Canals

[IXIRandyIXI]

Not really sure if this idea is out there yet, but I just decided to throw it out there:

Canals! They should be a terrain improvement (like Outposts, Airfields, Radar Towers) built by Workers, built on land. The land tile it is built on must be located directly near a Coastal, Sea, or Ocean tile. The Canals allow BOTH land and sea units to cross into that tile. This will allow you to cross those small sections of land that split up two large ocean masses (such as where the Panama Canal is located in Central America ). The canal also allows any friendly nation's naval units to cross through it as long as they have been given a Right of Passage.

I think it would be a great addition to the game. What do you guys think?

 

[Civrules]

This suggestion is actually pretty common around the Civ fan sites.

There have been various concepts of how it should be implemented but no one knows whether or not it will be included in the new Civ.

 

[Admiral8Q]

I hope they do include canals, I just settle tiny "canal" cities if need be in Civ3, or abandon an existing city and relocate it. A canal terrain modification would be handy.

The greatest advantage would be that allies could also use the canal, or to go one step further, maybe neutral civs could pay to use it!

 

[JanSobieski]

Yeah, I really like the idea of canals but I'm not sure how the maintanance would be determined. Maybe for like one tile canal it costs 10gpt, two tiles long it costs 30gpt, three tiles, 60gpt, four tiles, 100gpt, etc. or something like that.

And I like the idea of charging other civs to use it. Maybe it could be a diplomatic agreement like a certain amount of gold for every canal tile crossed or something like that.

Maybe, like polution, canals could even alter weather patterns and change terrain tiles, like a desert becoming a plain because of increased water evaporation and increased rainfall. I know that in real life, hydroelectric dams do this (like the Aswan Dam in Egypt) but I'm not sure whether canals do this.

 

[brinko]

i never even thought of maintenance, good thinking jan!

 

[Sub]

I love the idea of charging other civilizations to use the canal.

 

[wakiki]

Yeah that sounds awesome.

Here's a random idea:

Canals could be more of a terrain improvement like roads. I think they should take alot of turns to make (longer than improving mountains), but generate lots of commerce (like, +2 or 3 per tile), in addition to creating trade routes and giving water passage. The only thing is, they shouldn't be able to change direction. It would look pretty cheesy to have canals going in eight directions on every square, with sea units able to pass through the whole continent

I like the airfield-style version just as much.

 

[Darwin420]

Good idea.

Canals should only be available for 1 tile that has two sides connected to water, IMO. Given that one tile is a rather large area of supposed land, I think that would be a reasonable restriction. Maintenance should also be pretty steep, but you could offset that by selling 'passage rites.'

Hopefully they'll implement something like this in cIV.

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

This probably goes without saying, but irrigation would be possible from these?

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

One question, what if you control 1 side and not the other? Would the ships be able to pass if you say its ok and the other guy say no? Also, would you need a transport to cross canals with land units?

 

[brinko]

One question, what if you control 1 side and not the other? Would the ships be able to pass if you say its ok and the other guy say no? Also, would you need a transport to cross canals with land units?

i would think u would need a rights of passage without tickin your neighbour off..hmmm thats interesting, having your neighbour pay for half of the canals hefty maintenance costs.

 

[wakiki]

Darwin: what I was thinking would be that the canals couldnt change direction, and that other canals couldn't be built within, say, an 8 tile radius of an existing canal. Perhaps canals would cost upkeep, but I would expect them to generate alot more money than they cost, whether or not another Civ uses it (since I imagine neutral trader galleys and such going to and fro through my harbors and such, transporting luxuries, etc. The same would apply for "invisible" traders traveling through my Canal. )

Tank Guy: I don't know much about Canals. Are they fresh water? I would assume no, since they are linking two bodies of salt water, but I wouldn't know. I'm pretty sure that the Panama Canal has a freshwater lake in the middle, which helped them cross that gap, but I think that it's an exception. I don't think you would be able to irrigate from them...not sure, however
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Okay, the biggest problem right now is that if you only let them be one square long, their use would be limited. On the other hand, if you let them be indefinitely long, then they could be silly and/or abusive. (Just imagine a Canal going from Maryland to California. How ridiculous )

So, here's a way to fix this problem: ships can only move one tile per turn through Canals. (They would use all of their movement points, whether they had 1 movement or 100.) This makes sense, since the locks take a long time to travel through in Panama (At least I think so - I've never been to the Panama Canal).

This solves the problem twofold:

1. If a canal space used up all of a ships movement points, then it wouldn't be worth going through a 15-square canal. It probably wouldn't be worth building a Canal that's longer than three squares or so, since you are using up four or so movement squares (depending on the ship/trait/wonders) by going through the Canal. Sure, you could still build a Canal from Iran to Siberia, but it would be worthless, and a huge waste of turns.

2. It would take a huge amoung of time to build a Canal, meaning the longer it is, the more time you spend building it. I'm thinking numbers like fifty or more turns to build one square with a regular worker! I still don't like fifty, since Industrius / Demo. players would be able to build it in 25 turns...which is much to short a time to build a huge project like a canal. Perhaps one hundred turns. You would have to dedicate a huge workforce to build the Canal in a reasonable time period, which is realistic. Maybe not a hundred...perhaps somewhere in between 50 and 100 turns.

Random brainstorming:
(whenever I think of anything that relates to a thread, I just list them under brainstorming, even if I don't like the ideas, I just put down whatever comes into my head. Read at your own risk )

1a. If a city had a Canal square on both sides of it, it would link them. (duh) Moving a ship through the city would be just like moving through a canal: it would use all of the ship's movement. You could save a whole lot of worker time by building a city in the middle of an isthimus to be a canal square.

1b. On the other hand, a city that's just sitting on a 1-tile-wide isthimus wouldn't form a Canal just by being built. Well, maybe it would once Canal Making was researched....but that's just way too easy. No spending worker time in building the Canal....hrm, I don't like that.

1c. Come to think of it, I don't think I like the idea of a city having a canal in it. (Haha, I just thought this as I went along..)You could use the city to build a Canal through rugged Terrain, which I don't think is right. Which brings us to our next point...

2a. Canals can't be built in Hills, Mountains, or Volcanoes.

2b. Possibly, Canals shouldn't be allowed through Tundra. After all, it would be a frozen canal This probably wouldn't matter so much, since Tundra tiles are at the edges of the map, where isthimuses (isthimi?) are not as strategically important. If they have seasons in Civ4 (which I doubt) then they certainly shouldn't be usable during the Winter.

3. There should be a Tech required to build Canals. (another no-brainer, I think) A bit less of a no-brainer would be where to put the Canal Tech. I think the Suez and the Panama Canals were built during the early 1900's, so I guess the early Industrial Age would work nicely.

4. Ships within a Canal would be vulnerable to enemy land units! A ship going through a Canal would be helpless. Either they would be captured or destroyed when a land unit occupied their square...I'm leaning towards destroyed.

5. A Great Wonder based off of this would be cool! It would be either the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal. The city would either have to be on the coast or have a Canal linking it to the coast to build it. The wonder would have the industrious and seafaring traits(or possibly commercial / sea).

Possible wonder benifits:
-Your ships may go through two canal squares in one turn.
-All Coast, Sea, and Ocean tiles within that city radius generate two extra commerce.
-All Canals that you build anywhere generate one extra commerce than normal (bringing them from 3 to 4)
-A Canal may be built with 5 tiles of another one instead of ten.
-If Canals are not able to be built through Tundra, this Wonder could allow them to be.
-Your workers build Canals twice as quickly.

6. Since canals take so long to build, they shouldn't be pillagable, or they should take multiple turns to pillage them.

7. Mines and Irrigation would be removed by Canals. Roads and Railroads could still be built across them. (Although Rails wouldn't offer a food or shield bonus. I hope they change Railroads in Civ4 anyway)

Whew, okay, brainstorm over. I can't think of any more at the moment. As I was typing this, several ideas came into my head, but I forgot them before I had finished typing what I was working on. I will likely post another shorter brainstorm on this thread again

EDIT: Oops, I was using HTML tags sometimes instead of BBCode. Fixed now.