Can you direct the flow of the "ocean"?

[City Builder]

Hey,
So I was watching a twitch streamer create his own map and he struggled with setting the current of his ocean. He had built no rivers to speak of and only adjusted the height of the ocean but then when he tried out his map in the game, he found that he had no ocean current, it was all just static so I'm guessing poop/sewage has nowhere to go if the flow doesn't transport it away. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing really (in terms of the game), and of course I fell asleep before I could see if he figured out a way of directing his ocean current so that it did more than just sit static.

Is there a way to direct the ocean current (when using only the ocean level to set your water and not place any water spots) or no?

 

[Truronian]

You can fake it fairly well by building a land wall at the very edge of the screen then placing lot of water sources there. Extend the wall around much (but not all) of the map edge: the only place that should be left open is the direction in which the water is supposed to flow.

The wall won't be visible while playing the map: the only problem with this is that it restricts the placement of shipping lines.

 

[Junuxx]

Or just have a water source slightly above sea level on one side of the ocean, and another slightly below sea level on the other side.

 

[Shiggs]

Or just have a water source slightly above sea level on one side of the ocean, and another slightly below sea level on the other side.

it really doesn't work this way in practice. In my Boulder City map, most of the top of the map is Lake Mead. In the very top right corner of the map is where the Colorado River enters. I only put water sources where the Rivers natural course would take it and let the water flow out to fill in Lake Mead. The water sources closest to the edge are much higher and more powerful (strength of 1.00) than the ones downstream. None of it is filled with Ocean, only a very small portion of the Colorado River south of the Hoover Dam has some "Ocean" in it because that was the spot on the map with the lowest elevation.

Still, when I loaded up the map I was surprised to see that Lake Mead had no current. As I said, it has no ocean, it is simply filled up by a few huge water sources that slowly decrease in height and strength as they go downstream. Very similar to what you are talking about, excluding that it wasn't filled with "ocean".

The only way I could get it to flow, and hence have the Hoover Dam actually work was to place another water source just before the dam, and dug a slow trench forcing all the water to rush that way.


Another map I worked on (unreleased), in Anchorage, Alaska it was the same thing. No matter how high or strong I made the water source in the river, when I loaded it up the ocean had no current at all. In fact it pretty much killed the flow of the river at the mouth of it.