Very few sea resources (and reasons to settle on the coast)

[Natura]

Actually in the real world most city "centers" are not actually in the center. One of the artifices of Civilization is circular borders. Real cities are almost never shaped that way.

I'm hoping there are policies to make coastal cities worth it.

Well, no, but a heck of a lot of cities are on the coast.

Civ VI will do a much better job of showing say, London, which by the standards of previous Civ games would certainly be a coastal city, but it's really not in reality. On the other hand, coastal cities are already suffering in Civ VI by removing the potential for district tiles, so they're automatically at a disadvantage compared to inland cities that can just build a harbor district to have access to ship construction.

One simple partial fix there I can think of is that coastal cities get a bonus to ship construction, maybe 25%.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

There is no cost for having cities so there is no need to balance costal vs inland.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think one thing that is overlooked is that 1 f 1g might be good if there are no trade post (ie gold) improvements. (Especially if there is a way to improve them)

 

[Mercade]

Might make for an excellent Dutch unique ability in DLC or expansion ... Reclaimed Land: build districts on coastal water. If I recall correctly, this was already considered in an earlier version of Civ, but at the time not possible to terraform in-game.

 

[Siptah]

If I'm not wrong the harbor has only 2 buildings that can be build in it. What if there will be third one (and if it's only in expansions or dlc) that will give additional yields to ocean/coastal tiles?

 

[WiseGreen]

The (minor) advantages we've seen so far are the bonus housing (still worse than rivers) and the eureka bonus to Sailing tech.

 

[MarcoFurio]

Is that a new sea luxury/bonus tile at Germany's first look video 1:00?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyfztARmagA

It seems like seals at northwest to me.

 

[MarcoFurio]

*I mean northeast

 

[Homusubi]

Now you come to mention it, even Kyoto is inland...

 

[Sansa_Stark]

Aren't there many more sea resources this time? I mean quantity of tiles in comparison to V.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

What if the city center gained an adjacency bonus from ocean tiles, like +1 food or something?
Like districts get bonuses from mountains or rivers, the city center is a district, it could gain a bonus from ocean tiles. Come to think of it maybe it could gain a bonus from other kind of adjacent tile, just low enough. (?) like if there are 2 oceans, always better than 1 ocean? well maybe not if on that other spot there is 1 ocean and 2 mountain, +1 food +2 production.. or something o_o or not^^

 

[Krajzen]

Aren't there many more sea resources this time? I mean quantity of tiles in comparison to V.

Nope. From what I've seen, there are only a few of them. Vast majority of water tiles are blank.

Seriously, coastal cities seem so terrible right now that I think we'll see bias opposite to those of civ5 - avoiding coasts as much as possible and settling to grab as few water tiles as possible compared to land ones

I'm honestly curious how archipelago maps look now, devs said once that they had to revamp them because of district system. I expect much, much, much fewer small (few tile) islands and instead many small-medium landmasses "capable of maintaining at least one good city".

 

[Atlas627]

One reason that hasn't been mentioned is that if you have no cities directly on the coast, then an enemy navy could demolish all your harbors and prevent you from ever rebuilding them, making you land-locked for the rest of the game.

Sure, but we haven't seen any reason why it would be a bad thing to be landlocked

housing bonus and appeal of coastal tiles could be a reason if you go for culture victory...
Furthermore sea-trading could indeed be a kicker for coastal cities - maybe they offer higher income combined with a harbor district which makes it worthwhile
As stated by others there might be possibilities to start navy earlier with a coastal city (no harbor district needed)

So I have a few hopes it might still be feasible to settle by the ocean...

The housing bonus is slight, and I don't see why we'd need the housing bonus if many of the workable tiles can't even feed themselves (1f1g water tiles, ew).

Haven't seen anything to suggest sea trading is different from land, and have in fact seen the opposite (both use the same unit)

If these things don't exist, then there's no value in a navy because no cities need to be coastal and there's no ocean trade to plunder.

But Appeal is a good one to point out. I had forgotten about it. Still though, you don't need to found your city on the coast for it, and water tiles don't have appeal (afaik). You'd still get more of those tiles, and be able to build on more of them, if you went slightly inland.

Maybe the water tile yields can be improved. You do get some fresh water from coast which is better then nothing which most land tiles provides.

Cities near the water can build a port which give a trade route. This mean a costal empire can have twice as many trade routes as a land based one.

Given that cities don't have an upkeep or penalty after founding you could maybe pack more cities in a single area is you build some of them on the coast. All districts get an adjacency bonus for being next to other districts so unlike older civ games civilization VI actually encourage you to build cities near each other so you can build alot of districts next to each other.

Haven't seen anything to improve the water tiles.

Good point about the potential for you to have double trade routes if you build both a harbor and a commercial district in your coastal cities, but again you don't need the center on the coast for that.

Ah, map overlap. That's a good one I hadn't considered. I think that's more like a "well I guess this is the best leftover spot", which works, but isn't really *fun*. I want a good reason to found my 3rd core city directly on the coast, as opposed to founding it by another mountain range.

There's the 3-tile-city minimal distance which may force you towards the coast (if overlap proves as worthwhile).

The harbor takes a full tile which can be more easily "blockaded" (pillaged) than a city so you may run into the problem of losing sea superiority (like air...).

There's tourism and appeal rates, trading routes being much more valuable and maybe port cities giving you a bonus to espionage (those gossiping sailors).

And I can't really think of many more examples for sea resources, so instead of making something up, sea tiles need to be improved by better tile yields. Just relax for when the game is released or we at least have more information

Already addressed these above, but good points.

 

[Depravo]

In the real world oceans are not very valuable...

Jesus wept. Really?

All I'll say is that about 44% of humanity lives within 150km of the sea and that we are communicating in English not Kirghiz.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Jesus wept. Really?

All I'll say is that about 44% of humanity lives within 150km of the sea and that we are communicating in English not Kirghiz.

and 99.9999% of humanity lives within 150 km of the land and we are communicating on devices that would not operate under water.

They should make water tiles better..3 or 4 output by later in the game, and sea trade should be much better than land trade (although I don't think it should require a coastal city, a harbor should be enough)

However...notice that "within 150 km" part... how many big cities are actually coastal... within say "15 km"...probably a Lot less. (which is why I think having a Harbor/coastal city should provide a major benefit for trade routes..but either one should work.

 

[Thormodr]

Alexandria is coastal for the Egyptians.
If Peter the Great leads the Russian Civ and his capital is the eponymous St. Petersburg then they will have a coastal capital.
If Portugal is in Civ VI, Lisbon is a coastal capital.
Rio de Janiero is a coastal capital in Civ VI.
Any Scandinavian Civ will have a coastal capital.

There are a few, anyway.

 

[King Jason]

If I'm not wrong the harbor has only 2 buildings that can be build in it. What if there will be third one (and if it's only in expansions or dlc) that will give additional yields to ocean/coastal tiles?

I count three - One at Celestial Navigation, one at Mass Production, and one at Electricity.

Haven't seen anything to suggest sea trading is different from land, and have in fact seen the opposite (both use the same unit)

That they use the same unit does not prevent sea routes from being more profitable.

Haven't seen anything to improve the water tiles.

There are a myriad of techs that increase yields to improvements. Apprenticeship gives +1 production to mines and banking is +1 gold to quarries. These tooltips are trickier to spot in the footage since the players typically go straight for the objects within the techs themselves, causing us to potentially miss some information. Another example, there's no icon that demonstrates to us, visually, that Mathematics increases all ship movement by 1. All we see is that it allows us to build the Petra.

Having said that, it's possible that one of the seafaring techs make coastal tiles food neutral. It's a very common trend in civ games to have the sea start with a crappy food output and then become food neutral later. Civ3 it was harbors that made sea tiles food neutral. In 4 and 5 it was the lighthouse. In civ6, both are unlocked with celestial navigation.

As it turns out, we haven't seen the actual tooltip for celestial navigation.

 

[Atlas627]

That they use the same unit does not prevent sea routes from being more profitable.

I'm aware. I'm pointing out that clearly the system of 5 is not in place. So the default is that no mechanic exists, rather than assuming that it will be more profitable, a la Civ5.

There are a myriad of techs that increase yields to improvements. Apprenticeship gives +1 production to mines and banking is +1 gold to quarries. These tooltips are trickier to spot in the footage since the players typically go straight for the objects within the techs themselves, causing us to potentially miss some information. Another example, there's no icon that demonstrates to us, visually, that Mathematics increases all ship movement by 1. All we see is that it allows us to build the Petra.

Having said that, it's possible that one of the seafaring techs make coastal tiles food neutral. It's a very common trend in civ games to have the sea start with a crappy food output and then become food neutral later. Civ3 it was harbors that made sea tiles food neutral. In 4 and 5 it was the lighthouse. In civ6, both are unlocked with celestial navigation.

As it turns out, we haven't seen the actual tooltip for celestial navigation.

I agree, I hope this is the case. If there is no mechanic to make water useful at all, I will be sad (until they fix it in an expansion). I suspect that they'll at least make the tiles meh rather than bad, since that's been in every Civ. But really, I'm hoping for better trade mechanics.

 

[Seek]

I do hope (and expect) that they add small icons to show what techs/civics boost - currently it's rather unintuive.

 

[fmm]

I count three - One at Celestial Navigation, one at Mass Production, and one at Electricity.



That they use the same unit does not prevent sea routes from being more profitable.



There are a myriad of techs that increase yields to improvements. Apprenticeship gives +1 production to mines and banking is +1 gold to quarries. These tooltips are trickier to spot in the footage since the players typically go straight for the objects within the techs themselves, causing us to potentially miss some information. Another example, there's no icon that demonstrates to us, visually, that Mathematics increases all ship movement by 1. All we see is that it allows us to build the Petra.

Having said that, it's possible that one of the seafaring techs make coastal tiles food neutral. It's a very common trend in civ games to have the sea start with a crappy food output and then become food neutral later. Civ3 it was harbors that made sea tiles food neutral. In 4 and 5 it was the lighthouse. In civ6, both are unlocked with celestial navigation.

As it turns out, we haven't seen the actual tooltip for celestial navigation.

Unfortunately, have to discredit this theory:



This comes from 13:06 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK2D53uMMXc.

As far as I can tell, it says "Allows Traders to embark. Allows harvesting of fish."