Ship building question

[freestyle604]

Greeting all. I am a long time player and have run into something I have not see before. I am trying to build a workboat. I am going to use the new fort feature to get to some clams blocked by 1 land square. The problem is I cannot build a boat at the city. I am next to the water (coast not fresh water lake) and can build a harbor/lighthouse but no boat options show up. Just like a city that was built inland. I have attached a picture of my city building a harbor (city view) and showing the last unit and building that I can select. The other picture shows the world view and you can see the clams I will get after making a fort. My only guess was maybe you have to have access to an ocean square to make a ship but not a harbor/lighthouse? I know you cannot build next to a fresh water lake and build a ship or a harbor/lighthouse. Any ideas??

 

[Ghpstage]

I think the minimum number of water tiles in a body of water needed to allow shipbuilding is 20 while buildings like lighthouses need only 10. Hopefully someone else can confirm.

 

[freestyle604]

Wow, if that is true I did not know that. For this purpose I counted and there are 15 coast squares and 0 oceans. If the 10 and 20 square thing is true. Do ocean squares count the same as coast squares? (my initial guess would be yes)

 

[Ghpstage]

Yes, coast and ocean are counted equally for this. I just tested it using worldbuilder and the 20 tile rule seems to fit perfectly.
Oh and you can't use forts to artificially increase the water area a city can access, it won't count

 

[freestyle604]

I was going to use the fort to let my work boat past the plains square into the next little water section (NW of my city) to get the clams.

Thanks for the help. I will be counting water squares from now on to make sure I can build boats on a coast city.

 

[freestyle604]

I did your world builder idea. Boy that answered a bunch of questions. Workboats if they have access to resource (under 10 coast/ocean squares even) Ships (non-workboats) is 20+ coast/ocean squares. Once again thanks for your help.

 

[Deckhand]

Yeah, thanks for asking - I learned something.

only slightly off topic: Do forts have to be in my cultural borders to be used by boats?
perhaps in an ally's culture?
but not in unclaimed territory?

maybe I will worldbuilder test this in a few hours.

 

[beestar]

Damn, I thought there were no more things left for me to learn in Civ4!

 

[Ataxerxes]

Yeah, thanks for asking - I learned something.

only slightly off topic: Do forts have to be in my cultural borders to be used by boats?
perhaps in an ally's culture?
but not in unclaimed territory?

maybe I will worldbuilder test this in a few hours.

All correct. Forts in allied culture would work like a city in ally's culture. I don't think the AI will build a fort for ships except by accident if it's on top of a resource.

 

[freestyle604]

All correct. Forts in allied culture would work like a city in ally's culture. I don't think the AI will build a fort for ships except by accident if it's on top of a resource.

Yes, forts only work in your own culture for resources (you get the resource not the additional food/production/coin that a mine/plantation/etc.. provides) and boats (2 square limit on the boats). You can build them outside your culture for defense/air units. The forts are far more useful now then before.

 

[johnny5000]

Can you build a line of forts across a continent like a canal and have ships pass through?

In my current game, I took over my entire continent (kind of shaped like a figure 8- fat in the north and south and skinny in the middle) and it would sure be a lot easier if I could just send my ships across a canal than have to go entirely around the continent.

I have enough workers sitting around doing nothing

 

[Ghpstage]

You can build them outside your culture for defense/air units.

Aircraft and missiles can only be placed in forts in your culture, noone elses and not neutral. Ships are the same only being able to use forts in your culture, this is a useful way to prevent rivals attacking your Privateers .

Can you build a line of forts across a continent like a canal and have ships pass through?

For ships to be able to travel into a fort the fort must have a water tile adjacent, so normally you can't make huge canals. Forts can go a lot further at times however, as inland lakes allow you to extend your canals, as does impassible ice that acts like a water tile for this purpose (and others oddly).