Coast Is A Problem. Let's Talk About It.

[@ashwin.trisal]

I think the suggestions in this comment section about "buffing coast's ability to settle inlands, buffing inland's ability to settle coastally" are not achievable for fundamental game reasons. A coastal capital is concretely worse than an inland capital for multiple reasons: the luxuries are harder to access and improve, additional build queue is necessary, and about half of "your" land is discarded to the coast. This means that a coastal player, even one who settles inlands, has less settler directions and therefore a slower game. A coastal player also can't improve mining luxuries or hill plantation luxuries to make settlers, which means that there's a serious tradeoff in early-game worker time. At the point where you are settling mostly inland cities, you would much rather be an inland player. A coastal capital is also a deterrent to early war for reasons that have nothing to do with unit composition. It's fairly basic theory from skirmish that you can never hold a city that you can't push past; if you cannot control the tiles "behind" the city, the city will be recaptured until every last unit is dead. The fact that land units and sea units are mutually unable to exert pressure on the other means that the city is the only point of contact. The point at which naval units are nerfed enough that recap war is impossible is the point at which naval units capturing cities is impossible. Building boats as an inland player is always a risky-at-best strategy, because a coastal player is heavily incentivized by this recap war dynamic to simply all-in on naval units themself: their land units are inefficiently traded away, but their coastal units are not. If an inland player's coastal expands are doing more production than another player's whole empire, and thereby this inland player can win the naval war on its own terms, that's a very strong game for that inland player. Don't expect this to happen. Coast in Lekmod has been severely propped up by incredibly strong coastal pantheons, incredibly strong coastal civilizations, and, most importantly, its ability to greed and free sim because of the recapture war dynamic. This is exactly what the "coastal feel" is. There is no way to remove coast's toxic interactions without destroying this. Consider also the question: especially in tournament contexts, why are we allowing such an incredible variance in start? Is it good for gameplay that two players are ridiculously costly for the rest of the lobby to interact with? Is it good for gameplay that two players' starts are objectively worse than the other four's?

[@gauephat7760]

Could you imagine getting that start in a tourney game? Or even a final? What a nightmare that would be

[@EliteDarkLordman]

I knew this start looked familiar lmaooo

[@tedsmith6385]

LMFAO it was a gauephat game :D do you have a video of you playing it out mr Gauephat? I would love to watch @gauephat7760

[@KFP_Prophet]

I agree with the lighthouse, explo, workboat and sea resource amount changes, but not having coastal spawns just feels wrong. Some more ideas: - Allow inland ship production to nearby coast tiles (Even if it's just for cities on rivers/canals) - Bring back canals to allow inland civs to threaten coast (Leave ships inside them vulnerable/unable to attack to prevent cheese) - Allow cargo ships to traverse rivers and canals - Add food trade routes to lighthouses as well as granaries Those changes would allow inland civs to compete navally with coastals, preventing run-away games, recap wars, and island vacations, and would make coastal cities more viable (Since they would be easier to defend and you'd have access to internal coastal trade without needing as big a coastal investment) And they would also allow coastals to settle inland without giving up cargo trade and naval production, create buffers against land attacks, without making inland settles straight up better.

[@ryk25]

I know I’m 100% contradicting myself with a previous comment. But the more I think about having inland cities be able to build boats, the more I worry that it’ll make it much harder to pull off a proper boat attack. I guess if caps are no longer on the coast, you’d always need land units anyway. Interesting to think about

[@KFP_Prophet]

@@ryk25 I think the solution is just to make inland ship building possible but a bigger investment. Seaports are already going to give coastal cities a production advantage for ships in the mid-late game, but maybe add a production penalty for inland ship building. Make canals expensive in terms of maintenance, maybe even have them be more expensive and slower to build the further from the sea they are. That way inland ship building can help supplement the defence of coastal cities (including captured ones from recapping) and threaten island cities and trade routes, but it's still going to require foresight, investment or a much stronger production base to actually 1v1 a coastal civ.

[@KFP_Prophet]

Though even without a production penalty, if you don't build naval units or tech coastally in advance, a coastal civ can still rush you. It just becomes a series of exploitable but defendable timings like crossbows and landships, instead of an inevitable defeat.

[@ryk25]

@@KFP_Prophet It's a good point. I like the idea of having the river/canal system with really expensive maintenance. That way you have to decide if it's something you really want to invest in or not.

[@KFP_Prophet]

@@ryk25 It also opens up some fun possibilites, like sneaking ships out to sea to raid coastals kriegsmarine style (Which also gives post-war ships something else to do, defending against raiding ships or blockading the mouths of rivers and canals). Or heck, let ships range attack from rivers/canals, but make them attackable, maybe even capturable (like prize ships), by melee land units, allowing them to be gambled as a limited, behind lines support unit for land warfare

[@lordgigenshtain]

i will add the microplastics yield to gleb mod. upon discovering plastics. you get -1 food on all land tiles and -2 food on all sea resource tiles. its a good allegory for why microplastics suck.

[@grandmastercultistofben]

are microplastics spices?

[@lordgigenshtain]

@grandmastercultistofben no. Seasoning.

[@SmileyE17]

Great Video! Some food for thought :) 1) You never mentioned if islands are eliminated? I still like rewarding civs that are inland, settle costal, then have the option for late settles on islands and going explo, but I get the argument against it. 2) If there are no islands, I like the idea of drastically decreasing the size of the ocean of the map. This would promote interaction of the corners of the maps with their sea units, and create the option for embarked attacks with bombers and carriers. 3) I know Vietnam and the bias was mentioned, but I do like the idea of a "costal" bias which puts those civs in a region that is 1 of the 4 corners. People love map position arguments, and this map position bias phenomenal for tourney, and should on average give these civs more coastline. This also allows these civs to maybe have weaker bonuses that are costal exclusive, but even if they don't have a great coast line, they get a corner which is extremely important. 4) I think with this change GLH will be far less valued, however, I like the idea of another sim oriented wonder away from colossus on the tech path that can only be built in a costal city (my idea was maybe drama and poetry). This just even more incentive to settle costals.

[@ryk25]

Was going to talk about islands but you made both points I would’ve mentioned. You could argue islands would be cooler to have now because they’re less accessible so you should be rewarded. Alternatively, you do the other approach and remove them entirely. I don’t think either one is wrong, and both have their merits

[@ashwin.trisal]

One of the big benefits of islands in the lategame is access to strategic resources. I think it would be cool if islands tended to have a higher strategic resource density to incentivize this sort of play, and to make reliance on Third Alternative less egregious. (I do not like Autocracy.)

[@SmileyE17]

@@ashwin.trisal actually, this whole idea should possibly incentivize moving "off shore oil platform" improvement to a different tech (maybe bship tech or even just oil tech) and keep oil frequency higher in the ocean. I feel like frequently people have oil on ocean tiles and can't improve it, and moving this has a late game incentive to settle additional coastals.

[@bucketfullabiscuits7865]

Love it or hate it, we can all agree that this change should happen in the middle of the next tournament :]

[@michaelbird9148]

Fascinating ideas! I appreciate your approach to considering the longevity of the game/scene.

[@SWElewa]

Granted i mostly play vs AI but i personally love coastal play. I agree with the CS spawns and in general i really feel that the way pangea works it is hard to motivate coastal. Maybe a map with more vaiance in terrain would be better? Not like continents but the again why not? just reduce the ammount of water between them and have maybe 3 large landmasses? or maybe have the pangea map be overall larger but with more water dotted around, and make large lakes/ inland sea actually better. The only thing i wish to have from civ 6 is the ability to build a harbour "district" so that i could build boats even if i dont settle coastal. Maybe that can be something. The buff to the ammount of coastal resources would also be great. I often feel that my coastal capital is good, the rest of the cities on the mainland are often limited to 1 or 2 coastal resources.

[@pizzaman11]

Agreed about the Civ 6 point. I hated districts but the one thing that was real nice was the harbor district.

[@jebbb2]

I was against removing coast at the start of the video and I knew from before I even pressed play that it would be your suggestion. But coming to the end now, I think it makes sense. Making the coast actually fun to settle but not where you start would be ultimately a more healthy change than what we have now.

[@puglosipher1666]

I like the suggestions! It would also be cool to have the option of either all civs spawn coastal or all spawn inland if there’s a big divide between people who love to spawn coastal and those that hate coastal spawn.

[@ryk25]

Yeah absolutely

[@dddlll7003]

I think ability to build naval units in non-coastal cities will be also great and ability for naval units to move on land with penalties (one move, no ability to attack, less combat strength) will also be necessary. Adding this two abilities will also solve problem with inability to build special units like ship of the line.

[@KFP_Prophet]

My thoughts exactly. Removing canals was a mistake, they should've just made ships weaker and more vulnerable to remove cheese.

[@ryk25]

Canals were very buggy and created some weird war dynamics. I like the idea of being able to build boats from inland cities assuming all they can do is move one tile (kinda like they’re on a truck or something)

[@inversion3492]

fixes that just maybe wouldn't be that in the spirit of the game would be: - make naval units become civilian units on land and they can only move along river tiles, road and railroads, meaning that inland cities can build ships - maybe readd canals, but with age and tech dependent build speed penalties - a building in the mid to late stages of the game that only has the function of unlocking the first, maybe two sailing techs, but its only buildable at war if you captured a coastal city - more erratic coastlines and fish to compensate for lack of space because of city states - make some naval units take 2-4 turns to convert into a fitting land unit type when on land so you have a risk-reward those are just some interesting thoughts i wanted to drop, but again it feels pretty offbrand for the game, but it might force much more interaction and isn't really unrealistic either

[@ryk25]

I like your idea of making boats civilian units while on the land

[@inversion3492]

​@@ryk25im just concerned if this would be too challenging or annoying to add into the game for EAP or other contributers if that idea finds traction, also im kiti if you were curious xd

[@jarjab2games]

​@ryk25 the only thing I'd we worried about with being able to move boats in land is people figuring out ways to cheese others in lakes.

[@ryk25]

@@jarjab2games That kind of sounds like an inevitability. If you look at my recent Canada game. You could literally slam my city with privateers if I lost the coastal LOL.

[@RealTrapQueensLA45]

I think this is an interesting way to go about it- what do you think about Aswhins idea of a lakes/inland seas map that wraps around? That fixes the issue with corner spawns being kinda op / but also your idea could fix that. corner players planting coastal could make them vulnerable to amphibious or just sea attacks altogether.

[@ashwin.trisal]

This isn't my idea by the way. Certain NQMod versions were played on this Lakes map. It just needs an update.

[@Glossen]

I think Meota is tinkering with it atm. I tried to retool the existing lakes map a while back, and it didn’t work, but he might come up with something functional

[@RealTrapQueensLA45]

@@Glossen exciting to hear i hope he can get something at least testable

[@pizzaman11]

I think maybe adding an early game accessible coastal improvement called nets could be interesting. They’re essentially a sea farm, you can place them in non adjacent tiles and they will gain lighthouse/seaport sea resource bonuses. Only fixes part of the issues for their bad early game but is a start.

[@chungle5363]

Quite based mr thinking emoji

[@georg8952]

I wonder, if the main issue is, that for the most part people play Pangea map type. If instead there were 2 continents, 3 people on each (just first random idea, that came). Would that force more coastal citys for all players in order to interact with other continent perhaps? And also with your own continent, since other players want more coastals aswell.

[@ryk25]

The name of the game has always been an attempt to have more interaction in the game. Thats the primary reason we play on Pangea. Though your solution would help with the coastal portion, the rest of the game would likely suffer dramatically

[@georg8952]

@@ryk25 Yeh, thats fair. In map type that is focused on land based gameplay, coast and naval is probably always gonna be more situational and niche. I guess it would be a lot of modding work, but looking at civ7 vids, navigable rivers would be idea aswell. Let all ships go "in land" if it has river.

[@ryk25]

Oh for sure. I think that would be an idea situation

[@VenediFail]

some small change could be that lighthouse's (all) give food trade options so you are not forced to go building something else and then cargo cuz its still better then ligthhouse

[@ryk25]

Regardless if this overhaul gets put into the game, I love this idea

[@blyford]

I'm not sure mechanically this could be done in the Civ 5 engine, but how would you feel the balance would be if you didn't have to be adjacent to water to build ships? For instance something like if there's a coastal tile within your cities 3 rings you could build ships there. That would help the recapping scenario you mentioned (melee ships wouldn't be able to reach) and allow for fishing ships to be build in more scenarios/easier. I think the downside would be naval combat would probably be much worse because there would be no reason to settle on the coast anymore.

[@KFP_Prophet]

It would take a bit of fine tuning, but it would work if 2nd and 3rd ring sea resources were heavily increased. I like the idea of there being a production penalty on naval units if you aren't adjacent to the coast as well. That way it's a risk vs reward situation.

[@ateshcamurdan5403]

Explo to everyone might be an interesting idea - maybe it becomes a “settle 1000 cities” type of tree that creates a new niche

[@Adam0k]

One small thing that has occured to me with these changes is that it might encourage people to settle 1 tile out from the coast rather than actually on the coast. If there's suddenly loads of sea resources now, which have more yeilds and you don't need to be coastal to build a lighthouse, I think you would often take those resources but pass on the risk of settling coastal by going one tile off. Of course, you lose the ability to send cargoes, but it seems like something a lot of people would opt for. May not be the worst thing, as these cities are still vulnerable to frigs and especially bships - and of course amphibious attacks - but it probably doesn't lead to the interactions that these changes are about.

[@ryk25]

It’s a very good point, especially if lighthouses can be built from inland cities.

[@dhjerth]

thumbnail had me like 1. Fuck yeah Petra Collo time 2. Wait I'm dead

[@jt92]

Bring canals back. That actually allowed a decent amount of interaction with inland cities as well as allowing coastal players to settle inland cities without losing access to building boats and getting lighthouse. Also coastal spawns often get fucked by large inland seas or lakes that you can only ever canal with a 1 tile choke city, which is often unsettleable. I do think there should be a limitation such as "canals can only be build adjacent to cities" so you could at most have a 3 tile canal to a lake or inland sea including the city.

[@EliteDarkLordman]

While I don't think I agree that removing coastal spawns is a solution that can preserve the 'feel' of coastal, I do like your arguments and that it's a radical idea for how to fix it because it seems like coastal has fallen prey to many incremental changes, and something radical is prob the only way to fix. I worry that coastals with early coastal tempo/benefits (carthage, oman, etc) would be hard to balance back up. Vietnam might not always get the marsh or jungle tiles it wants in the cap/surrounding, but an inland carthage cap would guarantee that the cap would never get to build its lighthouse, have to build a road to an expand for harbor connects, etc (maybe this is a bad example, carthage might get fucked the hardest by a change like this so this might be an outlier). I worry that coastals that rely on the coast would be nerfed too much early (although like you said, having a normal spawn where 30/40% of our tiles arent dogshit until explo 4 might make coastal civs stronger), but the later scaling might make it fine (kind of funny, as that's kind of the reason coastal is already good now). Maybe coastal civs don't spawn on the coast but have like a 2nd or 3rd ring coast tile guaranteed idk.

[@ryk25]

If you compare Denmark with my proposed changes to Vietnam on a full plains start or Armenia without a single mountain, how are they any different? The only way to truly use your UA is to acquire more land from somewhere else. Also I know these examples are pretty specific, but they happen a lot. Carthage is probably the best example of civs that would need to be changed due to this overhaul. That being said, it is abnormally rare to find a spawn where you are unable to settle ANY coastals at all. Or rather, any cities to have coastal tiles in the city (to work with the lighthouse change I recommend). The only instances where you wouldnt be able to settle ANY coastals would be: 1. Middle map spawn where instead of spawning on the top/middle of your region, you spawn on the very very bottom/top (meaning you're abnormally in the very center of the map. In general this is super rare and has only happened to me a couple of times in the last year or so 2. The more common reason would be because CS spawn in your way and you're unable to settle cities you would want to otherwise. Reminder, these changes I'm proposing are buffing all coastline so CS with 3+ fish wouldn't be uncommon to see. Thus buffing playing honor and taking those CS. Obviously this is not a perfect solution but it's something.

[@EliteDarkLordman]

@@ryk25 I think the Denmark/vietnam/armenia comparisons are good! I may be too focused on the capital spawn, but the difference to me is that with vietnam/armenia, there are times when you do not get the civ's benefits when you spawn, but there are also times where you DO get the benefits when you spawn. With an inland denmark capital, I think you would be guaranteed to NOT get your fish prod benefit in your capital (if inland spawns force no coast within cap's first 3 rings which I believe is how it works but could be wrong). I agree that outside of the cap, carthage or armenia it's more or less the same, you need to expand to acquire the land for your UA. My concern was primarily about the cap (and that even if it's balanced, the cap no longer being a coastal may make the civ lose the 'feel' of coastal games). coastal civs would become like other civs that heavily favor specific types of land (like vietnam, armenia, sioux), it might not work the same in practice due to map geometry. As a coastal, your favored settle-able land would be any part of the circumference of the map (coastline) that is close enough to you, a curve or crescent, whereas for land-dependent civs, your favored settle-able land has a lot more possibilties for where it could be, and would probably look more like a polygon around the capital. I don't think I understand civ enough to say how land-geometry-asymmetry would impact the game (or if it's even right, as you could get an inland spawn like your armenia example where you're basically on a penninsula), but I just wanted to bring it up bc you've definetely done more playing and theorycrafting than me. Coastal CS spawns might exacerbate the geometry problem even more, im not really sure, but CS can hurt land-dependent civs already so maybe it's not wholly different

[@TanukiAlarm]

Yugo AI only player here, it seems like you have to somehow guaranty that coastal civs spawn not in the middle to not be totally dead in the water. If a civ who only gets bonuses from sea resources, building, and units spawns with jungle truffles it seems a lot worse than a bad vietnam or armenia start. However on the flip side if you guaranty they dont spawn in the middle, it heavily buffs/incentives land war civs who know they probably will spawn middle now.

[@ryk25]

How is Denmark with my proposed changes any different than Vietnam spawning in full plains?

[@TanukiAlarm]

@@ryk25 in plains no difference, but I think with how much people avoid playing vietnam, we will still see people avoiding playing coastal civs. I think a lot could be solved if coastals were all avoid jungle in this scenario? Just seems like theres way more changes for not as much equally reduced variance (amount of change > reduction in variance)

[@ryk25]

Definitely a good point. I think that would make a lot of sense

[@whiskeypatt1569]

its an interesting idea, one i would encourage Lek to make as a alpha for pros to test out. Would be nice to see x3-x4 people fighting over sea too to establish dominance.

[@Borjigin.]

What about requiring players to leave the game if, at any point in time, they don't hold control over a mainland city that's at least 8 pop? This would prevent long recap wars or unreachable island holdouts. The 8 pop requirement avoids getting around this rule on a technicality by dropping a random settler on the mainland or conquering random coastals. It would only apply after earlygame, or after a war has happened. Islands are intended to be an optional way to get a few nice expands, but the real game is always on the mainland. This rule would honour that.

[@mehiskortel6435]

Really interesting. Someone should make a small mod for this and test it out with people.

[@henrymccoy2306]

19:00 +2 fish hammers?!??? Do you mean fishing boats or just fish resources? Because even fishing boats would be insane to have +2. I feel like the real solution here is giving inland better access to coast + reducing coastal variance (like changing resouce spawns/adding more coastal lux/changing city state spawns). Anything else is just overtuning at this point in time. - for coastal lux being bad -> make them unable to be used as your unique lux and spread them across the coastline instead -> also limit non coastal lux spawns to coastline tiles if you're a coastal civ (to stop you missing out on luxes because they're inland) - for city state variance -> limit city state coastal spawns to small islands (maybe use indonesia's ability as a methodology for this?) - for bad coastal settles + that awkward war between inland and coastal civs -> make it possible to build ships when not directly adjacent to the coast (maybe if connected by a river and/or after harbours? Otherwise it'd be too big a change)

[@mr_cysio]

seems like best way to test this would be to just play it and see. that are big changes and people will complain and theory-craft just because they are hypothetical. having change to map generation script should be straightforward, even if fine tuning would take a lot more time, but changes to lekmod need mod experience. if you know some modder I think this would be best approach - make the changes, ask people to play with you and test it to see if it's good or have potential. don't have to do it all - do just few civs, some balance and that's it. post it on yt and then it will have more substance to it, I think. would that be doable?

[@ryk25]

Finding a modder that would be willing to do it is a lot harder than you’d think. I’m friends with all of the modders for teamer gamemodes but most don’t like touching lek. EAP doesn’t like moving forward with changes until they’ve been thoroughly hashed out (understandably) so I think just starting this dialogue is a good start

[@june-ls1hw]

When you said remove coastal spawns entirely I hated it and then you totally convinced me by the end. I like the idea of “looking for the land you want to settle”, and best of all this removes the awkwardness trying to get 2 players to play coastal who don’t want to

[@june-ls1hw]

But I think removing islands instead and making the oceans small is more realistic. It doesn’t solve as many issues though

[@danielr3587]

Wouldn't it be better solution be everyone spawns the coast? The disadvantages wouldn't matter because everyone has the same ones. The way you create enough rooms have city states be unable to spawn on the coast. And for civs who benefit from having Highland type spawn like Inca should have plenty of room to settle Inland to. I feel like my suggestion everyone will hate until they try it once in a multiplayer game.

[@ryk25]

Coastal cities are vulnerable from all across the map, which is not a good position to be in a from a liability standpoint. Inland cities, are the opposite. Because of this dynamic, coastal current opt-in liability is good way to balance the risk reward. Additionally, most ppl don’t like settling coastal/playing coast the way it currently is. Having everyone start coast would make this so much worse for everyone. Lastly, this opens Pandora’s box of all sorts of rebalancing that would have to occur

[@brunof8713]

​@@ryk25I don't think you're wrong about the issues you raise, but this response doesn't seem coherent. Having every capital coastal makes them more vulnerable yes, but that's inherently because there's more room for interaction. Which is the reason why Pangea is played over other maps like continents which encourage more naval play. Also about your last point, your proposals would also raise a ton of balancing issues. So to me it kind of seems like a pot meets kettle moment.

[@StudyMusicAssist]

Ended up getting 8 costal resources near spawn. I'm sure you know what came as a result of that. TOTAL. PANTHEON. DEATH.

[@rohamr6478]

What becomes the point of naval units in this scenario?

[@mr_cysio]

if you get better incentives to settle coast you will get more coastal cities and more reason to attack other coastal cities

[@rohamr6478]

@@mr_cysio Building military units that don't have a chance to attack a capital seems less than ideal to me.

[@ryk25]

Battleships, carriers, nuclear subs, etc. will always be incredibly useful in the late game. Also, if you are getting attacked and you both have coastals, the person attacking is incentivized to build a few coastal units just to pillage cargos and take free cities if they’re out there to dry. Coastal war, honestly, is super boring and not interesting. It’s like if every war was just chariots. There’s not much interaction aside from build privateers upgrade to frigs. So it’s probably a good thing that those attacks become less important/common

[@danielnelson3136]

Carthage is king of the coast, and other Island type maps!😂😂

[@I-should-go-outside]

What about everybody starts coast

[@petergriffin5450]

I feel like the coast has always been pretty bare in most civ games, 30-40% increase on sea resources would be amazing.