a review of the most underappreciated building of CIV: the harbor

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Heroes


Yeah, civ 4 is quite different from civ 3, -- one building I like a lot is forge!

I really have question about your saying on worker techs here. Sheep and pig needs animal husbandry, clam fishing, rice agriculture (Inca starts with this). All these are cheap techs. OTOH, harbor needs compass, which is much more expensive, isn't it? I guess in most cases I will research these 3 worker techs before compass: animal husbandry for production, fishing for many water resources (food and health), agriculture for farm. Certainly, this depends on resources. If I have only 1 or 2 health resources and they are from water, then it makes a lot of sense to build harbor asap. But that's basically for growth, not for trade route (a nice side effect though).

Civ 3 all the way... you've got a highly flexible tech tree, why limit yourself to research the bottom techs first? There's a lot of stuff so interesting to get your hands on early, that it is worth not having animal husbandry...

DeepO

[Heroes]

Originally posted by DeepO

Civ 3 all the way... you've got a highly flexible tech tree, why limit yourself to research the bottom techs first? There's a lot of stuff so interesting to get your hands on early, that it is worth not having animal husbandry...

DeepO

I agree, there is a lot more freedom to reseach order now. Well, I promise to me, in next game, if there is no resource nearby needing animal husbandry, I will skip it and beeline to compass ... Well, I want to compare whether it's more profitable than beeline to writing and build lib.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
I don't believe I've seen it mentioned that Forges also give +1 happy for Gold/Silver/Gems (it took me several games to notice this!!!). Thus if you have 1 or more of those luxuries, and more happy than health problems, the forge gets bumped up on the priority list considerably.

I said two posts above yours that mining gives happy, that implied forges as well, they are the modifiers for the mining happy resources (BTW: note that all resources are grouped like this: forges for mine resources (all happy), granaries for grains, grocer for calender, harbor for seafood, and broadcast tower / eifel for all modern ones). however, when happy resources aren't important to establishing mines, forges certainly aren't

I've been using harbors a lot more since reading this thread but I'm unconvinced. Most small cities only have 1 commerce traderoutes, and they usually stay at 1 with the harbor. Or is trade actually fractional amounts and it could be that under the covers the trade income is indeed being increased by 50%?

Well, rounding is not evened out that I'm aware of. +1 trade routes will still produce +1 after harbors. The same happens for forges:
1-3 hpt: no benefit from a forge
4-7 hpt: 1 hpt benefit from a forge
8-11 hpt: 2 hpt benefit from a forge
etc.

But I do see some other effect in the changement of trade routes themselves, not just adding a bonus to existing trade routes. But maybe that's the ghost in my machine

What difficulty are you playing on DeepO? I suppose at higher difficulty levels the AI bases grow a lot faster and thus make for better trade routes... also what map type/size?

Generally Monarch, however I tried Emperor and succeeded. But for the moment, it's not at my comfort level yet, a bit similar to the difference between Emperor and Deity in Civ3. I think it will change soon enough, but I found that Monarch is the first level where tests actually start to matter. You need to have some kind of grand strategy or you will fail. Prince still lets you succeed while still surfing trough the game, experimenting with things, recovering easily from big mistakes. Monarch is not so forgiving.

As to maps: I play all kind of things, however I've got a personal taste for terra maps. Obviously, you will need a lot of water for harbors: not only for your cities but also enough AI cities to trade to.

[/q]I think I'm still missing something because I'm not really seeing the benefits of harbors to such a degree.
edit: and by that I mean I'm seeing precisely 0 benefit, not just less benefit than other builds. [/QUOTE]
Like I said above: sometimes when you need to get a point across, you need to be extreme in marketing it. I do not believe harbors are the start all, end all solution. However, it took me a while to get convinced that their place is not somewhere in the build queue when there is nothing more to build. You only need to work for them: large cities, lots of AI trades, many trade routes... those are the things that make a harbor focus shine. And I think, shine better than simply going for forges everywhere, without distinction whether a city is going to build units, or commerce.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Heroes


What do you mean? A city with forge gains 2 happiness from gold or silver or gem? That's interesting!

forges add one happy face to all mine-happy resources (gold, gems, silver). It's similar to a market, which does it for the calender resources. Silk and things like that, you'll find the list in the civilopedia

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Heroes


I agree, there is a lot more freedom to reseach order now. Well, I promise to me, in next game, if there is no resource nearby needing animal husbandry, I will skip it and beeline to compass ... Well, I want to compare whether it's more profitable than beeline to writing and build lib.

The tech path is by far driven by your map situation. You only need animal husbandry when you need to build a pasture. If your capital relies on cows to grow, you need it asap (but not before you've got a worker in place which can build the pasture). You only need the wheel for resources you rely on (health, or horses): if you don't need the growth, why connect the cow?

BTW, animal husbandry is expensive: you will be half your way to optics by skipping it.

DeepO

[Heroes]

Originally posted by DeepO

Generally Monarch, however I tried Emperor and succeeded. But for the moment, it's not at my comfort level yet, a bit similar to the difference between Emperor and Deity in Civ3. I think it will change soon enough, but I found that Monarch is the first level where tests actually start to matter. You need to have some kind of grand strategy or you will fail. Prince still lets you succeed while still surfing trough the game, experimenting with things, recovering easily from big mistakes. Monarch is not so forgiving.

Yeah, I remember Sirian says in RB1 SG (in CFC) that civ 4 monarch is like civ 3 emperor, and civ 4 emperor is like civ 3 deity, so don't get fooled by their names! ... I'm eager to finish my current monarch one and try higher levels ...

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Heroes


Yeah, I remember Sirian says in RB1 SG (in CFC) that civ 4 monarch is like civ 3 emperor, and civ 4 emperor is like civ 3 deity, so don't get fooled by their names! ... I'm eager to finish my current monarch one and try higher levels ...

He is right. And he should know, he has been playing this game a lot longer than I have

DeepO

[Heroes]

DeepO, from http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952
I just see that the base cost of compass is 400, and that of writing is 120 ... Currency (1 more trade route, able to trade gold in diplomacy) 400, construction (war elephant and catapult) only 350, literature (heroic epic, great library) only 200. Emm, hard to put compass at a high priority since it's so expensive ...
For example, why not pick currency first? It gives every city 1 more trade route immediately, which is not huge, but doesn't need any building.
Of course, if you dearly need the health from harbor, then compass becomes urgent.

[DeepO]

Currency is nice as well, but look where it's situated: nowhere close to critical techs (except for writing), and not a prerequisite for a while (banking will come later on).

Compass is part of a valuable beeline: everyone will want to see copper and iron asap, probably before starting to trade techs if at all possible. And the other naval techs that have compass as prerequisite are very important as well (and come relatively soon). Think about the race to circumnavigate the world, for instance. He who finds compass early has the best chance by far.

BTW: literature is a good tech, but seeing as it is hardly necessary to go for it (no prereqs), and the great lib is a decent but certainly not overpowered wonder, the cost of the tech is justifiable.

DeepO

[Heroes]

Originally posted by DeepO
Currency is nice as well, but look where it's situated: nowhere close to critical techs (except for writing), and not a prerequisite for a while (banking will come later on).

Compass is part of a valuable beeline: everyone will want to see copper and iron asap, probably before starting to trade techs if at all possible. And the other naval techs that have compass as prerequisite are very important as well (and come relatively soon). Think about the race to circumnavigate the world, for instance. He who finds compass early has the best chance by far.

BTW: literature is a good tech, but seeing as it is hardly necessary to go for it (no prereqs), and the great lib is a decent but certainly not overpowered wonder, the cost of the tech is justifiable.

DeepO

Well, if I can't control the whole continent, how much use is the +1 navigation movement? It seems to me that heroic epic (from literature) is of very high priority. Currency is also critical, because in pure tech trade (with only alphabet) you often cannot get the full value back. So basically, I would take compass first only if badly needing harbor for health.

[Krill]

Heh, there are few, if any, right answers. I've had a look at the harbour in my latest game, where every single city of mine but my capital is coastal. It gave me alot of gold, I have to admit, and I have not beelined to it at all...far from it, Lit in 4, Compass in 6, got music first...Now to go kill that ***** Izzy...

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Heroes


Well, if I can't control the whole continent, how much use is the +1 navigation movement? It seems to me that heroic epic (from literature) is of very high priority. Currency is also critical, because in pure tech trade (with only alphabet) you often cannot get the full value back. So basically, I would take compass first only if badly needing harbor for health.

Heroic epic can be critical. A major nuance It's actually rare where you need to build it before harbors, you can easily build it later on.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Krill
Heh, there are few, if any, right answers. I've had a look at the harbour in my latest game, where every single city of mine but my capital is coastal. It gave me alot of gold, I have to admit, and I have not beelined to it at all...far from it, Lit in 4, Compass in 6, got music first...Now to go kill that ***** Izzy...

Another convert

DeepO

[khumak]

The main benefit for granaries in the early game is that for high food cities you can pop rush buildings and quickly be right back up to the "happiness cap". It's not worth it once you can get your cities up past around 8 or 9 but when you have a cap of 6 or so I find that I can build buildings roughly twice as fast as usual. If I don't plan on pop rushing then granaries are very low priority for me until I start having health issues.

The other case to be made for granaries is for very low food cities that otherwise just take forever to grow but if you have a city in such a bad location that you can't build some farms to get decent food production then you probably shouldn't have built that city.

[Blake]

Here's my observations on Harbors after playing with them and observing.

The "Good trade route attraction" effect indeed exists, and is at the expense of other cities. In other words, the harbor cities get better trade routes and other cities get poorer trade routes. There is very much net benefit to this though, it's like the harbor city gets +7 trade income and the rest of your empire loses a total of 4. The net gain would be +3, but amplified by buildings and it's more.

So assuming there are a certain number of "Good" trade routes available, these trade routes go to the Harbor cities first. But once the good trade routes are used up, there's no real benefit from having more harbors. If your empire is large there are very real diminshing returns on the trade income from additional harbors. Most of the benefit may very well come from only 2-3 harbors, in your largest cities.

If my observations and assessments are correct, then there is a very real benefit to building a harbor asap in your largest city, the harbor will attract the best trade routes and be an ideal candidate for an Acadamy.

The value of harbors in smaller cities is very, very questionable.

Have the mechanisms of trade routes been determined? To me it appears that they are dependent primarly on city population and not particullary on commerce or anything else. In one game my Capital was terraformed all farms/mines, yet had the highest commerce of any city due to over 70 trade income. My capital was huge, about 26.

I'm probably going to have to test this. What I suspect from intutition is that harbors simply increase the population of the city by 50% for purposes of trade income and trade route ranking, that seems like the easiest way to cause both the trade route value increase and the "trade attraction" (from a programming perspective).