Harbors? Terrible?

[Rpger29]

Coastal cities cannot be underestimated in value. My minimum threshold is:

2 sea resource tiles (not including atolls)
1 land resource (ideally strategic)
3 other workable land tiles
1 unique luxury
or
2 repeat luxuries
or
2 strategics

Harbors are awesome if you have at least 2 sea resources.

 

[Kwik E Mart]

The buildings are good, its the sea tiles that suck. Unless you can get a lot of special ressources a coastal city is pretty bad.

what can u get out of a normal sea tile? 2 Food 1 Gold, with a lighthouse? I dont think it goes beyond that. On a grassland u can get up to 4 food, up to 4 Hammers on a mine etc. And that doesnt even require buildings. They should allow work boats on normal sea tiles later in the game. Coastal cities are more of a liability than an asset. you usually only build one to (most of the time) buy ships or get a trade route.

In reality for a city to be coastal is a huge advantage.

well, assuming you don't build the colossus or go down the commerce social path...several things that i like about coastal cities though:

1) they have limited avenues of attack from enemies...a couple of well placed forts and they become death traps for invaders
2) they can hold two ranged units, one land and one naval...i like to have a cannon and frigate/ironclad in addition to the inherent city ranged attack...can make a big difference, not to mention naval units just outside the city that can assist in the defense and usually immune to the land attackers

 

[The_Quasar]

I'm playing Germany on a small continents map at present, and I have one city with 7 fish resources, that city is as good as my capital.

 

[headcase]

I always forget about harbors, and usually regret having 10-tile roads all over the place...

Same here, but such roads are still useful for unit mobility at least.