any sense?

 

[Anarcomu]

If the canal get destroyed, the naval unit could retreat into the lake (unless it is already occupied, but anyway)

 

[CppMaster]

And in case of 1 tile inland city it could just retrat to the ocean

 

[Rekk]

And in case of 1 tile inland city it could just retrat to the ocean

The one in the city could not.

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah, it would just stay in the city. So what's the problem?

 

[pineappledan]

Civ 6 let players build coastal cities away from the coast and just plant a harbor district on the water. End result is that boats are useless. People basically build them for a eureka bonus and that’s it. If you block navies from attacking cities directly then all they do is ferry land troops to the real fight, and that’s simply not enough to justify their existence. Except it’s even worse in VP’s case because embarked land units can actually take a punch, so navies can’t even effectively intercept an invasion.

Ya’ll are getting hung up on if this is codeable. You shouldn’t want this even if it is.

 

[CppMaster]

Eh, naval combat is meh anyway. I wouldn't really miss it.

 

[Tekamthi]

navies can’t even effectively intercept an invasion.

Shouldn't we be doing something about this? Are we really in the best place balance wise on this front?

 

[Recursive]

iirc there is a mod option somewhere in the VP config files that allow longer canals to be enabled -- this is good enough imo.

I think the issue if nothing else is that AI cannot plan out long canals the way human can, it can barely figure out the 1-plot canals. I'm not sure if they can pathfind effectively through longer canals, too

In a perfect world where we have super-smart AI that can plan things out long-term, I'd love to have longer canals.

Doesn't work anymore and IIRC was removed.

Civ 6 let players build coastal cities away from the coast and just plant a harbor district on the water. End result is that boats are useless. People basically build them for a eureka bonus and that’s it. If you block navies from attacking cities directly then all they do is ferry land troops to the real fight, and that’s simply not enough to justify their existence. Except it’s even worse in VP’s case because embarked land units can actually take a punch, so navies can’t even effectively intercept an invasion.

Ya’ll are getting hung up on if this is codeable. You shouldn’t want this even if it is.

Yeah, I agree. The impact on naval combat and the amount of human exploits this would add is too significant, not to mention all the new code required to handle this, and the 'where would the ship go if the canal is destroyed' problem.

Proposal vetoed.