Increased food production from sea/ocean tiles

[ezlndylan]

I looked through the current topics thread and saw that one of my 2 ideas for improving Civ was there: Canals.

Here's my other proposal. Sea/Ocean tiles should be able to produce more food, perhaps with an improvement. Conquests has the commercial dock, but this does nothing with food. I think it's kind of silly that food production from water tiles does not evolve any from the discovery of Map Making until the end of the game, for 2 main reasons:

1) Fishing techniques and knowledge have grown HUGELY since the dawn of time, and we're able to cultivate much more food from the Ocean in 2004 AD than we were in 2004 BC. The game doesn't reflect this at all.

2) Some of the world's largest cities are coastally located (Tokyo, Shanghai, New York, etc.) but in Civ, a coastal city can almost never be larger than an inland city.

It might not seem like a big deal, but this is something that's bothered me since Civ2. Anyway, just my $.02

 

[Galganov]

The harbor works fine imo. At most have the harbor gain a bonus food or something after a certain tech/age or create a new city improvement called a fishery in the modern age.

 

[JanSobieski]

Yeah this annoyed me a ton. I figured that the ocean could provide loads of food and yet the game doesn't reflect this at all. I think there should be more ocean resources as well, shuch as shrimp, tuna, etc besides whales. And theys should provide alot more food than they do, somewhere in the area of 5 or 6 food per tile, even without the bonus resources which should provide even more.

 

[Kayak]

This would mean the ocean would produce more food per tile that land based agriculture. That just isn't realistic. I agree that advanced techniques and automantion should increase the catch, but if current situations are any guide, this should not be sustainable. Maybe you should be able to increase or decrease the amount of the harvest in modern times (to represent regulation perhapse), and you would run the risk of makeing tile unproductive for many turns to represent overfishing.

 

[Huxley Hobbes]

Seems to me that both land AND sea tiles should see a lot more improvement towards the end of the game. But that's just me.

 

[Bluetooth]

Seems to me that both land AND sea tiles should see a lot more improvement towards the end of the game. But that's just me.

I agree on that. In Civ 2 it was possilble to irrigate a second time to get farmland and even build the Supermarket, I think that was a good way to do it.

 

[sealman]

This is something that can be edited into the game. Either with a "fishery" improvement or clicking the box that says "increase food output in oceans (or something like that) for any on of the existing improvements.

 

[Admiral8Q]

Maybe you could build an "Aquaculture Complex" after researching a tech called "Fish Farming", or "Aquaculture"

The "Aquaculture Complex" could either increse the sea food by 1 per tile.

Or perhaps after building it, you could "build" a fish bonus tile to add to a currently empty sea square. You could build these fish tiles like building a city improvement, only it would be placed on the map (randomly maybe?) But... to counter this huge bonus, maybe fish tiles could die off with the chance increasing over time that it is being used.

 

[Darwin420]

Maybe have a "Fishing Boat" that would be the naval equivalent of a worker. Once you discover and advance fishing technology (I like the two you mentioned, Admiral8Q), new fish resources appear on the map, and you need to build "Fishing Boats" to place down a "Net" (with Fish Farming) or, more advanced, an "Aquaculture Complex" (after discovering Aquaculture).

Like other resources, these different fish 'stocks' would disappear over time.

But I don't think these resources should provide an obscene amount of food/commerce. Maybe +1 for the Net, +2 for the Complex.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

I don't think you can double up on a food bonus improvement for water in civ3, if you built something besides a harbor, you'd still get just 2 food per tile. This is the way a lot of the flags work in civ3.

For big cities, keep in mind that the marine products consumed are often caught well out to sea, beyond the city tile radius. It would be nice to have some kind of deep ocean fishery, that can bring back several extra food for a coastal city from way out there, I don't know how you'd implement it though, it couldn't be a static improvement like a farm. Maybe you could just build a special boat, that had a home city like in civ2, and when you park it on a deep ocean square with a resource on it, like a swordfish, herring school, etc, you see an extra food being applied to the city food box thru the fishery ship.

 

[Darwin420]

@Ivan: That idea could work, to have a Deep Sea Fishing Boat. It would be vulnerable to attack by an enemy, but the resource payoff for its 'home' city would be an excellent amount of food and commerce. Maybe it should have an "operational range" of maybe 10 tiles.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Yep, you'd have to guard it in wartime. Also, privateers could be trouble. But, I think I would base privateer attacks more on how much gold the tile was producing rather than food. Some resource tiles, like Herring, would produce 4 food, 1 gold, privateers would leave these alone. But a Sperm Whale tile might produce 3 food, 1 shield, 5 gold, a privateer would go for this whaling boat, getting maybe 40-50 gold for a successful attack. Such fishing ships should not cost support, paying for themselves automatically, the player only invests the shields in them. They should be vulnerable to storms as well, if weather is implemented.

EDIT: I'd base range on era and technological advances, at first you couldn't venture too far from the city and make it back safely, but in the modern era, with diesel-engined trawlers and refrigerated holds, basically the entire ocean on your side of the continent would become harvestable.

 

[Darwin420]

Nice ideas Ivan!!

If weather is implemented, even if it's just random events (a storm that lasts for 5 turns and moves, say, towards the coast perhaps), it should affect any ship in its radius.

 

[Kayak]

@Ivan.. I second Darwin420. Good Idea! There should be more types of shipping for privateers to attack.