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True. The shape can also matter. A coast naturally in form of a U can help protect ships from storms.
If the depth of the water was introduced, it could have other purposes, like how hard is it to extract oil.
If the depth of the water was introduced, it could have other purposes, like how hard is it to extract oil.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
The significance of the depth of a 'natural harbor' depends on the ship technology: a Trireme or Bronze Age galley with a draw of 6 feet that can turn around in just over its own length is a far cry from a modern oil tanker that needs a mile to turn around and draws 30 feet or more when loaded: the definition of 'natural harbor' will be very different in each case!
Several things would make coastal cities more important, or at least almost as important as they were historically:
1. A decent Trade system in the game. No more dual system in which your trade in Resources is magically independent of distance or technology.
2. A realistic Trade system. Bulk goods like Food cannot be traded any distance over land until you have railroads. Period. End of Discussion. You can get Production by trading things like obsidian, copper, bronze or iron tools (Obsidian for cutting edges was traded in the Pre-Game Neolithic, in fact) but you cannot trade enough food to make a difference to a city without sea or river - boat traffic - for the first half or more of the game. Even the recreated Bronze Age galleys could carry up to 20 tons at 10 - 15 kilometers per hour with a crew of less than 10. The best a cart or pack animal on land could do was 100 - 1000 pounds using 1 to 4 draft/pack animals at 3 - 5 kilometers per hour for less than half the day - and that's over good terrain or some kind of road. 1000 pounds of food, assuming it arrives unspoiled, will feed about 300 - 500 people for 1 day. A single trade galley would feed 10,000 + people for a day. There's just no comparison.
3. Harbors are built more than found, but they are built much, much earlier than the game has ever allowed. Some dates:
2570 BCE: Wadi-el-Jarf (modern name) in Egypt has the oldest known Port Structure, a 300 meters-long breakwater made of stone to protect anchorages.
1200 BCE: Phoenician cities on the Levant coast all building masonry breakwaters, piers and quays for harbors.
515 BCE: First evidence of cranes used (in construction of stone temples) - in Corinth, Greece, which also, by no accident, was a major trading port.
Also note that the first evidence for transporting troops and people by (coastal) sea is in pictorial form, from Egypt 2500 - 2300 BCE, so coastal sea movement should also occur much, much earlier in the game than has ever been allowed, and that would also increase the importance of coastal cities and the ability to exploit the coast for travel and access to resources.
4. Virtually all Harbor installations: breakwaters, quays, lighthouses, warehouses, etc. Increased the amount and value of trade through the harbor. Harbors were the object of as much production in facilities/infrastructure as any district in the city, and far more than any caravanserai or 'commercial district' for overland trade, but all the production resources put into harbors paid off and kept paying off as long as trade continued.
5. Sea Trade Routes are very resiliant. No amount of pirate activity ever 'destroyed' a Trade Route - simply made it go around or find an alternate route that was longer, less profitable, but still viable. Barbarian or other 'raids' on a naval trade route (or a land route, for that matter) should remove Value from the route every turn that they raid it, but it is destroyed only if one of the destinations at either end are completely blockaded/besieged or destroyed/captured.
6. Technology increases Trade Value on land and sea both. The Singularity-like change on land is the building of Railroads, which suddenly allow 1000s of tons to be carried for 100s of kilometers a day (just like on the sea) to any destination/city that has a rail connection. On the sea, open-ocean navigation and then Steam propulsion both change sea trade dramatically: making inter-continental trade possible, making trade more profitable because you can 'cut' distances through the open ocean, and making trade more reliable by removing reliance on wind direction and strength.
The other Singularity-like change to all trade has never been modeled in the game, and that is Containerization: the standardized Source to Destination containers that can be loaded and moved by truck, rail, air, or sea without disturbing the cargo. This resulted, between the late 1950s CE and the present day, in increasing all trade by an order of magnitude, decreasing loss during trade by almost as much, and speeding up the movement of all non-bulk cargo tremendously, which in turn resulted in modern 'just-in-time' delivery of resources to Factories and Populations and another massive increase in productivity and profitability
Get all those factors right, and the value of coastal cities will be where they should be.
I think you can look at it as whether the location would allow a permanent harbour - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ria
- or if it's doomed to be just temporarily - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alluvial_fan
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Actually, from the historical and archeological examples, Harbors could be made in a variety of places, and were. The temporary nature of harbors - and coasts in general - is part of another problem/change required in Civ VII, and that is Civ VI's relegating of all climate change to the End of Game when in fact both widespread and very specific - as in, harbors silting up in various parts of the world, or harbors losing their importance because they stopped being able to handle larger ships, or rivers that were navigable up to X point being only navigable for part of the that distance because even river boats got larger and heavier - 'climate/terrain changes' have been happening throughout history and pre-history and really should be in the game in some form other than the occasional Flood, Tornado or Volcanic Eruption (look up 'Dust Shield" for one of the really widespread possible consequences of a volcanic eruption, for instance)
nzcamel
Nahtanoj the Magnificent
While I don't doubt what you are saying here Boris, my only critique would be of the solution you propose here, as to me it should be important for the player to commit naval resources to protect their sea trade routes. I know there is a degree of abstraction in terms of just who would have protected ancient traders at times (more likely mercenaries they hired rather than any official local military? etc); but it certainly would have happened. Without sea trade being a good target to be attacked by both rivals and pirates, there is no incentive for the naval game to reflect real life at all; as there is little else at sea to justify much investment in naval units.
I guess I could get on board with the idea that raiding a sea trade route doesn't destroy it, as long as the rewards and losses are enough to encourage both attacker and defender to up their game.
nzcamel
Nahtanoj the Magnificent
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
I confess, ever since umpteen versions of Civ ago, when you had to laboriously build a Caravan Unit and then send it across the map to the destination to start a Trade Route, and then one $#@*& Barbarian Galley could wipe out all that effort in one turn, the idea that Trade Routes could be utterly destroyed by a single aid has bugged the heck out of me.
You are right, of course: if the Trade Route is going to keep functioning, the penalties from the raids are going to have to be nasty. Like, not only do you lose a turn's worth of Resources and income from the Trade Route, but perhaps the return on the route goes down X amount because of shippers trying alternate, less lucrative routes for their cargos. And each succeeding raid on the route within Z turns will reduce it even more. The Trade Route might not be destroyed, but it can become unprofitable if it isn't protected.
Protecting it, though, will require that the gamer (and AI) is given a command of something like Patrol/Convoy where a ship or squadron can trace the dangerous part of the route and automatically attack any raider or potential raider (i.e., any Barbarian ship) And every raider destroyed will increase 'confidence' in the shippers and restore some of the lost revenue/resources from the raided Route. And Barbarian/raider ships should be encouraged to also attack unprotected Harbors which, if Pillaged successfully, would require major effort to re-establish the port facilities and restart trade - encouraging the realistic fortification/defense of rich trade harbors and cities.
All of which will increase the Naval activity required to keep those generous Naval Trade Routes operating . . .
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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Which means.
1. diplomatic trading options will be limited to maximum distances of merchant caravans / convoys.
2. lag times until trade items arrived
correct?
Personally, riverine movement rules of land units as well as trade routes should return, this also affects map designs as well, personally I prefer ones with river goes THROUGH a tile / hex (Civ 2, Civ: Call to Power and its successor game, and Humankind) over ones that divided a tile. even one might argue that historically river divides two different domains of different rulers/governments apart, this notion DOESN'T ALWAYS TRUE. Land units move along river tile has different movement rules that EVERY land unit class has the SAME movement speed along river (treats as embarkment), can a horse swim or trot along a river faster than a long river barge with 25-50 rowers?
EDIT: These rivers should later on be able to develop into Maritime canals where big ships can pass. How impressive US Navy giant warships like USS Texas or the Last Iowas sailed along Missisipi? i've only learned of this very recently.
Should there be separate 'Naval Base' district in addition to 'Civil' harbor?
What should trade models be? same caravan trader as in civ5 or different trades ordered through city screen?
So then Railroading tech should be available in Civ7 vanilla too. But 'when' in the industrial era?
1. Early Industrial Era (Define the beginning of Industrial Era as 1776 or Napoleonics), with Birth of Railroading in 1829 (Both in Europe (Liverpool and Manchester) and the United States of America(Baltimore & Ohio) )
2. Mid Industrial Era (Wildwest cowboys of 1848-1872, by the time Transcontinental Railroad was completed (Union Pacific to the East met with Central Pacific to the West, eventually UP owned the entire route from Omaha to San Francisco).
3. Late Industrial Era / Early years of Modern Era (When the rests of the world began building their National or Colonial Railroads depending on the locations and operators, Siam was quite late in Railroading clubs with the first line constructed in 1896 by foreign corporates, and the first Government Owned RR (The Northern Line) began construction two years later, and finished AFTER the end of WW1)
nzcamel
Nahtanoj the Magnificent
I know it's to Boris that these points/questions are directed, but I'll add my 5 cents too 
Completely agree with 1. I like the idea of 2, yet in a game where a turn can span a hundred years I don't think it matters. Civ happens on such a large scale that delivery lag would be inappropriate.
The way Civ VI has handled large rivers as an impediment to units crossing is brilliant. I want that to stay, so I prefer the river staying on the edge of the tile. Having said that it would be good for units travelling alongside a river to gain some movement bonus to reflect how much rivers were roads before roads were widespread.
It would be nice to have a way to have ships navigate some rivers, but I don't know that the scale of the game will allow for that well. It makes sense in the Nile scenario to have the Nile represented by a whole hex that can be traversed by naval units. But as much as I like that, I don't think they can put that in Civ at the current size of map. And I don't think it's a good idea for players to be able to convert any hex next to a river into a canal to widen it for ship travel. But there is potential there to do something clever...
I don't think there's scope for a separate naval base from civil harbours.
I don't mind if trade is made more abstract in some ways, but it does need to be raidable by opponent naval units, else again, there is little incentive for much of the game to have naval units.
To me modern roads in Civ 6 were the same as railroads in previous editions. It was just a thematic simplification. 6 did slow down the speeds that people move along roads pretty well actually. Until the industrial era roads don't give you any movement bonus at all; they just reduce the impediments that hills and forests and rivers provide. Industrial roads give a tiny boost, only usable by units that have more than 2 movement points to begin with; and then it is only with modern roads that your units really start to fly around the place.
I hope movement stays much the same in 7 as it has been in 6, as with or without roads it has been the best of the series.
Completely agree with 1. I like the idea of 2, yet in a game where a turn can span a hundred years I don't think it matters. Civ happens on such a large scale that delivery lag would be inappropriate.
The way Civ VI has handled large rivers as an impediment to units crossing is brilliant. I want that to stay, so I prefer the river staying on the edge of the tile. Having said that it would be good for units travelling alongside a river to gain some movement bonus to reflect how much rivers were roads before roads were widespread.
It would be nice to have a way to have ships navigate some rivers, but I don't know that the scale of the game will allow for that well. It makes sense in the Nile scenario to have the Nile represented by a whole hex that can be traversed by naval units. But as much as I like that, I don't think they can put that in Civ at the current size of map. And I don't think it's a good idea for players to be able to convert any hex next to a river into a canal to widen it for ship travel. But there is potential there to do something clever...
I don't think there's scope for a separate naval base from civil harbours.
I don't mind if trade is made more abstract in some ways, but it does need to be raidable by opponent naval units, else again, there is little incentive for much of the game to have naval units.
To me modern roads in Civ 6 were the same as railroads in previous editions. It was just a thematic simplification. 6 did slow down the speeds that people move along roads pretty well actually. Until the industrial era roads don't give you any movement bonus at all; they just reduce the impediments that hills and forests and rivers provide. Industrial roads give a tiny boost, only usable by units that have more than 2 movement points to begin with; and then it is only with modern roads that your units really start to fly around the place.
I hope movement stays much the same in 7 as it has been in 6, as with or without roads it has been the best of the series.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Making it hard to cross rivers is only half the 'river problem': the river as a Highway for armies and trade is still missing from Civ VI, and I think does need to be addressed for Civ VII - there is a reason why virtually every major Ancient to Medieval City is on a river, or more than one river, or a coast-river combination, or a coast. The river is just too valuable as both a source of potable water, sewage removal, and transportation axis.
I confess I have been pleasantly surprised by how well the river through the middle of the tile works in Humankind. Units get a boost to movement when moving from one river tile to another on the same (connected) river - think boating down the stream, or at least carrying all the heavy baggage in boats, rafts, barges, etc. On the other hand, when you first move onto a river tile, you stop - no matter how many movement points you have left, which is a hefty 'river-crossing' penalty. Very clean system, and easy to get used to. Add the same kind of distance bonus to trade routes along a river tile that a sea trade route gets, and we have a good model of the advantages of rivers.
"Naval Bases" up until the late Early Modern (Renaissance) were built as part of or alongside commercial harbors, so there is no need to make them separate. Later, when warships began to have more specific repair, construction and victualing requirements, (Industrial Era and later) they still tend to be in the same 'natural' or constructed harbors used by the civilians, so a Building in a Harbor District could speed Repair/Construction times for naval military units, and requiring adjacency to an Industrial District with a Factory would approach the kind of major infrastructure required to build modern Capital Ships like Battleships and Aircraft Carriers.
I would have Trade Routes be started by an 'abstract' system rather than build individual Trade units and move them around. The way I would represent a Trade Route, though, is to have a Trade 'counter' - camel caravan, wagon, truck, ship, river barge, etc moving along the route at intervals - each counter representing one turn's worth of goods from the Trade. Raiders would target the counters, and each counter they scoop up costs you one turn-equivalent's worth of Production/Resources/Gold, etc from the Route. It shouldn't take long before that becomes expensive enough to require intervention by land or sea patrols.
Major advantage of roads before powered vehicles on them was to make it possible to cross rivers or rough terrain, and make it possible to carry heavy baggage over rivers and rough terrain. That means they only slightly speed up regular military units, but they really speed up things like Bombards, Siege machinery in general, and Artillery.
General hard-surfaced 'improved' roads show up in the late 18th century (Scotsman named MacAdam invented a new and efficient way of building them), but in game terms that's only a few decades (5 - 8 turns) before the Railroad. Prior to that there was a Canal-Building Boom in Europe during the last half of the 18th century, which included connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean through France and east and west coats of Britain (including tunnels to carry the canals through mountain/rough country) but, again, these didn't really speed up travel much, they just made it more convenient (and in places, Possible) to carry bulk cargo like coal, iron ore, grain, etc that overloaded any kind of wheeled wagon transport system.
The railroads starting in the 1830s, utterly transformed land transportation, and their influence completely overshadowed any road improvements until the 2nd third of the 20th century (Civ VI's Modern Era) when the automobile and truck on a hard-surfaced (tarmac, concrete) highway matched the railroad for speed and surpassed it for convenience and flexibility.
So, units and trade both should start flying with the Railroads in the mid-Industrial Era, and trade routes should start getting a boost to Production/Gold from them with modern highways, and the combination of highway and private automobile should give a major boost to Amenity - everybody seems to be in love with the personal transportation convenience of having their own car in every Civ where they've gotten rich enough to afford them and had roads enough to use them.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
Emperor
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This is what Civ 2 movement system was.
With this should there be 'development' options on these rivers that allows a civ to enlarge these rivers for big ships to sail through?
So then Civ6 'Industrial Road' doesn't really represent McAdam roads but (pre-GS) actually RRs?
nzcamel
Nahtanoj the Magnificent
I do like however that with the river along an edge of tiles you'll have armies on both sides knowing who moves first is at a disadvantage. The river in the middle doesn't address that. I mean if we're going to get pendantic about it with the river in the middle of the tile (with no bridge), any army attacked on that tile should suffer like they're on a marsh tile. I suppose that can give a similar situation to what we have with the river on the edge.
In terms of trade along rivers it was neat in 4 where for resources to "move" between your cities (for happiness and health) they needed to be connected by either road...or river. Nothing is connected that way in 6, but maybe they could bring something back along those lines with luxuries to also replicate how rivers were the highways of the past.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Humankind gives a bonus to any unit attacked from a river tile, presumably modeling a cross-river attack, but if you are on a river tile and attacked from a river tile on the same river, it is not intuitive and a little confusing. One solution, which Humankind's tactical battlefield derived from the strategic map does not use, would be to have a tactical layout that places the armies on the appropriate sides of the river in an expanded view so that the actual tactical battles play out the way they should.
As I said, before railroads the only way to move Food should be by sea or river - ship or barge traffic. Even a dug-out canoe can carry more weight than a cart or wagon and, unless on extreme counter-currents or rough water, faster than anything on land without artificial power sources. The earliest plank-built boats were found in England (in a bog, pretty well-preserved) dated to 2000 BCE, 50 feet long, 6 feet wide, capacity 3 - 5 tons, which is 3 - 10 times more than any primitive wagon or cart. The kicker is that these were Smaller than the dug out canoes used on the northwestern Pacific coast of America by the Haida, so river and coastal trade had an advantage from the very beginnings of human settlement.
1900 BCE - earliest 'canal' , a channel dug around a cataract on the Nile to facilitate river traffic around the rough water - so 'projects' to lengthen the navigable portion of a river date back to the Ancient Era.
By the beginning of the Classical Era, you have canals being built as Artificial Rivers (over flat land) between the Red Sea and the Nile and across the isthmus of Corinth for both coastal and river boat traffic. Around 618 CE the first sections of the "Grand Canal" (Jing-Hang Da Yunhe) in China were completed. This was basically a project to both connect rivers for traffic and straighten, smooth out or go around rough water on the rivers themselves. By the 10th century, this included Pound Locks to raise or lower boats from one water level to another, so 'Canalization Projects' could be built over hills as well as flat sections of terrain.
I've made the suggestion before, but it belongs here as well: the game needs Humankind's Waterfalls on the rivers, but in addition to being Pretty, they could show the Head of Navigation beyond which river traffic cannot go until the river is Improved by some kind of Project/canal/lock system.
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Lonecat Nekophrodite
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So terrain suitable for settlements will be limited until some techs that permits waterworks become available or what? And this should affect settlement area limits as well, with this Humankind also being more accurate to reflect the actual distance of travel and terrain 'limits' rather than circular territory which Civ series were based on. (With this I tend to build cities with no overlapping area borders -- seven by seven hexes apart, if possible.
And this sets trade route patterns as well? if a city A (a capitol) is located upon a high ground , city B (Craftsman city) on a lower ground, and city C (Port city) are all built along the same river, this river has a waterfall between City A and B, the continious riverine traderoute will be between city B and C and while routes between City A and B has to go around on the land, right?
