Fishing Nets

“Cast your nets where the water is shallow and the fish are plenty. The sea will feed your people.”

Fishing Nets are a water-based tile improvement that dramatically boosts the food output of coastal tiles. Deployed in the shallow waters near shore, these nets harvest the abundant marine life of coastal ecosystems, transforming otherwise modest water tiles into some of the best food sources available. For civilisations with coastal cities, Fishing Nets are a critical early improvement.

Stats

Valid Terrain

Strategy

Fishing Nets are one of the most efficient improvements in the game. A coastal tile with Fishing Nets produces 3 food and 1 gold – a yield that rivals the best farmland and adds a gold bonus that farms cannot match. For any city with coastal tiles in its working radius, researching Sailing and deploying Fishing Nets should be a high priority.

The value of Fishing Nets makes coastal city placement significantly more attractive. When evaluating a potential city site, count the coastal tiles within working range. Three or more coast tiles with Fishing Nets provide 9+ food and 3+ gold, enough to drive rapid growth while generating meaningful income. This can make an otherwise unremarkable city site into an excellent one.

The primary limitation of Fishing Nets is the tech requirement. Sailing is not always an early research priority, especially for inland civilisations with no immediate need for naval technology. Coastal civilisations, however, should consider prioritising Sailing precisely because of the food explosion that Fishing Nets provide. A coastal city that gets Fishing Nets online early will outgrow inland rivals rapidly.

Fishing Nets on coastal tiles are vulnerable to naval raiding. Enemy ships can pillage your Fishing Nets, cutting off the food supply and potentially starving a city that has grown dependent on maritime food production. As your coastal economy develops, invest in a basic navy to protect your fishing grounds.

Historical Background

Fishing is among humanity’s oldest food-gathering activities, with evidence of fish consumption dating back hundreds of thousands of years. The development of nets, however, marked a revolutionary leap in productivity. The earliest known fishing nets, dating to approximately 8300 BCE and discovered in Finland, were woven from willow bark fibres and allowed fishermen to harvest far more fish than line-and-hook methods.

Coastal fishing sustained some of the densest pre-agricultural populations in the world. The indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the fishing communities of Southeast Asia, and the maritime cultures of Scandinavia all built complex societies on the back of abundant marine resources. In ancient Egypt, fishing nets on the Nile were so important that they featured prominently in tomb paintings and religious texts. The Romans developed sophisticated fishing operations across the Mediterranean, including fish farms (piscinae) that bred fish in controlled coastal enclosures – an early form of aquaculture that foreshadowed modern practices by two millennia.