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Surely everyone's been there - an early warrior-scout is heading deep into the tundra and ice, or up a thin peninsular 'pan handle', and there's a choice between pressing on to the sea, or just turning around and going somewhere more interesting.
One thing I'll be bearing in mind next time I'm doing that, is that the potentially lucrative coastal trade routes are dependent on mapping a coastline between the trading civs.
Early rushers may travel far for their prey. If you want to keep your resource-rich conquests, despite maintenance costs, and you're a long way from home, it's easier to trade by sea than build a road. Mapping the coastline can make the difference if you've got distant holdings worth keeping.
This may all be obvious, but it was brought home to me in a Quecha rush game, where I took a distant city, built replacement Quechas and took some more cities. Soon research was sub-50% and I needed income. Of the 3 neighbours on the continent, the one I hadn't hit had good cities to trade with, but all the tendrils of the continent made it too diversionary to coast-walk before homing in on the first victim. Besides, there were also mountain blockages which stopped exploration.
In the end it took a ship to both open up the trade routes with Egypt, and to allow goods back and forth between the capital and the young empire.
So for distance-rushers and/or early coastal traders - the sooner you can map the coast the better, and you might even want to bring a boat!
One thing I'll be bearing in mind next time I'm doing that, is that the potentially lucrative coastal trade routes are dependent on mapping a coastline between the trading civs.
Early rushers may travel far for their prey. If you want to keep your resource-rich conquests, despite maintenance costs, and you're a long way from home, it's easier to trade by sea than build a road. Mapping the coastline can make the difference if you've got distant holdings worth keeping.
This may all be obvious, but it was brought home to me in a Quecha rush game, where I took a distant city, built replacement Quechas and took some more cities. Soon research was sub-50% and I needed income. Of the 3 neighbours on the continent, the one I hadn't hit had good cities to trade with, but all the tendrils of the continent made it too diversionary to coast-walk before homing in on the first victim. Besides, there were also mountain blockages which stopped exploration.
In the end it took a ship to both open up the trade routes with Egypt, and to allow goods back and forth between the capital and the young empire.
So for distance-rushers and/or early coastal traders - the sooner you can map the coast the better, and you might even want to bring a boat!