Useless, Worthless, Stupid Water ;)

[bcaiko]

- Make land caravans builts in riverside cities, able to move trought nearby river tiles as if they were roads in order to compensate the loss for gold. That way, you can build a fluvial commercial network and reward civilizations that builds their cities in strategic river crossroads

I was wondering the same thing. People have long been asking for trade route connection options via rivers, and allowing caravans to move twice as fast along rivers would hit both nails at once.

Sooooo....what happens to the Colossus now that water gold is gone...?

 

[shaglio]

I can think of 2 ways to possibly make coastal starts better:

1) Currently the Harbor and Seaport only affect water tiles with Resources. They could make them affect ALL water tiles instead.

2) Leave the Harbor and Seaport as is, but increase the frequency of Sea Resource tiles.

In Civs 1-4, I used to work almost all the water tiles in my cities. In Civ 5, I usually only work the 1-3 tiles that have a resource. That's a cryin' shame.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Seems to me that the amount of Gold coming into your Civ early on is now more dependent on elements you cannot directly control.
Now, you can build roads between your cities and place cities on rivers to keep Gold coming in at a steady rate. In BNW, neither applies, and (apparently) your only source of Gold is Trade Routes, which are dependent on having a neighbor willing to trade AND keeping the Caravans alive - both 'iffy' propositions.
I put it to you that no sea-based Trade Route will be established until after you've researched Seafaring, because barbarian galleys show up very, very early to raise h**l with your sea trade or resources.
Another point: Buildings/Wonders that currently have influence on Trade Routes will all have to be tweaked - Harbors and Machu Piccu, for instance. And I sure hope they are testing those 'tweaks' to death, because in the past things have gotten unbalanced pretty badly...

And finally, if roads between your cities no longer produce any income, how do you pay for them? Will the strategic benefit (faster defensive maneuver) outweigh the cost per tile? If you do not build as many roads, what are your Workers going to be doing? Don't know about you, but I frequently have semi-idle workers in the early mid-game because I'm not ready for rapid expansion and my cities are as developed as I can get them - is that going to happen sooner and more often, or will roads be given another benefit - like being required to make resources available for Trade/use, as in previous Civ renditions?

 

[Greizer85]

Wait, hold the crazyphone - no gold from road connections, either? Where exactly did you hear that, or is it only speculation? If it's confirmed, I honestly don't know what to think... These are pretty drastic changes. We can only hope they're being tested properly and that the removed gold is replaced with other benefit(s). Making roads maintenance-free but limited by techology (e.g. 10-20 roads per city) has certainly been on my wish list for a long time.

 

[JanghanHong]

I guess you get gold indirectly from road since trade caravans would travel faster between the two cities. So you'll always be running deficit, and you'll get little lump sum of gold each time a trade finishes. Getting gold will be much more unpredictable since most trades will be cut off in areas that are even have a minor conflict. I do hope that AI wages pointless war a lot less often.

I sort of want sporadic deficit and running on negative gold because right now, beakers are ALWAYS positive due to everybody running on surplus budget.

 

[shaglio]

I too didn’t know about them removing trade routes by road. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I thought the current road-based internal Trade Routes would stay and the only additions were Caravans and Trade Ships (EDIT: aka Cargo Ships) that perform either A) Trade Routes to foreign Civs or B) Trade Routes to transfer food & production between you own cities.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I'd like to see a source for this. I haven't seen anything so far that said you weren't getting money for connecting your own cities with roads.

 

[bcaiko]

I think the no gold from road linking trade routes is an assumption on Boris' part.

But it's an assumption I've made, too, based on how the new trading mechanics have been described.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Since the focus of BNW is Trade, and the only Trade they've commented on was the new Caravan system, I made the assumption (dangerous, I know) that for consistency internal trade would also be entirely dependent on Caravans. Especially since the only specifics on internal trade that I can remember is the use of Caravans to send food to another city from a city with a Granary. IF internal roads are also going to produce gold, that gives two entirely different trade systems going, one internal that combines Caravans and roads, one External that is entirely caravan dependent.

While that, to me, just overly complicates the whole trade system, God Knows what will actually happen. IF, however, roads only contribute to the Trade (making Caravans faster, possibly improving Gold yield from a route) that would be consistent with the entire Caravan Trade system, but also put extra burden on the player to manage your Civ's finances more carefully early on.

 

[steveg700]

So, here's the line:

Will you connect to a closer city for a lower payoff and a safer route, choose a longer route with more risk for the bigger payoff, or perhaps point your trade route inward, sending vitally important food and production to the far corners of your own empire?

If you're pointing your trade route inward, you may well simply be mirroring what you currently do now with roads, linking up a series of cities to your capital.

Since they've referred the new mechanic as "trade route" at every turn, and that you'll have a limited number of them, it does make sense the current implementation of trade routes will go away.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

However, the technical term seems to be International Trade Route. I don't think we should just assume that it replaces good old road/harbor trade, even if you can use it internally.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I would also suggest that, with gold maintenance, it would be counterproductive to build roads without at least some cash back. This strikes me as counterproductive even if they prefer to prioritize international trade routes.

 

[Ikael]

Sooooo....what happens to the Colossus now that water gold is gone...?

Some wonders such as the colossus or the lighthouse are due to have a new redesign, me thinks. Something along these lines would be cool:

Colossus: +50% to the yield of trade routes that start from this city (includes gold, hammers, culture and the likes)

Lighthouse: Gain one additional sea trade route

 

[Biologist]

I don't think I'm going to assume anything about the new expansion until we've got more solid data. For all we know, a month from now Firaxis could decide that "hey, this whole no gold from coast/rivers thing? Yeah, it's stupid. And the trade route units aren't working as expected." Then they scrap or overhaul the whole thing and people worried over nothing. I'm defnitely not going to take it for granted that something not specifically stated in any press release or interview will be part of the expansion.

That said, I think the removal of gold from rivers and ocean (do they mean "any saltwater tile", or just "ocean") tiles is an odd choice. Instead of removing a gold source, add a gold sink. It is, after all, an expansion. It should expand the existing game, not contract it.

Then again, Blizzard once hinted that they would be removing multiple units in the expansion for Starcraft II, and it never happened. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Helmling]

CiV has always undervalued the sea tiles. Most human population centers cling to rivers and coasts for a reason, yet the game makes them relatively undesirable, especially when the high costs of work boats and harbors are considered. Hopefully water will facilitate these new trade routes and compensate for the loss of the gold.

In the early game, though, before there are any trade routes--where will our gold come from? It seems to be that this makes gems, gold, silver, etc. over-powered now, but we shall see.

 

[JanghanHong]

I sort of think less gold as a patch than contraction. People avoided merchant specialists and great merchants because gold literally flowing in the rivers.

I admit that I play an especially gold-focused game because I highly value the ability to buy and units, since I don't have to declare war if people just declare war on me (The Venus Flytrap Gambit), I still have so much money left over after the Classical era, so I'm hoping that my playstyle will be stronger relative to other styles.

 

[ahawk]

CiV has always undervalued the sea tiles. Most human population centers cling to rivers and coasts for a reason, yet the game makes them relatively undesirable, especially when the high costs of work boats and harbors are considered. Hopefully water will facilitate these new trade routes and compensate for the loss of the gold.

In the early game, though, before there are any trade routes--where will our gold come from? It seems to be that this makes gems, gold, silver, etc. over-powered now, but we shall see.

I've been wondering the same thing about early gold. I have several thoughts:

1) The palace could now provide more gold then it used to.
2) Trade-posts could be moved to a much earlier position on the tech-tree.
3) New buildings may be introduced to the early game that give raw gold (as opposed to the percentage-bonuses from Market, Bank, etc.)

Any of those seem like possible solutions, though, if caravans are unlocked as early as Animal Husbandry, then I'm not sure how bad the problem will actually be, since that's quite early indeed.

 

[Depravo]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the case that a city on an island (or otherwise cut off by terrain from the capital) will never get the production bonus associated with a railway connection?

Undervaluing ocean has always been a problem with the Civ series and it's worse in Civ 5. Someone once compared sea tiles to the xenofungus in SMAC - an irksomeness you have to work around.

Whereas of course "Sixty percent of the world’s 39 metropolises with a population of over 5 million are located within 100 km of the coast, including 12 of the world’s 16 cities with populations greater than 10 million." I know that has partly to do with much of the world's best agricultural land lying in coastal flood plains but it's at least partly due to the fact that IT'S EASIER TO SHIFT THINGS BY WATER THAN LAND and always has been, even for a continental nation with an exemplary land freight infrastructure like the USA. And yet a coastal city in Civ will have sub-average production (absent heavy specialisation on bonus-giving social policies and religion) and now, it seems, trade too. Backwards.

 

[Deggial]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the case that a city on an island (or otherwise cut off by terrain from the capital) will never get the production bonus associated with a railway connection?

As long as there are two coastal cities with a port, the railroad-bonus is passed. If you found your island city (cities) inland only, then yes, you wil not gain the railroad bonus.

Regarding costal cities and their value:
- We know due to confirmed quotes that at least land-based trade-routes are of limited length.
- We know that longer trade routes provied higher profits.

I could imagine that it is far easier and therefore way more lucrative to create long trade routes via sea trade. If this isn't enough, I could imagine that you get more free sea-based trade-routes during the game than routes based on caravans. (This, of course, works only if the numbers of possible trade routes per city is somehow limited!)
Both game mechanics would make founding cities at coasts way more desirable.

 

[Securion]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it the case that a city on an island (or otherwise cut off by terrain from the capital) will never get the production bonus associated with a railway connection?

Undervaluing ocean has always been a problem with the Civ series and it's worse in Civ 5. Someone once compared sea tiles to the xenofungus in SMAC - an irksomeness you have to work around.

Whereas of course "Sixty percent of the world’s 39 metropolises with a population of over 5 million are located within 100 km of the coast, including 12 of the world’s 16 cities with populations greater than 10 million." I know that has partly to do with much of the world's best agricultural land lying in coastal flood plains but it's at least partly due to the fact that IT'S EASIER TO SHIFT THINGS BY WATER THAN LAND and always has been, even for a continental nation with an exemplary land freight infrastructure like the USA. And yet a coastal city in Civ will have sub-average production (absent heavy specialisation on bonus-giving social policies and religion) and now, it seems, trade too. Backwards.

I agree.

Give this man a cookie.