Sea resources are incredibly under-tuned

[Lord Shadow]

There seems to have been a bit of a paradigm shift in this regard. Previously, the main reason to settle directly on the coast was to enable naval unit production, buildings and wonders. The richness of sea resources was only a bonus so that said choice didn't mean putting coastal cities at a disadvantage.

Now, I'm pretty sure the whole naval production aspect is centered around the harbor district, which can be built on the coast regardless of the city center's location. Therefore, presumably to encourage district play, there's less of a reason to make ocean tiles particularly (possibly disproportionately) appealing.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

In civilization V you had alot of reason for not wanting many cities but in civlization VI cities have no long term cost even district cost do not seems to effected much by city numbers and district numbers.

The wrong thing I guess many players will be doing is only to settle 3-4 cities, while you may not lose the game but it will slow you down.
Yes you want an empire, 10 cities, 20 cities maybe even more in the long run.

Obviously you should not spam out settlers as that will also slow you down but expand in a natural pace.

Trade seems to be very powerful in civilization VI and a city near the coast can give your empire two trade routes which is better then a single trade route for land locked cities.

 

[isau]

Well the thing about sea resources is they are mainly stuff like fish and crabs and not actual luxuries that increase your amenity count so I don't see why you'd bother to try to reach them most of the time. It's all a bit perplexing. We were told something about sieges stopping cities from healing but in the videos I haven't really seen that come into play. I was expecting to see at least some gov't policies that benefit sea tiles, but so far haven't seen anything like that either. Sea tiles from what I can see seem to be something to be avoided, with truly coastal cities kind of occupying the same space as the old school tundra cities that you placed mainly to grab tiles. Maybe there's more to them but it's not readily apparent to me.

 

[migalhone]

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

They get a smaller bonus to housing, compared to inland freshwater spots.

 

[bbbt]

That may be intentional - a lot of ancient capitals were not directly coastal but near the coast up a river. This especially true if you consider the spread out cities - you have the city center inland up river and the harbor district on the shore.

From a gameplay perspective, you are probably better off settling on a river one or two tiles from the shore. And only settling directly on the coast if there are no rivers/lakes/oasis (for the water housing differences)

 

[Al Bundy]

I guess that we would not know until we play the game. Difficult to say right now...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

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

That would be a change that might make it worthwhile

Districts placed on Desert (no floodplains) or Tundra cost 50-150% more (and ideally no farms allowed on those terrains either... at least before the Modern era)

 

[Babarigo]

I don't understand why the developers made water tiles so bad. A water tile without a ressource gives the same food than tundra and there is no way to change that. I don't see any justification for that, it's neither realistic nor good gameplaywise. Even if land tiles have always been better than sea tiles in civ coastal cities had some advantages like better trade routes and being able to build naval units. Now it is no longer the case since it is possible to build a Harbour even in a city 3 tiles away from sea so you can still have both previous things. Land tiles also have access to the farm adjacency bonus which can give lots of food. I might be wrong about how bad are pure coastal cities but I've watched quite a lot of videos from filthyrobot and he mostly ignores sea tiles. I'm just hopping that firaxis will correct that or that a mod will make water tiles decent with a building just like in previous civ games.

 

[homan1983]

I think the fact that a pure coast is worse than a standard land tile is even more reason to make sure sea resources are at least as effective, if not more so than land resourced tiles. Since they are sparse and the sea tiles without resources are pretty much useless.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Perhaps something like Harbors get "adjacency" bonuses from all sea resources within 2 tiles (not just 1)
That's +1 gold and +1 production (with Seaport) (doubled with the right policy card)

 

[King Jason]

I don't understand why the developers made water tiles so bad. A water tile without a ressource gives the same food than tundra and there is no way to change that. I don't see any justification for that, it's neither realistic nor good gameplaywise. Even if land tiles have always been better than sea tiles in civ coastal cities had some advantages like better trade routes and being able to build naval units. Now it is no longer the case since it is possible to build a Harbour even in a city 3 tiles away from sea so you can still have both previous things.

That is still the case. All that has changed is the definition of what a coastal city is. Coastal empires still have the advantage of being able to effectively double their trading capacity compared to inland empires. Considering trade routes seem to be more powerful than ever, that's not a bonus to be overlooked. The average tile yield is a net of 4-5, Trade routes reach that output very quickly and eventually double it quite easily.

Essentially trade routes are super tiles that don't need to be worked and can be shuffled around your empire to cities of your choosing. That creates an a lot of flexibility.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Trade routes are extreamly powerful, I saw Filthy Robot get 18 gold from a single trade route without even using cards although he was spain in that game. They only get stronger and stronger as cities are built up.

You may not really want cities above 30 pop or so because these cities can not build any more districts. The end goal is really to have as many well developed cities as possible, the more such cities the better.

You no longer need or even want super cities just good enough cities. A single city should not use up 36 tiles by itself, that is just a waste of good land.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I think the fact that a pure coast is worse than a standard land tile is even more reason to make sure sea resources are at least as effective, if not more so than land resourced tiles. Since they are sparse and the sea tiles without resources are pretty much useless.

Thing is, I'm not sure what'd be the reason for that. I can't think of any big, successful cities that attained such status purely by virtue of the ocean surrounding them. You can't work tracts of sea as easily or thoroughly as you can tracts of land.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Generally you want to pack as many cities as possible in one area, the age of super cities are over as there are a max to how many district a city can support. Given that there are no long term damage (district cost seems to be more based around turn time then city numbers) for cities you do not lose much by settling subpar locations.

Most of the population can work in district, that is generally good enough.

 

[homan1983]

Thing is, I'm not sure what'd be the reason for that. I can't think of any big, successful cities that attained such status purely by virtue of the ocean surrounding them. You can't work tracts of sea as easily or thoroughly as you can tracts of land.

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.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The value of resources decline as the game moves along. While they do give a rather minor boost they are in the way for farms and districts and can mess up your adjacency bonus. Sea resources do not compete with districts or farms so you have more reasons to keep them.

 

[Stauffenberg]

I miss a way where you can get fish farming facilities. That could help a lot. Nowadays fish farming is an important way of getting fish. E. g. most salmon we get in the stores is from fish farms. Maybe an atomic era tech could give fish farming. It won't happen in vanilla Civ 6, but maybe in a mod.

I would like to have fishing boats be able to harvest sea resources further away than just 3 hexes. Real fishing boats could sail quite far away. E. g. Norwegian whaling boats sailed all the way from Norway to the seas near Antarctica to shoot whale. We now have fishing fleets sailing to the fish rich areas far away from the origin cities. Maybe one could do something like this. You could get a fishing route with a fish processing plant in the harbor district. That allows you to send a fish fleet to an out of range fish or whale resource to harvest it for the city. A coastal city could count as a separate harbor. So a coastal city with a harbor district could send 2 fleets to collect fish or whale outside the city range. That would make it more interesting to settle on the coast. The fish fleet capability should be linked to tech and where you can send it should be limited as your regular ships (so not to an ocean tile until you get cartography). Range can be set by era or by sea techs.

I also miss something for the tundra. Actually the tundra isn't so barren as one would believe. Adding e. g. potato as a food resource could help making tundra better. Potatoes and carrots actually growns pretty well on the tundra. So I would definitely like seeing a mod adding potatoes as a resource that can be added to several terrain types.

Dates could be a food resource in desert tiles as well. Maybe having to be adjacent to an oasis.

 

[Babarigo]

The value of resources decline as the game moves along. While they do give a rather minor boost they are in the way for farms and districts and can mess up your adjacency bonus. Sea resources do not compete with districts or farms so you have more reasons to keep them.

The problem is that early game, sea resources are bad comparing to land ones. Take for exemple truffles. They are on a plain tile with forest. Unimproved they give 2 food, 1 production and 3 gold. Now compare it to crabs. They will give when improved 2 food and 3 gold. You actually need to spend a charge to have an even worse yield than a unimproved tile. Even a tile with hill and forest can be considered as better. At the end you'll have at most 3 tiles that are just decent so there is no reason to build a city on the coast unless you really don't have any choice.

Later it's not any better. The yields of the crab will be 3 food and 4 gold to 3 food 1 production and 5 gold if you can get the harbour adjacency which is quite good. Nevertheless, the other water tiles will still have a bad 1 food 1 gold yield. As you said farms gain a lot of importance later on since the adjacency bonus become of 1 per farm but to have all those adjacency boni you'll need space. If your city is next to the coast you will lose a lot of space. Instead of having 8 tiles for farming that will give you crazy amounts of food you'll have 8 tiles of water whose only 3 will be good.

See the point ? At every moment in the game the water tiles are much worse than land ones and before you bring again the trade argument, yes the harbour is a very good district but you only need one water tile to get it.

 

[Makenshi]

Heh... in CiV I always use IGE to handplace 2 fish in ANY city founded, both by me and the AI - every 25 turns I make a whole map check with the 'take a look at the map' feature. Really helps AIs that settle useless coasts.

I think fish should be a much more common thing in coastal tiles.

 

[stealth_nsk]

In short - you don't have unlimited land and sea tiles are better than no tiles. In most cases you have cities on the other side and moving away from coast means you share more tiles with them.