Water related suggestions

[kidpython]

Currently Coast and Ocean have the same value: food - 2. I think this is wrong. Ocean front property is insanely valuable in the real world. I suggest that some 'coast' hexes should randomly also get Morale - 1 or Morale - 2.

Ocean tiles should randomly get food of 0, 1 or 2.

On top of getting the food value within the city territory, a cheap slow fishing boat unit could go out to the ocean and collect the food value of ocean hexes visited up to some limit based on the size of the boat. The food would be 'unloaded and harvested' at a city with a Cannery building freeing the boat to collect more food.

Allowing formers to convert hexes to water would be nice. We have roads, why not canals? (Maybe this is in the game already. I haven't messed with ecoregion yet.)

Speaking of which, can I build a road (i.e., bridge) across water? That would also be handy.

BTW I have discovered that rushing to create a couple of Barracudas and using them to scour the ocean for sunken ruins is a fine way to get a big head start on larger maps. The AIs don't seem to be aware of this tactic.

[arraamis]

"Ocean front property is insanely valuable in the real world"
That line had me laughing .......

Regarding the ocean ingame - We need to be able to harvest resources, build cities and terraform the ocean. Otherwise its not a functional portion of the map. In fact I totally ignore the ocean during games .......... sadly!!

[jamoecw]

i think the game needs to last a bit longer before that becomes a real option, but ya oceans are easily ignored at this point in time. i hope that when they make pandora 2 that ocean is given serious consideration, unlike pretty much every 4x game out there (aside from SMAC and CtP1).

[kidpython]

Oceans come into play in several ways already.
-- Early exploration to get sunken ruins.
-- Quick transfer of troops and such around the peimeters of a land mass.
-- Ocean crossing expeditions to establish colonies on new continents.
-- Knocking out the waves of troops that some AIs will send your way before they reach land.
So ocean tiles are more than just a great source of food. Ignore them at your peril.

[Belanos]

Oceans come into play in several ways already.
-- Early exploration to get sunken ruins.
-- Quick transfer of troops and such around the peimeters of a land mass.
-- Ocean crossing expeditions to establish colonies on new continents.
-- Knocking out the waves of troops that some AIs will send your way before they reach land.
So ocean tiles are more than just a great source of food. Ignore them at your peril.

True, but they definitely need more. Having some food bonuses along the coast would go a long way to making crappy tundra starts less crappy. Even if we can't develop anything on them, having a few fish type resources to add some +3 food tiles would help a lot. I also agree that ocean tiles shouldn't have the same amount of food as coastal ones. They should be dropped to only 1 food, not 2.

[Belanos]

My goodness. I was looking around at the XML files and I noticed that they already have a reference to a Fish resource with a +3 food. I wonder why they haven't made it appear in the game?