Harbour and City

[Kropotkin]

I can't see that someone has mentioned this idea before.:

You have all been there. It doesn't really matter what version of the civ-series we're talking about. You've found a good spot for your next city for your growing empire. There's only one problem; Either you place the new city out in the inland where it will get good access to a lot of good tiles. Or you chose to place it at the coast. This will probably mean the city will lose some of those fertile tiles it would really benefit from, but on the other hand, now the city can build ships -that might be vital for further colonisation and/or control of the seas- and also the harbour. It can drive me crazy at times when I discover that I've placed almost all of my good cities inland, thus dampering my chances of going out on the high seas.

Apparently, this isn't just a problem in civilization. For example, the founders of Rome probably didn't think the problem of getting grain and goods from all over the empire to the great city 500 years or so down the line. Thus the the town of Ostia became the port for the great city.

In civ3 we have the colony-concept. Even if few seems to be using it that much. But wouldn't it be a good idea to be able to build ports for cities that doesn't have a natural one? I mean, we already have the option of buildning airfields. The port would be built with the use of a settler or, alternatively, as a 'special' city improvement by the portless city. The port would need some defence and all sea-related city improvements of the city would be located there. For example harbour, docks and offshore platform. The port wouldn't be possible to place far from the real city, I'd say within the normal city radius, but the cities production could be used to build ships and sea related city improvements.

[wrylachlan]

Re: Harbour and City

[Trifna]

I think it is a good idea. I'd propose that you find where it go into the List and put the idea there

http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=105465

But I have one comment. Isn't it that:
1- the cities grow larger and larger, thus reaching the sea?
2- New cities are created to be next to the sea (harbors aren't alone with nothing around)

So I think that in fact that it's about the extension of cities and that once the water is close enough to a city, it can build a harbor. Other scenarios seem less probable with the costs, and alot less frequent I'd guess.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

This could be merged with the idea we discussed at about have pseudo states/regions in an empire.

Say you plant the city of Metropolis but it isn't on the coast. It could have a colony on the coast that counts as a harbor, perhaps even being able to work a tile or two itself.

Maybe the central city would then have an expanded tile working map to include its colonies or suburbs?

[Sandman]

Flexible city radii would solve this problem. End the tyranny of the 21-square blocks!

[lajzar]

Tile improvement: City port. Buildable either by workers or by civil engineering a la CTP.

Allows ships to enter the tile, acts as a part of the city for combat purposes. Allows city to build improvements that require sea-based buildings and units.

Later replaced by: Suburb. Adds 2 to maximum population. If a suburb is next to sea, provides all benefits above.

[lajzar]

On second thoughts, consider the map scale. With the giga patch, you have 10,000 tiles at most. The Earth's surface is 515 million km2. So each tile represents about 51,500 km2, or a square about 226 km on a side. Realistically, a city 226 km from the coast shouldn't be able to use that coast, end of story.

Rome was a mere 10 km from the coast. At that distance, it is on the coast for all practical purposes on a civ scale. Are there any cities that from from the coast that have a primary reliance on sea transport? I can't think of any.

If we allow fisheries and oil rigs as specific terrain improvements rather than city buildings (CTP style), that would remove the last major objection with cities 1 tile inland.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by lajzar
On second thoughts, consider the map scale. With the giga patch, you have 10,000 tiles at most. The Earth's surface is 515 million km2. So each tile represents about 51,500 km2, or a square about 226 km on a side. Realistically, a city 226 km from the coast shouldn't be able to use that coast, end of story.

That argument just doesn't hold water (heh). The scale of civ tiles isn't meant to be in any way realistic. Since optimal city placement is five tiles apart, by your calculations that would be 1130km. If you can find a european city that doesn't have another major city for 1130km in any direction I'll give you a cookie!

On a side note, I think a lot of this talk about somehow connecting it to the concept of states/provinces, or making it a worker action makes what is a simple idea needlessly complicated.

I think the there are 2 obvious and simple ways to implement this:
1)If there is a road from the city to a coastal tile within the cities radius, Harbor appears as a possibility in the cities build options (but at a higher cost, maybe 2x). If the city begins building a harbor, a ghost/outline of a harbor appears on the coastal tile. When the harbor is finished, it fills in and the city can now build naval vessels. The downside of this method is that if you have a city with 2 different oceans within its radius, you need to create a mechanism for the player to specify where she wants the harbor.

2) Workers build harbors the way they build fortresses. If a worker built harbor is in a cities radius it can build ships. The downside of using workers is that worker actions don't require shields, so why would you build on the coast when you can build 1 tile in, let your worker build the harbor while you do something else? One possible way around this is to have a minimum time to build, and at the end of the build time the worker is used up like a colony.

[hey, that gets me thinking... do you think all improvements that use up the worker, like colonies, outposts, etc. should work that way? A build time, then use up the worker???]

To make sure that there is still a need for coastal cities, I would suggest that stand alone harbors do not produce veteran units the way cities actually on the coast do. And no naval wonders either.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by lajzar
On second thoughts, consider the map scale. With the giga patch, you have 10,000 tiles at most. The Earth's surface is 515 million km2. So each tile represents about 51,500 km2, or a square about 226 km on a side. Realistically, a city 226 km from the coast shouldn't be able to use that coast, end of story.

Rome was a mere 10 km from the coast. At that distance, it is on the coast for all practical purposes on a civ scale. Are there any cities that from from the coast that have a primary reliance on sea transport? I can't think of any.

If we allow fisheries and oil rigs as specific terrain improvements rather than city buildings (CTP style), that would remove the last major objection with cities 1 tile inland.

Exactly - on any map in civ, Rome would be on the coast.

[patcon]

The solution is ... MARINE ENGINEERS.
How you get them:
*available after Amphibious Warfare.
*buildable only by coastal cities with harbors or possibly some other sea-related city improvement (such as a PORT, increases sea trade, tied to Navigation), to reflect the training and skills they would need
*high shield cost + pop cost to build, to reflect the cost and time of the major marine projects they can do
What they can do:
*1MP land/coastal water unit (100% loss in sea/ocean)
*loadable/airliftable
*perform any worker action on land
*terraform (takes time, like worker actions, but cannot be finished before the end of the turn - no dumping 24 MEs into a tile for an immediate terraform)
-coastal water into marsh (landfill)
-grassland with access to water into marsh (flooding)
-marsh into coastal water (dredging)
*build (uses up the ME, like building a fort, maybe require more than 1 ME for certain items)
-BRIDGE - allows land units to cross over coastal water (maybe allow workers to then add road and even RR to bridge)
-BEACHEAD - allows transports to enter (at the cost of all remaining movement) a land square to unload units (at a cost of 1 MP for the land units) which can then immediately move and attack with any remaining MPs {note: the creation of a beachhead destroys all other tile improvements}
-CANAL - really a very expensive, very dangerous terraform - turns a flat land tile into a combination land/coastal water tile - turns inland cities into coastal cities, allows movement of both land and water units (perhaps 2 or 3 MPs for water units) - produces shields and trade, but no food
-HARBOR COLONY - effectively a harbor for trade/resource purposes for any colony or city connected to it by a road

Perhaps we could even have a less-capable unit, the MARINE WORKER, available earlier to create HARBOR COLONY.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by patcon

Nope.

[lajzar]

Also nope.

For sea tile improvements (and land tiles, but thats an aside), Id rather have a CTP style apprach to improvements.

The canal looks like a viable tile improvement though. Better than my idea for having a separate cityport tile improvement or cities. I'd make the following placement restrictions on it:

can only be built next to a sea tile
can only be built on grass/plains/desert (stable flat ground).