Hopes/Focus Points of the Next Update?

[stealth_nsk]

Canals are probably the thing (in terms of a distinct feature or element) from Civ6 I miss most in Civ7. I guess the reason is the impact on picking settlement spots - as soon as you allow extending the "canaling ability" beyong the city tile itself, suddenly more tiles come into consideration when placing a city. To weight e.g. the access to resources or optmized spacing vs. the "canal potential" of a settlement is just one of those "major decisions" which would fit so neatly into Civ7 big vision "of less, but more relevant clicks/decisions"

I think canals just didn't fit well with Civ7 concept of rural and urban tiles with overbuildable buildings. Civ6 districts were much better fit here.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I think canals just didn't fit well with Civ7 concept of rural and urban tiles with overbuildable buildings. Civ6 districts were much better fit here.

Well, the same concept didn't stop them from adding bridges as buildings...I think a canal could work in a similar fashion.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Well, the same concept didn't stop them from adding bridges as buildings...I think a canal could work in a similar fashion.

Yes, they could, but it would be a bit more messy. Since buildings are overbuildable, one building can't change the type of the tile in terms of second building, for example. So, a land tile with canal will remain land tile, the same way as river tile with bridge remains river.

It would be a bit inconvenient to not being able to treat canals as navigable rivers in terms of buildings. And I believe it would require some significant adjustments to graphics - normally buildings split the tile they are on in half, but if canal will be on only one half of the tile, it would struggle to connect all possible ends visually.

 

[Krikkit1]

Yes, they could, but it would be a bit more messy. Since buildings are overbuildable, one building can't change the type of the tile in terms of second building, for example. So, a land tile with canal will remain land tile, the same way as river tile with bridge remains river.

It would be a bit inconvenient to not being able to treat canals as navigable rivers in terms of buildings. And I believe it would require some significant adjustments to graphics - normally buildings split the tile they are on in half, but if canal will be on only one half of the tile, it would struggle to connect all possible ends visually.

a Canal building would probably have to be a “consume whole tile” building, that only allowed ships to cross as opposed to making the tile a water one.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

IRL Canals tended to be relatively short: the Erie, Panama, Suez, Kiel, etc canals ranged from a few hundred to a few dozen kilometers long, and all of them had crossings for land traffic going across the water traffic.

Which means, making a 'canal' a whole-tile Structure/Improvement/New Addition which allows navigable river-type ship traffic in one direction and (delayed) land traffic in the other would cover the features of the originals we want to model. In other words, it would have the features of the current navigable river tiles without requiring a new 'special' set of tile features.

Another point is that as a Whole Tile feature canals will be limited by what else you are trying to shoehorn into the city radius so that 'canal spam' will not be easy. A steep cost (rising for subsequent tiles?) in Gold or Influence might also be necessary to avoid every Civ in the game getting to build China's Grand Canal over 1000 km in length

 

[Krikkit1]

IRL Canals tended to be relatively short: the Erie, Panama, Suez, Kiel, etc canals ranged from a few hundred to a few dozen kilometers long, and all of them had crossings for land traffic going across the water traffic.

Which means, making a 'canal' a whole-tile Structure/Improvement/New Addition which allows navigable river-type ship traffic in one direction and (delayed) land traffic in the other would cover the features of the originals we want to model. In other words, it would have the features of the current navigable river tiles without requiring a new 'special' set of tile features.

Another point is that as a Whole Tile feature canals will be limited by what else you are trying to shoehorn into the city radius so that 'canal spam' will not be easy. A steep cost (rising for subsequent tiles?) in Gold or Influence might also be necessary to avoid every Civ in the game getting to build China's Grand Canal over 1000 km in length

You could also just require all canals to be adjacent to a NavR/Coast, so no chaining canals.

 

[UWHabs]

IRL Canals tended to be relatively short: the Erie, Panama, Suez, Kiel, etc canals ranged from a few hundred to a few dozen kilometers long, and all of them had crossings for land traffic going across the water traffic.

Which means, making a 'canal' a whole-tile Structure/Improvement/New Addition which allows navigable river-type ship traffic in one direction and (delayed) land traffic in the other would cover the features of the originals we want to model. In other words, it would have the features of the current navigable river tiles without requiring a new 'special' set of tile features.

Another point is that as a Whole Tile feature canals will be limited by what else you are trying to shoehorn into the city radius so that 'canal spam' will not be easy. A steep cost (rising for subsequent tiles?) in Gold or Influence might also be necessary to avoid every Civ in the game getting to build China's Grand Canal over 1000 km in length

Yeah, I mean as much as from a gameplay perspective Panama being like a 3 tile wonder is cool to bridge things, your world map would have to be absolutely massive to get that to scale. Although in a civ scale, even the most sprawling cities should only take up basically a single tile in-game (maybe one ring around them when you count the rural farms that feed them).

You could also just require all canals to be adjacent to a NavR/Coast, so no chaining canals.

Yeah, I don't think you want to chain them, so you'd have to put similar placement rules as 6. IMO I don't even mind if they get rid of the 3 tile cheat in 6 where you can go water-canal-city-canal-water. Have them placeable with either 2 non-adjacent sides which border water (coast/lake/navigable river) or which border a city which borders water. So you can bridge a 2 tile gap (water-city-canal-water). IMO that's more than enough to fix those annoying spots, without pretending that the canal system is crazy.