Shipbuilding (Civ7)

Shipbuilding
Technology of the Exploration Age
Introduced in Civilization VII
Cost	900
Technologies
Required	Feudalism   Heraldry
Required	Feudalism   Heraldry
Leads to	Metal Casting   Architecture
Leads to	Metal Casting   Architecture
Unlocks
Units	Carrack
Infrastructure	Shipyard
Notes
All Naval units can safely travel across Open Ocean terrain without taking damage. All units ignore Movement penalties from Open Ocean terrain.
Mastery notes
+3 Combat Strength for Naval units. All embarked land units may enter Open Ocean terrain.

Back to List of technologies in Civ7

 "If ship-building art were in the wood, ships would exist by nature."
– Aristotle

Shipbuilding is an Exploration Age technology in Civilization VII.

Strategy

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Civilopedia entry

Just as sailing advanced in different ways throughout antiquity, the development of shipbuilding looked different in various places throughout the first millennium and a half CE. Polynesia remains one of the most impressive regions in history for shipbuilding: double-hulled Polynesian catamarans with crab-claw sails enabled people to journey vast distances across the Pacific – to Hawai’i, Rapa Nui, and perhaps beyond. While such voyages took place for thousands of years (Samoa was reached around 800 BCE) the expanses of the open ocean presented a serious challenge – for instance, consider the distances between the Cook Islands and Aotearoa (New Zealand) or even Hawai’i.

If the Pacific offered the challenge of distance, the waters of Europe presented other hardships – and opportunities. Norse longships featured benches for oarsmen and “clinker” hulls (made from overlapping planks). Their keels were flexible enough to ride the waves during a North Atlantic storm, but shallow enough to enable river travel and beach landings. These ships helped catapult the Norse into several centuries of raiding, trading, and widespread exploration.

But the Age of Sail was launched on the decks of caravels, carracks, and galleons. The Portuguese carrack (nau) was a massive ship for its time, eschewing oar power for expanded sails and speed, ditching shallow water maneuverability for the chance to withstand open water storms. Notably, such impressive ships were often singular; in the 1500s, the Portuguese empire had only a handful of ships connecting a global trade route – a handful of holds carrying pepper, spices, and gold across a vast sea.

See also

• Shipbuilding in other games