Canals could be built on hills but costs more

[DeckerdJames]

Maybe 2x production or gold? What do you think?

 

[Naokaukodem]

Canals hasn't proven an immense usefulness in Civ6, so I would rather suggest that they could be way longer and serve as artificial rivers as they do in reality by the way. The only difference with rivers would be that they wouldn't give fresh water, but I think that this aspect of rivers should be modified in Civ7 anyway.

As I m' at it, let's write here what I wrote yesterday in my ideas book :

- Rivers (1) serve as roads for every civ (2)

(1) or lake or coast [or canals]
(2) as long as you have the required tech. [considering it has more benefits than simply units movement, i.e. navigating into those with boats]

I could add that they serve trade as well, "connecting" your empire automatically and giving you gold per turn for that (like in Civ5) or allowing further communication and production merging. (I envisioned that locations linked with water or roads could merge their production for Wonder construction for example, see my sig)

 

[Evie]

We're really talking two different kind of canals here: river canals that facilitate barge and similar commerce, and oceanic canals that allow deep-hulled ocean-going ships through. The canals in the game are mostlynthe second kind, though not exclusively).

Combining them for gameplay simplicity can be done, though it might be interesting to have different mechanisms for them.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Ah yeah, not false. But I mean if we want make more use of them, we should consider the first one too. How many ocean canals are there in the world ? Panama, Suez and ?... I can place it one more in around Turkey, but that's not as important, and it facilitates commerce greatly in this region (Black Sea ?), so really there isn't much reason to have different mechanisms for them IMO, except their size maybe. (just like I would love to see different size of rivers, not sure how to represent it though)

 

[Evie]

There's a handful of others that, while they can't accomodate all modern warships (heck, even Panama can't accomodate an american nuclear supercarrier), can definitely host a wide array of modern oceanic ships, Kiel, Saint Lawrence Seaway, etc.

But yes, for gameplay purposes merging may be best...though hard to do right since the two canals really want to ne built in different places for different purposes in game.

 

[rocksinmypath]

This is a really cool idea I saw on Reddit. When passing through canal tiles that are built at different altitudes, units should incur >1 movement cost, implying they have to wait at a lock gate for the water around them to fill up or drain before they can proceed.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

"River" canals, which basically extend rivers as travel routes, date back to ancient times - by around 1900 BCE the Egyptians built a canal around one of the Nile rapids (cataracts) so that boats could get past without getting hammered. The largest such system was China's Grand Canal, which was built over about 1000 years (581 - 1633 CE) and had the first 'pound locks' to raise and lower boats between different levels by the 10th century CE.
These would have to be part of a Rivers As Transportation Routes system, massively enhancing trade between cities on the rivers/canals.

Canals between bodies of 'ocean' are almost as old - Corinth had a system of rollers, then a canal across the isthmus of Corinth for ships as early as 400 BCE to cut travel time around the Peloponese. The Egyptians tried building a canal between the Nile Rver (Mediterranean) and Red Seas starting around 550 BCE, but couldn't make it work until locks were invented to keep the salt water from the Red Esa out of the fresh water Nile!
Most of the inter-ocean canals had to wait until the Industrial Era: Kiel Canal, Suez, later rthe Panama Canal and Saint Lawrence Seaway. There are also a number of 'coastal waterways' in use around the world, but those would be harder to model - they basically consist of clearing paths along otherwise-shifting coastal/littoral regions to make shipping safer.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Yes, and let Canals be built over two tiles to connect longer stretches. Canal spots would still be uncommon but feel completely random.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yes, and let Canals be built over two tiles to connect longer stretches. Canal spots would still be uncommon but feel completely random.

Canals longer than 1 tile though, should be very, very expensive and time-consuming if allowed early. The Red Sea Canal in Egypt was worked on for over 200 years in the Classical Era to connect the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the Grand Canal in China was over 1700 kilometers long when finished but took almost 1000 years, from the Early Medieval to the late Renaissance Eras, to build. In fact, the Grand Canal is so much longer and more elaborate than anything attempted anywhere else that it should probably be a China-exclusive Unique of some kind.

 

[Naokaukodem]

France is sprinkled with small canals and they weren't so hard so build, and I guess it's the case of most countries. They link different rivers from a region to another, so in term of an average-sized country they are pretty long. Obviously that would be very different in a TSL map, where basically nothing could be reprensented in terms of canals. (same as rivers, cities, etc.) That's why I created a topic about totally changing the scale of the game, where you could have several cities in the same hexagon. Obviously that would change too much, especially in terms of working citizens, that's why people politely ignored that topic. On the other hand, maps in Civ have no particular scale (except in TSL), so there's no reason to ignore more common canals, as long as they just add a feature to a tile rather than overwrighting it. (they could stand between tiles like rivers)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

France is sprinkled with small canals and they weren't so hard so build, and I guess it's the case of most countries. They link different rivers from a region to another, so in term of an average-sized country they are pretty long. Obviously that would be very different in a TSL map, where basically nothing could be reprensented in terms of canals. (same as rivers, cities, etc.) That's why I created a topic about totally changing the scale of the game, where you could have several cities in the same hexagon. Obviously that would change too much, especially in terms of working citizens, that's why people politely ignored that topic. On the other hand, maps in Civ have no particular scale (except in TSL), so there's no reason to ignore more common canals, as long as they just add a feature to a tile rather than overwrighting it. (they could stand between tiles like rivers)

There was a surge of 'canalization' of rivers all over France, Britain, and northwestern Europe in the 18th century. It even included tunnels through hills that carried canals, and both straightened and 'tamed' troublesome rivers like the Rhine and Danube and also connected rivers all over northern and central France and southern and central England. It was the most dramatic improvement in bulk cargo transportation in history, but was completely overshadowed by railroad construction in the following century. Barge traffic on many northern European Rivers like the Rhine, Meuse/Maas and others is still a major component of industrial shipping in Europe, though.

Give Civ's time scale, I suggest that such 'river-improving' canals could be folded into later railroads, since the first dramatic change brought about by both was the ability to efficiently ship large quantities 100s/1000s of tons) of raw materials like coal, timber, and iron ore and food supplies between cities that had been inaccessible to bulk transport before. In game terms, both have the effect of enlarging the radius for Food supply beyond the city radius to anyplace the canal system or railroad reaches, and likewise making Resources available by the canal/railroad system that are outside the original city radius. With a canal or railroad system, the economy becomes national instead of individual city.