What coasts really are

[Socrates99]

I hope Bibor can convince the real estate market of his theory. Once he does, I am ready to acquire some of that toxic land to build myself a disgusting chalet looking into the toxic Pacific waters, with a private stretch of toxic beach.

Seriously though, I see what you are saying, Bibor. I just couldn't resist the idea of teasing the idea.

You guys are talking about seaside resorts for tourism right? There are two features people in RL are absolutely drawn to, mountains and sea. The resorts make total sense for CVs if we're focusing on tourism. I do kinda wish ski resorts had some kind of dependency though, they're easier to spam than seaside resorts. It is kind of an indirect nerf to coasts.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't think it's a problem of yields. It is a problem of housing, especially for coastal bias civs. And a problem of automatic tile gains.

Coastal spawns should either have a mountain adjacent or 1 hex away OR adjacency to lake or a river. I don't think most generated maps would have issues granting you one of these.
Also, culture tile gains should either beeline sea resources or go inland for production tiles. I find current coastal culture gains to be simply a bug, because they make no sense whatsoever.

To be fair, yes, its easier but not *that* easy to find good inland city spots either. Most spots are either good for resources, food or production.

Good points about 'tile gains', which are frequently counter to any logic or historical counterparts.
(Fresh) Water access is already 'programmed' into city growth, and should certainly apply to coastal cities as well, with one caveat: when small, or average in the ancient/classical eras, many cities had fresh water sources that don't show up on the map at Civ VI scale. For instance, Athens was built around the Acropolis, an easily-defended spike of rock in the middle of a broad flat arable plain (in fact, the largest such plain in all of Greece). But what made it a perfect site for a small city was that the Acropolis also had fresh water on top. Not enough for millions or even tens of thousands, but enough for Athens to have been founded as a city long before Greeks got to Greece (Athens is not a Greek word, the site and the city were settled by the pre-Greek 'Pelasgians').

We might, therefore, argue that (rarely) a tile normally lacking water access might be programmed with water access to represent springs, natural cisterns or other 'micro' water sources. Such a source might only provide 'water' for, say, the first 2 - 3 population points: not enough to get you a second District, but enough to have a 'strategic' site and requiring a lot more work on your part to build it into a 'major' city - as Athens eventually piped water in from the nearest mountains/hills to the north and northwest.

I would argue that Hydraulic Engineering for Water Supply is a type of 'Irrigation' that the game ignores, given that many ancient and classical Civs spent a great deal of time and effort ensuring water in areas that didn't start out with it: "aqueducts" are only one type of water supply that included springs, wells, cisterns, artificial lakes (barays), tunnels into and through hills and mountains, covered water courses (Afghanistan's qanat system that stretched for miles to 'irrigate' both fields and towns). Some of these could legitimately be UAs or UIs or UUs, but others were generally used by anyone who developed the digging, stone working, surveying technologies required.

 

[Bibor]

I would argue that Hydraulic Engineering for Water Supply is a type of 'Irrigation'

You’re right. Basically what you’re saying that the aqueduct terrain adjacency requirement should be removed, right?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

You’re right. Basically what you’re saying that the aqueduct terrain adjacency requirement should be removed, right?

Well, to be honest I've argued that the Aqueduct shouldn't be a District at all, but an Improvement. Like Roads, can be built over/through other Improvements on tiles, can be any length, but one end terminates in the City Center, the other, as now, in a Water Source (river, oasis, lake, Mountain/Hill tiles). Any tile it passes through or adjacent to gets the bonuses from Access to Fresh Water, which would include Neighborhoods and other Districts with Housing, and Farms - representing the large scale Hydraulic Engineering projects for agriculture as well as people.

The Roman Bath would become a Building, buildable in any Neighborhood or in the City Center with appropriate bonuses, but NOT buildable in a tile without access to Fresh Water.

Note that, in keeping with the GS theme of providing both bonuses and maluses, the Aqueduct Improvement could be Pillaged, abruptly cutting off your water supply, Housing, etc. On the other hand, if you're surrounded by friends, or at least a big, friendly army, you could build it considerable length with enough Builder Charges, to build a 'fat' city on a tile that normally wouldn't support growth because of lack of water/housing.

 

[Sostratus]

But that would obviously be an impossible design change

Civ5 BNW's Scramble for Africa scenario included, among other things, a Belgian civ with the ability to move along rivers as if they were roads. This mechanic is certainly possible to do behind the scenes even with between hex movement; they've done it before.

I actually really wish going up along rivers did something for you- for trade or otherwise. I don't see why having the trade route efficiency bonus is restricted to just int'l route gold either. I mean applying it to rivers (making rivers efficient tiles than regular land) would be nice. Extending to all yields + domestic routes would be fun too. Especially tweaking the numbers and letting them be modified by tech advancements (say, steam power makes sea tiles worth 3 instead of 2 efficiency and boosts the cap; globalization boosts the efficiency bonus cap. etc.) Work in airports somehow too, and you've got it all.

 

[Depravo]

We might, therefore, argue that (rarely) a tile normally lacking water access might be programmed with water access to represent springs, natural cisterns or other 'micro' water sources. Such a source might only provide 'water' for, say, the first 2 - 3 population points: not enough to get you a second District, but enough to have a 'strategic' site and requiring a lot more work on your part to build it into a 'major' city - as Athens eventually piped water in from the nearest mountains/hills to the north and northwest.

The game's allowing +1 housing sorta-water on coasts is as far in this direction as we need to go.

 

[acluewithout]

I don't think it's a problem of yields. It is a problem of housing, especially for coastal bias civs. And a problem of automatic tile gains.

Coastal spawns should either have a mountain adjacent or 1 hex away OR adjacency to lake or a river. I don't think most generated maps would have issues granting you one of these.
Also, culture tile gains should either beeline sea resources or go inland for production tiles. I find current coastal culture gains to be simply a bug, because they make no sense whatsoever.

To be fair, yes, its easier but not *that* easy to find good inland city spots either. Most spots are either good for resources, food or production.

Coastal Cities don't really have less housing most of the time, although it is situational.

A Coastal City built on a river mouth starts with full housing. You then get housing from boats (instead of farms) and can potentially build Aqueducts and Dams (although it's possible you may have less ideal locations for these). You might actually have more housing, precisely because you get housing from your lighthouse. It's really only inland cities that have gone nuts with farms etc. that do better.

It's only non-river Coastal Cities that are weaker, but that's fine. They should be.

Civ5 BNW's Scramble for Africa scenario included, among other things, a Belgian civ with the ability to move along rivers as if they were roads. This mechanic is certainly possible to do behind the scenes even with between hex movement; they've done it before.

I actually really wish going up along rivers did something for you- for trade or otherwise. I don't see why having the trade route efficiency bonus is restricted to just int'l route gold either. I mean applying it to rivers (making rivers efficient tiles than regular land) would be nice. Extending to all yields + domestic routes would be fun too. Especially tweaking the numbers and letting them be modified by tech advancements (say, steam power makes sea tiles worth 3 instead of 2 efficiency and boosts the cap; globalization boosts the efficiency bonus cap. etc.) Work in airports somehow too, and you've got it all.

Rivers and trade are represented by the Commercial Hub river Adjacencies. Maybe that doesn't capture every aspect of river trade, but it has the virtue of being simple and easy to understand.

Mucking around with movement on Rivers just seems needlessly complicated. I'd rather see the introduction of slower movement on deserts and tundra first.

The game's allowing +1 housing sorta-water on coasts is as far in this direction as we need to go.

Exactly.

 

[Sostratus]

Rivers and trade are represented by the Commercial Hub river Adjacencies. Maybe that doesn't capture every aspect of river trade, but it has the virtue of being simple and easy to understand.

Mucking around with movement on Rivers just seems needlessly complicated. I'd rather see the introduction of slower movement on deserts and tundra first.

In a thread about how bad coasts are, I think the only real boon given to coastal cities in GS- the early access to the trade efficiency- is 1) not expansive enough and 2) is too binary.
Absolutely in no way should we go back to gold on river tiles or such a thing. Yuck.
Applying trade efficiency to all basic route yields (including domestic) would be a nice buff for coastal cities & empires. As @Boris Gudenuf has probably said in this thread already, before rails you couldn't move big quantities of stuff from place to place without boats of some kind. (And that's exactly what trade routes are doing.)
RE river moves, maybe it's too complex to fit in civ6. Though you could even leverage the named map features and have a policy card that gave extra yields to trade routes with both ends on the same river.

Of course I'm really just shilling for deepened trade route modifiers instead of thinking about coastal cities. Poor coasts.

 

[knighterrant81]

Saint Petersburg is on river Neva, Vladivostok was founded for strategic reasons and Murmansk is on river Tuloma.



History of the Russian region is vastly more complicated than that and their strategic interests in the Baltic and Black Sea are also more complicated than that As far as Russian Emperors were concerned, Constantinople was the final prize. Never achieved, of course.

Obviously an oversimplification, but not that big of one. But even if you're right, WHERE is Constantinople? On the coast.

 

[Depravo]

Obviously an oversimplification, but not that big of one. But even if you're right, WHERE is Constantinople? On the coast.

Yeah, but claiming St Petersburg isn't primarily a coastal city because it's also on the Neva is like claiming Constantinople isn't a coastal city because of the Golden Horn.

 

[Flaxton]

Great ideas here. I can't see why sea tiles would increase production though.

I would:

a) Have harbours get walls, many, many harbours were fortified throughout history - this prevents barbarian pillaging at least - it's not like you can leave a cannon unit in a harbour (actually that would be a good compromise - land units can fight from harbours at full strength)
b) Coastal cites are about trade - remove the commercial/harbour trade limit
c) Here is an idea: Allow harbours to be built on coast-land as well (maybe restrict to river tiles). E.g. London, thus allowing 'coastal' cities with full bonuses slightly inland.

 

[ezysquire]

The lack of production is obviously a biggy but the lack of space to build districts is also a contributing issue. The problem is at its worst with offshore atol cities which are almost entirely pointless to settle because of this. It is the unpacking of the city tiles which has broken coastal positions compared with earlier episodes of the Civ franchise where an island city could still build or buy most buildings.

My idea for a fix would be to make a new shipyards district as an equivalent to the industrial zone as a way to generate production. It would also allow harbour districts to focus on commerce, switching to Great Merchant great people points with Great Admirals moved to the shipyard district. Changes to these districts would allow for a revamp of England's RNDY which would be nice too.

 

[Bibor]

I agree that an additional harbor-type district should exist.
Also, if we are already taking the game into future eras, why is artificial land not in the game? Worker built (can spend 2 charges as far as I'm concerned), can house only buildings or districts. Lets get those "floating" opera houses and science labs!

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think people have hit on what makes the coast cities kind of disappointing--it's the space. In older games where you had 36 tiles to work with, having less not such a big deal because cities rarely get that big anyhow. Now you have to fit in districts and wonders and stuff. Now you can't really make that cool island city even if you're willing to pour lots of resources into it.

 

[Jkchart]

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.

Yeah, when I build a coastal city, I buy what I need as the general rule. Then I do use those for sea trade to make lots of gold, but with rare exceptions, inland cities with hills win in cogs.

 

[Jkchart]

Civ5 BNW's Scramble for Africa scenario included, among other things, a Belgian civ with the ability to move along rivers as if they were roads. This mechanic is certainly possible to do behind the scenes even with between hex movement; they've done it before.

I actually really wish going up along rivers did something for you- for trade or otherwise. I don't see why having the trade route efficiency bonus is restricted to just int'l route gold either. I mean applying it to rivers (making rivers efficient tiles than regular land) would be nice. Extending to all yields + domestic routes would be fun too. Especially tweaking the numbers and letting them be modified by tech advancements (say, steam power makes sea tiles worth 3 instead of 2 efficiency and boosts the cap; globalization boosts the efficiency bonus cap. etc.) Work in airports somehow too, and you've got it all.

I think that the developers of the series (theory, of course) have been trying to force players to interact with the other civs and to not always be on autopilot.

In previous games, we didn't do way too much for gold - now we are forced to build trader units to get better gold yields from international trade routes. whereas in Civ IV, we would add "trade route slots" which automatically got filled and would create unseen connections that gave gold without much thought, all automated.

The same thing has happened with exploration - previous games, we had map trading. In Civ III, we could trade world and territory maps relatively early, and we would know the general layout of most things by the middle of the second era. Civ IV, we could only trade world maps, but only once we researched Paper in the Renaissance, which was a nice compromise, as it meant you didn't figure out everything too early. In Civ V, you had to EXPLORE EVERYTHING to know everything, which was frustrating because it meant you still didn't know all of the tiles by the end of the game a number of times and is incredibly stupid. Civ VI basically follows from V, but allows you to discover all of the land by building earth satellite, which is okay.

There has been a reaction against player automation that has, in some areas, made for a better game, but in others, created more tediousness and annoyances and issues.