New Idea - Canals which are built by workers...

[Eagle Scream]

Make them 100 turns to build and no shorter than 10 turns per square no matter how many workers you have working the site. That way you can have ships move across continents to lakes etc or move from one body of water to another even when there is a two spaces wide spot of land in the way.

When a canal is built on a piece of land that land cannot be pillaged (unless hit by a nuclear device). However the locks can be damaged instead. This would mean the canal cannot be used until fixed by workers (another 100 turns to remove and fix the damaged locks).

[alms66]

Not exactly a new idea, but a good one nonetheless.

[Urban Ranger]

There's already a thread on canals

[Shogun Gunner]

100 turns! That's one expensive worker improvement!

[alms66]

This is completely off topic but, since this thread will die anyway...
I just noticed your sig UR (I don't get out of the Clash forums much ), what event on 7/7/1937 are you referring to exactly?

[Shogun Gunner]

Japan invaded China starting the Sino-Japanese war. The incident that started the hostilities was referred to as "Marco Polo Bridge Incident"

Lugouqiao Incident

[alms66]

That's what I thought, I just wanted a confirmation.

[Max Sinister]

100 turns, but shortable to 10? OK, cutting a jungle costs, how much, 24 turns? If you accept the latter the first doesn't sound that bad, too.

[Dauphin]

Canals are always desirable.

100 turns seems a reasonable length of time, but I think the tech required should be fairly late in the tech tree. At least the Industrial era.

[trev]

I do not believe that there can be a benefit comparable to the cost you are proposing and therefore it would be an unused gimmick. Any idea with a high cost must give a large benefit to be usable

[Eagle Scream]

The idea itself is a good one, and as you said it is expensive however it is worth it who play 'centuries' beyond when the game score is done. I love to play HUGE worlds with continents and get into huge wars at the hardest level where it takes 100 years to take just one city (and where more nucs are used in the game then exist in the real world :P). So when you have over 200 battleships alone, having the ability to build a PANAMA canal or SUEZ canal becomes a very very valuable tool when at war and having to move your forces between your strategic cities (which of course are far away from each other).

[Dauphin]

A number of games I'm in I have 30 workers often they end up sitting around on there arses after upgrading all the territory. Other games with larger empires I have 60-70+ workers. Combine them to build a canal and it would take just a handful of turns.

How is that too expensive for a device that would save your ships 6 or 7 turns travel the long way around.

[Xorbon]

To keep canals from being too powerful, perhaps they should be limited to being built adjacent to water tiles. That way, an isthmus 2 tiles wide could be crossed by a canal, but one three tiles wide couldn't. This rule would allow fresh water lakes to be connected to oceans/seas or other fresh water lakes, as long as the lake is no more than 2 tiles away from the other body of water. The purpose of this would be to keep canals from crossing huge continents, which IMO would look ridiculous.

[Naokaukodem]

Heavy navy can't pass through normal canals.

[Grandpa Troll]

Glad to see this idea is up and running aground in a second thread