Lighthouse lights the waves?

[gfrazieror]

According to the Civilopedia, and the manual, the Lighthouse doesn't give galleys the ability to safely cross ocean squares, but in my experience so far it allows galleys to sail the ocean blue with impunity. Is this a bug or should I just shut up and enjoy the voyage?

[Gaius Marius]

It does have this effect - I have observed other civs using it and have it in my current game.

[Drago Sinio]

According to the manual, you can cross ocean squares but not end your turn in them. If you do you have a 50% chance of losing the boat.

I have seen, however, that once any civ gets "Navigation", that all the AI galleys can go anywhere they like. In my current game I was playing on a map with lots of islands, and built the Lighthouse so I could colonize islands first that the AI could not reach.
This worked fine until one of the AI civs discovered "Navigation". Then all the AI's, whether they had the tech or not, had galleys all over the map, plopping down colonies on "my" islands! The nerve!
Either a bug, or a feature of the game I did not know about before.
So, if you are going to build the lighthouse, take full advantage of it ASAP, because once any of the AI's gets navigation, they are all over you with amazing speed.

[gfrazieror]

My experience is that once you have the Lighthouse, you can go anywhere you want...hang out on ocean squares, cross vast bodies of water, colonize distant lands. In fact, every time I've had the Lighthouse I've never really needed the explorer, because by the time it becomes available I've managed to use my galleys to find all the distant overseas lands and explore them with horsemen.

This looks like another dejavu all over again from the original Civ; one of the complaints about an AI "cheat" was that the AI's civs could send triremes (the Civ equivalent of the galley) out over open ocean with no danger of being lost at sea. The justification was that if the AI was hampered by the rules for triremes, it would have been crippled (duh!).

[BlackOut]

Same thing i have noticed. Once i Built the lighthouse i was able to send my galleys and caravels across the ocean, stop in ocean squares etc. The first time it happened i thought i might have been a little lucky, but then i tried it again and had no problems.

Guess we have another "Feature" to point out to Firaxis

[Larz Smith]

not exactly. Ive been able to go into ocean squares with the lighthouse and even end my turn there, but if you begin and end a turn in the ocen the ship sinks.

[E_T]

The Lighthouse "lighting the waves" is a known bug that has been listed in the Bug List.

I don't like it, but you should try to work your stratagy to "Ignore" the bug's result and keep to the Sea's. If you don't, you'll probibly be p*ssed when the first patch comes out.

[Matthew]

As expensive as the lighthouse is now, I think that this 'bug' should be left alone.

[FeathersMcGraw]

Originally posted by Matthew
As expensive as the lighthouse is now, I think that this 'bug' should be left alone.

I would much rather see the free movement bug fixed and the AI civilizations limited to the same movement rules as players. Right now, building the Lighthouse is pretty much necessary to achieve parity with the computer in terms of new continent colonization, but if you always build the Lighthouse, the caravel is about as useless as the privateer.

[challenge]

Do you folks just not read the material provided in the civilopedia (tm) (stupid name for it)? It says you gain one movement point in speed and galleys can cross sea squares.

[gfrazieror]

Challenge, with the Lighthouse you can cross not only sea squares with galleys, but ocean squares as well, contrary to the information in the manual and the Civilopedia. The only thing the Lighthouse does not do for you is open up sea routes for trade. Otherwise, with the Lighthouse under your control, your galleys have all the benefits of Navigation centuries before it becomes available as an advance.