Do rivers become navigable over time?

[MIS]

I know there are two types of rivers; navigable and non-navigable. Do non-navigable rivers ever become navigable over time, or is the state set at the beginning of the game? If they do become navigable over time, how long does that process take?

 

[GeneralZIft]

It would be cool if this is one of the things that change during the age transition.

 

[UWHabs]

Or vice versa.
"Too much silt has deposited in the Mississippi River. It is no longer navigable."

 

[evonannoredars]

To clarify just in case, no they don't change with time.

 

[wesplaysciv]

Information age unit to dredge a navigable river to your opponent's capital

 

[GeneralZIft]

Information age unit to dredge a navigable river to your opponent's capital

It's a shame that Civ series really shys away from fun futuristic concepts, like terraforming, but also underwater cities and tunnels, space combat, advanced robotics and so on.

Like it's a popular opinion that the ancient eras are the best, but I feel like the players and developers don't give information and future eras enough credit in their possibilities.
Social media would be an interesting culture and diplomatic tool. The aforementioned mechanics would be cool for science, military and economics. There's enough meat there to cement an entertaining end to a game but not enough effort

 

[Mudkip1001]

It would be cool if this is one of the things that change during the age transition.

It would be cool until your city, buildings, and or wonders that were built on said river tile eroded away (which while realistic, would kinda suck from a city planning/game/coding perspective)... It would be cool if unclaimed rivers did this, the Mississippi River is always changing and moving, it destroyed countless towns and moved others into different states...

It's a shame that Civ series really shys away from fun futuristic concepts, like terraforming, but also underwater cities and tunnels, space combat, advanced robotics and so on.

Well... Its kinda rare in Human History to create totally new land, with the Dutch being the most prolific examples and they probably created equivalent to one civ tile of land, but even then (also the AI has a hard time with terraformed tiles, there was a mod in 6 that did this but just broke the AI's pathing)... Also Civ: Beyond Earth had cities in the water/ocean tiles, and idk it never seemed that worthwhile, also you probably should just play that (I like the idea of a future/dystopian age but I think I'm in the minority with that)

I really hope they re-add tunnels, dams, and canals from civ 6 gathering storm! Civ 7 with its navigable rivers could actually make them really worthwhile!

 

[GeneralZIft]

It would be cool until your city, buildings, and or wonders that were built on said river tile eroded away (which while realistic, would kinda suck from a city planning/game/coding perspective)... It would be cool if unclaimed rivers did this, the Mississippi River is always changing and moving, it destroyed countless towns and moved others into different states...

That depends on implementation, so if a river moves, does it necessarily destroy what used to be on the river or where the river goes through now? Or does it simply move anyway?
All the old districts get overbuilt anyway so it shouldn't be a huge issue, right?

Now, another implementation could be that only parts of the river move, just the unimproved parts. Like you suggest, this would move unclaimed rivers but also claimed, unimproved rivers.

Well... Its kinda rare in Human History to create totally new land, with the Dutch being the most prolific examples and they probably created equivalent to one civ tile of land, but even then (also the AI has a hard time with terraformed tiles, there was a mod in 6 that did this but just broke the AI's pathing)... Also Civ: Beyond Earth had cities in the water/ocean tiles, and idk it never seemed that worthwhile, also you probably should just play that (I like the idea of a future/dystopian age but I think I'm in the minority with that)

Well I'm not a fan of BE and I'm not a fan of super futuristic alien planet setting -- I'm just interested in seeing a reasonably realistic, competently designed, fun near-Future Earth for the end of the game.

I do believe underwater cities has appeared in either Civ3 or Civ4 if my memory serves me correctly? But yeah, that, and tunnels, dams, canals for sure and terraforming, social media, global warming, advanced espionage and the Internet could play big roles in this theoretical final era, for once, more than they ever have in previous games

 

[Mudkip1001]

That depends on implementation, so if a river moves, does it necessarily destroy what used to be on the river or where the river goes through now? Or does it simply move anyway?
All the old districts get overbuilt anyway so it shouldn't be a huge issue, right?

Well this would work better, although i don't really see much of a point in non-navigable rivers moving considering many cities like London, Brussels, etc just built over them (also I dont think they really add any benefit to tiles; in my mind, it would be "best" if non-navigable river tiles became navigable (and that's where I fear the game would have to destroy stuff to accommodate the change).

Having a tile with something you shouldn't overbuild like the Golden Age Academy or a wonder like Petra just being wiped off the map cause the tile is now navigable would suck... although a flooding crisis might be fun... (think Yellow River flooding causing the removal of an emperor's mandate of heaven)

Well I'm not a fan of BE and I'm not a fan of super futuristic alien planet setting -- I'm just interested in seeing a reasonably realistic, competently designed, fun near-Future Earth for the end of the game.

I do believe underwater cities has appeared in either Civ3 or Civ4 if my memory serves me correctly? But yeah, that, and tunnels, dams, canals for sure and terraforming, social media, global warming, advanced espionage and the Internet could play big roles in this theoretical final era, for once, more than they ever have in previous games

yea... I see where you are coming from, Mellenia had several interesting but half-baked future eras that all kinda spawned their own crisis (albeit underwhelming) like an alien invasion, and even a nuclear apocalypse era if you used too many nukes (although ive never seen anyone play it cause the game is not worth the time) advanced espionage of civ 2 I believed had an option where you could send a spy to dirty bomb nuke another city (although like how you cant verify the underwater cities, I cant verify this). I really hope they add crises that actually make large empires shake to the core in the modern and the 4th age, minor inconvenience is just blah...

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Or vice versa.
"Too much silt has deposited in the Mississippi River. It is no longer navigable."

My first thought was "oh no we can't go any further because we found a dam" as in a beaver resource.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Historically, the planet has thrown some major and specific changes at humans in the form of river, coastline, and general trafficability of both:

The ancient coast of the Persian Gulf was much, much further inland than it is today: rthe famous marshes in southern Iraq were open Ocean in trhe Bronze Age and earlier.

The Mississippi might be better known to Americans, but the Huanghe, or "Yellow River", the 2nd longest in China, was both the center of ancient Chinese civilization along its floodplain, and also is known as "China's Sorrow" because it floods, changes its course, and generally messes with China regularly. One estimate is that the river has flooded its banks 1593 times in 2500 years between the 6th century BCE and 1946 CE. The river has in that same period changed its course so much it has reached the sea at points over 500 km apart.

Ports have lost or changed their access to the sea through silting of rivers or changes in sea level. Famously, the classical port of Alexandria is now about 10 meters under water, and Scarborough in England, in medieval times a major port, is now Inland.

Other cities have had their access to the sea changed dramatically by Man: Amsterdam was a small inland town until the first reclamation projects in the Netherlands gave it access to the sea, turning it into a major port. The Great or Grand Canal in China extended 'navigable river' access all the way to Beijing and other points up to 1000 km from the coast. The Erie Canal turned the Hudson River into part of a Navigable waterway from Manhatten all the way to Buffalo on the Great Lakes.

So, yes, the game missed out considerably by not allowing the occasional Major Change in the map due to Mama Nature's whims - although Mama Nature's whims might be too much for gamers to put up with.

BUT the first canal around a cataract on the Nile was built to extend the 'navigable' part of the river in 1900 BCE, so this sort of thing isn't even late-game. And since, potentially, the gamer/AI ability to extend Navigable rivers with canals dates 'way back it really should be included in some form. And it shouldn't take until half-way through the game's development to do it, as it did in Civ VI.

By Exploration Age China's (Unique?) ability to construct the Grand Canal could be in the game, and by the Modern Age human monster projects like the Suez and Panama Canals or Saint Lawrence Seaway should be possible.

 

[Leyrann]

It's a shame that Civ series really shys away from fun futuristic concepts, like terraforming, but also underwater cities and tunnels, space combat, advanced robotics and so on.

Who knows, perhaps in Civ VII we'll finally get polders that aren't just an improvement on land (Civ V) or an improvement on water (Civ VI) but actually genuinely turn water into land. Oh yeah, and "that would be difficult in the engine" isn't an argument, as the Civ VI engine can also turn land into water, as shown by the climate change in Gathering Storm where you can move boats across submerged tiles without issue.

Amsterdam was a small inland town until the first reclamation projects in the Netherlands gave it access to the sea, turning it into a major port.

Actually, it was always connected to the Zuiderzee, so ships had to take the long way around but they could get there. And of course the Netherlands is one big mess of waterways going this way and that anyway. The Amstel is nearby (that's what the city is named after - a dam in the Amstel), I don't know exactly what the IJ is but it's some historic waterway (that persists to this day), and there's tons of others. The Utrechtse Vecht (not to be confused with the other river called Vecht, in Overijssel) is notable for historically flowing one way, but in modern times flowing the other way because that's more convenient with water management. Yeah, the country is that flat. And while I haven't looked into this, the naming of older towns and flows across Holland and Utrecht implies that once upon a time, the Rhine flowed past Utrecht and then west to someplace north of The Hague and Leiden to enter the ocean there, while the Meuse would enter the ocean near Rotterdam. Nowadays, the Rhine's primary outflow is actually at Rotterdam, and I don't know for certain where the Meuse flows out, the geography implies that it reaches the ocean south of Rotterdam but I'm pretty sure the dams we built in that area can't let that much water flow through so it's quite possible that the effective outflow of the Meuse is also in Rotterdam, with the flow making a few weird twists on the way there.

BUT the first canal around a cataract on the Nile was built to extend the 'navigable' part of the river in 1900 BCE, so this sort of thing isn't even late-game. And since, potentially, the gamer/AI ability to extend Navigable rivers with canals dates 'way back it really should be included in some form. And it shouldn't take until half-way through the game's development to do it, as it did in Civ VI.

The IJssel river in the Netherlands is known to be a branch of the Rhine, which in fact carries about one-ninth of it's total outflow up north. What's less well known is that the IJssel was originally a small local river, and the Romans dug a canal to divert water from the Rhine away and to the north where it wouldn't bother them, with the end point of this canal being the IJssel. And I actually suspect that back in the day, the IJssel carried more of the Rhine's water than it does now, as the town and flow names I mentioned above imply that the (relatively) smaller branch of the Rhine that the IJssel branches off of was in fact the main branch back in the day, with the current main branch (the Waal) having been the smaller branch at the time.

For reference, the Rhine first splits two-thirds of it's flow into the Waal and one-third of it's flow into the Pannerdensch Kanaal (kanaal = channel//canal, idk to what degree this one is man-made though), and then the Pannerdisch Kanaal splits two-thirds of it's flow into the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine), which becomes the Lek further down, and one-third into the IJssel. Based on the location of the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine), Kromme Rijn (Curved Rhine) and several other vestigial flows that branch off of the Nederrijn/Lek right where it changes it's name, this is probably the 'original' flow of the Rhine. Bonus points by the way: 'lek' is Dutch for 'leak', I wonder if the Lek is originally a 'leak' of the Rhine that eventually became the dominant flow. On the other hand I've spoken to enough linguists to know I shouldn't just assume that's the case.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Who knows, perhaps in Civ VII we'll finally get polders that aren't just an improvement on land (Civ V) or an improvement on water (Civ VI) but actually genuinely turn water into land. Oh yeah, and "that would be difficult in the engine" isn't an argument, as the Civ VI engine can also turn land into water, as shown by the climate change in Gathering Storm where you can move boats across submerged tiles without issue.

A telling sign would be can naval units enter Buganda's unique improvement?