This is a thought I had to help Abbasids on mixed and pure water maps and it felt like an interesting change to me. Giving docks the House of Wisdom aura and counting the buildings in it towards the golden age would make for a nice change of playstyle especially on mixed maps. This bonus could also be locked behind a tech.
Currently, you are pretty much forced to go on water due to how powerful fishing boats are. This does of course punish your golden age timing and you often have to pour additional ressources into defending the docks delaying your eco bonus further while other civs don’t suffer from a similar trade-off.
Instead of just building up your main city, setting up big river outposts would become a priority to play around. It would also encourage building defensible outposts over building a massive landsnake of a base - especially on bigger mp maps the snake can become ridiculous.
Alternatively universities could give the HoW aura to settle additional islands on water maps. The main map often doesn’t have the space for tier 3.
What do you guys think about this idea? Good/bad? Too disrupting to their one base playstyle?