Any reason to settle on the coast?

[Lord_Azazel]

You can move your great admirals from a harbor district or the city that is settled on the coast, you can't however do this from a harbor district from a city which is not settled on the coast. Unsure if you can move the great admiral to a harbor district of a city which is settled inland though, needs to be tested.
By moving, I mean the way you can move a great person from a city to another with the ability they have.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of the "city un-stacking" that Civ VI introduces with Districts. If you place your City Center a few hexes away and then build a harbor on the coast, that city is on the coast, because the Harbor District (and every other district) is part of the city.

 

[LanguishViking]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of the "city un-stacking" that Civ VI introduces with Districts. If you place your City Center a few hexes away and then build a harbor on the coast, that city is on the coast, because the Harbor District (and every other district) is part of the city.

yes but frigates and caravels can't take the city in that case

 

[Myrrdin_Emrys]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of the "city un-stacking" that Civ VI introduces with Districts. If you place your City Center a few hexes away and then build a harbor on the coast, that city is on the coast, because the Harbor District (and every other district) is part of the city.

I'm not sure to get your point.
If I have innland city with harbor, you can't conquer my city with navy only, as the opposite if your city is coastal. Ok with the harbor you can still pillage, annoy me, but not to the point you can threaten me by taking the city.

And i was thinking about a point, what if all player found city one tile innland (so no coastal city)... ships become rather useless no ? (they can attack other ships but thats all, they can't help by taking cities)

 

[Kwami]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of the "city un-stacking" that Civ VI introduces with Districts. If you place your City Center a few hexes away and then build a harbor on the coast, that city is on the coast, because the Harbor District (and every other district) is part of the city.

I think that you're entirely missing the point of this thread.

Besides, putting the city center on the coast and putting the harbor on the coast do not produce the same outcome.

 

[Olleus]

The problem with settling on the coast is that sea tiles AND sea resources are useless. They've lowered the yield form Civ5, while all other yields in the game have gone up - sometimes hugely.
In addition to the existing bonuses, the district buildings should:
Harbour: +2 gold if adjacent to city centre. Encourages cities built on the coast, and makes cities built near the mouth of a river a beast when you take into account the commercial district adjacency bonus.
Lighthouse: +1 food on each sea tile. Speaks for itself.
Sea port: +1 gold on each sea resource
Shipyard: +1 hammer on each sea resource
This brings a fully developed sea resource in line with a good land tile, which is what it should be. Plain coastal tiles are now about as good as unimproved land tiles. Again, as it should be.

But coastal city centres need something more than a beefed up harbour, they need their own special buildings (like river cities get the water mill). I would add:
Wharf (available with sailing): city centre must be adjacent to coast. Gives +1 food, +1 hammer.

I doubt it would be particularly helpful but I think it would be fun to add
Coastal fortress (available with balistics): city centre must be adjacent to coast. Gains an additional ranged attack, can be used on sea tiles only.


This would tempt me to build cities on the coast, maybe even at the expense of fresh water (provided an aqueduct is still in range). But not anywhere near enough to make them OP.

 

[Fede1893]

There is already a thread about this so it would have been better to continue the discussion there. Anyway having finally played the game I feel that it is always better to have most of your cities 3 hexes from the coast so that you may build later the harbor but cannot be invaded by sea (also because coastal yields suck, even if covered with resources). However it will take you far more turns to have your first ship in the water and in continents or islands maps I would settle at least 1 city per large landmass on the coast because pillaged harbors take forever to be repaired and a smart opponent could blitz on your harbors and pillage them cutting you off completely from being able to build ships. A further advantage is the ability to have a safe place for damaged ships that can also fire back at the opponents.

I hope that in the future they either add some sea luxuries or raise a bit the yield of the sea tiles so that cities founded on the coast can be more viable.

 

[Nikolai II]

You can move your great admirals from a harbor district or the city that is settled on the coast, you can't however do this from a harbor district from a city which is not settled on the coast. Unsure if you can move the great admiral to a harbor district of a city which is settled inland though, needs to be tested.
By moving, I mean the way you can move a great person from a city to another with the ability they have.

You can do this. Just tested.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I found the Great Barrier Reef in my game and thought that was a pretty good reason to settle coastal. I settled a second to grab some resources and was running out of room anyhow. I still have a pretty tenuous grasp on the game mechanics on this first run through, and might make different decisions next time.

 

[Proteus]

I'm not sure to get your point.
If I have innland city with harbor, you can't conquer my city with navy only, as the opposite if your city is coastal. Ok with the harbor you can still pillage, annoy me, but not to the point you can threaten me by taking the city.

And i was thinking about a point, what if all player found city one tile innland (so no coastal city)... ships become rather useless no ? (they can attack other ships but thats all, they can't help by taking cities)

I don't think the navy becomes useless.
A navy always is a good think to kill enemy invasion troops moving over the water. Also it can serve tro protect your traderoutes from barbarian ships or privateers.

Of course the it is still a matter of location whether a navy is useful or not ... if all of your enemies are on the same continent, a navy may not beso useful as if they are on another continent.
But that`s the same in reality. Looks at russia for example ... over most of their history they didn't have a big navy (despite having seaside towns) and there are no big sea battles in the history, between russia and other states. Reason is, that their main enemies always were on the same continent.

Look in contrast to England ... they are located on an island and have a large history of sea battles (as well as a powerful navy).

So, it actually reflects reality that the usefulness of a navy depends on your civs location (and circumstances) in the specific game you are playing

 

[Olleus]

But that`s the same in reality. Looks at russia for example ... over most of their history they didn't have a big navy (despite having seaside towns) and there are no big sea battles in the history, between russia and other states. Reason is, that their main enemies always were on the same continent.

Is that meant to be a joke? Russia has been trying to have a world class navy since Peter the great. It currently has one of the largest ocean going fleets in the world, and the largest nuclear submarine fleet. It's had tons of major naval battles in the past against the English, French and Japanese amongst others.

 

[Drakul]

The best solution would be that a coastal city gets a free harbor district,10-15%boost towards naval unit production and small bonus towards exp generating for naval units.Also to add more resources to ocean tiles and naval trade routes. Finding a city on the coast should drive you that you focus on naval power,naval trade etc.

 

[bcaiko]

Sadly, it does look like the fears expressed by those of us on the pre-release "coastal looks bad" thread have come to pass. One thing I don't think we considered, however, was how expensive a cost Harbors are:

• They take a long time to get to.
• They cost a lot of production to build.
• The detract from the number of other districts that can be built in the city.

I don't think this cost makes up for the other, obvious downsides - but it may encourage you to found one early coastal city. I got some use out of early scouting ship this way, and it offered a small amount of protection to my father trade routes. However, I think it's clear coastal yields will need to be increased and/or coastal tiles need available improvements. Why can't we fish every coastal tile and get a different, non-fish bonus resource?

One concern that remains is the power of the navy is really nerfed when there aren't coast cities. They can't do much of use if there's no coastal cities to attack. (Though, in the case where an AI has had a coastal capital, I can confirm that a proper navy will quickly WRECK a city.)

Therefore IMHO it makes sense to go away from the old system where you had to found acity directly on the coast, if you wanted to have a harbor

The problem is gameplay must trump flavor here. The natural gameplay consequence of coastal cities being bad/rare is it will make naval units all but useless. That in itself is a great historical anachronism.

Trade route range is doubled over water. If you want your coastal city to be a trade hub, you need to put it on the coast otherwise you'll only have access to about half the total area as you normally would otherwise, compared to a city 3 tiles inland with a harbour. You'll have to take my word for it or do the math yourself. I've already posted it in another thread and I'm too lazy to look for it.

Huh. Good to know. Still, in my games I found the value difference between far-away trade routes and trading with the city-state safely in my back yard to be minimal.

Settling on the coast allows you to immediately build ships. This can be important because harbors can take a long time to build and you won't have to spend the gold to get a sea tile.

Yeah, I'm still dubious about the value of that. Scouting with a ship is somewhat nice, but you still need a land unit to collect any villages you might spot. And an early warmonger is almost better off not meeting too many Civs until later in the game. Gold for a single tile is not a high price for a harbor (the other opportunity costs, I think, are much worse).

What irks me the most about coastal cities is the fact that water hexes are utterly useless later on.
Give me three terrible Tundra hexes and I can at least turn them into 1F 3P lumber mills later on. Water seems to stay pointless for the whole game...

Yeah, a lot of water tiles are terrible. I just don't understand why we can't generally improve them like we do land tiles with farms.

The real LOL is the +1 Housing, which seems like a reason to settle there, until you realize that just building 2 trash farms on any random tile would get you the same. Water tiles are a real mess right now. Unfortunately everything that was predicted in that several months long discussion about it has come true.

I agree - It does seem that way.

 

[Proteus]

Is that meant to be a joke? Russia has been trying to have a world class navy since Peter the great. It currently has one of the largest ocean going fleets in the world, and the largest nuclear submarine fleet. It's had tons of major naval battles in the past against the English, French and Japanese amongst others.

Actually the battle of Tsushima was a good example for, how neglected the russian navy became over time.

But yes, after looking it up, I have to admit that russia had far more sea battles than I thought of.
Perhaps a better example would have been to take Austria-Hungary. While the austria Hungarian navy surely had naval battles, their navy never played a deciding role in their wars.

 

[UWHabs]

A reason to settle on the coast is simply if that's the better location. You get some benefits (sea trade routes, housing, boats without a harbour), but obviously location trumps all.

I do think the harbour should have a large adjacency to the city centre. That would certainly be a potential other reason to settle the coast. And at the very least, I think the harbour buildings should all improve sea resources - I'd like to see them dominate again. I remember back in civ 4 days where building a city with 3 fish would turn it into an awesome specialist hub city. I like having cities be strong because of the resources nearby.

 

[Proteus]

...

The problem is gameplay must trump flavor here. The natural gameplay consequence of coastal cities being bad/rare is it will make naval units all but useless. That in itself is a great historical anachronism.

...

And actually that is something I disagree with.
Naval units in Civ VI don't become useless if they cannot conquer coastal towns.
They still can kill enemy invasion armies that move over the ocean with it (or protect your own invasion armies that go to other continents), or can protect your own trade lanes against pirates (either barbarians or privateers). Also they can be used to bombard armies on land.
All uses for which navies were traditionally used in reality
(also, in Civ VI ships still can be used to pillage enemy marine resources or protect against pillaging)

Lots of uses for ships (of course their use still is dependant on the amount of oceans and continents ... they will be next to useless when playing one continent games (or if your worst enemy is located on the same conmtinent as yourself ... but that`s O.K., IMHO, why should ships be equally useful in every game of Civ VI you play )

I for my part always disliked the ability of ships in Civ to conquer towns without any help by ground troops, because it is unrealistic.
(and I rarely or never used ships for conquering cities in past incarnations of civ)

So, for me actually the gameplay has improved by the added realism in Civ VI with regards to the harbor. Civ VI may have its problems/shortcomings ... but this definitely isn't one of them, IMHO

 

[isau]

The solution I would like to see implemented is a new Policy card that gives +1 Diplomacy point per city center adjacent to Ocean. Making it so that Ocean empires excel at city state diplomacy. Since they can't provide for themselves, they instead rely on external resources.

This card would outstrip the other two Diplomacy cards available early, and be specific way to go city-state centric.

The alternative to card would be a building that gives the point that is built in the city center if it is adjacent to ocean. The "customs house." Competes with Water Mill for a slot.

 

[LoneDragon]

Funny how they screwed up the water part of BE and had to fix it with DLC...then completely didn't learn from their mistake and make sure the water part of Civ VI was balanced properly.

 

[steveg700]

I think they should give you much more than a eureka, since the cost is that boats can attack your city. Currently it seems the reasons to settle ON the coast instead of NEAR it are far too small to be worth it

Funny, I'd say rather that the cost of settling away from a coastline is that you can be surrounded and sieged by land units more easily. The way I see it, coastal cities are better defended against land units, effectively requiring boats (a.k.a. ships) in order to be sieged.

But that doesn't overcome the fact that the devs still haven't addressed that water tiles shouldn't need resources in them to be useful.

Devs, let me help you out here: you should be able to get plenty of food from water tiles. It shouldn't just require having lots of fish bonuses around--not anymore than farming requires you to have lots of wheat or rice bonuses around (it's just nice if it happens).

What does a harbor do for you now for food? +1 food from a lighthouse? Is that it?

Maybe we need a civic that boosts food yield for all water tiles?

 

[Proteus]

It would be realistic to be able to do aquafarming on ocean tiles at one time/tech level.

Likewise it would be realistic to be able to have Land reclamation-Projects at least for the ocean tiles next to tne "natural land".
The people in the netherlands were able to get lots of new land via this method