I'd have to say the terrain improvment Civ3 needs most is CANALS.

[Action]

Canals.
We can sort of build them by making a city at spots where one tile seperates bodies of water. But that is often quite unsatisfactory. Additionally, there is the other problem of cities which contain salt water in their city radius but are not on the coast. They have no way to improve these tiles. This is pretty unrealistic, as well as annoying from a gameplay perspective.

So, the addition of a canal tile improvement would kill two birds with one stone.

But, a canal improvement would obviously need to be strictly limited or it would get unhistorical.
Limitations:
1) Should take a long long time to build.
2) Cannot be built adjacent to another canal (possibly some modern era tech could allow two tile canals but thats questionable.
3) Doesn't provide any extra food sheilds or trade. The canal tile should still be worked normally IMHO. Although now a city could build a harbor and similar improvements, if the canal connected it to the ocean.

This would avoid unrealistic canal proliferation, but canals would still be very useful in two major circumstances.

First use. Connecting two bodies of water; sometimes building a city would be undesireable, impossible, and sometimes you can't connect them using just the one city. See Suez, Panama canals. On huge maps I feel its both semi realistic and quite neccesary to allow two tile linkages between bodies of water.

Second use. Allowing cities which are one tile inland access to the water, allowing them to build harbors and other improvements which make ocean tiles give a decent amount of resources. This would almost be a different improvement than a canal, but from a gameplay perspective they are identical. This is part canal part port facility. If a large city is near the ocean but not built directly adjacent there is nothing stopping them from building a slightly seperate port facility and/or a channel allowing better access. There are tons of examples of this, I believe even ancient Athens did this.

I for one would like to see canals in the next Civ 3 expansion pack, what do you guys say?

[theNiceOne]

I think its a good idea. Your idea has clear goals that would improve gameplay and is simple to implement - unlike most ideas.

[asleepathewheel]

I like the idea of canals generally, however I have a few reservations, at least about their implementation as you propose.

1. I don't care for the idea of allowing inland ciites to have harbors etc. Kinda takes the strategy out of city placement for me. I like to be forced to make a choice between being able to build ships and having a cow, this option would take away that choice. Also a tile is quite large as compared to RL land, so not sure it woudl be good to use as a harbor.

2. How would you implement control of the canal? In RL, one must have permission to cross the canal. In the game, would you only allow those with ROPs to cross? Would the canal be impassible or would it be possible to enter, but as an act of war? What happens to the units in the canal if its destroyed (or can you destroy it?) As an aside, and combined with number 1, could you be hit by Berzerks and Marines via the canal?

3. I think Firaxis was looking into a canal wonder or something similar. I don't know why it was implemented, but it seems to me that it would be difficult to get the AI to use the canal worker or wonder effectively at all. Frankly, the worker does a bad job of mining/irrigating/roading as it is, I'm not sure it could canal at all. Even if it could, there is no way it could place canals as strategically as humans could.

Despite how the above sounds, I am in favor of canals in the game, I too have been quite annoyed before at a small bridge I can't cross. I'm just not sure how they should be implemented and if the AI could use them (which is an issue in decisions of Firaxis). There are several threads in the archives here, on canals, that have discussed these issues, IIRC, you might want to check them out.

[Datajack Franit]

What about river-river canals?

[Ijuin]

In order to prevent the over-use of Canals, I would suggest the following restrictions on them:

1.) Canals become available with Engineering

2.) Canals may only be built on tiles adjacent to lakes or seas.

3.) Building a Canal on a tile "uses up" a Worker just like building a Colony, Outpost, Radar Tower, or Airbase.

4.) Canals can be built on the second tile away from water with the Industrialization advance, but ONLY if there is already an existing Canal adjacent to it.

5.) Since Canals are treated as tile improvements (like roads), they cannot be used by foreigners without an ROP if they fall within your territory.

Benefits of Canals:

1.) Ships may travel along them at a movement cost of 1.

2.) Friendly land units may travel along them at a movement cost of 1/3.

3.) Canals that connect a city to water count as coastal, and may build coastal improvements and ship units.

Note that Canals would NOT provide access to fresh water for irrigation--the water may be salt.

[ruby_maser]

I still say, if there are gonna be canals, there need to be bridges as well. And I think the best way prevent proliferation is to make them take an insanely long time to build even if you stack workers on the task.

I was watching a program where they stated that serious discussion has gone on about bridging the Strait of Gibraltar and even an "International Peace Bridge" going 55 miles across the Bering Sea to link up Alaska and Russia. So, this stuff IS feasible.

I don't think monumental bridge- or canal-building should come as early as Engineering though. The Suez and the Panama Canals are both 20th century achievements. And the earliest suspension bridge to utilize steel and usher in the age of truely longspan bridge constuction didn't come on the scene until 1883.

[edit]: more than just upgrading unit movement, I like the idea that these structures would be targets and would need to be well defended in times of war and peace. The amount of strategy they would add to gameplay would be the real bonus for me.

[Fosse]

What if the ability for cities on one tile land bridges to act as a canal is removed? First of all... it's ridiculous that one can have effective canals in place in the ancient age, when major canals are only an advent of the last hundred years or so.

Ships can enter the city from either coast, but can only exit on the same body of water that they entered from. So a Panama city with an east and a west body of water would still be a port for both bodies, but it wouldn't allow teleporting navies between two oceans.

That is... until the city builds a canal improvment.

That's right, make it not even a worker job. That solves the problem of preventing it from being over done, as nobody ever has a huge number of cities on 1-tile land bridges.

No historic problems, as you can make it available with industrialization or some such tech.

It makes a canal a more strategic investment, and no matter how many workers you have for stacking, the job is going to cost an arm and a leg.

Also... the AI will be just as able to use it as a human, assuming they get a city into the right place to begin with.

[Kramsib]

Oh yes, I have been asking for canals since Civ III appeared, but there was no answer.

¡¡¡ WE NEED CANALS !!!

[Shr3dZ]

I would perfer canals only usage to be to allow boats to cross one land square without the need of a city like we do now. The sound of creating multiple canals together to join a city to the ocean doesnt sound good, like someone already mentioned it takes a little strategy away from placing cities.
As for the bridge idea, I was thinking after Engineering land units should be able to cross one 'coast' square and possibly with a small wonder, you could cross two 'coast' squares.
As for the time it takes to build these, Id say 15turns or so, or however many turns 10-20yrs is. And they can be destroyed by airplanes & boats, so keep yer cruise missles/air superiority close!

[Carver]

We need canals, up to three spaces I'd say. And I like the idea of bridges too. It would be nice to connect small islands to the mainland... maybe long causways, like those in the Florida Keys, up to something like 6 spaces.

[lateralis]

I think this discussion should also include the strategic and industrial use of rivers. Yes, rivers already provide the ability to grow beyond size 6 as well as extra commerce (representing the trade that occured on rivers) but shouldn't 2 cities connected by a river be effectively connected? I realize that the scale of the maps we see in civ means that watching a galley traversing a river would look a little funny, but still I think this is an important part of this discussion. Trade on the great lakes takes place via rivers and canals.

for example lets look at marla's world map. If I am egypt and build my first city on the nile and then build my second further south, but still on the nile, and I connect one of those cities to a luxury, it would make sense that they be connected for the purposes of that luxury. don't you think? also, I believe that a number of shipyards throughout history have been located within rivers that let out to the sea but were not neccessarily on the sea themselves (maybe I'm wrong but I swear I've read about this concept) In this way, a canal would be kinda like an artificial river (which, for all intents and purposes, the panama canal is.)

In order to move UNITS along rivers (as opposed to roads) I think some sort of transport should be required. maybe there could be a tech somewhat before map-making, on the first tech level, like canoing or junk-boat building. This would make a river's strategic importance greatly increase in the ancient age (this tech could also be what unlocks the ability to connect cites via rivers for happiness and cultural purposes) . military road and river networks would provide a great strategic advantage to the smart player. ooh ooh ooh! and if you unload in a city, you could retain movement points, but if you unload between cities you lose your movement for that turn. also these units (the transports) could only move in fresh water, they would sink in saltwater or just be prohibited from moving into salt water.

to bring it back to canals, I agree that they should be incredibly expensive in to build and maybe requiring the loss of a worker would be a good idea. but all of these possibiliities (for rivers) could also be worked into the model for canals. In this way, a canal could be built to link 2 rivers later in the game to allow (possibly upgraded) freshwater transports to move even further. Think of the missisippi river. boats move up and down it for miles within the continental US. why can't this be in CIV? I admit, the usufulness of this movement would be lost after RR but a guy can dream can't he?

What do you think?

lateralis

[Tuberski]

I like how everybody says that canals should take a LONG time to build.

How long do you think it will take people to open up the editor and change the amount of turns it takes to build?

Length of time is not a detterent to building a lot of canals.

ACK!

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Tuberski
I like how everybody says that canals should take a LONG time to build.

How long do you think it will take people to open up the editor and change the amount of turns it takes to build?

Length of time is not a detterent to building a lot of canals.

ACK!

I would agree, I would prefer it if they were either built by the city, like other improvements, or by using up a worker, to illustrate the high human cost of bulding canals.

[Trifna]

Erm... with alot of tech, should we also be able to change river's course?... And should hydroelectricity need rivers so we could change a course and use it?? And I agree canals would be a good thing.

Since we're tralkign about rivers, maybe even the electricity of a city, if powerful anough, could serve for some other cities too...

[Trifna]

And I guess there should not be limits on how many tiles bridges and canals can cover. Instead, it should consider what type of tile it crosses. Canal in mountain? Forget. Bridge in middle of Atlantic? Forget. The price and time taken would be dependant of distance and things like this.