All the navy stuff

[Evie]

Navigable river would be a waste of development resources over something that would not actually translate to any valuable historicsl-based gameplay.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The biggest historical effect of navigable rivers hasn't been mentioned yet, and needs to be: they extend the city radius when there are very few ways to do that.

From before the Bronze Age (and prior to the nominal Start of Game at 4000 BCE) cities on navigable rivers received food and other bulk goods from up and down river far outside of any distance that land transport could cover economically. Any set of draft or pack animals would basically eat up the equivalent of what they were carrying before they 'd gone more than 200 kilometers, whereas even small river craft (dug-out canoes) could carry half to a full ton each and be paddled by only 2 - 4 men - and traverse 20 - 40 km a day even without sails, which also came pretty early.

In game terms, that should extend the city radius by at least another tile or two up and down a navigable river, which in the early game is very significant. Later, as ship/boat technology improves, Trade Routes (in game terms) can only carry Food and other Bulk goods (Production?) by water, so rivers become, if anything, even more important for the care and feeding of cities. This all changes with railroads, but up until the Industrial Era. rivers should be a prime consideration both in tracing Trade Routes longer distances and providing resources direct to a city.

The 'Viking Unique' ability could be the ability to extend riverine Trade Routes Overland between rivers for 1 - 3 tiles of flat land - the Rus trade through Russia was dependent on the ability to pull their craft out of the river, put it on log rollers and drag the ship overland to the next river: 'Portaging' from the Baltic to the Black Sea and to the Volga and down to the Caspian Sea and the terminus cities of the Silk Roads. (And I freely confess, a Unique like this would help to emphasize the Trade nature of the Vikings as opposed to the constant Raid features that are modeled in the games)

 

[Iceberg1er]

Yeah rivers are HUGE pieces of CIVILIZATION. I really didn't realize how many very young people (judging by what these people think a river IS) play civ that is so cool! But smack talk aside. Yeah I saw somebody say something like but ships would go up it oh no. Get outside and go to a major city river (still hugely used today for trade, transportation, AND WARFARE) and see how freaking big these major river are. Any ship basically. Now your regular river? Nah not any ship? Bunch of brutal desperate hungry Norseman in a glorified canoo? These raiders practically pulled up to your front door and did whatever they wanted and left before you could get your farmers armed. extrapolate to raiders/pirates the world over, this was actual warfare for thousands of years except for a little blip in time recently. I think the game starts in bc right. I dunno I'm just so amazed that with all the power they haven't rained it in to be amazing and like Civilization instead of a made up game that has no correlation to real life. First few thousand basically being uphill was like a big deal for defence or escape cuz walking uphill sucks. Next few thousand years it's specialized boats moving army's faster. To today. And this game called civ acts like water and geography aren't a thing that decided all of humanity to the smallest detail until like... Still does.

 

[Evie]

I know how large large rivers can get, I live near one of the largesr. But no, despite what you imagine the Vikings's style of sea-going ships going upriver to raid was not "actual warfare for thousands of years". Raiders as a rule did not want to be caught in narrow waters where they could only go in predictable directions if things went wrong and enemies went after them. Even viking raiders raided coasts far more often than rivers.

Moreover, while you're right that most large rivers are wide enough for ships, width is not the issue with seagoing ships in rivers. Depth is. Not all rivers even if very wide have deep enough channels for even significant high medieval ships, and even when they do have such channels, the channels are often narrow and shifting because of the river current, meaning unless you have a very shallow-draft ship you will likely need to proceed very carefully with a sounder (or with a local pilot) even if the river is wide even when sailing peacefully. Actually fighting battles in a river with any ship that has more draft than a barge or longship is just asking to ground half your fleet.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Rivers are also treacherous. Most of the rivers we in 'modern civilization' are familiar with have been thoroughly tamed, regulated, channeled, dredged, etc. Prior to that, they were unpredictable on an annual basis at least, shifting their banks, main channels, changing their depth, filled with debris like old trees, boulders, tangled driftwood, etc. Sam Clemens, who worked as a riverboatman on the Mississippi before he tried his hand at writing, wrote about how no matter how well you thought you knew the river, every spring after the end-of-winter floods you had to relarn it, because it would have changed in nasty ways that could kill you and your boat.

 

[Evie]

Even to this day, large civilian ships in peacetime aren't permitted to sail the Saint Lawrence without a locally trained pilot - and that's been the case as far back as ships larger than canoe have sailed the river. Even in the days of New France ships reaching the end of the Laurentian channel (where depth is measured in hundreds of meters, not thpical river depth ) at Tadoussac would take on a local pilot and that was just for sailing to Quebec City, which is all still water tiles on most world maps.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Rivers are also treacherous. Most of the rivers we in 'modern civilization' are familiar with have been thoroughly tamed, regulated, channeled, dredged, etc. Prior to that, they were unpredictable on an annual basis at least, shifting their banks, main channels, changing their depth, filled with debris like old trees, boulders, tangled driftwood, etc. Sam Clemens, who worked as a riverboatman on the Mississippi before he tried his hand at writing, wrote about how no matter how well you thought you knew the river, every spring after the end-of-winter floods you had to relarn it, because it would have changed in nasty ways that could kill you and your boat.

Now that would be an interesting subject aside: Rivers changing their course over the course of the game!

 

[Marla_Singer]

When it goes about rivers, the question of combat riverboats is secondary honnestly. Regarding combat, rivers are before everything an obstacle to be crossed slowing down offensive troops and exposing them.

Yet the most decisive impact rivers should have is about trade and transport. Maybe my first post wasn't clear enough and @Boris Gudenuf expressed it better, but something very simple that could be easily pictured in a game like Civ is the fact units move faster along rivers, and there's no need to picture any kind of riverboats for this. After all, you can build road once the wheel is developped, but we don't need to put units on any kind of chariot to benefit from the extra moves. Why would you need to put your units in boats to benefit from rivers extra moves? From a gameplay perspective the logistics involved would annihilate the advantage. Just let any unit moves faster along rivers the same that is already done with roads.

Sorry if this point is repeated but it is very essential. Before railroad, there's nothing more efficient than rivers and coasts for travel. Therefore the player should be severely incited to build cities upon rivers. Rivers and coasts should be the main transport network, mouth of rivers to the sea should be strategic locations for cities and forts. Roads should only be used as a second option if there's no water alternative available.

 

[Evie]

Oh yes, on that I agree. Units should move faster along rivers, have offensive penalties when crossing them, and trade routes should form along rivers. Among many other gameplay impacts of rivers.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There's already a Civ VI mod that speeds up travel by land units along rivers, but I don't think it affects Trade Routes in any way. So, halfway there!

 

[Marla_Singer]

Oh yes, on that I agree. Units should move faster along rivers, have offensive penalties when crossing them, and trade routes should form along rivers. Among many other gameplay impacts of rivers.

To me, the most straightforward way to implement faster moves along rivers for units is to put rivers on the tiles, exactly like roads are. If rivers are only at the edge of tiles, as it is since Civ2, then it gets clumsy. Also considering that trade routes should logically join cities to one another, it all makes it easier to have cities directly built upon a river rather than beside it.

That would also make it easier to build canals, as they would also be built in the middle of a tile. We could imagine for instance that canals would take longer to build, but would allow goods and units to move faster than roads. This way, it would only makes sense to build them on most strategic locations, such as trade routes bottlenecks.

To tell the truth, I never understood why Brian Reynolds moved the rivers to the edge of tiles, cancelling the movement bonus they had in Civ1 and the original Colonization. Yet on those original games, rivers weren't great either as they were a terrain type by themselves, like grassland or plains, which doesn't really make sense.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Now that would be an interesting subject aside: Rivers changing their course over the course of the game!

Dump this in with other examples of On-Going Climate/Terrain Change to bedevil the gamer with.

The extreme example is the 'Yellow River' (Huang He) in China, considered both the Cradle of Chinese Civilization and "China's Sorrow". It has flooded over 1500 times in recorded history and the 1931 CE flood killed as estimated 4,000,000 people - it may have been the most deadly non-plague natural disaster in history. More to our point, since 595 BCE when they started keeping records, it has shifted its course 26 times, 9 of them major shifts of hundreds of kilometers. Basically, the river keeps shifting from north to south and then back to the north (last shift in 1855 CE) of the Shantung Peninsula. One major shift and flood in 11 CE is credited with helping to bring down the Xin Dynasty, so these constituted major disasters.

The Yellow River in modern times also exhibits what I call "Man made River Disasters" since massive irrigation projects along the river since the 1950s mean that for most of the year now none of the river's water reaches the sea - the mouth and lower reaches are dry most of the year. The same thing, for the same reason, happens to the Colorado River in the USA, which is drained of water for irrigation and population by every state from Colorado to the sea. Unlike the Yellow River, the Colorado was never a major riverine trade route, so its dry course is 'only' a Natural Disaster, not an Economic one. If the Yellow River had dried up for much of its course in the 18th century, before modern highways and railroads, it would have been absolutely catastrophic to China's economy and its ability to feed all the cities along the river.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

To tell the truth, I never understood why Brian Reynolds moved the rivers to the edge of tiles, cancelling the movement bonus they had in Civ1 and the original Colonization. Yet on those original games, rivers weren't great either as they were a terrain type by themselves, like grassland or plains, which doesn't really make sense.

Rivers could be handled like Roads, a 'terrain-type' that is affected by but doesn't negate other terrain in the tile. Moving along the river wold be speeded up (like roads), trade routes moving the same way would be enhanced, but movement across the river course (from non-river edge to non-river edge traced through the river thread) would be impeded without a bridge - another 'terrain type' that doesn't negate other terrain except the river.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Dump this in with other examples of On-Going Climate/Terrain Change to bedevil the gamer with.

The extreme example is the 'Yellow River' (Huang He) in China, considered both the Cradle of Chinese Civilization and "China's Sorrow". It has flooded over 1500 times in recorded history and the 1931 CE flood killed as estimated 4,000,000 people - it may have been the most deadly non-plague natural disaster in history. More to our point, since 595 BCE when they started keeping records, it has shifted its course 26 times, 9 of them major shifts of hundreds of kilometers. Basically, the river keeps shifting from north to south and then back to the north (last shift in 1855 CE) of the Shantung Peninsula. One major shift and flood in 11 CE is credited with helping to bring down the Xin Dynasty, so these constituted major disasters.

The Yellow River in modern times also exhibits what I call "Man made River Disasters" since massive irrigation projects along the river since the 1950s mean that for most of the year now none of the river's water reaches the sea - the mouth and lower reaches are dry most of the year. The same thing, for the same reason, happens to the Colorado River in the USA, which is drained of water for irrigation and population by every state from Colorado to the sea. Unlike the Yellow River, the Colorado was never a major riverine trade route, so its dry course is 'only' a Natural Disaster, not an Economic one. If the Yellow River had dried up for much of its course in the 18th century, before modern highways and railroads, it would have been absolutely catastrophic to China's economy and its ability to feed all the cities along the river.

As you're on this, the Sumerian city of Ur was originally on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The sediments gradually made land gaining over the sea to the point that it is now located 250 km inland. The Shatt al-Arab river merging both Tigris and Euphrates wasn't formed before 3,000 BCE.

And to mention something even more impressive, the Sahara turned temporarily into a savannah during the Holocene wet phase, from 10,000 to 5,000 years BCE.

 

[Evie]

Minor correction: it was civ 3, not 2 that introduced rivers at the edges of tiles. II still has rivers through tiles.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Maybe Rivers could be both between Tiles and inside Tiles...

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Maybe Rivers could be both between Tiles and inside Tiles...

If that were the case, then there would need to be some sort of distinction between the two. Maybe "tributaries" could be the smaller ones between tiles that empty into the larger, navigable rivers, located on tiles.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

As you're on this, the Sumerian city of Ur was originally on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The sediments gradually made land gaining over the sea to the point that it is now located 250 km inland. The Shatt al-Arab river merging both Tigris and Euphrates wasn't formed before 3,000 BCE.

And to mention something even more impressive, the Sahara turned temporarily into a savannah during the Holocene wet phase, from 10,000 to 5,000 years BCE.

But wait, there's more!

My dates for the African Humid Period are:
12,500 - 3900 BCE: There was a whole book written on it a few years ago, called When the Sahara Was Green. Before approximately 3900 BCE a belt from North Africa through Arabia was much wetter, a savannah-like area with rivers, lakes, marshes, and supported several populations in North Africa of herders and early farmers. When it dried out about 4200 - 3900 it caused all those populations to start migrating.

6500 BCE: Flooding of Doggerland. Until this time, Doggerland was a wide, flat plain between Britain and Europe, a wet grassland that may have been a source of prime hunting, fishing and waterfowl resources. As the glacial-period ice melted to the north, it 'tilted' the land, submerged Doggerland except for a flat marshy island where the modern Dogger Banks are, and formed the English Channel, creating the British Isles from a British Peninsula.

6200 BCE: Lake Ojibway glacial lake collapse. A massive lake of glacial melt-water covering much of the modern area of the Great Lakes in North America,, the final ice dam collapses about this time, dumping an estimated 50,000 cubic kilometers of glacial fresh water into Hudson's Bay and the North Atlantic Ocean. This resulted in several centuries of colder, wetter Europe and arid conditions (drought) in North Africa and the Near East, and a sea level rise in northwestern Europe, eastern North America and Asia that in places reached up to 3 meters. Early cities in the Near East were abandoned, farming disappears from the record in Cyprus, but farming starts in parts of Anatolia, Thrace, Bulgaria and Macedonia in Europe.

6225 - 6170 BCE: Storrega Slide and Tsunami. A collapse of the submerged continental shelf off Norway moes an estimated 3500 cubic kilometers of earth and rock, generating a Tsunami of 20 meter-high waves in the North Sea/North Atlantic that completes the submersion of the last of Doggerland and causes catastrophic flooding of coasts as far as 29 km inland

5680 BCE: Mount Mazama volcanic eruption, VEI 7 in Oregon. Blew top of the mountain off - formed Crater Lake, dumped volcanic ash up to 600 km away.

4200 - 3800 BCE: Piora Oscillation hits Europe: Gets much colder, glaciers advance in Alps, winters become much colder, 4120 to 3900 BCE exceptionally cold. Floods become more frequent on all floodplains and the Danube valley, 00 settlement sites in eastern Europe are burned and abandoned, many forests die out, Europe becomes more open and prairie-like. No new sttlements in Danube valley area from 3800 to 3300 BCE.

1628 BCE: Thera volcanic eruption: VEI 7 north of Crete, buries city of Akrotiri, spreads ash all the way south to Egypt, destroys crops all over the eastern Mediterranean from ash fall and solar screening by the dust clouds.

536 - 547 CE: Volcanic eruptions in Iceland pump so much volcanic ash and dust into the atmosphere it creates a "dust veil" that covers the northern hemisphere from Europe to China. Temperatures are lowered up to 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit so the decade is the coldest recorded in over 2000 years. Crops fail all over Europe and Asia, resulting in widespread famine that weakens the population so that the Plague of Justinian (possibly Bubonic Plague) is many times more fatal.

950 - 1250 CE: Medieval Warm Period. North Atlantic region bordering both North America and Europe becomes noticeably warmer, highest estimated temperatures until the 21st century CE. Great Plains in North America got drier, may have forced populations to move off of them until the horse arrived centuries later.

1282 - 1287 CE: Floods break the barrier dunes near Texel and the North Sea floods the Netherlands and forms the Zuider Zee. Also forms a sea channel to Amsterdam, up to this time a minor inland village, and kills an estimated 50,000 people.

1556 CE: An earthquake hits Shanxi province, China, kills an estimated 830,000 people: Magnitude 8.0, sometimes called the most deadly earthquake in recorded history - also the reason we do NOT need earthquakes in the game.

- And these do not include any of the steady stream of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes throughout history, most of which had only local (if devastating) or ephemeral (months to no more than 1 - 2 years) effects, or the plagues that appear to be equally common and the most deadly in sheer numbers of people killed.

Gives whole new meaning to the term "Cruel World".

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

If that were the case, then there would need to be some sort of distinction between the two. Maybe "tributaries" could be the smaller ones between tiles that empty into the larger, navigable rivers, located on tiles.

The problem is, any river shown on the map has to be big enough to be a barrier to movement and combat, so the vast majority of streams, small rivers, etc will not be shown at all. The area fought over in October 1941 from west of Vyazma to the Nara River in front of Moscow included no less than 8 river barriers that were tacticaly significant to WWII-era armies. But that area in Civ game map scale would be no more than 1 - 2 tiles. Crossing a tactical river might take an extra day or week to cross all the vehicles and heavy equipment, but that's at most 1/50 of a turn in Civ: Tactical simply cannot be modeled on the Civ map and time scale.

 

[Iceberg1er]

I know how large large rivers can get, I live near one of the largesr. But no, despite what you imagine the Vikings's style of sea-going ships going upriver to raid was not "actual warfare for thousands of years". Raiders as a rule did not want to be caught in narrow waters where they could only go in predictable directions if things went wrong and enemies went after them. Even viking raiders raided coasts far more often than rivers.

Moreover, while you're right that most large rivers are wide enough for ships, width is not the issue with seagoing ships in rivers. Depth is. Not all rivers even if very wide have deep enough channels for even significant high medieval ships, and even when they do have such channels, the channels are often narrow and shifting because of the river current, meaning unless you have a very shallow-draft ship you will likely need to proceed very carefully with a sounder (or with a local pilot) even if the river is wide even when sailing peacefully. Actually fighting battles in a river with any ship that has more draft than a barge or longship is just asking to ground half your fleet.

What? I disagree with almost absolutely every single thing you are saying. Yeah I want to sneak up on every grass wealth in a country that has terrible defences but I'm gonna.... Walk. Just cuz it's and a sunny day out! What in the world. I'm not continuing to his conversation sir. It's a strong waste of time that I could better spend doing it important life things like building my empire and and hating my lil longboat butt whoop canoes not doing canoo things