How to tell a city where to build a boat - build in ocean rather than lake?

[Oddible]

Is the only way to tell a city where to build a boat by building a harbor?

[Mehno]

You just move a builder unit on to the water and build your boats this way. This is not Civ V and Boats and Builders are not seperatly build if that was the assumption.

[Oddible]

Originally posted by Mehno:

You just move a builder unit on to the water and build your boats this way. This is not Civ V and Boats and Builders are not seperatly build if that was the assumption.

I think you're talking about improvements which isn't what I'm asking. I'm talking about how to get my city to build a Frigate in the ocean and not the lake when a city is adjacent to both.

[donald23]

Originally posted by Oddible:

Originally posted by Mehno:

You just move a builder unit on to the water and build your boats this way. This is not Civ V and Boats and Builders are not seperatly build if that was the assumption.

I think you're talking about improvements which isn't what I'm asking. I'm talking about how to get my city to build a Frigate in the ocean and not the lake when a city is adjacent to both.

If it's adjacent to both it doesn't really matter. You can move the ship through your city either way.

The alternative is to build a harbor. Since that's where ships will be built initially when it's free.

[Oddible]

Sorry yeah it is one tile from both - and it always seems to build it in the lake not the ocean even though they're the same distance away.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Originally posted by Oddible:

Sorry yeah it is one tile from both - and it always seems to build it in the lake not the ocean even though they're the same distance away.

I think you'll find the only way is to build the harbor on the ocean side. Presumably you have the harbor on the lake side. There is no way to do otherwise, boats have to spawn either in the city or in the harbor. If the harbor is not on the ocean side and a city is not adjacent to the ocean a boat will never spawn in the ocean because there is nowhere on that side for it to spawn.

[jmerry82]

Is the lake where you put your harbor? Because that's the spawn point for boats now, unless it's occupied in which case it reverts to the city center.

In any case, boats can always move through city centers; if the city is directly adjacent to both a lake and the ocean, you can freely travel between them.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Btw, in the very long run, you could build a canal later (if the tiles allow, they need to be flat, not hills, and not have luxury or strategic resources on them) and move the boat to the ocean that way.

[Oddible]

I have no harbor yet - it just always puts ships I build in the lake - I want to tell it to use the other. If I have to burn a district slot I guess I have to.

[jmerry82]

If you don't have a harbor, any ships you build in that city should always spawn in the city center. Unless there's something other than normal building going on here?

[crzyfsh123]

If it's putting in the lake, you have a land tile between the city and the ocean. Ie the city is on the lake coast.

[crzyfsh123]

Wait and build the harbor on the ocean when your city area expands.

[grognardgary]

Where ever your light house is is where your ship will be built. However if your city is adjacent to a lake and you have not built a harbor district the boat will always appear in the lake. Assuming your city isn't on the ocean shore.

[plaguepenguin]

You can only build ships in a city center that is located on a land tile that is right next to coast (lake or sea), or that has a harbor. In the latter case, the ship appears on the harbor.

A screenshot would help here, because what I understand from the verbal description is contradictory. When you say "one tile away from" does that mean you count one tile to get to water, or does it mean you have to count one land tile before you get to water on the next count?

If the city has no harbor, and the city center is one tile away from both fresh and saltwater tiles (there are land tiles between the city center and water), you shouldn't be able to produce any ships in that city. If you can, your problem isn't that you can't get the ships produced on the sea side of your city, your problem is a glitch of some sort in the game, and you need to get rid of a mod, or reinstall the game, or something.

If the city center is actually adjacent to both fresh and saltwater, it shouldn't matter, except for a difference of two movement points, whether ships appears on the lake or on the saltwater side of the city as they are produced. The city center will act as a canal allowing free passage of ships between the lake and the sea.

If the city center is right on the lake, but there are land tiles between it and any sea tile, you can only ever build ships on the lake, and they can never get to the sea, until you do one of two things: either build a canal to the sea, or put a harbor on a seacoast tile belonging to that city. If the latter, any ships already in the lake are stuck there forever, or until you put canals somewhere else on the map to give them a path to the sea.