What coasts really are

[Pietato]

Civilizations that thrived on the coast often relied on maritime trade and sustenance.

Civ6 represents them pretty well at this point, now that trade route yields are effectively doubled for them.

Nope. I can run an inland trade route over the water as well.

 

[Ziad]

I would hope one doesn't have to explain how inland trade routes don't have remotely the same potential as overseas ones., at least in the earlier eras.

 

[Bibor]

I suggested making trade routes double speed starting from coastal cities and I still like that idea.

Harbor trade routes should yield additional housing from domestic trade routes and problem solved.
And I agree with some people that lighthouses should get an additional trade route, not replacing the marketplace one. Perhaps somehow limited to being a domestic trade route.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, the best solution would be to simply up the lighthouse housing, production and food yields, to mimic everything stated above. It's a hefty production investment anyway.

 

[Pietato]

I would hope one doesn't have to explain how inland trade routes don't have remotely the same potential as overseas ones., at least in the earlier eras.

Going over the water is what boosts the trade route. I can do that from inland cities as well.

 

[bonafide11]

I think everyone agrees coastal cities need to be improved some, it's just a question of what. The cities just never can compete with major inland cities in the game. I'd suggest maybe a significant improvement to lighthouses that provides extra housing or gold and increased yields or distance from trade routes. I don't think coastal cities are worthless, but if you settle a few cities early in the game, both in land and on the coast, no matter how good the coastal cities are, they'll always struggle to compete with the in-land cities. They don't have the housing or production or science. So you're almost always better off settling your cities in land.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

One thing that's missing a bit here is what a "tile" is. If you're into TSL maps take a a look at how far inland a "coastal" tile goes. A tile could be hundreds of square miles (it also scales down to much smaller than that if you're talking combat). Nonetheless it's much more than the space where the water directly meets the land, and there is lots going on in coastal areas--yummy shore birds, things you could find washed up on the beach for early production, maybe smaller waterways you can't see on a larger scale map, etc.

But one way or the other, in-game the coasts weren't that great and the flooding issue made them worse. And besides, no matter how bad you think living on a coast is, I'm sure most people would say that's better than being in a desert or on a tundra, and the game really helps people that live in those places.

 

[UWHabs]

I think everyone agrees coastal cities need to be improved some, it's just a question of what. The cities just never can compete with major inland cities in the game. I'd suggest maybe a significant improvement to lighthouses that provides extra housing or gold and increased yields or distance from trade routes. I don't think coastal cities are worthless, but if you settle a few cities early in the game, both in land and on the coast, no matter how good the coastal cities are, they'll always struggle to compete with the in-land cities. They don't have the housing or production or science. So you're almost always better off settling your cities in land.

Yep, coastal cities are basically half of what other cities can yield, and it's really not until very late in the game that coastal tile yields actually become usable. Inland cities with desert or jungle can easily plow all those tiles and throw districts on them (when IRL, it's not like they were putting industrial zones deep in the jungle in the medieval era). Coastal cities biggest challenges are that even if I have 5 or 6 good coastal tiles, I'm going to want to use 2-3 of them for districts, which just makes those cities even less useful. And given that coastal tiles give no adjacency bonuses except for a few civ abilities, those campuses/industrial zones/etc... just never give you as good yields as ones inland.

 

[Wingednosering]

I think everybody agrees that coastal cities should be buffed in the game. There has been some great discussion on potential balance improvements across the three threads that have been discussing this. The easiest thing for firaxis to do (which they likely won't) would be:

- Harbors should get adjacency from city center
- IZs should get adjacency from Harbor
- Fishing boats should give 1 housing each

I'm fairly certain that would even the playing field. Even after all of that though, you'd be looking at an equal gameplay benefit, but still have the crippling disasters. You'd either need to buff the coast further to make the risk worth the reward, or you'd need to tweak the disasters so coast isn't disproportionately affected.

Note: this doesn't even address fewer district options or culture expanding borders over useless territory.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think everybody agrees that coastal cities should be buffed in the game. There has been some great discussion on potential balance improvements across the three threads that have been discussing this. The easiest thing for firaxis to do (which they likely won't) would be:

- Harbors should get adjacency from city center
- IZs should get adjacency from Harbor
- Fishing boats should give 1 housing each

I'm fairly certain that would even the playing field. Even after all of that though, you'd be looking at an equal gameplay benefit, but still have the crippling disasters. You'd either need to buff the coast further to make the risk worth the reward, or you'd need to tweak the disasters so coast isn't disproportionately affected.

Note: this doesn't even address fewer district options or culture expanding borders over useless territory.

I think i'd put tile buffs on those 1-3 flood level tiles. That would make it worth your while to go there even if you know what might happen later.

 

[Wingednosering]

I think i'd put tile buffs on those 1-3 flood level tiles. That would make it worth your while to go there even if you know what might happen later.

I've seen that suggestion before. I like it in theory, but there's already a big problem of the game ending before climate change even begins. We also know that early game benefits snowball and are worth far more than a late-game bonus/malus.

A tile yield buff that helps for the first 80% of the game might be too strong. You would probably never see the malus.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I've seen that suggestion before. I like it in theory, but there's already a big problem of the game ending before climate change even begins. We also know that early game benefits snowball and are worth far more than a late-game bonus/malus.

A tile yield buff that helps for the first 80% of the game might be too strong. You would probably never see the malus.

But considering all of the unusable tiles if you start near the coast, maybe that would just even things out. I don't know but I see what you mean.

 

[Abaxial]

If you look at, say, the expansion of the USA westwards at the beginning of the 19th C, you find it was all along major rivers. If you wanted to penetrate the continental interior, boats were the only way to go. Trouble is, you can't really do this in Civ VI because rivers run along hexsides. They function as a barrier to travel rather than an asset - another case of taking modern transport priorities and imagining that it was the same in the past. If you had river hexes instead, then rivers could function like a road or a railway. But that would obviously be an impossible design change. Perhaps in Civ VII?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If you look at, say, the expansion of the USA westwards at the beginning of the 19th C, you find it was all along major rivers. If you wanted to penetrate the continental interior, boats were the only way to go. Trouble is, you can't really do this in Civ VI because rivers run along hexsides. They function as a barrier to travel rather than an asset - another case of taking modern transport priorities and imagining that it was the same in the past. If you had river hexes instead, then rivers could function like a road or a railway. But that would obviously be an impossible design change. Perhaps in Civ VII?

I don't see why you couldn't use them as RRs for trade route yield purposes with the rules the way they are now. But yeah, navigable rivers should be a thing.

 

[Arianrhod]

There is an important gameplay problem with coastal civilizations as things are now, though: because coastal cities are not really worth building, only maritime civilizations will want to build them, which means that the only civilizations who will have anything worth taking with a navy on the coast are the civilizations who themselves have navies. And maybe the odd city-state.

Until coastal cities are themselves desirable, coastal civs are effectively double-nerfed by this simple fact: they cannot meaningfully benefit from coasts, and they cannot use their typical specialties to capture anything of real worth.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

going on a bit of a tangent here--what if harbors gave you the ability to build fishing boats a reasonable distance outside the three hex ring of your city, a la colonies from civ III or supply crawlers from AC?

 

[S1AL]

For anyone taking the OP at face value, please do a quick search for the world's largest cities and then count how many are on seas, oceans, or large lakes.

After that, count how many are on rivers with ready access to the ocean and were also known for their Maritime capabilities.

While this is partially a result of the layout of the Mediterranean and East Asia, and partially a result of British colonial practices and influence, the results are... Pretty conclusive.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Even in civilizations that were baseline maritime, like ancient Greece and Phoenicia, not all cities were coastal. Sparta is as far from the coast as it can get.
Babylon is not coastal, Egyptian capitals were not coastal, Rome is not on a coast, civilizations in India were not coastal, none of the native american civilizations were coastal.

I can turn this argument on its head and it makes just as much sense: Russia is not really a land power because some of its important cities are on the coast: Saint Petersburg, Vladivostok, Murmansk.
Oxford is not on the coast, therefore the sea was of no importance to England?

And Rome was not on the coast, but Rome got its food from the coast: Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber was one of the busiest sorts in the whole Empire, and grain shipped in from North Africa/Egypt fed Imperial Rome. When the Goths cut that trade, Rome's population fell precipitously, because no land route could provide the same amount of food.

You could say exactly the same thing about Athens - which also is some ways inland from its port of Piraeus, but got the bulk of its food, grain, shipped in from Greek colonies on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Again, when Sparta won control of those trade routes with her new Persian-financed fleet, the Peloponesian War ended abruptly with Athens' defeat.

Both cities owed their existence as major metropolises to their access to the trade from the sea. The alternative, as your examples of Babylon , Egypt and the Indus cities indicate, was access to major river transport - not for access to fresh water, but for transport of food in bulk.

The game currently and correctly allows a city not on the coast (like Athens, Rome, London, Antwerp) to still build a harbor and access the Sea for trade. Unfortunately, as this and at least two other Threads are discussing, it severely penalizes cities that are actually on the coast, like Saint Petersburg, Alexandria, Byzantium/Istanbul, Shanghai, New York City, and that simply makes no sense in either historical or game terms.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

And Rome was not on the coast, but Rome got its food from the coast: Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber was one of the busiest sorts in the whole Empire, and grain shipped in from North Africa/Egypt fed Imperial Rome. When the Goths cut that trade, Rome's population fell precipitously, because no land route could provide the same amount of food.

You could say exactly the same thing about Athens - which also is some ways inland from its port of Piraeus, but got the bulk of its food, grain, shipped in from Greek colonies on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Again, when Sparta won control of those trade routes with her new Persian-financed fleet, the Peloponesian War ended abruptly with Athens' defeat.

Yes--I'd argue that in game terms those were harbor districts.

 

[Flaxton]

This simple fact is illuminating when you think of the entire history of humanity up until today (and still in some places). One culinary tradition nearly everybody on Earth has is soup. Why? Because it was one of the safest ways to consume water and get nourishment. The same goes for fermentation methods of fruit and vegetables otherwise known as wine and beer. Of the cultures that drank alcohol (nearly everybody), you ALWAYS see two general results with fermentation in mind -- weak wine/beer and strong wine/beer. Most wine and beer was of the first variety and was usually less than 1-2% ABV. More than that and you urinate out more water than you put into yourself in addition to starting to get drunk (especially in children). The second kind, what we call "normal" beer and wine today, is what ancient people made in order to get drunk and have a good time. That many people had a beer or wine god(dess) or venerated alcohol in some way makes A LOT of sense when you realize that if you drank beer, you didn't die. If you drank water, you might die. Beer must have seemed magical if not godly to people.

And let's not forget Tea. The industrial revolution would have been different without all those new urbanites drinking Tea - which prevented illnesses. Englands WOTW ability should include +2 housing for cities with a harbour.

Also the default starting place for England should be a coastal river. I agree with the OP - why would you settle on a coast without a river?

 

[Abaxial]

going on a bit of a tangent here--what if harbors gave you the ability to build fishing boats a reasonable distance outside the three hex ring of your city, a la colonies from civ III or supply crawlers from AC?

Someone once said about Columbus that "of course, America had been discovered many times before, but previously people kept quiet about it". This is very true - for religious reasons, fish (especially salted fish) was extremely important in Medieval times. It was well known to English mariners in the 15th C that the seas off Newfoundland were particularly good fishing grounds - but of course, they weren't going to tip off their rivals!

AFAIK Newfoundland is more than three hexes away from Bristol.