Coastal Capital

Hambil

Emperor
Joined
Oct 16, 2006
Messages
1,100
I've seen a lot of threads dead set against this. Yet, in my experience a well placed Coastal Capital is more defendable than an inland one. If you have a decent bay you can load it up with ships, place a couple forts with cannon or artillery in them... the ship parked in the city acts as a second cannon/artillery.

I'd like to see some kind of challenge built around this assumption (coastal capitals are bad) because I'm not sold.
 
The defensibility issue is strictly a MP issue. The SP AI is simply so bad at naval warfare that a coastal capitol is a non-issue. The problems with coastal cities though is that they take much longer to get going due to water resources requiring work boats and harbors. Also, unless you're loaded with sea resources, the regular water tiles just suck in general. You can't improve them like you can regular land tiles and they only reach 2 food, 1(2?) gold at their peak.
 
I've seen a lot of threads dead set against this. Yet, in my experience a well placed Coastal Capital is more defendable than an inland one. If you have a decent bay you can load it up with ships, place a couple forts with cannon or artillery in them... the ship parked in the city acts as a second cannon/artillery.

I'd like to see some kind of challenge built around this assumption (coastal capitals are bad) because I'm not sold.

See above post, he nailed it.
 
The defensibility issue is strictly a MP issue. The SP AI is simply so bad at naval warfare that a coastal capitol is a non-issue. The problems with coastal cities though is that they take much longer to get going due to water resources requiring work boats and harbors. Also, unless you're loaded with sea resources, the regular water tiles just suck in general. You can't improve them like you can regular land tiles and they only reach 2 food, 1(2?) gold at their peak.

Technically they do improve, though with buildings like the Lighthouse(+1 gold per sea resource) and some of the others rather than by building improvements on them with workers. But yeah, coastal tiles without resources are certainly weaker than land tiles that aren't desert/snow/tundra, since even improved desert/snow/tundra tiles are still bad. But yeah, as a whole coastal cities, unless in a perfect position and with at least 2-3 sea resources(even fish, not just luxuries) and some land resources+food tiles to start things off with, than it's not a good idea to get a coastal capital.
 
Coastal cities with 2 or 3 lux's, combined with the right buildings, can generate loads of gold and hammers, but not necessarily in the very early game.

I almost always play a continents map, and almost always have at least 1 coastal city, quite often the capital. The benefits of early exploration, meeting CS's etc are a huge advantage.
 
I don't mind a coastal capital as long as the land curves so that I have less water and more land than, say, a 50/50 split.

If you are close or over 50/50, you must build the Colossus, then suddenly you have future tradepost equivalents very early on.

But in general I prefer my capital inland with a nice spot to place my 2-4th city on the coast.
 
I'm just going to assume this was posted as a multiplayer issue and answer it from that assumption. A coastal capital requires you to maintain the best navy in the game. Otherwise the player with the best navy in the game will use your weakness (additional avenue to conquer) to his advantage. Besides that, if you have the best navy, you will want to use it. Well, ships move fast, fast enough to sneak up to your capital without much warning but not so fast as to get your navy back home to defend. Goodbye capital to person with second largest navy.

Stated differently, an inland start gives you a lot more flexibility with regards to the naval portion of the game.
 
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