Port (Civ3)/Civilopedia

Civilization has always followed water, and the greatest cities of antiquity and the Middle Ages were those
with ready access to a major river or sea. A port is a large harbor, where intense trading takes place, and the
availability of imported food allows these cities to grow much further beyond their normal ability to support. The
port at Constantinople allowed that great city to withstand sieges that would have normally reduced a city that
size in short order; the ports of the Italian city-states produced trading empires that funded the rise of Europe
from the backwater of the collapsed Roman Empire into a major force in the world; and the ports of England allowed
that nation to build an empire that spanned the face of the planet.