Sea resources are incredibly under-tuned

[Abraxis]

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

Does this mean a coastal city on a river delta gets +4 or +3?

 

[King Jason]

Does this mean a coastal city on a river delta gets +4 or +3?

Ocean/River housing output doesn't stack. You get the highest of the two.

 

[Abraxis]

I tried to find where I read the exact trade ranges but could not. Everyone has forgotten that trade over sea is 2x to 3x more efficient for the trade range. Therefore effectively raising the trade range of coastal cities vs inland with a harbour by 4 to 6 tiles over the sea. Fairly significant if trade routes end up being as important as everyone is saying.

In addition to this, we don't just have to think about how many trade routes we generate ourselves, but also how many foreign cities are in range to send us trade routes no? I'm not sure if that's the case anymore, it is for Egypt at least.

Let's compare the area of coast, 1, and 2 hex inland cities respectively, guessing sea trade range is about 25 tiles.

Coast: Diameter of 50 (625 total "tiles")
1 hex inland: Diameter of 42 (441 total "tiles")
2 hex inland: Diameter of 38 (361 total "tiles")
I say "tiles" for area because I'm sure A = π × r2 is not exact with hexagons.

The amount of cities in those different areas could easily vary by the dozens, with the coast approaching twice the area of the 2 hex inland city across water. Even if everyone but Egypt does not receive anything from incoming trade, it would still give you a much wider selection of targets -access to more capitals.

Also consider geographic location does play a factor. If you're on the coast of an ocean too wide, this will only give you a linear bonus up and down the coast, not quite such a big deal then.
Also, in all cases what you lose in sea area you do make up for in land area behind you, but minimally.

If anyone wants to double check the math, with the proper values even, that would be great. I'm still on a ton of Hydromorphone haha

 

[jali8888]

Doesn't this just mean a difference in the definition of "coastal city"? Instead of thinking of coastal cities as having the city center directly touching the coast, it's any city that's close enough to have the ability to build a harbor district. There are definitely a lot of implications to this like tiny islands are less valuable to build a city,and a harbor is almost a prereq to a naval unit building city because otherwise you're wasting a lot of city space on unproductive sea tiles. However, it could still work and be balanced.

 

[Teproc]

This is not about realism, its about balance. If we wanted realism then cities wouldnt expand 3tiles in all directions, they could expand in 1direction. Sea trade routes would also be 100 times as powerful due to capacity and speed during the ancient times. Money could buy food and production and in fact coastal cities would be the most powerful and rich in the world a la London, Alexandria, Venice, Istanbul, New York, Honk Kong, Singapore änd a big chunk of some of the world's most prosperous nations' capitals.

at the moment sea based resources are significantly worse than land ones, and I'm at a loss as to why. I'm also surprised people are blindly rationalizing it away. The same thing happened with the ai and then we saw what happened.

I just fail to see why it's a problem. Some areas are better than others... that's not a balance problem. You wouldn't want any area to be a great place to plop down a city would you ? Otherwise where are your choices ?

So... most of the times coastal cities won't be a great choice. This is a problem because... ?

 

[bumpyglint]

I just fail to see why it's a problem. Some areas are better than others... that's not a balance problem. You wouldn't want any area to be a great place to plop down a city would you ? Otherwise where are your choices ?

So... most of the times coastal cities won't be a great choice. This is a problem because... ?

This is a problem because in the real world there are tons of costal city and they have been the most important cities of the world, in Civ VI instead they will be few and pretty weak, if this teory is confirmed. It's ok if desert tiles are worse than wood one for example, because that's how the world works, but seeing the sea almost totally useless (or worse than the land tiles anyway) is simply wrong and bad, not only for immersion but because there is an entire part of the game that focus on boat/sea resources and that part would be totally useless.

 

[Teproc]

Except the person I quoted was arguing that flavour didn't matter all that much to him.

Now this argument I kinda get, though there's also plenty of cities (Rome and Athens being some of the most obvious examples) that have the CiVI setup of being inland with a harbour outside the city, giving them access to the sea (Ostia and Le Pirée, however you say it in English). I think you're exaggerating when saying sea resources are useless... i still think you want to get the resources, because you do want harbours and that's what you want to optimize harbours. You won't work empty sea tiles but it's not like you did in CiV either.

 

[EgonSpengler]

From a historical perspective, I think this is fine; oceans don't provide as much value as good land with fresh water, and never have. From a gameplay perspective, I can't say whether this will be good or not. That could be another story entirely. I'm also concerned about the value of the oceans for trade, which is where Civ V fell flat on its face for me.

 

[Babarigo]

Bumpyglint is mostly right about sea ressources. Their yields are comparable to land tiles without ressources. An improved fish is 3 food and 1 gold. A mine on a hill is 2 food and 2 production which is most of the time better. The harbour only gives better yields to adjacent ressources and most of the time you'll have only one, two if your are lucky. Now, since water tiles are so bad and there is very few luxuries (I haven't seen oil too but I might be wrong) there is no competition to settle cities there. That means navy will be less important since there will be very few coastal cities to attack. I don't really understand why so much people seem to be fine with this. There has always been a building that gave 1 food to water tiles since at least civ 3 and there wasn't any balance issue because of that. I wonder why the developers have decided to change that.

 

[isau]

From a historical perspective, I think this is fine; oceans don't provide as much value as good land with fresh water, and never have. From a gameplay perspective, I can't say whether this will be good or not. That could be another story entirely. I'm also concerned about the value of the oceans for trade, which is where Civ V fell flat on its face for me.

While this is true to an extent, the boundaries of real life cities are not circular. The need for ocean tiles to function is in part tied to the arbitrary shape of Civilization's cities, which are always round, with the "city center" in the middle, whereas in real life when a city gets bigger it just pushes out further from the coast. If there was a district we could build, called say the "downtown district" and that could be anywhere in the radius of the city and replace the city center, that would be a possible way to partially get around this, but that's theorycrafting new mechanics.

 

[Teproc]

Bumpyglint is mostly right about sea ressources. Their yields are comparable to land tiles without ressources. An improved fish is 3 food and 1 gold. A mine on a hill is 2 food and 2 production which is most of the time better. The harbour only gives better yields to adjacent ressources and most of the time you'll have only one, two if your are lucky. Now, since water tiles are so bad and there is very few luxuries (I haven't seen oil too but I might be wrong) there is no competition to settle cities there. That means navy will be less important since there will be very few coastal cities to attack. I don't really understand why so much people seem to be fine with this. There has always been a building that gave 1 food to water tiles since at least civ 3 and there wasn't any balance issue because of that. I wonder why the developers have decided to change that.

It's possible sea resources need a buff, but when did you want to work coastal tiles in CiV ? Basically never.

 

[homan1983]

you don't have unlimited land and sea tiles are better than no tiles.

That's the definition of imbalance. When a tile is better than literally nothing then we know we have a problem. Sea resources should be on par with land ones, although in civ5 mods which enhanced the game, sea resources were slightly better to make up for the wasted tiles.

edit: It seems a lot of people are considering the adjecency bonus of the harbour as part of the resource yileds. This is wrong. The harbour district has adjecency bonuses just like the holy site, campus and commercial districts do. Those belong to the district and are part of its own cost-benefit.

 

[Gorbles]

Tiles shouldn't be evaluated in isolation with each other. The relative merits of settling on a coast (benefits of Eurekas, advantages to trade, etc, dependent on Era and Tech / Civic progression) should also be included. It might be that early Sea tiles are fine, but later-game Sea tiles need buffing at key points during Tech or Civic progression to make up for Land tile progression.

It's not a simple "sea resources should be on a par with land resources".

 

[homan1983]

There are less Eurekas for sea than land, I don't know why people bring it up.

But the point a lot of people are missing is the fact that even if Sea resources are on par with land ones: it's not like we'll be seeing cities on the coast everywhere. Sea resources are sparse and there are usually very few spots that would have enough resources to justify a coastal city. But the point is that even cities that are not directly coastal, but near the coast are right now being punished because those coastal resources are worse than land equivalents.

What I'd like to see is some balance, so that every well placed city has a trade-off compared to other ones. At the moment, it seems like even a perfectly located city one is far far below a land-city. I would have thought everyone would like to see a balanced game with lots of flavour.

 

[Babarigo]

It's possible sea resources need a buff, but when did you want to work coastal tiles in CiV ? Basically never.

Yeah they always been worse than land tiles which is normal since they need no improvement but at least your city could have some growth with the 2 food yield. Now you can't even have that. Also in civ 5 harbour and sea trade routes were exclusive to coastal cities so it was normal that water tiles had worse yield for balancing the game. In civ 6 you just need a water tile to have access to the trade routes so not only coastal cities have lost their main advantage over continental cities but they also have worthless tile yields. For me it is a balance issue and it also saddens me since I've always liked to settle on the coast. I would really like that firaxis allowed the construction of fishing boats in every water tile. This will solve the problem for me.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That's the definition of imbalance. When a tile is better than literally nothing then we know we have a problem. Sea resources should be on par with land ones, although in civ5 mods which enhanced the game, sea resources were slightly better to make up for the wasted tiles.

You are misinterpreting my words. Sea tiles are "free", because you mostly don't need to compete with other cities to grab them. If they are as good as land tiles, settling on the coast is always better. Sea tiles need to be somethat worse than land ones to be balanced.

 

[Babarigo]

You are misinterpreting my words. Sea tiles are "free", because you mostly don't need to compete with other cities to grab them. If they are as good as land tiles, settling on the coast is always better. Sea tiles need to be somethat worse than land ones to be balanced.

As you say they need to be somewhat worse and they are indeed but the problem isn't the base yield, the problem is that you cannot do anything to improve it. A land tile without resources can have improvements and districts. A water tile without resources can only have a harbour district which means that only 1 tile will be useful. The other ones will be completely useless. Let's be honest, why would you work a water tile that gives 1 food and 1 gold when you can send your citizen to work to the commercial district and get 4 gold ? Even the specialists have better yields. The base yield of water would be fine if you could do something to improve it just like in any other civ game. The best solution for me is to be able to build fishing boats in every water tile. Even improved the yield would be inferior to land tiles and you will still need to spend builder charges.

 

[bumpyglint]

It's possible sea resources need a buff, but when did you want to work coastal tiles in CiV ? Basically never.

Yeah they always been worse than land tiles which is normal since they need no improvement but at least your city could have some growth with the 2 food yield. Now you can't even have that. Also in civ 5 harbour and sea trade routes were exclusive to coastal cities so it was normal that water tiles had worse yield for balancing the game. In civ 6 you just need a water tile to have access to the trade routes so not only coastal cities have lost their main advantage over continental cities but they also have worthless tile yields. For me it is a balance issue and it also saddens me since I've always liked to settle on the coast. I would really like that firaxis allowed the construction of fishing boats in every water tile. This will solve the problem for me.

Babarigo answered for me.

You are misinterpreting my words. Sea tiles are "free", because you mostly don't need to compete with other cities to grab them. If they are as good as land tiles, settling on the coast is always better. Sea tiles need to be somethat worse than land ones to be balanced.

They should not be "always" better, they should have the SAME potential, AT LEAST in the long term when you build improvement, fishing boats ecc...
It's totally useless to use an entire part of the tech tree if studying it you will not get the same potential that ignoring it (in the 99 % of the circumstances). And this is even more awkard noticing that that "almost useless feature" called "the sea" has been one of the most important element in human evolution. This game will need tons of balance in my opinion (and a better AI...).
P.s. you don't know how I would like to be wrong.

 

[stealth_nsk]

As you say they need to be somewhat worse and they are indeed but the problem isn't the base yield, the problem is that you cannot do anything to improve it. A land tile without resources can have improvements and districts. A water tile without resources can only have a harbour district which means that only 1 tile will be useful. The other ones will be completely useless. Let's be honest, why would you work a water tile that gives 1 food and 1 gold when you can send your citizen to work to the commercial district and get 4 gold ?

And if you can't? Sea tiles need to be more useful than nothing, but less useful than land tiles, that's how it is. For how much - it's the question of balance fine-tuning.

If you have a city 5 tils away from the cost, you could build second city closer to the first one with tile overlap or on the coast with free coastal cities. It's really interesting choice, because if you don't consider growing those cities too much, overlap could be better, but if you want to get maximum out of them, grabbing free sea tiles will give you more.

I'm not saying that's currently balanced - I didn't play the game. But most of the other posters here didn't as well.

They should not be "always" better, they should have the SAME potential, AT LEAST in the long term when you build improvement, fishing boats ecc...

If free tiles have the same potential as those you compete for, they are always better. That's simple.

 

[bumpyglint]

And if you can't? Sea tiles need to be more useful than nothing, but less useful than land tiles, that's how it is. For how much - it's the question of balance fine-tuning.

If you have a city 5 tils away from the cost, you could build second city closer to the first one with tile overlap or on the coast with free coastal cities. It's really interesting choice, because if you don't consider growing those cities too much, overlap could be better, but if you want to get maximum out of them, grabbing free sea tiles will give you more.

I'm not saying that's currently balanced - I didn't play the game. But most of the other posters here didn't as well.


If free tiles have the same potential as those you compete for, they are always better. That's simple.

That's no sense, you compete for all the tiles in the world togheter, they are not "free". And obviously I'm not saying that a sea city surrounded by nothing should be better than a land city with tons of resource. But a sea city with a lot of resources should be equal to a land city with a lot of resources, that's simple. It's not "free", you still try to catch that resources, so I don't get your problem with this.