Cities one tile away from the coast.

[Aseon]

I've been reading here and noticed that a lot of people really don't like having cities that are one tile away from the coast. I'm assuming that it's because that gives you water tiles in the fat cross but doesn't give you the ability to build the things that would take the most advantage of them (harbors, lighthouses, etc.)

Is that the main reason, or are there others?

Also, I had an interesting dilemma regarding this in a game I was playing last night. I was looking for a place to put a new city and there was a decent tile on the coast. However, 1 tile inland gave me access to an additional food resource and was on the coast of a 1 tile lake, thereby giving me access to fresh water. Based on my assumption above, I opted to build the city next to the lake (since that allowed my to build a harbor, etc). Was that a dumb move?

 

[svv]

It's also that, by not building on the coast, you're depriving yourself of the extra trade routes that coastal cities get.

 

[futurehermit]

The main thing is that any coastal tile in your BFC cannot be upgraded from 1 to 2 food. Thus those tiles are basically a complete waste (moreso than normal...). However, if you can limit the number of coastal tiles and have sufficient surplus food to run specialists late game to allow you to ignore those tiles then it's no big deal...

 

[Validator]

By settling away from the coast you also lose the ability to build naval units in that city. In one game I played the Bismark AI was on another continent and despite having a sizable empire only had 2 coastal cities while 4 IIRC were 1 tile from the coast. When Bismark declared war I had no problem blockading the two ports and eliminating any invasion threat.

Also by settling away from the coast you lose the health benefits of a harbor (in addition to the trade benefits mentioned by svv).