Deity District Guide

[Machiavelli24]

The new district system is the backbone of the economy in Civilization 6. If you want to succeed on Deity it is important to understand how your district choices shape your strategy and propel you toward victory. This guide will go over how each district should be evaluated when working toward different victory conditions. It will also describe how districts should be combined and placed on the map.

Categorizing the Districts
Victory Districts:

1. Campus District
2. Theater District
3. Holy Site

Support Districts:

1. Industrial Zone
2. Commerce Hub
3. Harbor
4. Encampment

Population Districts:

1. Entertainment District
2. Aqueduct
3. Neighborhood

This list does not include the Aerodrome or Spaceport. The Aerodrome will be explained as part of the Encampment and the Spaceport role in the final sprint toward a Space Victory is relative self explanatory.

Victory Districts
If you are pursuing a Space, Tourism or Religious Victory than you want to build the Campus, Theater District or Holy Site (respectively) in every city without question. Any district in this category that isn't part of your victory condition should be considered a Support District. Multiple factors push toward monopolizing a single district type: 1) Maximizing critical yield, 2) Government Policies, 3) City States and 4) Great People.

In order to win a Space Victory you need to generate a large amount of Science. Failure to build a Campus District in favor of any other district means sacrificing Science. It is never worth it do give up the critical yield you need. When going for a Science Victory other yields -- like Gold and Faith -- are useful only to the degree that they help you get more Science.

Government Policies provide +100% adjacency bonuses and later +100% yield from buildings of a specific district type. Policy slots are limited so it is not possible to boost many different types of districts. The policy bonuses dwarf the differences between a non-boosted district with perfect adjacency verse a boosted district with marginal adjacency.

City States provide another reward for monopolizing a specific district type. In the first half of the game you won't have enough envoys to get the district yield from every City State. Prioritizing a single district and focusing on City States that boost that district will provide more yield than spreading your envoys across multiple district types.

Last, but most important is Great People. Winning the race for Great People requires getting as many Great Person points as possible. The main way to get the points is districts and district buildings. Great People points are more valuable the more of them you generate. As they let you get the Great Person faster and potentially let you get multiple Great People in a row, denying them to your rivals.

Support Districts
Support Districts provide secondary benefits not directly related to the Science, Tourism or Faith needed to win. While you will always build your Victory District in every city, the question of what support districts to build will depend on the terrain around the city and the city's district budget.

A city's district budget is not really determined by food but by its housing. Over the course of the game you will gain access to tools that will let you increase your cities' district budgets. At the start of the game cities on rivers will be able to reach a population of 4 without much trouble but will struggle to reach population 7. Once Feudalism comes online cities will be able to grow to 7 or 10 population. Once Neighborhoods are available cities will be able to easily grow past 10 or 14 population.

Once you have a sense for what a city's district budget is you can identify which support districts would have the most value.

Population Districts
Population is not really gated by food but by housing and amenities. These districts exist to help you grow. The Entertainment District is the only one that impacts your district budgeting but all of these districts can be used to support adjacency bonuses.

Evaluating Support Districts
When looking at the various support districts when and what should you build? This section lists in rough order what you should be considering. Campus, Industrial Zone and Commercial Hub are the first ones you should be considering.

1. Campus: Even if you aren't going Space Science is needed to keep your military effective and unlock more buildings.
2. Industrial Zone: It is much easier to get large adjacency bonuses with this district than other districts. Its production will allow you to fill out other districts and their buildings faster.
3. Commercial Hub: This is a deceptively strong support district. The advantage of it is that you don't need to build any of its buildings (at least right away). You should consider the Trader, not the Market, its first building. This Trader can even be built in an already developed city, easing the burden on young cities. Gold is also critical to executing upgrade based timing attacks (Slingers->Archers, Warriors->Swordsmen, Chariots->Knights). In the late game Democracies can use their large stockpiles of Gold to rush buy all the Great People.
4. Harbor: This district should only really be considered in cities that already have (or will soon get) a Commercial Hub. Cities founded on the coast and a river can have a triangle formation with the city center, Commercial Hub and Harbor. This will gives the Commercial Hub an adjacency of 5. Like the Commercial Hub consider the Trader not the Lighthouse as this district's first building.
5. Theater: This district is marginal. You can generally get enough Culture with Monuments and the Meritocracy Policy (+1 Culture from every district). Its adjacency bonuses are low and its buildings don't really provide much Culture unless you can get Great People, which you probably won't unless you are monopolizing the district.
6. Holy Site: If you want to found a religion but not necessarily pursue a Religious Victory than you will need the Holy Site as your first district in your capital and second city. If you aren't founding a religion don't both with Holy Sites at all. It is better to get a Commercial Hub and buy Great People with Gold than to try to do it with Faith.
7. Encampment: With no adjacency this district is usually not worth it. But if you have only one copy of a resource it may save your life. That said, most early game attacks revolve around upgrade timings, which only need one copy of the resource.

 

[LanguishViking]

Don't you need encampments for scratch building corps and armies? In addition to the strategic resource shortage?

 

[trojan13]

I can't remember exactly but I think one encampment is required to upgrade unit with only one strategic resource. Or is it possible to upgrade with one resource even without encampment?

 

[Browd]

You can upgrade with just one copy of the required strategic resource, even without an encampment. What an encampment enables is the ability to build units with only one copy of the required resource.

 

[trojan13]

You can upgrade with just one copy of the required strategic resource, even without an encampment. What an encampment enables is the ability to build units with only one copy of the required resource.

Thanks.

 

[Ornen]

Especially with eurekas and spies, I haven't needed to build more than 1-2 early campuses to keep up in early science, if that. On the other hand, workshops, harbors, and commercial districts are often essential to getting my cities producing effectively, especially if they don't have great production turf already.

Likewise, I'm not 100% sold on 'no harbor unless already commercial hub'. The harbor also features the lighthouse, a very nice t1 building, and the shipyard, which can give a very nice production bonus in the right location. Not only that, they offer an otherwise landlocked city naval access, which is very helpful to get a key inland production city building up your navy. Plus, they tie eureka bonuses for cartography and steam power. Both are pretty key – cartography allows you to explore and expand across oceans, and steam power unlocks coal and leads directly to electricity, another key production tech. And they don't take up a land tile, either. So there are a number of reasons you would build a harbor instead of a commercial hub.

My list would probably be Industrial - Commercial & Harbor - Campus & Theater - Holy Site & Encampment. Holy Site can be very strong, but religion is very difficult to found on higher levels, and only reliably possible with a handful of civs. The current version of the Encampment is pretty limited, IMO. The exp bonus isn't very strong, and it hurts a lot that you have to wait for it, rather than getting a front-loaded promotion bonus. It can be very useful for defense, but still very situational.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I don't play Deity, but still I have a couple of questions (maybe it can improve my lower-level gameplay too):

• If you can get enough Culture only by Monuments and Meritocracy, wouldn't you get enough Science with population only? Maybe building only a handful of Campi for the Great Scientist points might be enough.
• I believe some City-States might be worth mentioning for district planning, such as Carthage (+1 trade route per Encampment), Mohenjo-Daro (all cities get the housing bonus for fresh water, regardless of fresh water availability) or Toronto (Industrial Zone and Entertainment Dstrict regional effects get +3 range)

 

[se7en]

I don't think building a campus in every city is necessary for a science victory, even on deity. Instead, only build enough where when you monitor the science output of your civ in the science victory screen and are keeping in 1st place. Use the extra hammers to build production capability, which is actually the most important resource for knocking out those science victory projects, which take tons of hammers. And don't forget to build a military academy or seaport, there's a policy later that speeds up production if you have them.

 

[Ornen]

Instead, only build enough where when you monitor the science output of your civ in the science victory screen and are keeping in 1st place

Not necessarily relevant – the AI gets bonuses so that they can keep up even if science output is half (or less) yours

 

[Bigv32]

I would argue that for new cities, it is more important to get your support districts built first (starting with the indy hub). Without those, your new city will not grow or expand much while taking forever to build the victory district you are advocating. My build order would be this (assume you have 2-4 trade routes to send to that city to help it expand faster.

City Center buildings (monument and either waterwheel or granary) - Indy hub - Indy Hub buildings (1 and 2 at least) - Commercial hub (or harbor) - Victory district if needed.

The reason here is because of AI bonuses, keeping up early is not as easy. You need to get your base economy (support districts) up to make your cities viable and then go for victory.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think that it depends on what the new city is for.

If you've got a rather marginal city on the end of the empire that's mainly there to grab strategic resources, a Campus with a +3 or +4 adjacency can improve your Science situation more than a single IZ with a Factory that only affects that city and the one right next to it. So Campus-Commercial might be the way to go there until it grows large enough to have an IZ.

For a central filler city that's going to be basically in the middle of your empire, IZ first followed by Factories and Entertainment - that's the way to go.

 

[ansa]

I don't play Deity, but still I have a couple of questions (maybe it can improve my lower-level gameplay too):

• If you can get enough Culture only by Monuments and Meritocracy, wouldn't you get enough Science with population only? Maybe building only a handful of Campi for the Great Scientist points might be enough.
• I believe some City-States might be worth mentioning for district planning, such as Carthage (+1 trade route per Encampment), Mohenjo-Daro (all cities get the housing bonus for fresh water, regardless of fresh water availability) or Toronto (Industrial Zone and Entertainment Dstrict regional effects get +3 range)

Nah man I tried, and it looks like you need Campuses and science stuff even with a lot of cities to keep teching at good speed.
Culture is easy with monuments, pastures pantheon and policies, but science slows down considerably from Renaissance and onward as prices grow.

When you get policies for +100% gold from commercial buildings and +100% science from campus buildings - this is where you start generating obscene amounts of those and can rip anything apart (if you haven't done so in ancient/medieval).

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Nah man I tried, and it looks like you need Campuses and science stuff even with a lot of cities to keep teching at good speed.
Culture is easy with monuments, pastures pantheon and policies, but science slows down considerably from Renaissance and onward as prices grow.

When you get policies for +100% gold from commercial buildings and +100% science from campus buildings - this is where you start generating obscene amounts of those and can rip anything apart (if you haven't done so in ancient/medieval).

Yeah, just found it on my Rome game. My civics tree ended up almost an era ahead of my science tree. But a few Campi and the Campus bonus policy rectified it.

 

[Machiavelli24]

If you can get enough Culture only by Monuments and Meritocracy, wouldn't you get enough Science with population only?

While raw population is weighted toward Science (.7 Sci per pop v .3 Cul per pop) it is harder to get additional Science outside of Campuses than it is to get Culture outside of Theaters.

Starting with adjacency bonuses -- it is hard to get more than 1 Cul from a Theater district (by building it in a triangle formation with the city center and one other district). But a Campus can usually get +2 or even +3 if you have a line of mountains. The policy that boosts Campus adjacency and +100% yield from Campus buildings are both available sooner than the Theater counterparts.

Science is also generally more useful than Culture. The effectiveness of your military is determined mostly by Science. Being an era ahead of your target is critical to a successful attack. The only strength jumps provided by Culture are Corp & Army forming (+10 Str, +7 Str). There are some helpful Policies (upgrade reduction, unit production multipliers) but they aren't going to let your horsemen kill cavalry.

 

[Machiavelli24]

...production capability, which is actually the most important resource for knocking out those science victory projects, which take tons of hammers.

I have found the faster way to complete a Space Victory isn't Science & Production but Science & Gold. Democracies can stockpile Gold in the mid game while they are teching and then rush buy Engineers and Scientists after getting Suffrage. There are Engineers and Scientists that can solo all of the Spaceship parts themselves in one turn. I've done it multiple times. There may be an overflow bug though, when I crunch the numbers the expected result is less than what I get in game.

I don't think building a campus in every city is necessary for a science victory, even on deity.

Sacrificing science is just delaying when you can start building a Spaceport. It may take 13,000 production (1500, 2500, 3*3000) to build the Spaceship but it takes over 40,000 Science to get there. +10 Science will shave multiple turns off getting to 40,000 while +10 Production will only shave a single turn off building everything.

 

[lilnev]

It seems to me that early on, as you're expanding, inward trade routes (from peripheral cities to your capital and perhaps a second city) have generally the highest return on investment, so Commercial Hub and Harbor are very high build priorities. Often city center buildings come first, perhaps an Aqueduct, to support their own growth (rapid, with a trade route or two bringing food and hammers). The first thing that they contribute to the general economy is usually trade routes via CH/Harbor. Sometimes, a Campus comes first if there's a good spot. Trade routes from Harbors are so strong, I plan my city placements with them in mind.
To make those trade routes as strong as possible, the capital (and perhaps one other city) should be as large as possible, with a full complement of districts. CH/Harbor of course, and beyond that whatever is needed (often Encampment and IZ).
It might be that later on, Factory/Power Plant and Zoo/Stadium are even more powerful than additional trade routes; I have a habit of abandoning games and starting again.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I have found the faster way to complete a Space Victory isn't Science & Production but Science & Gold. Democracies can stockpile Gold in the mid game while they are teching and then rush buy Engineers and Scientists after getting Suffrage. There are Engineers and Scientists that can solo all of the Spaceship parts themselves in one turn. I've done it multiple times. There may be an overflow bug though, when I crunch the numbers the expected result is less than what I get in game.


Sacrificing science is just delaying when you can start building a Spaceport. It may take 13,000 production (1500, 2500, 3*3000) to build the Spaceship but it takes over 40,000 Science to get there. +10 Science will shave multiple turns off getting to 40,000 while +10 Production will only shave a single turn off building everything.

There is an overflow bug, but getting those GPersons can still give ~2 of the 5 for free, and major boosts to the rest. so it might be worthwhile to go for the gold.

 

[Victoria]

There is more than one way to skin a cat.
Yes build an initial hub of buildings but also expand and get phase 2 cities out there that will grow large and string by the end of the game but also provide amenities, spread, better options all round TBH. For me ib science Phase 2 never ends. no need for phase 3 strategical cities, just big population growers
Initially just build 1 campus or 2 for bonuses then mid game when your phase 2 are large enough bang em all out at once if that's what you want to do but realistically about 8-10 big cities with good prod its what its all about.. and those civics and other bonuses.

This also works, to me too many campuses early just limits everything else and for the value they gain initially why bother. later when you can go bang bang bang with good production and gain +10 science quick for each sure. The extra cities in my view early on provide extra growth and stop your core cities maxxing too quick.

Just my view, more than one way

 

[malitano]

Good stuff

 

[Machiavelli24]

I'm not 100% sold on 'no harbor unless already commercial hub'. The harbor also features the lighthouse, a very nice t1 building, and the shipyard, which can give a very nice production bonus in the right location.

It is very hard to justify building a Harbor but not a Commercial Hub. A Commercial Hub can easily get +3 from adjacency (2 from river, 1 from being in a triangle with the city center and another district). A Harbor will struggle to get more than 2 (1 or 2 resources and maybe a triangle). Often lining up the Harbor with the Commercial Hub for +2 is more important than maximizing the Harbor's adjacency.

The Harbor's buildings are marginal. The Lighthouse costs more than a Granary or Watermill for less housing or worse yields. And all it has going for it is Great Admiral points, which has negligible value if not going for water domination. The Shipyard is crippled by the poor adjacency bonuses on the Harbor. You could run the Harbor adjacency policy, but that is almost certainly going to provide less than the Commerce adjacency policy (and if you want to just run both than you're sacrificing your victory district's policies which are way more important).

The power of Harbors is that they are a weaker second version of a Commerce Hub. Their buildings won't provide all the Gold a Commerce Hub can but their Trade Route and adjacency boost make Policies like "+100% Commerce Hub adjacency" and "+yield from Trade Routes" better.