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

[EgonSpengler]

I haven't caught up on all 6 pages here, but I definitely want to jump up and down on Civ V for its poor, poor representation of the importance of the oceans.

In Civ V, navies and maritime trade aren't anywhere close to important or useful enough. I don't know if this was a deliberate choice, to make landlocked nations more viable than they have been in reality, but if so I think they went too far. In Civ V, I kind of don't care if my country even has a port, and if my capital has a great swath of oceanfront property, I usually restart. Almost all of the ocean-going civs are pretty lame (except on an archipelago map, I guess).

I hope to The Flying Spaghetti Monster that Civ VI gets it (closer to) right.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

It removes choice. If sometimes its good to build on the coast (ie, you want one city that can build a navy, or there are some very juicy resources) and sometimes better inland, you have to decide what you want. if inland is always better, it's just a little bit boring.

Oh, and it will make navies even less important and worthwhile than they have been in the entire civ series.

Not really. The old choice was "do I need coastal or inland cities?" If coastal, settle on the coast. If inland, include as few coastal tiles as possible. That left a no man's land in the hexes that fell one or two tiles from the coast that players often tried to avoid. The harbor districts add those 1-2 hex away from water as viable options.

More viable options, more choices. It was more black and white in previous games. Now there's some grey area in there that will require more thought. It's no longer "on coast or as little coast as possible" as your two options.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Cities that have access to the sea (can build a dock) can give your empire 2 trade routes instead of only one and I assume that sea trade is the strongest trade which make naval units important.

One difference between civilization V and VI is that trade routes come from cities like in Beyond Earth so you can build a trade empire that operate 50 trade routes if you want to.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Cities that have access to the sea (can build a dock) can give your empire 2 trade routes instead of only one and I assume that sea trade is the strongest trade which make naval units important.

One difference between civilization V and VI is that trade routes come from cities like in Beyond Earth so you can build a trade empire that operate 50 trade routes if you want to.

I REALLY hope that is not true....trade route spam was a major problem in BE.

Now if they learned so that
1. trade routes don't overpower everything else
2. trade routes are limited how many can come from a city(ie adding a harbor doesn't give your empire a trade route, it only gives that City a trade route)
3. Domestic trade routes don't give anything to the city they go to (only the one they come from, so you can't mass boost a city)
4. The Only way to get trade routes from a city are the Commercial Hub/Harbor districts [and maybe some World Wonders and the Palace]
5. It is easy to have trade routes on 'autorenew'

Then Maybe, Maybe it could work.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Maybe I should not say cities but districts. Harbour and Commerece Hub give one trade route each. England have a pretty big advantage thanks to its royal harbour because as a unique district it can always be built and at half the price.

 

[Martin Alvito]

It's Civ, the sea sucks. It's like Gandhi nuking all the things - it's just part of the design of the series at this point.

I hope that this has changed, but I'd be surprised if it turns out that it has. Trade routes offer the possibility of settling on coastal tiles (more than once) being useful, at least.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Maybe I should not say cities but districts. Harbour and Commerece Hub give one trade route each. England have a pretty big advantage thanks to its royal harbour because as a unique district it can always be built and at half the price.

Well hopefully the trade route a district gives you must run from that district (or its city)...
and that is a point that districts will get limited as they get more expensive the more you have.

 

[bcaiko]

They don't [have to be perfectly balanced]. They have to each have their strengths and weaknesses, so that sometimes you want to choose one or the other.

The strengths of coastal cities currently outweigh their own negatives very rarely. And that isn't even counting the opportunity cost of settling it near-but-not-on the coast.

Nobody wants them equally good. Its already impossible to be equally good because they provide different types of yields and can't be improved.
...

Great post, Atlas. Couldn't agree more.

More viable options, more choices. It was more black and white in previous games. Now there's some grey area in there that will require more thought. It's no longer "on coast or as little coast as possible" as your two options.

Sadly, from what we know right now, there are options but no real choice. Coastal cities seem to be suboptimal in almost every instance. This isn't an "unimportant choice" - which is bad game design. This seems to be a false choice, where building a little inland is always the correct decision.

That's not real choice, and if we can flag the issue for the devs to address now before the game releases (and the full on complaining begins), we're doing them a service asking for them to address it.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It is not really city anymore but city center. The city is the city center + all its districts. Placing the city center near the coast may not always be that great but not nessicarly bad because cities don't give the same penalties as in civ V and being able to bunch them togther is a great thing for adjacency.

In the same way as the district system not force you to build your city center next to the coast you don't have to build your city next to the moutains if you want good science because now you can build the campus district next to the mountain.

Unlike civ V civilization VI don't really encourage you to get as much out as possible from each city, it may be much better to place cities as close as possible to each other because most districts provides adjacency bonus to other districts and with many cities you can specialize better because each city can only have one of each type of district.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

That's not real choice, and if we can flag the issue for the devs to address now before the game releases (and the full on complaining begins), we're doing them a service asking for them to address it.

This "choice" you guys are worried about isn't gone though. Its just been shifted from where to settle to what districts you want to build. Sure, you can get a navy and sea trade with a city that's inland a bit but at what cost? Your industrial district? Science? Religious? How long do you wait to build that first trireme and how many beakers do you have to dump into naval techs to catch up with those that snagged early Eurekas? Until your first or second city hits 6, 9 or 12 pop?

This is looking more and more like a false dilemma. "Oh no! We're not forced to settle subpar cities in order to engage in the naval game!" It really wasn't a choice before. I had hoped my first post got that through. "Either you want a navy or you don't, now settle accordingly," that was the "choice" that's being taken away from us.

 

[Atlas627]

Every single tile makes a difference. But only if they're different.

I might end up wanting to settle next to the mountain not because I'm next to the mountain, but because of the combination of a) the river touches there, b) it lets me reach a good campus spot, c) it is more defensible, and d) I get to control a mountain pass.

Now, the same might happen for settling on a coastal tile. However, there are also *consistent* negatives for founding on the coast. These will rarely be overcome, since there are so many of them and (so far) so few positives.

1) You have fewer tiles to build districts on. (each tile you settle closer to the coast is another whole ring of water tiles)

2) You have fewer workable tiles. The water tiles basically don't even count as workable, since their base yields suck and they aren't improvable, even by the normal water improvement buildings we've seen.

3) A coastal City Center appears to provide no benefit (except anti-siege). You can't construct naval buildings (still need a harbor), you don't get a bonus to trade (still need the harbor), and naval units appear to be pretty useless (if nobody else has a reason to build/trade on the coast, navies suck again).

4) There are some things that could still be revealed to be of use, of course. Perhaps the appeal of the city center matters, and coastal tiles have more appeal. Maybe the city automatically gets a trade route for being on the coast, so it can get up to 3 by building a harbor and commercial hub. Maybe there are many things that make it worthwhile! But we haven't seen any yet.


So yes, we are trading a single choice (found on coast or far inland) for more options (on coast, sorta on coast, inland). But at the same time, the on coast option seems to be nearly strictly worse than sorta on coast, which makes it not a real option. It needs something to make it more worthwhile than currently, especially because coastal cities are such a huge part of real civilizations (I'm not saying flavor is everything, I'm saying its intuitive to make coastal cities an actual option).

This "choice" you guys are worried about isn't gone though. Its just been shifted from where to settle to what districts you want to build. Sure, you can get a navy and sea trade with a city that's inland a bit but at what cost? Your industrial district? Science? Religious? How long do you wait to build that first trireme and how many beakers do you have to dump into naval techs to catch up with those that snagged early Eurekas? Until your first or second city hits 6, 9 or 12 pop?

No, here's the problem.

What good is sea trade? We've seen no reason to believe its worth anything more than land. Perhaps even less, since it doesn't make roads.

What good is the navy? No trade to control. If there's no trade to control AND sea tiles absolutely suck, nobody is going to build on the coast. If they want a navy at all, they'll found inland. So if there is no trade to control, no sea tiles worth blockading, and cities aren't in reach to attack with navies, what good is a navy?

What good are naval techs if the navy and sea suck? Why do I care about those eurekas at all? I'm not missing anything by waiting for those techs.

This is looking more and more like a false dilemma. "Oh no! We're not forced to settle subpar cities in order to engage in the naval game!" It really wasn't a choice before. I had hoped my first post got that through. "Either you want a navy or you don't, now settle accordingly," that was the "choice" that's being taken away from us.

There was a reason to settle on the coast before. It enabled sea routes which were better than land routes, and sea tiles could be at least passable.

Because there was a reason to settle on the coast and protect the coast, there was a purpose for navies. Thus, even more reason to settle on the coast.

There is no reason for any of that currently. The choice is actually being taken away, because the naval game has not been shown to exist at all. Just found inland always! Even if you do want a coastal city for some niche reason, it might as well be inland! You still need the harbor to make any of the naval buildings anyway...

 

[agonistes]

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.

To me, the importance of sea/oceans becomes apparent when you realize that most landlocked countries are poor. Although oil deposits are impacting this. See Kazakhstan.

Unfortunately, have to discredit this theory:

Dear god, what civ leader is that in the lower right corner of your pic? Can't place him. Norway?

Water still needs a benefit. Even Harbors themselves are looking weak right now.

A boost to food and gold from water tiles, +1 to ship movement, and a small naval combat boost, provided the city center is adjacent to the coast, would do it for me.

Maybe the first expansion will be "Naval Empires." A resurrection of the old Coastal Fortress?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

A coastal city in civilization VI terms is a city who have access to the harbour district which mean it can reach at least one coastal tile.

You can work coastal tiles but you can not work mountains and coastal tiles it not that terrible, compare 1 food and 1 gold with the 2 resources specialist give.

Yes you will have less tiles to place districts then an inland city on but each district can have up to 3-4 specialist each so you should be able to give your citizen work.

But the big argument against the need of balance is that you can have both the inland city as well as the coastal one because civilization VI don't have the same expansion penalties.

In real life land trade can not match sea trade in efficiency and it was probably worse a few hundreds years ago.

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

No, here's the problem.

What good is sea trade? We've seen no reason to believe its worth anything more than land. Perhaps even less, since it doesn't make roads.

What good is the navy? No trade to control. If there's no trade to control AND sea tiles absolutely suck, nobody is going to build on the coast. If they want a navy at all, they'll found inland. So if there is no trade to control, no sea tiles worth blockading, and cities aren't in reach to attack with navies, what good is a navy?

What good are naval techs if the navy and sea suck? Why do I care about those eurekas at all? I'm not missing anything by waiting for those techs.



There was a reason to settle on the coast before. It enabled sea routes which were better than land routes, and sea tiles could be at least passable.

Because there was a reason to settle on the coast and protect the coast, there was a purpose for navies. Thus, even more reason to settle on the coast.

There is no reason for any of that currently. The choice is actually being taken away, because the naval game has not been shown to exist at all. Just found inland always! Even if you do want a coastal city for some niche reason, it might as well be inland! You still need the harbor to make any of the naval buildings anyway...

Whoa! Hold on, are you drawing on a mechanic added in the second expansion of the fifth game in the series as the basis of your argument? Were navies never useful before that?

 

[Atlas627]

A coastal city in civilization VI terms is a city who have access to the harbour district which mean it can reach at least one coastal tile.

This is true, but as I mentioned above, each tile should be worth considering in some scenario. The coastal tiles are incredibly bad for settling with what we've seen so far.

You can work coastal tiles but you can not work mountains and coastal tiles it not that terrible, compare 1 food and 1 gold with the 2 resources specialist give.

Those specialists get better with tech, but we have seen no such thing for water tiles. Also, each water tile is replacing a workable tile; specialists aren't.

Yes you will have less tiles to place districts then an inland city on but each district can have up to 3-4 specialist each so you should be able to give your citizen work.

Not if there's not enough food. The water tiles don't even feed themselves right now, let alone specialists.

But the big argument against the need of balance is that you can have both the inland city as well as the coastal one because civilization VI don't have the same expansion penalties.

Sure. This is so far the best reason to have a coastal city, because an extra city seems to be almost strictly better than no city. However, you would probably be better off having an inland city and a near-coast city. And if you do have 1 inland and 1 coastal city, the inland city will always be better. This makes no sense flavor-wise at all.

 

[Atlas627]

Whoa! Hold on, are you drawing on a mechanic added in the second expansion of the fifth game in the series as the basis of your argument? Were navies never useful before that?

In Civ4 and before? No, they actually weren't useful.

In Civ5, they had 2 uses before the trade routes. The first was to conquer cities that were coastal. The second was to have aircraft carriers project power inland.

The first only worked because coastal cities were worth founding. They were worth founding because it made the sea tiles workable, not because it let you build navies. Navies were worthless except for conquering coastal cities.

The second would not be a reason for settling directly on the coast in Civ6. Any city that wants to produce Aircraft carriers will need the Harbor buildings to have enough production to make them, so they might as well build a harbor. No reason to settle on the coast.

And the coastal cities were still pretty meh in Civ5 (before trade routes). After trade routes, you still only needed 1 coastal city because you could make all your routes go from there. That might be a reason why I haven't seen the "relocate trader" button anywhere...

Edit: I didn't explain why aircraft carriers weren't useful before 5. Aircraft became much more useful in 5 once the units got spread out, because you could control which units to bombard. It also helped because Cities had their own defense, which planes were good at bombarding.

So sure, you probably still needed 1 coastal city for a Conquest victory in games before 5. And coastal cities were useful because there was no reason NOT to have them. But now there's no reason TO have them.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

And the coastal cities were still pretty meh in Civ5 (before trade routes). After trade routes, you still only needed 1 coastal city because you could make all your routes go from there. That might be a reason why I haven't seen the "relocate trader" button anywhere...

Now one dock is one trade route so you may want several docks just to get extra trade routes.

Costal cities are pretty important for the naval tech line because the first eureka needs a costal city and the second needs 2-3 galleys who can only be built in a coastal city because the harbour is only unlocked by that tech the galleys provide the eurka boost for.

2 eurka moment are quite a few beakers.

 

[Depravo]

...

In Civ V, navies and maritime trade aren't anywhere close to important or useful enough.....

I agree, but the eventual addition of proper trade routes was a HUGE step in the right direction - BNW was Civ 5 1/2 as far as I'm concerned - and since the same dude is the lead designer this time, there is cause for optimism.

 

[Atlas627]

Now one dock is one trade route so you may want several docks just to get extra trade routes.

Yep, I'm happy with that change. That doesn't make me want to found on the coast though. In fact, it makes me want to found on it even less, since if I have to build the harbor anyway I might as well have more workable tiles.

Costal cities are pretty important for the naval tech line because the first eureka needs a costal city and the second needs 2-3 galleys who can only be built in a coastal city because the harbour is only unlocked by that tech the galleys provide the eurka boost for.

Nope, go look at the tech tree gain. Founding on the coast gets you the first Eureka. The second and third techs aren't connected. The 2nd tech (the one that gets you harbors) needs you to improve 2 sea resources, which settling on coast doesn't help. The 3rd tech (the one needs 2 galleys) unlocks another ship, which is pointless if there's nothing interesting about the water.

2 eurka moment are quite a few beakers.

Even if it were the only way to get these 2 Eurekas, which it isn't, it still isn't that many beakers. And its also on beakers for techs you don't need. And you would need exactly 1 city on the coast to get the Eurekas. That's not an incentive to found cities on the coast, just 1 city. And just for the Sailing Eureka, which is very cheap.

 

[Ebrim]

I'm not sure you could have multiple docks anyway. Pretty sure you can only have 1 type of district per city.

Also, despite all that we might know or think we know, we're speaking from a position of pretty significant ignorance. Let's see how things play out in reality before making too many unequivocal statements that "x are useless".