Panama Canal

[civarchitect]

A small wonder I would like to see added is the Panama Canal. It would be nice to add a water tile to a city that is only one square from being a choke point on a conitnent so that the already too slow ships don't have to sail all the way around.

 

[ChrTh]

I think the programming logistics of such a wonder would be too burdensome

 

[Black Waltz]

I would like canals to be a new worker action. I had the problem last game which reminded me of the problems Russia has. Russia could not combine their fleets at one point without sailing halfway around the world as their sea territory is split so they need a seperate northen and southern fleet. The iratating thing is that all my productive cities were at the south and it was taking me 29 turns to sail to the north. A canal could have solved that completly...

 

[Shabbaman]

That one is on top of my lists since civ1...

 

[Mr Black]

Hi!

Always a great idea, when it's brought up.

I also wish we could make canals several tiles inland, like in real life. "ERIE CANAL"

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

It is really annoying when you have to sail a huge distance to get two fleets of ships together unless your lucky enough to have a chokepoint to buil a city on, and give your ships a short cut. Building a canal across the continent would work great.

 

[Ben E Gas]

it would be great to be able to build a canal. Also, I wish you could build ships on large inland seas. I don't like how, currently you cannot build ships in theses seas.

 

[Inter4]

If you biuld a canal through a whole continent..could you be able to cross that canal with land units?

 

[Black Waltz]

Well you should be able too. Although the canal shouldn't give any bonuses to city production (to stop people building them all over the place like railroads). Also I don't think any military actions should be able to be completed while in the channels.

 

[Lynx]

id like to see this, definetly

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Thing is the canals could blow up in you face, because the enemy could just as easily send a fleet of aircraft carriers loaded with bombers up and unload or worse yet a nuclear sub with a nuke on board. :saiyan:

 

[Smidlee]

i think the Canal is a good idea. have it work something like a settlers radar or airbase where there is an owner of the canal

 

[HAWKMAN812]

I think that is a very good idea. The canals could be owned by civ and only friendly civ could use them, for a fee of coarse!!

The canals should be very very costly to build and upkeep to limit the use to only a few square.

 

[dexters]

Before we talk about canals, I still want to see friendly units stacking. It's annoying when your ally parks his forces in your territory making your troops take the long way around, or worse yet, they park on an unimproved or polluted tile and the only way to get them to get off is cancel the ROP and ask them the "leave or declare war" diplomacy deal and you always risk them delcaring war on you, especially with their forces all over your territory.

 

[cgannon64]

I think Canals should be a worker option, like a road for ships. They should be VERY hard to build to discourage them from being built everywhere.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Exactly. I don't really think having the Panama (or Suez) Canal as a Wonder is very viable. It should be a Worker action (perhaps with a new technology called Canal Building?), and it should take a very long time to build. Certain terrain types (like mountains!) would probably not allow canal construction there. I don't know that there should be a limit to how long you can make a canal, but the prohibitively long time spent to build one, even on a single tile, would prevent people from, say, attempting to connect the Mediterranean directly to the Yellow Sea.

Once built, a canal would allow (all? certain types of?) naval units to pass through, while still allowing land units to cross without any movement penalties.

And use of the canal would be determined by ownership. If you control the canal, you and everyone with whom you have a Right of Passage Agreement could use it. If no one controls it . . . would it even work? Don't canals need people there to man the locks in order for the ships to even get through? Perhaps, then, a canal could only be used if it was inside somebody's borders.

 

[Balastulin]

Completely agree with previous post.

Canal building should come with Steam Power and Sanitation, as digging canals releases all manner of nasty diseases.

At the moment I simply build a whole string of Size 1 cities. I don't think this is cheating as such since it does take quite a bit of time and effort, and you still need to defend them all.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

hello railroads?


point:
you guys would canal every single square unless there was a per a turn operating cost. And if the per a turn operating cost wasnt large you would have a web of canals that isnt at all the intended effect.

long time to construct really doesnt show itself to be a barrier to players. When you got a team of 30 workers running around everything goes down quick in the end.

 

[Balastulin]

Originally posted by jeremiahrounds
hello railroads?


point:
you guys would canal every single square unless there was a per a turn operating cost. And if the per a turn operating cost wasnt large you would have a web of canals that isnt at all the intended effect.

long time to construct really doesnt show itself to be a barrier to players. When you got a team of 30 workers running around everything goes down quick in the end.

If a canal square adds no extra bonuses and precludes other advances except roads and irrigation, that would solve the problem. Canals would only be useful for the purpose of transporting vessels over isthmi two square or wider, most probablr via deserts which are pretty much useless anyway.

It's pretty tough trying to run a railroad over a canal capable of transporting ocean going vessels.

 

[Balastulin]

Originally posted by jeremiahrounds
hello railroads?


point:
you guys would canal every single square unless there was a per a turn operating cost. And if the per a turn operating cost wasnt large you would have a web of canals that isnt at all the intended effect.

Anyways, that's what the British did in the 19th century. The British canal network is staggeringly large and did much to keep the industrial revolution revolving.

I believe the point of this thread is for ocean-going vessels though, similar to Panama, Suez, Kiel canals