Naval units "useless"?

[Victoria]

...I notice that Builders can embark with Sailing (very early on) so I waited until my Builder had one charge left and sent him to sea. Discovered quite a lot and is still doing so - way before any other units can embark or before I've even built a galley!

Is this right? Very handy for the huge Islands map I'm on!

yup 100%, make use of this little "feature".

Sadly they cannot go to sea proper... but there is great Admiral Lief Erikson who can get naval units over the sea before cartography.

 

[Lord Shadow]

If you are just thinking about size or usable hexes then sure. But they are useful based on situation and can be great gold earners. Not every city needs to be 20+ population... a coastal city can be. Its also quite defensible and to be really honest they give me more variety in the game.

I also like playing England.

Yeah, on my last game as England I had about 10 cities and all of them had a Royal Navy Dockyard (the unique Harbor equivalent). I had around 17 trade routes, giving me enormous economic versatility. And that's ultimately the point of coastal cities in real life. The area of water they have access to is much less important in itself than the trade possibilities it grants.

Real coastal cities can be prosperous primarily due to that, not because the water immediately adjacent to them has wondrous resources or fertility equivalent to farmlands. If grand expanses of ocean were very profitable in and of themselves, then we'd see bustling metropoli across the Caribbean and the archipelagos across Pacific Ocean. So it's frankly unrealistic of some to expect sea tiles to be anywhere as valuable are fertile land or rich hills. Modest food and gold is quite accurate.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Investing into naval technology is still worth it even if you don't plan on building a Navy.

Reasons being:

-The Harbor (especially the English Royal Navy Docks) grant gold and a trade route. You need celestial navigation for this. Lighthouses also provide additional housing, food and gold. Shipyards provide additional gold and production and Seaports add even more additional housing, food, and gold. In short the harbor is a strong district on any map type as well as the buildings it offers.
-The Colossus is a wonder the AI never goes for and grants gold, great merchant points, and an additional trader. You need shipbuilding.
- City-states will ask you to construct a Naval unit or request an additional trade route which can mean more envoys.
- Barb camps on coastal tiles spawn boats often and you need some kind of defense.
- Even coastal boats can do some important scouting
- Cartography gives you complete map freedom even on a Pangea map and is super strong on any other map type.
- Ranged Navy units are quite strong at bombarding and later Naval units can bombard from 3 tiles away which is huge. Even on a Pangea map a sufficient Navy can force opponents inland while giving you up to 3 tiles worth (from the coast) of uncontested space to expand to.
- Three great admirals are really important for any game condition. One offers you ocean sailing before Cartography (Leif Erikson) , another decreases war weariness (Lisboa), and another one (Grace Hopper) unlocks one free technology in the information era. Admirals will be uncontested great people on Pangea maps for the most part.

Forgot to add the Naval Tradition civic grants a free envoy, Not huge but can be useful in the rights circumstance.

 

[raen]

What I know is that any civ in game that has a boat UU/plane UU, has a land UU as well, leader unit or not. This means that navy/air force still not big in game.