Are coastal/sea cities OP?

[Dio Aloke]

As I learn the game towards the higher difficulties, I found coastal/sea cities are really powerful. They have great buildings/wonders that improve all their tiles or boost naval unit production. At the same time, AI coastal/sea cities seem pretty vulnerable since they usually don't have terrain to protect them.

[Ryika]

Yes, Ocean cities are stronger than land cities. They produce less Unhealth, gain more yields from internal trade routes, and overall just scale very well and very quickly. Plus they have the best wonder in the game, and conquest on sea is very easy and efficient when you're in the dominant position.

On the flip side, sea resources are almost universally kind of trash, if you're the defender, war on the sea can be very expensive since there's little to no defender's advantage, and picking up tiles isn't automated, but if managed properly, these drawbacks hardly matter compared to their strengths.

Coastal cities on the other hand have only minor advantages and for the most part just make you vulnerable for little to no benefit, unless you already have ocean cities and need to defend the sea anyway. As a land-based empire, it's usually good to avoid settling directly at the coast unless it's in a very defensible spot.

[Dio Aloke]

Originally posted by Ryika:

and picking up tiles isn't automated,

They don't expand their border with culture? You have to move the city to increase its area?

[Ryika]

Originally posted by DerEider:

All cities expand their area according to their Culture output, whether they are continental or coastal. There may be less culture sources available for an island location as compared to a continental site, but the city's tile expansion will continue if it generates culture.

Aquatic cities do not expand their borders with culture, you have to either move them around, or buy tiles with Energy.

[DerEider]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by DerEider:

All cities expand their area according to their Culture output, whether they are continental or coastal. There may be less culture sources available for an island location as compared to a continental site, but the city's tile expansion will continue if it generates culture.

Aquatic cities do not expand their borders with culture, you have to either move them around, or buy tiles with Energy.

Roger ... I got this mixed with my Civ5 forum stuff
I will delete the comment ... Thanks for waking me up

[dtt.scanner]

Yep. It is still faster to grow Aquatic cities than Land-based cities. If they are supported with caravans for growth, it basically takes 10 turns to grow the outpost into a city and load it with a Trade post and several other production buildings (purchased), including the Thermohalene Rudder. Then it takes 12 turns to move it into position (collecting 37 tiles in the process). Have 2-3 workers laying out the farms as you go, and by the time you get to the center of your plot, you will have about 8-10 population and fully producing (if you do it right, you will gain population every 2-3 turns). Then you just produce and grow and use your trade routes to support another new city. Doing this you can be producing new cities about once every 5 turns, and in 20-25 turns have each as a fully functioning city. (About 5 cities at a time in the growing/moving phase.) Even if you have to build the buildings instead of purchase them, you should only take 5 or so turns per building with the caravan support, so the whole process is around 40 turns.

EDIT: This is a mid-game strategy, and assumes you have a good amount of technology unlocked.

I usually build defenses as soon as I get to the center plot, since extra buildings will slow down the aquatic city movement. They are especially vulnerable until the defenses are up, and you may need to stop and build defenses if you see a fleet coming. You can also use the city movement to "attack" an enemy. If you can move quickly (one turn), you can crush an enemy ship by moving into it.

Compared to a land-based city, which gains new plots of land about every 5-8 turns, that's around 150 turns to grow a land-based city to the same size using culture for expansion. That assumes you are building every cultural advantage available.

[Dio Aloke]

Originally posted by dtt.scanner:

Yep. It is still faster to grow Aquatic cities than Land-based cities. If they are supported with caravans for growth, it basically takes 10 turns to grow the outpost into a city and load it with a Trade post and several other production buildings (purchased), including the Thermocline Transducer. Then it takes 12 turns to move it into position (collecting 37 tiles in the process). Have 2-3 workers laying out the farms as you go, and by the time you get to the center of your plot, you will have about 8-10 population and fully producing (if you do it right, you will gain population every 2-3 turns). Then you just produce and grow and use your trade routes to support another new city. Doing this you can be producing new cities about once every 5 turns, and in 20-25 turns have each as a fully functioning city. (About 5 cities at a time in the growing/moving phase.) Even if you have to build the buildings instead of purchase them, you should only take 5 or so turns per building with the caravan support, so the whole process is around 40 turns.

EDIT: This is a mid-game strategy, and assumes you have a good amount of technology unlocked.

I usually build defenses as soon as I get to the center plot, since extra buildings will slow down the aquatic city movement. They are especially vulnerable until the defenses are up, and you may need to stop and build defenses if you see a fleet coming. You can also use the city movement to "attack" an enemy. If you can move quickly (one turn), you can crush an enemy ship by moving into it.

Compared to a land-based city, which gains new plots of land about every 5-8 turns, that's around 150 turns to grow a land-based city to the same size using culture for expansion. That assumes you are building every cultural advantage available.

Thanks for the detailed information!

[tim]

I've always built aquatic cities until trying to beat the game on Apollo level and I found that defending them was impossible. Even coastal cities with exposure to the water on only one side of the hex became hard to defend from waves of level 3 boats. Building only land-locked cities was finally the strategy that worked, but I missed zooming around in the boats lol. There may be other better strategies to defend them than what I tried though.

[dtt.scanner]

Originally posted by tim:

I've always built aquatic cities until trying to beat the game on Apollo level and I found that defending them was impossible. Even coastal cities with exposure to the water on only one side of the hex became hard to defend from waves of level 3 boats. Building only land-locked cities was finally the strategy that worked, but I missed zooming around in the boats lol. There may be other better strategies to defend them than what I tried though.

Did you have an air force? You need to have 3 aircraft in each city, and if you perk it right, you can have 1 artillery unit with longer range than the ships in each city, plus the city cannon. The aircraft can defend other cities in range, and if you take out all of the melee ships coming in first, you will always win the war of attrition, because the ranged units cannot take a city. Your aircraft will get damaged, but veteran units (with the wonder perk that lets damaged units attack at full strength) will defeat nearly any incoming fleet. Your defensive fleets can move quickly if you have teleporters set up at strategic points, and can defensively be available within 2-3 turns if you need fleet support. Aircraft carriers can launch planes in the SAME ROUND that they teleport, if the planes haven't already moved. I have not had a problem defending an aquatic empire on Apollo... my only problem is if one of the factions builds a victory tower and I can't find it in time on massive maps.

Side note: do not ever move aquatic cities without moving the aircraft away first. They do not always move with the city, and can be lost at sea... usually 1 per move. You can sometimes get them back by clicking on the empty hex, and the aircraft MAY still pop up and allow you to move it back to a base. After the next turn it is certainly lost.

Even without being NSA, which can get over 150 defense, you can still get to around 120 defense, and that usually keeps fleets from attacking just from the fear factor, once you have that level of defense up. Presuming you have decent defense if you are being attacked by level 3 ships, the hard part is getting level 3 aircraft, because they level up more slowly. I always take the air to ground perk specifically for this kind of defense. Air to Air superiority is not such an issue, because the AI rarely builds aircraft, and once you know they are there you can still easily intercept them.

[Dio Aloke]

Originally posted by tim:

I've always built aquatic cities until trying to beat the game on Apollo level and I found that defending them was impossible. Even coastal cities with exposure to the water on only one side of the hex became hard to defend from waves of level 3 boats. Building only land-locked cities was finally the strategy that worked, but I missed zooming around in the boats lol. There may be other better strategies to defend them than what I tried though.

dtt.scanner said prety much all. I'm not playing on Soyuz difficulty (only 1 more level for max difficulty) and what I've learned is that sea cities can't defend by themselves. I now build a massive fleet to overwhelm my enemies and have abandoned submarines since they take so damn long to reach far targets. I always leave one melee and one ranged unit on alert status near my frontier cities (see where enemies can attack from) and with at least 1 aircraft on them. That's usually enough to foil an attack. Like the preview post said, take out melee naval first since they're the only ones that can take the city. A ranged ship can't do that even if the city has 0 HP

My biggest mistake was taking all my military and leaving my cities undefended, because I woke up to find 15 ships around them. BUt it doesn't take much to hold your cities even on higher difficulties

[tim]

Thanks dtt.scanner and Dio - "if you are being attacked by level 3 ships, the hard part is getting level 3 aircraft" - that's it - the airforce would hold them off for a while, and I definitely used the strategy to concentrate on the melee units, but the level 3 ships would chew up my level 2 aircraft and that's when things would go down hill lol.

Another factor is I need to keep multiple cities within air strike range of each other, I tend to want to spread out to maximize the resources for each city, but that clearly has disadvantages such as not being able to concentrate airpower!

City defenses were another factor - trying to stay on Harmony techs to level up as fast as possible, those techs just don't include much for city defense. Different story on Purity which is what I'm trying now.

I'll definitely try an aquatic city again!

[Dio Aloke]

Originally posted by tim:

Thanks dtt.scanner and Dio - "if you are being attacked by level 3 ships, the hard part is getting level 3 aircraft" - that's it - the airforce would hold them off for a while, and I definitely used the strategy to concentrate on the melee units, but the level 3 ships would chew up my level 2 aircraft and that's when things would go down hill lol.

Another factor is I need to keep multiple cities within air strike range of each other, I tend to want to spread out to maximize the resources for each city, but that clearly has disadvantages such as not being able to concentrate airpower!

City defenses were another factor - trying to stay on Harmony techs to level up as fast as possible, those techs just don't include much for city defense. Different story on Purity which is what I'm trying now.

I'll definitely try an aquatic city again!

I try to spread out a bit my tech in the beginning, looking for more building for cities, things that'll increase my science or culture for example. I think this way I can research faster later on, but I might be mistaken

[tim]

Originally posted by Dio Aloke:

I try to spread out a bit my tech in the beginning, looking for more building for cities, things that'll increase my science or culture for example. I think this way I can research faster later on, but I might be mistaken

That was how I played in the lower difficulty settings, but on Apollo, the AI levels up very fast so I had to adjust my strategy to concentrate on keeping pace or I would get wiped out quickly. So that meant choosing Harmony techs almost exclusively and going after the "leaf" techs too as they have 20 affinity points vs 7 on primary tech even though I didn't need the things they unlocked. Chemistry was maybe the only non-Harmony tech I would research early to get the Laboratory. Choosing quest decisions to favor science made up for lack of dedicated science buildings.

Now I'm trying to win with Purity - I have to rethink some things again - that tech path has different strengths and weaknesses, so i have to compensate in other ways.

I guess that's part of what makes the Apollo level hard - I can't play the way I like to play lol.

[Dio Aloke]

Originally posted by tim:

I guess that's part of what makes the Apollo level hard - I can't play the way I like to play lol.

Sometimes adjusting can be fun either because it teaches you to be better at the game or because the current difficulty level has become trivial, but having said that... it's supposed to be fun. In Civ6 I love building lots of wonder, which isn't very viable in higher difficulties, so I play medium dif... it's your game, play however you like

[Dio Aloke]

Just got trashed on Apollo :P

[dtt.scanner]

Originally posted by tim:

Different story on Purity which is what I'm trying now.

I always play Purity. Definitely my favorite unit, even if it takes longer. Expansion is key in getting the tech quickly. The more cities you have, the more science buildings you can build. By late game you can be getting tech and culture unlocked every 2 turns with 30+ cities. I'm a bit OCD, so finishing the tech and culture trees is something that I compulsively do. Turns take a long time, but thankfully once you build everything, you can just set them all to produce food to boost your pop and fill the specialist slots. I think I've only gotten to 50 pop once in one city, but you can definitely support that and more with Aquatic cities. FYI I put 2 rings of farms and the outer ring is either biowells or terraform, depending if it is on land or sea. Either one has huge boosts to health, and as Ryika said the Aquatic cities have lower health disadvantage, so can easily support huge populations of 40-50+. Like you, I spread out in a honeycomb pattern of 37 tiles per city, with holes really only where there are Stations that pop up. It makes a really pretty map. LoL. Since Hutama gets extra trade routes for every city, and aquatic cities get bonuses from trade routes, Polystralia tends to be even better than NSA at building aquatic empires. Expand expand expand.

EDIT: Forgot to say, anything that boosts worker speed is highest priority for me. Even with 50+ workers running around building away, you still need all of the perks to get it done quickly. My largest Apollo empire was over 1200 people. That was after I finished both Tech and Culture (you can sell off most of those buildings then... I don't even bother building some of the science stuff, because it will be obsolete before it gets much use.) This isn't the only way to play and win, it's just what I do. It really only works for playing solo.

When you have an empire like that, you don't build units, you just buy them and teleport them where needed the next turn, if you need more. Energy comes in +thousands per turn, health bonuses maxed out +50% of everything. Weather satellites boosting pop growth, 2 satellites per city, and the 3rd satellite (if you don't crash the game) can be energy. But yeah, you have to lay out the satellites the same way you lay out your cities... it is a specific pattern of coverage. And yes, I'm anal enough that I raze any captured city that doesn't fit the pattern.

Aquatic movement is based on how much production (including from trade routes) vs. how many buildings are built (which slow you down)... so I only build production and set up trade routes until the city finishes its 12 moves. (Hint: you start at one of the 2nd ring vertices, not in the middle to save yourself 2 moves... 10 moves to complete the hexagon, then 2 moves back to the center. If you start in the center it takes 14 moves to finish back at the center).