Are coastal cities fun to play in Civ 6?

[labellavienna]

I bought civ6 at the beginning and didn't like it very much, I heard that coastal cities were useless and being that i am a huge fan of ships and submarines I pretty much stopped playing. I am interested in picking the game back up with all expacs and wondering if naval warfare and coastal cities are useful and fun?

 

[Sostratus]

I am interested in picking the game back up with all expacs and wondering if naval warfare and coastal cities are useful and fun?

The xpacs add a lot. I personally think the game is more 'complete' now than civ5 BNW was, but that's just my opinion.
Are naval warfare and coastal cities useful?
This is obviously a complex topic but ultimately it's map dependent. Several of the new maps just released in the June patch, namely Small continents, and to an extent Seven Seas, are much better balance of land and naval gameplay than regular continents (naval is all but irrelevant) or archipelago (land is too minor and the AI can't cope.) Seven seas has a lot of canal opportunities, but you often need to do some connecting to cover most of the map's water with your fleet. Small continents has larger landmasses that can hold ~2 mature empires fairly comfortably, (where continents might hold ~3-4 civs) and larger and smaller islands. This map leads to a lot of naval - especially littoral - action, both with barbarians and enemy ships and their embarked forces. It also means you have a lot of coastal targets for bombardment.
Are these playstyles useful in the sense that they are perfectly balanced with terrestrial play? No, but that doesn't mean they are useless. You will get your fastest science wins on regular continents map by sticking to the land than on water, but that's mostly due to the fact that this is Civ6, not Beyond Earth Rising Tide.

Are naval warfare and coastal cities fun?
Oh, why yes. Many people enjoy setting up good harbors, having sea routes going (which now get bonus gold if the route is mostly over water!) and generally being a wealthy maritime power. The new canal districts and panama canal wonder (they do what you might imagine - a buildable district like an aqueduct, they allow ships to cross land tiles. Extremely handy for those 2 or 3 tile isthmuses oppressing your fleet!) Especially on small continents, you can have a total riot going sea focused. Also, these come quite late in the game, but if you end up fighting long drawn out domination victories - GS added a few extremely good sea improvements (offshore wind farm, seastead) that IMO can make coastal cities superior to land ones at that point. Holy crap are seasteads strong.

For a discussion on the current state of naval civs, you may want to see this thread.

 

[Victoria]

I think coastal city civs are useful and fun.
Using a navy feels like fun until you come across an AI Navy. The naval game is useful but not fun imo. You just get tired of your ships sailing around doing little apart from bombardment. When bombardments stop, you stop moving your ships.

 

[Kurnn]

No city is useless in Civ 6. All lands has some use.
A govenor can be upgraded to let the city she is in, build improvements on Coast. They are VERY good!

You say you just bought Civ 6, and then talking about Subs?

I suggest you start a game on Marathon, and play from there. You get 10x more game content with Marathon then fast speed.
Civ 6 IS NOT about the end game. The game starts at turn 1, and the end game includes tons of stuff, other then military.

Also, please look at each Civs and leaders abilities. They matter.