One change I really appreciated in Civ V was the improved importance of the navy. By allowing melee ships to capture enemy cities, you could be severely punished if you neglected your naval forces. In previous iterations the punishments weren't quite as severe, but your coastal cities could still definitely be caught unawares if you didn't maintain a naval threat.
In VI, I'm not sure this will be the case. From the information given so far, there is little incentive to settle a city on the coast. To build a harbor, you only need it to be within the range of the city and on the coast. This means, from a defensive standpoint, it'd be recommended to settle a city three tiles away from the coast. From this distance, any surprise attack can be much more easily stopped with your land forces and the city is out of range of ranged ships, and even 1 tile away, the city doesn't have to worry about melee ships at all. Your cities will also usually be stronger in this position anyway, because they'll have access to a higher number of land tiles that will, on average, give greater yields to sea tiles. Really, the only reason to settle directly on or close to the coast would be if there was a luxury far away that you want to access as soon as possible. So, unless you want to go to war, there isn't much of a point in building or maintaining a strong navy. You can almost completely neglect it and it wouldn't negatively affect you as long as you place your cities strategically. Similarly, a strong navy against a good AI would be wasted hammers and gold, because they wouldn't be able to do much other than defend an invasion.
So, thoughts? Am I missing something, or will the navy end up being mostly unimportant in VI?
I would say that seem possible, but there might be some reason to still found cities directly on the coast. So far, we know hat a harbor district with it advantages can be build by cities one or two tiles away from the coast.
But imo are there some reason who speak for a direct placement on the shore:
1. You get the eureka bonus which will help the research of the whole naval branch of the tech tree, if the tech tree is similiar build like in previous civs.
2. We dont know yet, when the harbor district is available at all! Imo it could be an unlock during the classical era, maybe a bit earlier, a bit later...
3. You will use up one possible district for your city, in the early game it is questionable if you will build an harbor for an inland city. If there are good mountain tiles for a good science or faith bonus, you could have a good wonder building town so the culture district would get more use etc.
4. You can build naval units without an harbor district
5. Until now it seems that gold from coast tiles is back, but not directly from rivers. But rivers seem to get a buff to commercial districts. So in general, if you are not that lucky with luxuries who give gold and you are in need of it, a direct coast city will have in the most cases more gold from tiles than no coast cities, at least early in the game. Plus we dont know how that appeal system really works.
6. In the harbor district will be build those buildings who give advantages for coast/ocean tiles and a coastal city give more.
7. We dont know how effective sea trade routes will be. In Civ 5 they were stronger then the inland caravans. So coast cities might get that advantage earlier or more possible than inland cities.
8. Wonders are know build on tiles and the coloss at at least is build offshore. A coastal city can it build earlier if you dont have a lot of culture border expansion or if purchasing a tile is still expansive for outer ring tiles.
9. If you can say that coastal cities have a better access to gold income from tile yields, there might be a good synergy between coastal cities and commercial districts, especially if the coastal city has access to rivers/is founded next to one. In the commercial district will be build all those commercial building which give gold boni. I think a city with a higher gold income from tiles will have a bigger advantage.
Those are some points which come in mind if I think about it. A lot of the actual mechanics is still unknown. But I have to agree, there are some disadvantages:
1. You will have less space for districts and wonders.
2. I think it is more likely, that those terrain boni for science district etc. will be better accessable for inland city.
3. In general in all the previous games, an inland city will have more production and so can get things faster done, so with an harbor a inland city might be the better choice for your navy building.
4. In the most cases, an inland city has the better food production, in previous games (a lot of) river farms and more food bonus ressources were better than coast/ocean tiles.
5. And again, we dont know the advantages of sea trade routes. It might still be beneficial for an inland city to build that district just for those sea trade routes (+ better navy production) over the decision to build another district.
6. And yes, you have the said defense advantage against naval invasions. (But if you have a strong navy, a near coast can help to defend attacks from the land)
7. And yeah, even if you have 1-4 coast tiles in city range, you might even save a harbor district if you dont want to build ships in that city and it cant make that much of profit of an extra district. Because I think, in coastal city you will often build the harbor district to buff your tile yields and your navy anyway.
You can see, there already a lot of ??? but I think we can make the right decision when we know more about the mechanic and if my mentioned points are somehow valid or not. Especially England and Japan might have a big use for it, at least for those civs it isnt that hurtfull anymore to settle one tile away from the coast. But if you have a naval oriented playstyle, a coastal city is obvisiouly the faster choice in the early game, but with the new changes, later in the game a bit more inland cities will join the club of accessing the seas.
Especially Egypt might profit a lot from the new harbors. Egypt wants to settle on as many river tiles as possible. But at the same time, it gets boni from trade routes, which might be even higher for sea trade routes. So you might just build one city at the coast to get the early bonus, but later you can build only one rivers 3 tiles away from the coast if the river is long enough and you still get access to the sea.
And finally, it is quite realistic. In my imagination those districts are like some minor cities in the space of a metropolis and especially Rome and Athen are inland cities and without their "harbor districts" of Ostia and Piraeus, those ancient civilizations wouldnt have worked the way they did...
boost.
