Unique Tile Improvements

[lamaros]

So, unique tile improvements are pretty underwhelming in Civ 6, to my taste so far. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, the list:

Sphinx - Egypt - Culture and Faith
Chateau - France - Culture
Stepwell - India - Housing and Food (Bonus Faith)
Kurgan - Scythia - Faith and Gold
Ziggurat - Sumeria - Science and Culture
Mission - Spain - Faith and Science
Great Wall - China - Defence and Gold (Later Culture and Tourism)
Colossal Heads - La Venta City State Bonus -

So, what's wrong with them?

1st - They have to be worked to do anything.
2nd - Most of them don't provide bonuses to food or production, which are key early in the game, and still important late.
3rd - Most don't scale over time, unlike the basic tile improvements
4th - Several have significant restrictions on placement, and poor bonuses.
5th - The bonuses they do provide are paltry.
6th - They are removed when a city is conquered by another player or civ.

As a result almost all of them are never worth spending a builder charge on.

Making them more useful, and more interesting, isn't too tricky though.

Simply changing the first restriction I've listed would make them much more interesting. If they provided their bonuses without having to be worked, like districts, they would all be much better. However I think this is a less interesting way of doing it.

Better would be to making them scale over time with tech like the default improvements.

Those that have significant placement restrictions and/or adjacency bonuses are just generally weak, and could be buffed across the board.

Finally I don't see why they should be removed when the civ that built them doesn't control the city any more. This is annoying for the player if they lose and then recapture a city, less fun for a player that takes a city with some, and less interesting on the map if the diversity is snuffed out.

Thoughts of others?

 

[Magil]

All I'll say is that having a unique district is -much- stronger than any of the other options. Unique builders are still all right, but unique tile improvements? Pass. I don't see any reason to work them over farms and mines.

The Stepwell may be the one exception. Or maybe if you're going for a full religious victory and have reached the point where you just want to spam nonstop apostles, then the faith ones might be semi-useful. I'd still rather just have the Lavra in that case though.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

So, unique tile improvements are pretty underwhelming in Civ 6, to my taste so far. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, the list:

Sphinx - Egypt - Culture and Faith
Chateau - France - Culture
Stepwell - India - Housing and Food (Bonus Faith)
Kurgan - Scythia - Faith and Gold
Ziggurat - Sumeria - Science and Culture
Mission - Spain - Faith and Science
Great Wall - China - Defence and Gold (Later Culture and Tourism)
Colossal Heads - La Venta City State Bonus -

So, what's wrong with them?

1st - They have to be worked to do anything.
2nd - Most of them don't provide bonuses to food or production, which are key early in the game, and still important late.
3rd - Most don't scale over time, unlike the basic tile improvements
4th - Several have significant restrictions on placement, and poor bonuses.
5th - The bonuses they do provide are paltry.
6th - They are removed when a city is conquered by another player or civ.

As a result almost all of them are never worth spending a builder charge on.

Making them more useful, and more interesting, isn't too tricky though.

Simply changing the first restriction I've listed would make them much more interesting. If they provided their bonuses without having to be worked, like districts, they would all be much better. However I think this is a less interesting way of doing it.

Better would be to making them scale over time with tech like the default improvements.

Those that have significant placement restrictions and/or adjacency bonuses are just generally weak, and could be buffed across the board.

Finally I don't see why they should be removed when the civ that built them doesn't control the city any more. This is annoying for the player if they lose and then recapture a city, less fun for a player that takes a city with some, and less interesting on the map if the diversity is snuffed out.

Thoughts of others?

They do scale over time
Kurgan goes up to 3 gold (+1 at two different 'tech/civics')
Mission gets +2 science
Stepwell gets +1 housing
Heads get +1 culture

any culture producing improvement gains tourism production

The big thing is they provide benefits you can't otherwise get with improvements...so you don't spam them over your entire territory (because they don't give you food production)..so you rather use them as minidistricts with bonus food

The thing is you Can spam them, unlike UD/UB where you only have 1 per city.

 

[lamaros]

They do scale over time
Kurgan goes up to 3 gold (+1 at two different 'tech/civics')
Mission gets +2 science
Stepwell gets +1 housing
Heads get +1 culture

any culture producing improvement gains tourism production

The big thing is they provide benefits you can't otherwise get with improvements...so you don't spam them over your entire territory (because they don't give you food production)..so you rather use them as minidistricts with bonus food

The thing is you Can spam them, unlike UD/UB where you only have 1 per city.

Ah, nice, I din't know all that detail. Still weak though, as they have to be worked.

And the big thing isn't really big in civ 6, because districts also get you the science, culture, etc and don't need to be worked. So they're vastly inferior to the unique districts. Given they need to be worked I think they need to be boosted a bit more still, and probably improve even more over time.

 

[lamaros]

What might be interesting for some of the tile improvements is if they could could as other districts/features/improvements for the purposes of adjacency bonuses.

So say the Kurgan gets to count as a mountain for campus bonuses, the Stepwell counts as a farm for feudalism, the Sphinx as a wonder, Ziggurat as a district, etc..

 

[Big J Money]

Do the unique improvements pick up luxes and strat resources?

 

[GlobalTree]

i agree they could use some buffs...i think doubling their adjacency bonuses as they scale in era

 

[lamaros]

Do the unique improvements pick up luxes and strat resources?

Don't know but I doubt it. Will see.

 

[ScorpionTDC]

The Sphinx seems to draws in tourists too. By Info era (when I won my Egyptian culture victory), I had about seven or so sphinxes in my empire, each with 1-2 tourists. It's not tons, but that does make them more relevant, and it suggests Chateaus might be a little bit better than we first thought.

They also did attempt to add some degree of scaling for improvements. Sphinxes generate more culture with a tech or Civic researched, but they could definitely use more. As is, I use them a little but not tons, which may be how they were intended sans the Stepwell, which is truly an incredible improvement

I also think the ziggurat bonus is more how early it comes. Getting even 2 science and 1 culture in the early game is like having a campus and a monument

 

[Lukasz81]

Ziggurats are pretty good in my opinion. I was building 2-3 for every city and even though my cities wouldn't grow that big (usually to size 8) they would have science output that rivaled the much bigger ones with campuses.
Now take into account some additional benefits - builders are cheap, especially at start and putting 3 ziggurats means you will get insane science influx even from a very small city on top of being able to do it right off the bat without need to build campus + library (3 ziggurats = 6 science).

So in a situation when you start a new city, and send/buy a builder - you can pop some ziggurats and chop rainforest/marsh and you got a 3-4 pop city that is producing 7-8 science in 3/4 turns - try and rival that.
Building cities like that left and right means you have effective cities that are giving you science and culture and do not need many amenites because they are low pop.
You will soon find that you are a science powerhouse, outpacing everyone with this strategy.

I think it also holds true for other unique improvements - you can get effective cities that are giving you something you need without the need to build districts, growing them and eating up your amenities.

If you have that strategy resource you need on some very very bad land, you usually settle that city there and it does nothing but provide strategic resource, but with unique improvements you can turn that small city into something valuable by itself.

To sum up, districts are great for building huge powerhouse cities, but unique improvements turn your small cities into effective assets instead of waste of amenities.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

If unique districts cost half the price of regular and don't have the pop requirements, then maybe the unique improvements shouldn't cost a builder charge. I guess that would lead to abuse early game though maybe.

 

[grandad1982]

Playing China at the moment . Even with my better workers and serfdom I don't want to waste charges on the greatwall. Building a farm or mine just seems so much better. Maybe if I'd had a good bottleneck city site I might have built some but even then the ai barely ever seems to attack your units. I held off a melee/horse swarm with an archer and a crossbow and they only attacked my units a couple of times in a dozen turns .

 

[bite]

I think they are ok, but Unique districts are so much better

 

[zagosya]

When have they ever been great? I remember only terrace farms from civ5 which were a powerhouse. What else?

 

[Big J Money]

If unique districts cost half the price of regular and don't have the pop requirements, then maybe the unique improvements shouldn't cost a builder charge. I guess that would lead to abuse early game though maybe.

Assuming none of them are OP, I think this is brilliant.

 

[Ryika]

The main problem I see is that you can boost farms so extremely hard by positioning them correctly, which just isn't possible with many of the unique Improvements.

Most of them seem to have some rather restrictive adjacency requirements to even be decent. The Kurgan is the perfect example, +1 Faith for an adjacent Pasture, when will you ever have a situation where you get more than 2 adjacent? Having 3 is basically - maybe even literally, depending on how the map generation works - impossible, so why not give it a proper adjacency bonus and lower the base yield?

Could just make it give 1 Gold without adjacency, and then give it a +1 Gold +2 Faith for each Pasture. That way you might actually want to build some adjacent to Pastures, while you'll probably not be using them over Farms in any other case anyway.

 

[GT_OKEZ]

Unique tile improvements would be amazing if they provided their bonuses without being worked. I'm not sure if that would be overpowered though.

 

[cephalo]

I guess the idea is that you get more initial currency out of the unique improvements. I.E. two culture instead of 1 food. The big problem is that the currencies other than food, production or gold are much less valuable.

 

[lamaros]

Unique tile improvements would be amazing if they provided their bonuses without being worked. I'm not sure if that would be overpowered though.

That's be super overpowered.

 

[Big J Money]

Yeah that's too OP. I would like to test out them not costing charges though. It's easy to imagine; it simply means these Civs effectively get them wherever they need them.