[GS] Land vs coast (tile) yield balance concerns

[Tomice]

My first impression was that they wanted to strengthen the naval/coastal aspect of the game with the new expansion - canals improve ship usability, some new coastal districts/improvements were in the leaks...

But thinking about it for a bit longer, I'm actually concerned that coastal cities will be worse than ever:

• Floods and volcanoes improve the yields of land tiles, there doesn't seem to be anything that improves coastal tiles in a similar way
• Canals make it actually LESS important to settle on the coast (as you can just create sea access with a canal district) - this might even make harbors superfluous in many situations, and without harbors, sea tile yields are abysmal
• Settling on the coast makes you vulnerable to rising sea levels in the lategame

IMHO, they really need to increase the yield potential of sea tiles to not make this aspect even more unrealistic than it is already (as most of humanity lives not too far away from the coast, landlocked countries tend to be much poorer,...)

EDIT:
I checked it in the gameplay preview, coast still only gives 1 food 1gold base yield

 

[Disgustipated]

Perhaps the new sea based districts will somewhat offset this. We don't know what those things in the sea in the pictures were yet do we? And there seems to be a way to put a city or maybe it's a neighborhood on the water. Either way, we need some way to get production, because that's still a serious drawback to sea based cities.

I still make a lot of coastal cities in my games, even if they aren't optimal. Aesthetically, they look good to me. And part of this is just holdover from my civ4 days were coastal cities could be pretty good.

 

[Tomice]

Perhaps the new sea based districts will somewhat offset this.

Maybe in the very late game, but we have nothing new in the early game as far as I can see

 

[Josephias]

IMHO, they really need to increase the yield potential of sea tiles to not make this aspect even more unrealistic than it is already (as most of humanity lives not too far away from the coast, landlocked countries tend to be much poorer,...)

I'd challenge this statement quite a bit, as "not too far away from the coast" does not need mean in the coast itself. Indeed, the one-tile inside cities with Canal Access (or just Harbour) you are commenting have been pretty common trough history. Take Seville, or London. You can consider as well Bremen or Hamburg. Even Rome or Athens, or Washington, can fit this cathegory

Other thing, is you should Benefit more from districts being fitting the coast (as it goes for mountains in example). It has been done already for some civs, but it could be made more general. Holy sites and Commercial Hubs (even maybe the cultural districts!) may be benefited from having sea around. Harbours should be required to take a reasonable Benefit from sea resources. Appeal for neighbourhoods is already increased, however this Benefit is reduced by the Little need for them. It is true that people density increases around the coast, however this does not imply the power centers (the city centers) are the ones that need to be next to it.

 

[Tomice]

I'd challenge this statement quite a bit, as "not too far away from the coast" does not need mean in the coast itself. Indeed, the one-tile inside cities with Canal Access (or just Harbour) you are commenting have been pretty common trough history. Take Seville, or London. You can consider as well Bremen or Hamburg. Even Rome or Athens, or Washington, can fit this cathegory

Discussing whether these cities are the equivalent of "coastal" or "1 tile away from coast" is futile, as scale is a very flexible thing in civ games.
It's a different issue that bothers me (a lot, actually, it's some kind of pet peeve).

In the real world, 2 principles dictate that coastal regions are more popular nad more densely settled:
- Transport and trade by sea (or river) were way more efficient than their land-based counterparts until at least 1800 (railroads). This is still true to an extent.
- The sea stabilizes temperatures and brings precipitation, meaning that e.g. France(Gaul) was more appealing for human life than the steps of eastern Europe on the same latitude.

This resulted in the massive meaning of the Mediterranean sea for early western civilization and the prevalence of coastal settlements on the American continent. The rule is very visble on a population density map (note that great rivers are important, too):

Civ6 breaks this rule, as every water tile in a cities radius is actually wasted space, forcing players to avoid settling on the coast (unless they really need a navy for some reason).
IMHO, settling close to the coast should be generally beneficial, and not something to be avoided except in rare fringe cases.

 

[Disgustipated]

This is where the gameplay vs. realism comes in. Because Civ is a game that has citizens working tiles, it is limited by that. And can never be realistic because of it. A city like New York doesn't have high production because it is working nearby hills, it has high production because of factories and the like within the city. So as long as production is strongly tied to which tiles you are working, coastal cities will be limited.

This was true in Civ4 as well, but Civ4 coastal cities could generate significant commerce, making them very useful cities.

 

[bumpyglint]

My first impression was that they wanted to strengthen the naval/coastal aspect of the game with the new expansion - canals improve ship usability, some new coastal districts/improvements were in the leaks...

But thinking about it for a bit longer, I'm actually concerned that coastal cities will be worse than ever:

• Floods and volcanoes improve the yields of land tiles, there doesn't seem to be anything that improves coastal tiles in a similar way
• Canals make it actually LESS important to settle on the coast (as you can just create sea access with a canal district) - this might even make harbors superfluous in many situations, and without harbors, sea tile yields are abysmal
• Settling on the coast makes you vulnerable to rising sea levels in the lategame

IMHO, they really need to increase the yield potential of sea tiles to not make this aspect even more unrealistic than it is already (as most of humanity lives not too far away from the coast, landlocked countries tend to be much poorer,...)

EDIT:
I checked it in the gameplay preview, coast still only gives 1 food 1gold base yield

I totally agree, I can't understand how they could ignore something so important, I hope the new expansion will not make this even worse.

 

[Amrunril]

I agree that coastal settlements aren't appealing enough. I think a better solution,though, would be a rebalance of trade mechanics that recognizes the benefits of using water for transport. This would give a substantial boost to coastal cities but in a way that would give them a distinct gameplay feel, rather than making them act more like land cities that just happen to work blue tiles. I think allowing harbors and commercial hubs to stack trade routes and restoring a yield bonus to sea-based trade routes (as in CIv V), would be a decent start, though a more detailed rework could be one of the mechanical foci for a future expansion.

 

[Temppu]

Im also worried about rising sea level becoming yet another reason to settle on coast. Only reason to settle on the coast currently is the Galley chop, and this will be nerfed by the Drought mechanisms as well. For a somewhat sea themed expansion, there must be some updates encouraging coastal settling that we are yet to be informed about.

 

[Sostratus]

In Civ5 BNW, coastal cities were supremely desirable if you had 3+ sea resources in the radius. Key reasons:
1) sea trade routes got bonus yield
2)In BNW, lighthouse granted +1 prod to sea resources; the seaport granted +1 production and +1 gold to sea resources since vanilla.
Bringing back the production to sea resources on those buildings (or perhaps, to fishing boats) would be vital. Coast in civ5 granted 1 food base yield, but working those fish tiles was a supercharger for your city.
Perhaps, instead of adding another trade route slot- which means traders can just be moved to inland cities anyways- harbors could provide a bonus to trade routes going through (perhaps the buildings could add to this.)

The other stealthy thing they could do would be to up coastal housing from +3 to +4 (fresh water is +5.) It kind of sucks playing not-australia and realizing that you get to 2 pop, and then you have to eat the -50% growth modifier for being within 1 of your housing cap. Whereas fresh water can go all the way to 4 pop before feeling this.

I would really hope that in GS they add a city center building for coastal cities- either to give further sea specialization or as a bulwark against the climate. Another example would be coastal cities getting boosts to building sea districts [Harbor, Water park, seastead] say, +50%. This would be another great balancer to separate the hardy sailors from the squishy landlubbers.

 

[Socrates99]

Maybe the power mechanic might do something? The only real downside of most Civ VI coastal cities is they often have poor production. Perhaps tidal power plants or something may solve that late game production.

I don't know if it's all that important though. Most of the time if you're settling on the coast there's two or three resources you'll work, they generally have good food and/or gold yield. Then you really only need 7 or 8 decent tiles on land to work for "optimal" play. If that's the case why worry about the yield of a bunch of tiles you probably won't need to work?

If we're talking "realism" though it's actually trade that makes all those real world coastal hubs tick, not the water they bump up against. Perhaps they could add sea trade incentives like they did in V?

 

[UWHabs]

In Civ5 BNW, coastal cities were supremely desirable if you had 3+ sea resources in the radius. Key reasons:
1) sea trade routes got bonus yield
2)In BNW, lighthouse granted +1 prod to sea resources; the seaport granted +1 production and +1 gold to sea resources since vanilla.
Bringing back the production to sea resources on those buildings (or perhaps, to fishing boats) would be vital. Coast in civ5 granted 1 food base yield, but working those fish tiles was a supercharger for your city.
Perhaps, instead of adding another trade route slot- which means traders can just be moved to inland cities anyways- harbors could provide a bonus to trade routes going through (perhaps the buildings could add to this.)

The other stealthy thing they could do would be to up coastal housing from +3 to +4 (fresh water is +5.) It kind of sucks playing not-australia and realizing that you get to 2 pop, and then you have to eat the -50% growth modifier for being within 1 of your housing cap. Whereas fresh water can go all the way to 4 pop before feeling this.

I would really hope that in GS they add a city center building for coastal cities- either to give further sea specialization or as a bulwark against the climate. Another example would be coastal cities getting boosts to building sea districts [Harbor, Water park, seastead] say, +50%. This would be another great balancer to separate the hardy sailors from the squishy landlubbers.

I did see Liang now gives a production bonus for fisheries when she's stationed in the city, so that's at least one way to get a little production from the ocean.

I think the best bonus for coastal cities would be to give seafood resources more food by the end of the tech tree - there's no reason why a late game farm can give 6 or 8 food on a tile with adjacencies, but coastal fish still caps out at 4 or 5. If a coastal fish tile could get up to that 8ish food, and there was also a better way to make a larger population more productive (through factories or power or something), then coastal cities might be more useful.

As it stands now, the only real bonus for settling on the coast is the (small) housing bonus, and the +2 adjacency extra that the harbor gives you. But a couple housing and +2 or +4 production only when you get a shipyard isn't really that huge of a bonus.

 

[Brutus2]

What if there was a limit on how many trade routes could originate from each city (increasing with era or maybe city population) and cities with a harbor could have double?

 

[MooFreaky]

I agree that coastal settlements aren't appealing enough. I think a better solution,though, would be a rebalance of trade mechanics that recognizes the benefits of using water for transport. This would give a substantial boost to coastal cities but in a way that would give them a distinct gameplay feel, rather than making them act more like land cities that just happen to work blue tiles. I think allowing harbors and commercial hubs to stack trade routes and restoring a yield bonus to sea-based trade routes (as in CIv V), would be a decent start, though a more detailed rework could be one of the mechanical foci for a future expansion.

I agree that the most criminally underutilised mechanic is trade. Trade and commerce were what made so many cities powerful, and coastal cities were generally the biggest beneficiaries of this.
I would love to see a MASSIVE expansion on trade mechanics (both land and sea) to make city placement for trade routes a big consideration. Many of the biggest, most powerful cities in the world were based around trade (Rome was founded on the trade routes from north to south Italy. This allowed Rome to become rich and powerful as this brought in money. Carthage did the same (but on a vastly bigger scale) with the Mediterranean sea routes). Empires fought desperately (both militaristically and politically) for control of trade routes, because they were soooooo lucrative.
Most of the walls and border forts were placed, in most Empires, had a key factor in mind: controlling movement of trade. After Empires fought each other, or when bigger empires/kingdoms/etc crushed their smaller neighbours, peace settlements had trade rights as a prominent feature.
As a rule of thumb early on land routes were more powerful, but it didn't take long before sea routes took control and the cities based on land routes became irrelevant (Rome being a great example again).
Yet Civ6 relegates trade to bringing a touch of cultures, or a bit of gold. It doesn't reflect just how powerful it made cities, or how big it allowed them to grow. Instead the most important thing is hills and mines.

While I would love to see trade be majorly overhauled, basically as a central feature in an expansion. The bare minimum I would like to see just to address the current failing is
that coastal cities get benefits such as +x% gold from trade routes originating in this city. If you send your traders to another Civ's coastal city you get +z gold, while that Civ gets z/2 gold also. AND I would make purchasing buildings half price in a coastal city (or maybe 25%, then every trade route from that city makes it a further 10% cheaper??) reflecting how coastal cities could use their wealth to build their cities, rather than mining and forestry.

 

[bite]

They have mentioned (and we have seen some of in screenshots) that there are a lot of sea tile improvements in the expansion, so that could change the balance quite a bit once we know what they do

 

[Deggial]

Those sea tile improvments better be early ones. Those maritime sea-trading cities were financial (and therefore oftentimes militaristic) powerhouse since the ancient days.

I agree with the request to emphasize the trade (and food!) aspect of costal cities. I never really understood, why Firaxis got rid of the really interesting and well-working trade mechanics of Civ5. Were those trading ships really such a burden?
Anyway, many of the proposals mentioned in this thread might do the trick.
I would be fine with most of them - as long as somthing is done. (And this “something” has it’s benefit right from the game start, as mentioned above.)

 

[Victoria]

Great thread, 100% agree. It is trade that is the issue, not water resources, you do not get much production off water, mainly food/gold. Civ V did do this area justice.

 

[mitsho]

Theoretically, sea tiles should work differently from land tiles. You don‘t go out to specific places, you don‘t mark ground possesion and you don‘t build stuff on there. So it seems strange to make them give yields. For civ7 I would wish a distinction there and feel that‘s the basic problem of sea in civilization from the beginning. The wealth of these coastal cities doesn‘t come from the 5 tiles in their city radius after all.

But for now I tend to agree with the op. It does make sense that you require a harbour district to make sea tiles worth it. But it takes time to build that up which makes coastal cities lag behind their inside brethren. That means the most basic thing they could do is to create a „watermill“-equivalent as river cities have for coastal ones: A building (or project?) you can only build if coastal and that gives you production. The dock may be that, I‘m not sure. But we do need something in the early game.

Edit: also, the first ship needs to be a ranged one being able to clear coastal goody huts and barb camps. I do agree that sea districts should be half cost for coastal Cities to build.

 

[Berge20]

What would something like giving cities settled on coasts an extra gold per turn to help replicate the traditional commerce of these places? (In addition to other relevant trade route improvements) Seems overly simplistic, I realize, and probably not super helpful once you get too far into the game, but a relatively easy change.

 

[Kurtbob]

All they have to do is return to CiV5's system of two distinct trade units, caravan and cargo ship.

I assume they implemented the current system to encourage creating roads (trade routes) but I would argue they could create a dual trade unit system and just add shipping routes (trade routes over water) that act as "maritime highways" (faster movement for naval units) that have far better yields than land routes.