Lake and navigable river tiles are too underpowered relative to other tiles

[wheat fable]

This came up in a discussion in another thread, but I think deserves it's own feedback thread. These tiles, I think most would agree, are generally weaker then other tiles. There are fewer things you can build on them, they take up space, and the only real value they hold beyond having access to a couple for the small number of structures is in adjacencies, which more incentivizes you to have them outside of your borders on the edge then inside them. This problem also exists with ocean tiles - there is no niche for a high water city to exploit.

This feels weird both on balance reasons, and history-representing reasons - especially the freshwater tile sources are the lifeblood of most real civilizations. They are built around lakes, around rivers, around water. That not translating into the game is strange, and I believe steps should be taken to make these tiles more beneficial and give unique things that can be done with them. The only way this is really represented in game is the freshwater mechanic, which only matters for your city center and thus you want to do the minimum possible amount to achieve it without wasting space inside your city on otherwise useless water tiles.

There's lots of ways to do that, and I think others putting their ideas in would help. The one that is most obvious to me is to add a couple new resources, intentionally tuned to be stronger then most resources, that are exclusive to lakes and/or navigable rivers. What those are doesn't matter, but part of what makes these tiles weak is that they have no resources. It makes it awkward to route rural tiles through them and their lack removes a potential push towards settling on them. There's lots of other things you could do - maybe navigable rivers and lakes should give an adjacency bonus to nearby tiles? - but in some combination of ways, I think it's important to encourage their active use, instead of avoiding them as much as you can get away with.

Another thought - mountains have a similar (though more thematically appropriate) issue of being "dead tiles" bolstered by their adjacency. But when mountains and navigable water tiles are adjacent to each other, they both waste each other's limited potential. I don't have a solution to that in mind, but some way to actively make use of the situation of say, mountains bordering a river in a scenario like this would be great instead of the whole area just being dead space:

[dark knot]

agree we need strong nav river resources to incentivize players growing on them more

[polar bronze]

I like the idea of new resources and buildings, but I also want to add that the tech tree doesn’t do water any favors.

Sailing costs 15 science more than Pottery or Animal Husbandry, and doesn’t unlock any techs in tier 2.

Even with good reason to use water tiles (e.g. Egypt), going Sailing first feels pretty bad.

[wheat fable]

That's a good point - i was hoping this could be an all kinds of ideas on how to improve the broad balance of water-focused strategies

[dark knot]

lowering sailing science cost and introducing a sailing mastery with prod on fishing boats maybe?

[distant dew]

Not that I wouldn't want some navigable river or lake buffs but one of the things with them is they are strategically important, which means they can be worthwhile even without having great yields themselves.

[wheat fable]

This is true, but they aren't strategically important "in bulk". You tend to want access to 2ish tiles of them to access the sea and build the buildings you need, there's no real viable niche to fill for a city that has a lot of navigable river

[dark knot]

ideally u could end up with 2 or 3 prod per tile (depending on reefs) if u get the boatprod pantheon consistently

i could see an satisfying buildorder with getting the sailing mastery and mysticism both at the same time, making growing on water in coastal cities viable

u would still get 1/2 prod less than a mine pottery masonry start, but the food would make it balanced imo

[tough shadow]

One thing I would also like, is if there was a second warehouse for them in Exploration. Gristmills help farms in Exploration, but theres only the Quay in Antiquity. Could Gristmills also work for fishing boats?

[polar bronze]

I really want a second warehouse + a second building in Modern. It drives me insane that you have an odd number of buildings so there will always be 1 district-not-quarter

[dusky iron]

Are fishing boats bad? Do they need the help?

I don't think they should give them another warehouse just for "symmetry".
Asymmetry in design is a good thing.
Also claypits don't get a exploration warehouse.

[tough shadow]

Honestly? Yes fishing boats are bad. Farms at least have the early food, and can then be converted into warehouses or buildings, whereas you can do max 2 for fishing boats to convert

[wheat fable]

They aren't good at any point other then late antiquity when they've gotten a few flood bonuses if they are on rivers They fall off later in the game. And cities so reliant on them tend to be constrained in doing everything else.

[dusky iron]

Do Fishing Boats need to be on par with farms? Does that make the game better..? Can't some things be better than others?
Rivers have other uses than just their yields. Also if you haven't turned down natural disasters, flooding still happens fairly often

[wheat fable]

I didn't specifically argue for increasing their yields. The point of my post was to make there be some value to the use of these tiles, not specifically to increase their yield by whatever

[dusky iron]

I would argue the early game benefit is that there is hardly anything else you can build on coastal/river in antiquities.
As the game progresses you can pivot many of these tiles away to other uses.

So they are designed as an early game stopgap while you wait for the better buildings.

Vs land where you are spoiled for choice with many options each age.

[tough shadow]

Farms are already bad actually. But compared to fishing boats they are good. You say you can pivot “many” of these tiles. As we said, you can change 2 marine tiles, and you can technically build as many bridges as you like, but they are not worth it.

Idk having total pitfall traps for new players to stumble in with, and for experienced players to totally ignore, meaning their games are the same every time, doesn’t seem good. And for that matter, they have tried to make all tile types be about as good as one another, why not marine tiles too

[dusky iron]

So is early food bad?
Both farms and fishing boats are bad, so how do I get food then?

[wheat fable]

Well this is the whole point I was trying to make - these are the worst tiles to use at virtually every point in the game, either for rural or urban development, and thus it warps city placement and prioritization in a way that i would say is both less fun and less historically resonant. It encourages you to have the minimum possible water to have places for water buildings, which is ~2 tiles, 3 max. This becomes even worse when you have mountains beside water, where they cancel out each other's core value of providing adjacencies

Something needs to give "cities that have a lot of water" a niche, something that they do better then anything else. What that is, there's lots of options for.