Less Science more Culture & Religion?

[Babri]

Early campus districts are looking to be a really bad investment unless you can get some good adj bonus rolling.

I would rather build a monument, granary, water mill, holy site, settler, builder, industrial district, comercial hub. Before a campus.

Even if the numbers on campus buildings and adjacency bonus science looks to be relevant, in the actual gameplay, they are almost useless and actually a setback (talking about early game), just compare a campus district focused let's play with any of the FilthyRobot let's play, where he completely ignores districs other than industrial and commercial and go for early 8+ cities, he gets the same science as the guy who went for campus districts and totally outclass them in everything else.

I actually find the culture tree far more important than the science, the impact a police have in your game is HUGE, like the 100% military production cards, the 50% settler card, the +2 charge builder card, the extra envoys from an early new government, border expansion, just a straight HUGE impact.

But that is just my conclusion from watching a bunch of civ 6 gameplay with prince AI.
Maybe i'm totally off on this.

I don't see it that way. If you can get 2-3 bonus science from adjacency, it might be a good idea to get campus first & then settler considering your capital has a reasonable production. Not only settlers cost escalate quickly but each new city founded raises district cost slightly. This will discourage you from spamming settlers without thinking.

Also watermill is situational, if you have wheat/rice nearby then it might be worthwhile otherwise I'll prefer to go with some beneficial district instead. Holy site is also situational, you won't need always religion but you always can take advantage of extra science. Commercial hub & industrial district are all around useful districts but you need a second city to make real use of the trade route (to boost your newly founded city), and industrial district a bit later than holy site/campus/encampment etc IIRC.

Overall I think campus is a good district, science is quite scarce without it & an early science boost will help you in getting key techs quickly to get your war machine & economy rolling.