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So far, I have heared very little comments on the harbor, which I find a huge shame. There might be situations where its importance is reduced, but overall the harbor is one of the most crucial buildings, and cheap as well too! So allow me to start the discussion by telling what it is I like so much about them.
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Harbors, for those not familiar with the game yet, give you 50% more commerce from trade routes, while also giving you an extra health for every seafood resource you've got. They normally cost 80 hammers, which is reduced to 40 for expansionist civs.
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Let me first say there are situations where harbors are near irrelevant. pangaea maps, maps where you have reached near dominance (so there are no large foreign cities to trade too), and games where you are running mercantilism are the obvious examples. For these, the following does not apply.
Most other situations, though, the harbor is a better building to construct than a granary, library, market, grocer, aquaduct, and even in most situations a bank or a uni. Sometimes, it can also be a lot more important than a courthouse. In many instances is a harbor the first thing I construct in a new city, directly followed by a courthouse or granary.
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The reason is the following: in many cities, your trade routes make up for half of the city commerce. If you gain 50% of that budget, this means a harbor will give you 25% more commerce in the city. This is before any other modifiers apply, and also before the slider is taken into effect.
So, a city with 20 commerce, 10 from trade and 10 from tiles gets to 25 commerce with a harbor. That is +5.
A library in the same city has less of an effect: a library gives 25% extra beakers (so not commerce!). Assume you're running at 70% research, the example becomes
20 commerce * 70% gives 14 bpt. add a library, and you gain 20 commerce * 1.25 * 0.70 = 17 bpt. An increase of 3.
You can see that, because of the slider, you will need to build both a library and a market to get the same effect as a harbor. Two buildings instead of one. You do get culture, though, which a harbor won't give you.
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Add to this the very nice health benefit (any map where you can build harbors will have seafood resources), and the multiplication in bonusses: harbors are one of the only situations where a bonus is not first added to other modifiers, but directly multiplies. a lib plus a uni give an extra 75% beakers, while a harbor and a uni give 87.5% more beakers in the worst case. With the slider, the effect is even larger).
So, even if you need to build a lib first (because of culture, e.g.), build a harbor before building a uni. It will cost a lot less, and gains you more. Build a uni after the harbor completes
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So, are there specific strategies surrounding harbors? Oh yes
a no-brainer: expansionist leaders get half cost harbors. Plus, they will most likely have larger pops in their cities, as granaries are also dirt cheap, and they gain an extra 2 pop to start with. Larger cities means more chance of getting good trade routes... it all escalates together in a total focus on harbors.
So, try to beeline for compass, instead of going for currency first. The earlier you get those harbors up, the more benefit you will get from them. Currency is of course a very powerful tech too, but everyone will intuitively go for it for the markets and extra trade routes. The harbors is often forgotten. And in many cases it's very close: if you go the military line early on, you won't get to alphabet, mathematics, and currency easily. You will have iron working, though, direct prerequisite for the compass. Grabbing that before going for engineering can make all the difference in your game.
Further, the best possible wonder is the great lighthouse. If you are going to beeline for the compass, you nearly pass it... and if you focus on it, you will nearly always beat the AI to it, even at higher difficulty levels. Talk about a long term investment: 2 more trade routes up to corporation, which together with harbors can mean your coastal cities produce most of your empire's commerce, mostly coming from one building: its harbor. In many cases I find myself holding of on corporation, just to get more trade coming in from my cities.
This leads to another thing: If you have the opportunity because of lots of coast, it is nearly always better to specialise your cities into land cities with food/production, and coastal cities with commerce. Harbors only increase that importance of coastal cities, and makes it less necessary to add cottages on those few land tiles they are getting. So you can have a near-productive coastal city, which has enough hammers to build all commerce heavy buildings, mostly relying on sea tiles and trade routes for its commerce. Of course, later in the game towns get so important that you'll want more than a couple of them in any empire, but early on you often have no choice: you need production and growth to get you up and running fast. Harbors give you that commerce without eating up tiles, and thus hammers.
So... I hope I can win over some converts to my enthousiasm for harbors!
DeepO
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Harbors, for those not familiar with the game yet, give you 50% more commerce from trade routes, while also giving you an extra health for every seafood resource you've got. They normally cost 80 hammers, which is reduced to 40 for expansionist civs.
----------------------------
Let me first say there are situations where harbors are near irrelevant. pangaea maps, maps where you have reached near dominance (so there are no large foreign cities to trade too), and games where you are running mercantilism are the obvious examples. For these, the following does not apply.
Most other situations, though, the harbor is a better building to construct than a granary, library, market, grocer, aquaduct, and even in most situations a bank or a uni. Sometimes, it can also be a lot more important than a courthouse. In many instances is a harbor the first thing I construct in a new city, directly followed by a courthouse or granary.
----------------------------
The reason is the following: in many cities, your trade routes make up for half of the city commerce. If you gain 50% of that budget, this means a harbor will give you 25% more commerce in the city. This is before any other modifiers apply, and also before the slider is taken into effect.
So, a city with 20 commerce, 10 from trade and 10 from tiles gets to 25 commerce with a harbor. That is +5.
A library in the same city has less of an effect: a library gives 25% extra beakers (so not commerce!). Assume you're running at 70% research, the example becomes
20 commerce * 70% gives 14 bpt. add a library, and you gain 20 commerce * 1.25 * 0.70 = 17 bpt. An increase of 3.
You can see that, because of the slider, you will need to build both a library and a market to get the same effect as a harbor. Two buildings instead of one. You do get culture, though, which a harbor won't give you.
--------------------------
Add to this the very nice health benefit (any map where you can build harbors will have seafood resources), and the multiplication in bonusses: harbors are one of the only situations where a bonus is not first added to other modifiers, but directly multiplies. a lib plus a uni give an extra 75% beakers, while a harbor and a uni give 87.5% more beakers in the worst case. With the slider, the effect is even larger).
So, even if you need to build a lib first (because of culture, e.g.), build a harbor before building a uni. It will cost a lot less, and gains you more. Build a uni after the harbor completes
-------------------------------
So, are there specific strategies surrounding harbors? Oh yes
a no-brainer: expansionist leaders get half cost harbors. Plus, they will most likely have larger pops in their cities, as granaries are also dirt cheap, and they gain an extra 2 pop to start with. Larger cities means more chance of getting good trade routes... it all escalates together in a total focus on harbors.
So, try to beeline for compass, instead of going for currency first. The earlier you get those harbors up, the more benefit you will get from them. Currency is of course a very powerful tech too, but everyone will intuitively go for it for the markets and extra trade routes. The harbors is often forgotten. And in many cases it's very close: if you go the military line early on, you won't get to alphabet, mathematics, and currency easily. You will have iron working, though, direct prerequisite for the compass. Grabbing that before going for engineering can make all the difference in your game.
Further, the best possible wonder is the great lighthouse. If you are going to beeline for the compass, you nearly pass it... and if you focus on it, you will nearly always beat the AI to it, even at higher difficulty levels. Talk about a long term investment: 2 more trade routes up to corporation, which together with harbors can mean your coastal cities produce most of your empire's commerce, mostly coming from one building: its harbor. In many cases I find myself holding of on corporation, just to get more trade coming in from my cities.
This leads to another thing: If you have the opportunity because of lots of coast, it is nearly always better to specialise your cities into land cities with food/production, and coastal cities with commerce. Harbors only increase that importance of coastal cities, and makes it less necessary to add cottages on those few land tiles they are getting. So you can have a near-productive coastal city, which has enough hammers to build all commerce heavy buildings, mostly relying on sea tiles and trade routes for its commerce. Of course, later in the game towns get so important that you'll want more than a couple of them in any empire, but early on you often have no choice: you need production and growth to get you up and running fast. Harbors give you that commerce without eating up tiles, and thus hammers.
So... I hope I can win over some converts to my enthousiasm for harbors!
DeepO
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