Sea resources are incredibly under-tuned

[homan1983]

One of the biggest problems is the core yield of coastal tiles: 1food 1 commerce.

This means with a fish, and fishing boats we get 3f 1g
A crab is even worse: they give only gold boost (was it 2g?), so WITH FISHING BOATS its 2f 3g or so.

Compare and contrast this to land resources:

Stone on grassland gives 2f 2p
Pasture is 3f 2p
On robot's vod, one of the tiles has 5 food without improvements:

Hills have even better yields, they have a base 3 yields (1f 2p for plains hills or 2f 1p for normal hills), so resources on hills are even better by 1yield. A forrested hill has 1 food 3 production unimproved.

Coastal cities already are disadvantaged. They get less housing, they have less land for districts and workable tiles. Sea is also less relevant since naval power doesn't allow them to take cities with a harbour district but build inland. Their only hope is to work resources in the sea.

How can a civ starting on coast compete with another civ that starts with unimproved tiles giving 5 food.

Also lighthouse now gives +1food +1 gold to the city, not per sea tile. So the situation remains dire.

I hope they do a balance pass on it. Is there something I'm missing guys?

 

[racha]

You might like this thread.

 

[Krajzen]

Well, one more argument for sea tiles and settling cities on coast being relatively useless.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Who says cities need to work bonus tiles to be good? That's CiV logic.

We have to play VI to see how the new coast city mechanics work out, but the logic now appears to be:

Early era cities won't be working a ton of tiles because of housing caps. Harbors are good at kicking out gold, boats, and admirals, the things you want for conquest. Meanwhile you can specialize the city with one or two inland districts.

Later era cities are about farm adjacency and housing via tile appeal, and naval cities have an advantage in the second part, and with breathtaking neighborhoods will be excellent at districts/projects rather than at production.

Asking the game to balance naval bonus tiles with land bonus tiles would not fit with the adjacency mechanics, and also have no yet-apparent effect on making coastal cities more useful.

 

[Furycrab]

There are other advantages I think are understated. Starting with the Sailing Eureka and the ability to get all the other water based Eurekas much faster. Sure you can build a Harbor, or settle your second city on the coast, but speed wise it's very slow. Seeing how important it is to meet civs and citystates, I think if you can Freshwater settle on a coast, you won't regret it. I saw one streamer whose start was notoriously slow on an Island map because he decided for a slightly better spot but off the coast.

 

[homan1983]

But this is kind of sad isn't it?
Even if the resources gave the same yields as land tiles, that still would mean once those resources are worked a coastal city would fall behind.

The fact that even the resources are, in every case inferior to every resource on land just seems to strange to me.

We know this build is old, perhaps before balance passes are made (which happens towards the end of a production cycle). Is it possible the game would ship like this?

 

[fmm]

I think we've seen plenty of sea activity so far in the streams (though not in every game) and Harbors seem like a very important district in that they generate trade routes as well as production.

 

[homan1983]

What does harbour have to do with coastal cities and sea-resource tiles?

Also Harbour doesn't really generate production, it gives gold adjacency.

 

[fmm]

What does harbour have to do with coastal cities and sea-resource tiles?

Also Harbour doesn't really generate production, it gives gold adjacency.

The shipyard and the seaport (buildings in the harbor) both provide production.

 

[isau]

The balance is certainly mysterious. From the look of things, ocean without an improvement is actually worse than either Tundra or Desert, because when you place a District tile yields are wiped out anyway. Ocean tiles for the most part can't accept Districts, exception being the Harbor. But the Harbor doesn't seem to particularly reward having lots of ocean tiles. Ideally you just want the 1 ocean tile for the Harbor, and maybe 1 or 2 more for the ocean wonders. Maybe I'm missing something and maybe they'll revisit it. But it's definitely strange.

 

[indradiva]

Well, there are those seaside resort improvements that give you tourism, so there's actually a reason to settle on the coast.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Well, there are those seaside resort improvements that give you tourism, so there's actually a reason to settle on the coast.

No, those are a reason to settle near the coast, not on it.

 

[Ryika]

They get less housing

Do they? I was under the impression that Coastal Cities, like River-Cities, get full Fresh Water bonus.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

They get costal water which only give +1 housing instead of +3.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Do they? I was under the impression that Coastal Cities, like River-Cities, get full Fresh Water bonus.

Coastal cities get a water bonus to housing, but it is less than sites by Rivers, Lakes, or Oases.

 

[Ryika]

Ah, I see, thanks for correcting. Not sure how I managed to falsely memorize that. ^^

 

[Teproc]

So, in CiV you almost never wanted to settle one tile away from the coast. Did you have a problem with that ?

It seems more balance here in this sense : I think you'll mostly want to be one tile away, but for some things (naval production, reaching farther away sea resources), you'll sometimes want to be actually coastal.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

So, in CiV you almost never wanted to settle one tile away from the coast. Did you have a problem with that ?

It seems more balance here in this sense : I think you'll mostly want to be one tile away, but for some things (naval production, reaching farther away sea resources), you'll sometimes want to be actually coastal.

That's what it seems like, yes.

 

[Big J Money]

It seems like sea tiles are essentially another form of desert and tundra, except you can't place districts, like you said.

It would be interesting to see someone perform the math of whether it's worth it to lose basic land tiles to settle closer to the sea to pick up actual sea resources. It would be situational of course. Probably the smaller you expect your city to be, the more likely it's okay to settle closer to the sea.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Given that cities have no long term cost you are going to want alot of cities, 3-4 cities only is a big mistake in civilization VI.