Coastal Starts suck!

[Archon_Wing]

It is one of the reasons why I avoid leaders with a coastal start bias. Oftentimes, it's an excuse to not give your capital a river and thus housing problems become an issue-- you may not even be able to build an aqueduct. Sea tiles are terrible and it often means have your capital can't even build districts on them. In previous games it sometimes meant your seafood was "safe" from barbarians, but with barbarian quadriemes able to come at the start, this is again a negative and actually makes your cities harder to defend with them bombarding your units.

The only real reprieve you get is that you can build ships without a harbor but that's not too special unless you're Norway and the other civs are slightly inland, that's useless anyways. It's generally a bit ironic that the better "coastal" cities are often inland but can place a harbor.

Anyhow, this rant was mostly due to me having started several games as Norway and getting these really bad peninsula starts consisting of a strip of land. The game I ended up playing had non terrible strip of land so I started. However, it was not me that should have been complaining about the start, but rather Spain. In fact, I never met him at all in the game; he was merely revealed on the map on the space launch and everyone forgot he existed. Thankfully the AI was resilient enough to handle the situation! (No, not really)

Are there like no resources there besides to the north? I gather that they must have gathered the ones near their capital but....

My own start by comparison was better; probably should have used Oslo as a canal (we should be able to build canals, really.

 

[bbbt]

You can get a solid coastal city by mid-game - once you get a shipyard and run that 100% adjacency bonus harbor card, you can get a harbor doing +6/+8 production (and gold) easily. But it's a slow road to get there, and that card isn't worth running unless you've got a number of coastal cities. For the start unless you are australia and/or meet auckland early, it's slow going. And nothing really compensates for the defensive issues as you noted.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I actually like harbors a lot and build them over It's a shame the commercial + habor card comes so late. And even coastal cities don't have to be bad-- it's just that when it's the first city, it can be a problem. Starting with a capital just off the coast with a river and nice land makes it almost the perfect capital that can house all districts.

This here, is where the water is a great thing, maybe because a lot of it is not water. It's a great defensive spot for the capital. Any attacks from sea is going to have a bad time, and you might even consider square rigging for faster frigates to bombard attacks from land. And no I don't remember why I never settled North but that would have been perfect.

 

[stinkubus]

Getting Privateers will help keep those barb ships at bay as they can clear the distant coastal camps which spawn them. Having 2-3 of them roaming the poles and small islands is a must if you are going to try to play out a coastal start.

 

[Victoria]

It's a shame the commercial + habor card comes so late

Most of my games are a coastal start as I play a lot of England. Most do not have fresh water which is fine even on deity. It's more of a challenge but that's what deity is dupposed to be. I get tired of people saying deity is easy and then find they play Gilgamesh or Tomyris.

Take it from me you do not need that double card.... it's really a triple card and you get the double card early... double harbour adjacency gives double money and production.... the commercial triple is no big deal as you are rich by that time.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Most of my games are a coastal start as I play a lot of England. Most do not have fresh water which is fine even on deity. It's more of a challenge but that's what deity is dupposed to be. I get tired of people saying deity is easy and then find they play Gilgamesh or Tomyris.

Yea I usually avoid those leaders too. It's literally reducing the difficulty by several levels.... I would know.

Take it from me you do not need that double card.... it's really a triple card and you get the double card early... double harbour adjacency gives double money and production.... the commercial triple is no big deal as you are rich by that time.

That's probably why I like the harbor better if both are available.

 

[Victoria]

That's probably why I like the harbor better if both are available.

Harbour is off track for early efficiency unless sea rushing. Even as England I think twice before going that route, some good sea resources are a must, otherwise I'll get my campuses going first and then snowball money and trade once nearing mercantilism....
EDIT: Then again... I literally just found this ... I feel a diversion in science about to happen

The one nice thing about coastal defence you have not mentioned is it overcomes the garrison issue.

A starter city has defence 10 unless you place a barb in it when it becomes 20, but we like to put an archer in there. With a sea start we can place a galley in there that bumps defence to 20 and still have an archer.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Oh, not over campuses for sure, was thinking of harbor vs commercial.

 

[stinkubus]

Harbor >>> Commerce Hub. +3 or better Harbors is nbd, and you don't need to dump another 100 cogs into a building to get it.

 

[UWHabs]

The big flaw with harbors is that they don't have any city-states that give them a bonus. But other than that, with the recent bonuses, they're the only district that give a mix of food, gold, cogs, and housing. And if you have a decent number of harbors, you can get more production from the +100% harbor adjacency card than from the +100% industrial zone card, never mind being able to run both of them potentially as well.

Coastal starts without resources suck, though.

 

[Lee Duane Fitzsimmons]

I totally agree. I NEVER play coastal starts. I just start over.

 

[Kyro]

Totally agree. There's no advantage coastal cities have that justify their inherent penalties(Housing, productive/arable/buildable land), as such I I usually restart until I get a fair start with them.

I have no idea why the Devs did nothing practical to buff Coastal Cities despite knowing they are weaker than land cities. It's like giving every coastal Civ a handicap from the start for no balancing reason whatsoever. Creating "variety" that way is just pure nonsense. If coastal cities were meant to be different then they better darn well be just as good in some other way.

25% more gold? Bonus production to building naval units? Less amenities required for population? Making Ocean/Coastal tiles more productive without Auckland? So many things they could have done, yet all they did is is buff gold for coastal tiles instead of production; the latter being the real problem; as if to say: "We know Coastal Cities suck at production/growing and they don't have anything to make up for it, but we just wanna keep it that way." Can't wrap my head around why they think it should be this way.

It is all too obvious that coastal starts create a handicap that will never compensate itself/pay off in any way and the fact that all AI civs with coastal starts always fall behind the others proves this. I've never seen an AI take the lead after that kind of start, ever.

 

[bbbt]

Interestingly, from historical perspective I'd say it fits: most of the significant coastal cities I can think of that don't have a river or lake are much more modern cities (i.e. Rio, LA, etc.), Which makes sense from a freshwater perspective. The majority of older 'coastal' cities are on a river (or a lake if you are something like Carthage), and a lot of them are up the river a good 30-60 miles from the coast.

Of course that doesn't make it good game play (and the game in general is about historical themed game mechanics not historical simulation!)

 

[stinkubus]

Coastal starts will never compete on finish times against good in-land starts, but they can be great fun. I tend to find that if I start coastal at least a few other AIs will, so boats almost always come into play. Having a little novelty in the tech path, district builds, and policies used is a good thing, too.

Frigates in particular are crazy powerful and can easily zero out same-era cities with one or two shots.Great admirals are amazing in games where you need a navy, and if you spam harbors you'll have your pick. The best two admirals in the game will allow you to form a fleet and armada, respectively, out of a unit, and they can be earned eons before you'll ever get to Nationalism or Mobilization. If you push harbor shipping (the district project) you'll get them before Mercantilism, so every civ has access to a bonus that's better than Spain's LUA.

If you get the needed eurekas harbors can be spammed very quickly, and the cartography bee-line helps keep your tech count down to mitigate the district cost. Harbor buildings are somewhat expensive, and they are quite necessary to get these cities to their full potential, so I tend to rely on adjacency for yields from other districts and leave them empty (no buildings).

Commerce hubs get +2 for being next to the harbor, so they are a priority especially if you also have a river. You'll typically have no less than 4 adjacency for the harbor or commerce hub which both can be doubled by policy. Since sea resources are needed for adjacency and not harvested they will also generate large amount of gold. God of the Sea is usually a good choice in these games. I would agree that any starting area without enough resources to take advantage of God of the Sea would probably not be worth playing.

 

[Tech Osen]

The big flaw with harbors is that they don't have any city-states that give them a bonus. But other than that, with the recent bonuses, they're the only district that give a mix of food, gold, cogs, and housing. And if you have a decent number of harbors, you can get more production from the +100% harbor adjacency card than from the +100% industrial zone card, never mind being able to run both of them potentially as well.

Coastal starts without resources suck, though.

Taking harbors over commercial also means no great merchants. I like playing island plates where most cities will be coastal but if a city has room I will build both for that very reason.

 

[Victoria]

Coastal starts will never compete on finish times against good in-land starts

.... ?!.....no difference.... you can Great land tiles in both positions and a city will very rarely use all the tiles.

Inland tiles are much more vulnerable from being swamped by aggressors early.
Natural wonders are more likely on the coast
More options for getting CS quests.
More options full stop.

So I disagree... I do not think they are better per se, just on par especially as there is less chance of a river start when on the coast.

 

[Abraxis]

I love coastal starts. It's a different sort of challenge and kind of a different game. I haven't played any on Deity, but Immortal and bellow it's definitely possible to remain competitive with the AI while focusing on the top branch of the tech tree.

The thing is, they almost exist on a different plane than the rest of the game, and they are slow to get going. Everyone else is in such a rush to expand and defend themselves, the competition there forces them to over-invest in order to stay above the median to try and steal an advantage.
The coastal civ is about playing the long game. You can really just focus on scouting out the next best city location, while optimizing the development of your current assets. Distance and competition don't really matter as much to them in the expansion phase of the game. They don't have to fight over the map because they always have an uncontested alternative. They can always default into filling in the gaps and be perfectly okay.

Without that constant threat, you're able to devote yourself to growing most efficiently for later, along with not having to invest so much in defense due to both the speed of naval units and the difficulty in sieging coastal cities for civs without a navy. So, by the time borders solidify your power should be pulling ahead of everyone else's, unless you made some really poor investments. I think this is probably where it would all fall apart at deity, where stealing those steroid grown cities is just too disproportionately valuable. I guess Military is the only investment that scales positively with difficulty is the thing.
Anyways, for many of these civs, this is also when they get their UUs, which is no coincidence.

Speaking of investments, I think the slow start is also no coincidence. I'd say the fact that astrology is a dead-end tech for continental civs indicates coastal civs are meant to have an advantage in developing and competing in the religious game. Everyone's always complaining about how the religious victory is poorly balanced for anything but Pangaea, while simultaneously they see no value in naval pursuit.

Honestly I kind of think the tone of military first here, while accurate, is also amplified beyond its scope by many who are just really bad at running their economies, so early military investment will just always seems that much better given the lack of alternatives -you don't need to know how to best grow your cities if you just steal cities grown with AI bonuses.

Naval stuff is mutually exclusive to the optimal path to a strong military game, so if you're committed to being optimal, it's worthless. If you're not, it's a lot of fun and varifiably viable up to at least Immortal.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Why would you get to spend less on defense by being on the coast? You are still vulnerable to land attacks anyways, unless it is an island. It can be harder to surround the city and mountains can funnel so defending ships can attack invaders, but ships wont stop the pillage so you end up needing land units anyways, especially if you have to expand inland.

 

[Abraxis]

Because a coastal city can't be sieged without a naval investment above your own.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Why is that though? They can place siege out of range of the coast and ships wouldn't matter.

You don't get a ship that can fire far until frigates, and even that is 2 range