Quote Originally Posted by Bacchon
And it's not that hard to remove the new buildings from the techtree if you would rather not have them, but like all the other multitude of improvements that RTR brings. ; )
In fact, I've just done exactly that, though for different reasons than the above poster. I don't think they're necessarily bad additions, though I do think they're unnecessary. I'm not going to get into the realism/abstraction argument.

Instead, I'm more concerned about whether the AI can handle them. In my limited RTR 4.1 experience, the AI does not seem to build enough ports. I could be wrong, the AI may be building them later than I would expect because of increased build times, or there may be other factors at work. I can't be sure. But I don't want to risk it - the AI in this game has enough problems already that I don't want to make it's job any harder.