Water Tiles Enhanced
I miss sea improvements from Alpha Centauri. I liked being able to invest in improving the sea as the land. I also hate how the bountiful ocean is represented in game as food deficient, plus that shallow ocean over continental shelves (the ocean’s breadbaskets) yield so little food to start and as much as the deep ocean, which in real life is in comparison an "oceanic desert" (much lower biomass). Point is, Coasts should always yield more food than Oceans.
-Oceans don’t give food at start
This represents that fishing would be limited to near the coast (spear fishing, etc) and results in Coasts always giving more food than Oceans.
-Lighthouse gets +1 maintenance
The Lighthouse got buffed by BNW exp (+1 prod to sea resources, moved from Harbor) making it overpowered so this helps to balance its power.
-Harbors add +1 food to all water tiles that do not contain a sea resource, +1 to maintenance for balance
Finally a reason to build Harbors in coastal cities other than to unlock Seaports. After all you only need one Harbor per continent to connect your national trade network. For logic’s sake, city must already have a Lighthouse now.
-Harbors add +1 gold to Whales, Pearls, and Crab
These were some of the only resources that never got a building buff, like how Granary buffs Bananas, Lighthouse buffs Fish, etc. For balance these three add 1 instead of 2 to their tiles.
-Harbor requires Lighthouse
For logic’s sake and to complete the three tiers of buildings that buff water tiles.
-Buff to trade routes moved from Harbor to Seaport
Since Harbors now get the above buff they don’t need to do so much and it makes sense that a Seaport would be involved in trade.
-Seaports don’t give +1 gold to Sea Resources
Unbalances this mod, see Sea Resource yield note below.
-Seaports add +1 production to all water tiles that do not contain a Sea Resource, rather than Sea Resources, +1 to maintenance for balance
Seaports now help improve all water tiles just like Lighthouses and Harbors do.
-New building, Aquamining Network: +2 production to Ocean tiles, 4 maintenance, requires 1 Aluminum, unlocked with Robotics
The Aquamining Station is an Information Age building which requires a strategic resource (inspired in part by the Hydro Plant). Probably only worth it if the city has several Ocean tiles. Mining operations make Ocean tiles unsuitable for large scale fishing.
-Offshore Platform no longer produces food and Robotics adds 2 gold to them
Why does this produce large quantities of food? To compensate they get +2 gold instead from Robotics, so oil is lucrative, as it should be.
-Compass no longer buffs Fishing Boats
Necessary to balance things out without interfering with other changes
——
Special thanks to Alex for helping with the code for the new building! It’s my very first custom building. Since they are a bit more powerful, Harbors and Seaports are a tad more expensive to build.
Note on yields: Sea Resource yields normally total 9 at end game. Now they total 6 (the same as land resources), but they remain much better than empty water tiles, which total 3-4 points. I believe they were so powerful to balance the empty water tiles being so weak.
–Compatibility–
Probably requires BNW since I gave the Seaport the Harbors boost to trade routes ability, which didn’t exist before BNW.
–Direct Download–
For direct download if Steam is acting up or you are a Mac user:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3597242/Water%20Tiles%20Enhanced.zip
Just open the zip file and copy/paste or move the folder inside to your Civ 5 Mods folder alongside your other mods and it should appear in your mod list in game.
–Alternate Mod–
Please check out the alternate of this mod Improvements in Water Tiles (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=322554338) which produces the exact same yields, but by letting you build Fishing Boats and my custom Mining Platforms in all water tiles (not just on Sea Resources).
