Commercial Hubs/Harbors nerfed.

[ShinigamiKenji]

I really don't understand why they didn't end up with some way to have one city-state type per district type. So they would just need to add maritime CS to add food to harbors, and maybe add some sort of "entertainment" city-state to add an extra amenity to entertainment complexes (Las Vegas and Monaco as city-states?), and that helps balance things (other than the awkward case of both encampments and industrial zones giving production bonuses that don't always apply).

A +1 amenities from an "Enterteinment CS" would make ECs very powerful. But yeah, every specialty district (read: that gives specific GPP) should have its own CS type, and right now the only one that lacks it is the Harbour.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I'm fine with it. I generally build one or the other anyway. I would prefer an overall nerf to commercial districts though - I agree with another poster who suggested 1 trade routes per 2 commercial districts.

 

[Victoria]

I am just playing a deity game as England. I did not change my strategy, i mean commercial districts get +2 for being next to a harbour. Still swimming in gold, not missing the trade routes that much, I think there were too many anyway
Just starting to build sea dogs, will see if they have had the decency TO GIVE ME BACK MY #}{{#%}{ UU

 

[joncnunn]

My main thoughts are that:

1. This is a good step in the right direction; but it would be a good idea to continue further in this direction; have the first few districts increase by one trade route but after that degrade to every other district adding a trade route.

2. As long as the district costs are locked down fast enough, there's very few cities near the coast in which it's not desirable to build both of those districts even if the second of them falls below say a campus.

Case A: Harbor built first (perhaps placed adjacent to multiple sea resources) : In this case if there's any land tiles adjacency to that harbor (excluding city center), then planting a commercial district somewhere in the city is bound to give at least +2 adjacency.

Case B: Commercial district built first (perhaps placed next to a river) : If that hub happened to be on a coastal tile (river + coastal tending to be a preferred place for Commercial Districts) then placing a Harbor next to it again boosts the Commercial District.

 

[TruthfulCake]

In my opinion, they need to make Celestial Navigation not a leaf tech. If this change disincentivized players from building harbors in the first place, they might as well make it compulsory to research the harbor tech to make it less ignorable. Of course, nothing beats giving the lighthouse its Civ V effect, which buffs all ocean tiles.

 

[ShakaKhan]

In my opinion, they need to make Celestial Navigation not a leaf tech. If this change disincentivized players from building harbors in the first place, they might as well make it compulsory to research the harbor tech to make it less ignorable. Of course, nothing beats giving the lighthouse its Civ V effect, which buffs all ocean tiles.

Yeah, hadn't thought of that until you mentioned it, but something that is a little annoying about civ6 is the water tile yields. In CIv4, water resources were pretty good, but there was the lighthouse which made regular coast tile 2F/1C which was bottom priority but marginally useful, then they had that other building in the second expansion that added a hammer to it which made the tiles good but not competitive with land tiles of the era; it let the higher population citizens add a nice supplement to the "core" land yields. In Civ5, the trade-off was that sea resources were some of the best tiles in the game, but you'd have to inherit a number of tiles that contributed little while acquiring the sea resource tiles. But in Civ6, water tiles are just terrible. The resource tiles could arguably supplement your economy, but land tiles had higher gold yields and/or added a more valuable yield (production.) But the water tiles without resources are just terrible and can never develop into anything better. Sure, it's nice that we can have coastal cities that aren't adjacent to the coast now, but that just makes true coastal cities so much worse because they're going to both have more useless tiles and be more vulnerable. There should be some benefit to having coastal cities, other than a single, early game eureka.

I'd prefer it if land tiles had better yields but required improvements (which now come at a higher cost than previous civ games) but water tiles had lesser but still decent yields without improvements. Something like some early building (lighthouse) adds one food to all water tiles (for a yield of 2F/1C on unimproved coastal tiles) and a much later building (seaport) added one hammer to all water tiles (2food/1H/1C.) Could also buff England a bit by having RND's give an extra gold.

 

[player1 fanatic]

If anything, this change makes case for skipping CD is you are already swimming in gold for coastal cities. Harbors help in other things then gold, while CD is exclusively gold, if we not count in trader benefits, which can be gained by harbor too.

 

[bladex]

Were you playing as Australia? That's part of their UA.

oh is it? cool

 

[VicRatlhead5199]

Kind of a boneheaded nerf since the CD got a bonus yield from an adjacent harbor. You used to be encouraged to build both a harbor and CD in the same city. Now I'm not sure it'd be worth it.

What if they flipped that +2 over to the harbor instead? It'd give a nice bump to the shipyard making it a production district in cities where you're building both.

 

[Victoria]

Now I'm not sure it'd be worth it.

It is VERY worth it still. The triangle of money is great and I am always using it where I can because it is so fast so good.

+3 gold for the harbour
+5 gold for the CD (+3 without river)

and thats before any buildings... It also means you are not so reliant on cards for money.
Also your internal trade routes are +3 production fairly quickly without IZ. I still often rush IZ for the +1 mine bonus but do not build them often unless sciencing.

Playing another Ghandi Deity ATM and have a nice save from turn 80 showing this value. Also the game is nicely poised for any victory with a great prophet just created, 8 cities & a settler and a few campuses going up. Literally any victory should be easily reachable from here if you just keep your mind on it... and the possibility of a great navy. Can post if anyone interested.

 

[Herod]

Playing another Ghandi Deity ATM and have a nice save from turn 80 showing this value. Also the game is nicely poised for any victory with a great prophet just created, 8 cities & a settler and a few campuses going up. Literally any victory should be easily reachable from here if you just keep your mind on it... and the possibility of a great navy. Can post if anyone interested.

I'd like to see it for research please, I've found my last few games were on the easy side so I went up a level and got slaughtered by Indian Varu.

 

[Victoria]

I'd like to see it for research please, I've found my last few games were on the easy side so I went up a level and got slaughtered by Indian Varu.

posted here
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/has-production-scaling-gotten-worse.611103/#post-14671974

 

[kaspergm]

I still think the whole trade system needs a general reworking. As others have stated, this change did not really do a lot to make CH less essential, it will mostly make Harbors more useless. I was not a particular fan of the land vs. sea trade route mechanism of Civ5 (and certainly not a fan of how sea trade routes were universally better than land trade routes), but there needs to be a stronger link between the districts and the trade route yields than just the number of routes you can support. The whole "trade post" system currently in the game is extremely vague and impossible for the player to get an overview of, so I'd rather see some bonus yields when passing through a city with a CH (bonus gold) and a Harbor (bonus food/production).

On a side note, we really really need an option to path our trade routes. The "go from A to B, and let computer choose path" is just a BAD idea. Instead, each trade route should have a range, and then you should have the option to choose which cities it should pass through (so, start in A, go through B, C, D and end in E, not necessarily along a straight line, but limited by trade route range). The trade route should give yields to the cities passing through based on the districts present as well as yields in the start city.

Another change they need to do to boost the Harbor is to revert back to the bonus yield mechanism of Civ5. For instance, instead of the shipyard giving production bonus based on the adjacency bonus, it needs to give bonus production to each sea resource being worked. Lighthouse needs to give +1 food to each sea resource being worked. This will make it much more viable to settle coastal cities to get off-shore sea resources. Now, these resources will often be located so you can only get one of them next to your harbor, making it pointless to settle for them.

 

[Herod]

posted here
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/has-production-scaling-gotten-worse.611103/#post-14671974

Thanks, I managed to salvage my game after the Varu's gave me a very severe beating around turn 100 (epic). I've just researched tanks and I'm about to stamp my authority on the map.

 

[Magil]

I still think the whole trade system needs a general reworking.

I think, among other things, Trade Routes should be local rather than global. Each city should have its own trade route count. And they should be a lot easier to manage, my preference would be something like, you send out a trader to establish a route, but it gives you no yields until it reaches its destination, and once there, the trader disappears, establishing the trade route, and you continue to receive yields until it's cancelled (which you should be able to do from the trade route overview).

I have lots of ideas for how to handle trade routes in this game to make them more interesting, more engaging, but require less inputs and be less prone to exploitation... unfortunately the modding tools released can't handle a rebalance of that scale.

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

I second (or third or fourth or whatever it is at this point) that this wasn't the best way to go about balancing this. From what I've hard, the issue with trade routes was never that you could get too many inherently, but that smaller civilizations could never get as many trade routes as larger civilizations, strongly pushing you to play wide and aggressively. I think removing the ability for Harbors to give trade routes only exacerbates this issue.

I don't know if this is an appropriate place to throw in my two cents for balance ideas, but other people have done it so I'll go ahead. I think if some of the higher level buildings in Commercial Hubs and Harbors increased your trade routes further then it would help more than making it so only one provides trade routes. This way, a taller civilization will still be able to gather a good number of trade routes because they'll be able to build higher infrastructure.

I also think if sea trade routes were a little better than land trade routes (though perhaps not as crushingly better as they were in V) and were only available to cities which were either coastal or had Harbors, then it would make settling those locations and building those districts a bit more appealing without having to divide traders into two units or whatever, which is something I do appreciate.

And yeah, I also second the idea of Harbors getting City State boosts (both Harbors and Commercial Hubs getting +3 gold from Mercantile City States is a number which jumps into my head) and making sea tiles a bit better and sea resources more lucrative might help Harbors and Coastal Cities be more useful, though I'd like it to mostly be buildings which improve these tiles, it just feels right to me.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I'd support them getting +4 gold with 3 envoys and +2 production with 6 envoys from "Maritime" City-States. Mixes well with the "jack of all trades" nature of Harbours.