[R&F] A district for every city

[acluewithout]

So, a thing that niggles me.

I really like districts and the whole district mechanic. But there is a big rub.

I can’t see any reason to not have a district in every city. The way the game works with yields and projects, unless you have at least one district, there’s nothing really for a city to use it’s production for, except maybe some base infrastructure (grainary) or more builds or settlers. Am I wrong about that?

Having a district in every city sometimes feels a bit samey. Just, ugh, samey. I’d much rather have some big cool cities with awesome districts / buildings, a few more smaller cities with commercial hubs harbours, and then maybe some fringe cities that a more like towns.

What do people think? Do people always build districts in every city? Do they like that?

One think I’d like to see is cities having some base project they could run without any districts. It could maybe give growth and expand borders. And or maybe a gold or faith generating project, but that doesn’t produce great people.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

You can build troops, or builders.
Given time constraint, builders or settlers are better option than districts for many cities. Especially when all trees being removed.

 

[AmazonQueen]

It would only lead to lack of variety if you built every district in every city. I try and specialise my cities a little. I also have fringe cities, usually to pick up a resource that have a lot of tundra or desert and are never going to be massive.

 

[Cedbird77]

I am usually hustling so much to compete, stay alive, win or dominate I don't mind building the same districts in every city. I don't have time to think about much.

Yet I love diversity. It is needed sometimes as you grow. Or to counter an enemy.

A district in every city for me. Why not

 

[ezzlar]

There is not so much to gain by specialising. You might as well build as much as you can. Extra districts are always net positive value due to nominal gains and district cost not being a function of number of districts.

I find it strange that it is worthwile to build a campus with a university in the middle of nowhere with almost no population. And that every city can have a university!

 

[acluewithout]

You can build troops, or builders.
Given time constraint, builders or settlers are better option than districts for many cities. Especially when all trees being removed.

I certainly don’t play as efficiently as you - I have a habit of building a few more harbours and CHs than necessary - but agree, this is basically where I come out.

For a lot of cities, they don’t really need a district (and I’m only willing to build so many “redundant” districts on the basis of “fun”), and I don’t want to build any infrastructure other than a monument. So, I build Builders. Not even Settlers, because I try to limit myself to roughly 12 cities, or units because I dislike unit spam.

 

[AmazonQueen]

There is not so much to gain by specialising. You might as well build as much as you can. Extra districts are always net positive value due to nominal gains and district cost not being a function of number of districts.

I find it strange that it is worthwile to build a campus with a university in the middle of nowhere with almost no population. And that every city can have a university!

Most British cities have 2. I'm not seeing why this is any different to buildings in earlier versions of Civ. "Builders" built everything in every city, "wargamers" built the minimum to support their armies.

 

[acluewithout]

Most British cities have 2. I'm not seeing why this is any different to buildings in earlier versions of Civ. "Builders" built everything in every city, "wargamers" built the minimum to support their armies.

I’m not the most efficient player. My real gripe is that I’d like to differentiate my cities - so some have xy districts, some have ab districts and some, like the littlest piggy, get none. But cities without districts really have nothing useful they can do - except builders (and or maybe settlers or units).

 

[MrRadar]

Well, OP, first of all, titling this thread like that you surely came up with a very catchy slogan, and a universal one, that can perfectly serve all the main ideologies, well done!

And, as it tends to happen with policies, it is so open to every kind of distortions, while filtering through bureaucratic and ideological channels: "A single district per city" policy, "A different district for every city" policy, "Only this state approved type of district in every city", "Only this type of district allowed to be built in our cities during this era" policy, "Only one type of city districts per continent" policy, and so on. So many variant play and RP options

Coming back from this slight derail, I do tend to build some sort of district in every city, so that it could build a city project or a specific unit.

This "city has nothing useful to do" feeling usually comes towards the late game, when everything useful has already been done across all of your empire, all the reasonable spots in the world have been already settled, and you're just waiting for the game to end or delaying it for whatever reason. When no more builders, settlers or units are needed, indeed there could be some option to set a city to the endless gold, culture or science production, like in the earlier installments.

 

[BenitoChavez]

I’m not the most efficient player. My real gripe is that I’d like to differentiate my cities - so some have xy districts, some have ab districts and some, like the littlest piggy, get none. But cities without districts really have nothing useful they can do - except builders (and or maybe settlers or units).

I tend to play with victory conditions in mind, and to some extent playing this way allows for some variety in the districts built. For example, for domination victories I really only need 2-3 cities that specialize in producing units which means encampments and if time allows industrial zones. The other cities in my empire can focus on science/gold/culture. For science & religious victories my cities tend to all have the same districts.

Industrial zones and entertainment complexes/water parks encourage city diversity due to each district having building that affect other cities in a range.

As for cities without districts, when I go for a culture victory they can be useful purely for seaside resorts. I usually plop them down on some small island in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't matter they don't have a district since they can still produce tourism. For other victory types, I agree they aren't very useful.

 

[nitedemon]

I feel like they should have some buildings in there that can only be built if you have both district A and district B, to incentivize specialization.

 

[Cedbird77]

Well, OP, first of all, titling this thread like that you surely came up with a very catchy slogan, and a universal one, that can perfectly serve all the main ideologies, well done!

And, as it tends to happen with policies, it is so open to every kind of distortions, while filtering through bureaucratic and ideological channels: "A single district per city" policy, "A different district for every city" policy, "Only this state approved type of district in every city", "Only this type of district allowed to be built in our cities during this era" policy, "Only one type of city districts per continent" policy, and so on. So many variant play and RP options

Coming back from this slight derail, I do tend to build some sort of district in every city, so that it could build a city project or a specific unit.

This "city has nothing useful to do" feeling usually comes towards the late game, when everything useful has already been done across all of your empire, all the reasonable spots in the world have been already settled, and you're just waiting for the game to end or delaying it for whatever reason. When no more builders, settlers or units are needed, indeed there could be some option to set a city to the endless gold, culture or science production, like in the earlier installments.

I would guess that you players who are limiting your districts are playing below Emperor. Is this correct?

I find in Emperor games in which I play 100% of the time. I could never just build a few Campuses or Theater's etc. I have to build build and keep building them to be competitive

 

[Depravo]

If you're making CS influence a major part of your strategy, focusing on one district type and the corresponding CS type can greatly increase your global output in that field. Specialisation is fun, but in most ways the game seems to be pushing you the other way, including with policy cards that encourage extreme tunnel vision.

In my current game as Persia, this focus has been on Holy Sites, which are normally nowhere near the top of my list - since faith is the one output you can easily win without, and those Great Prophet points are inexplicably still completely useless once every religion has been founded.

 

[Sostratus]

I think this hits at a common gripe about the way things are balanced in VI. A lot of people will suggest things basically along the lines of even further specialization; all but certainly, the concept of district adjacency actually fulfills this well. If there were no buildings, we would only place districts where they make sense based on adjacency rules: CHs would go in cities that have good river/harbor access, IZs would go near the mines, holy sites near natural wonders or other good terrain, campuses high in the mountains, and theater squares near wonders. We would literally execute gameplay in the "districts are specialization" vision they first teased with Civ VI.

But, we do have buildings, and they all give flat bonuses, so in most cases the district itself is nice to get in a good spot but we would build them in desert or snow if we had to, just to get those +2's and +4's. (Looking at you, campus and CH.)
It's not so bad because it give support to a variety of styles; we can build districts to make sure we have "enough" of everything, or we can spam one district everywhere if we just want tons of one yield. You can, for example, play a Rome game where you're the Optimus princeps, building large, thriving cities with baths and a balance of infrastructure; or you can play as Spain and go full crusader, spamming holy sites and campuses for uber-Missions tiles and securing hordes of zealous conquistadors. It's nice that we can do these things.

While R&F greatly changed the policy cards around buildings, i think it was a mistake to have building enhancing cards in the first place- although i absolutely support the idea of tying bonuses to districts with 3+ adjacency; a filter on "quality." If more buildings acted like the shipyard, in the sense that they do variable things depending on the district or attributes of the city, then maybe we could change the conversation from "need more gold, build C Hubs everywhere" to "need more gold, so I have to focus on controlling high gold potential cities."

Personally, I've toyed with details along the lines of solutions that would fit what seems to be the template of an average empire being about 8-12 cities, whether that means integrating national wonders in a civ6 style, or looking at governors, or population based city center unlocks. But any solution to "more specialization" has to make sense for a game that can be played on a map where the 2 sides can each have 4 cities, and maps where each of the 12 sides have 12 cities each, and still gives players the freedom to do weird and niche things on the harder (but not hardest) difficulties.

I find in Emperor games in which I play 100% of the time. I could never just build a few Campuses or Theater's etc. I have to build build and keep building them to be competitive

I am not an optimizer, but what I like about emperor is it offers a very easy way to lose (AI gets the second starting settler at this level) but you have some forgiveness around strategies- you can eschew campus/TS in large part and just focus on production, for example, and still be competitive. There's also a lot less reliance on maximizing chops, which is nice.

 

[Disgustipated]

I always build one district in every city, at a minimum a district that produces a trade route. Either Commercial hub or harbor. Some island cities may only have one district the entire game (harbour) since the lack production for anything else. Late game cities I may start on a harbor, but never finish before the game ends. I don't play a high enough level to necessitate campus in every city. So I like the trade routes instead.

 

[mitsho]

Yes, it takes away options to have to build a district first. You can't have a little production in a city to quickly start it off. If you build an industrial zone, you probably will want to build all three buildings in it. Now if there was a choice like between barracks and stable, that might still be interesting. As such, it feels repetitive. The city square buildings will always get built because it's possible. But I can't really quickly switch turns in a city because I need to hard build a district first. As I don't really like to play the maximize adjacencies mini-game, the districts don't do as much for me. As such, for the next civ game I propose districts having no category, but 3 plain district slots. If you cluster three culture buildings together, you get a cultural district. Make the buildings movable between districts and you make the micro-managers happy and avoid that every city square has a granary right in the city center even in the modern era. But I'm deep into Ideas and Suggestions again...

 

[acluewithout]

...when I go for a culture victory they can be useful purely for seaside resorts. I usually plop them down on some small island in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't matter they don't have a district since they can still produce tourism. For other victory types, I agree they aren't very useful.

That's a good point. Yes, I do that too.

I think this hits at a common gripe about the way things are balanced in VI. A lot of people will suggest things basically along the lines of even further specialization; all but certainly, the concept of district adjacency actually fulfills this well. If there were no buildings, we would only place districts where they make sense based on adjacency rules: CHs would go in cities that have good river/harbor access, IZs would go near the mines, holy sites near natural wonders or other good terrain, campuses high in the mountains, and theater squares near wonders. We would literally execute gameplay in the "districts are specialization" vision they first teased with Civ VI.

But, we do have buildings, and they all give flat bonuses, so in most cases the district itself is nice to get in a good spot but we would build them in desert or snow if we had to, just to get those +2's and +4's. (Looking at you, campus and CH.)
It's not so bad because it give support to a variety of styles; we can build districts to make sure we have "enough" of everything, or we can spam one district everywhere if we just want tons of one yield. You can, for example, play a Rome game where you're the Optimus princeps, building large, thriving cities with baths and a balance of infrastructure; or you can play as Spain and go full crusader, spamming holy sites and campuses for uber-Missions tiles and securing hordes of zealous conquistadors. It's nice that we can do these things.

While R&F greatly changed the policy cards around buildings, i think it was a mistake to have building enhancing cards in the first place- although i absolutely support the idea of tying bonuses to districts with 3+ adjacency; a filter on "quality." If more buildings acted like the shipyard, in the sense that they do variable things depending on the district or attributes of the city, then maybe we could change the conversation from "need more gold, build C Hubs everywhere" to "need more gold, so I have to focus on controlling high gold potential cities."

Personally, I've toyed with details along the lines of solutions that would fit what seems to be the template of an average empire being about 8-12 cities, whether that means integrating national wonders in a civ6 style, or looking at governors, or population based city center unlocks. But any solution to "more specialization" has to make sense for a game that can be played on a map where the 2 sides can each have 4 cities, and maps where each of the 12 sides have 12 cities each, and still gives players the freedom to do weird and niche things on the harder (but not hardest) difficulties.


I am not an optimizer, but what I like about emperor is it offers a very easy way to lose (AI gets the second starting settler at this level) but you have some forgiveness around strategies- you can eschew campus/TS in large part and just focus on production, for example, and still be competitive. There's also a lot less reliance on maximizing chops, which is nice.

Agreed, particularly your point about buildings.

One reason I really like Coastal cities is harbours, and the reason I like harbours is because you can play around with them so much between their particular adjacency rules, buildings etc. You can have mega Reyna powered super ports with CHs and all the buildings, Industrial giants with a Shipyards and IZ, or little coastal towns with just a lighthouse.

I think at least the T2 and T3 buildings should provide only small flat bonuses (if at all) and then provide map based bonuses.

Some ideas I'm working on (all still very rough):

Industrial Zone

- Workshop. +1 production for each bonus resource in this city (excluding wheat and rice), +1 for horses and +1 for iron.

- New T1 IZ building: Artisan Quarter. +1 production to each trade route originating from this city. Mutually exclusive to Workshop.

- Factory. Regional amenities and production. Trade routes originating in this city gain an additional +1 food.

- T3 IZ building replaced with Tech Hub. +%production to this city based on how many districts it has (including Neighbourhoods and Aqueducts).

New District: Powerplant.

- Make the Powerplant a separate district. Can only be built in a city with 10+ Pop. Regional production, housing and amenity bonuses. Increased regional production bonus if you have two coal or two oil. Additional further production to any factories in 6 tiles of this city. District can be bought with gold.

Commercial Hub

- Bank. Gold based on how many adjacent districts.

- Stock exchange. Gold bonus based on number of Commercial Hubs and Harbours within 6 tiles. Cannot be built within 9 tiles of another Stock exchange.

Campus

- Library. Small flat science bonus. Adjacent districts provide +1 science adjacency instead of +0.5.

- University. Additional housing.l +2 science adjacency for city centre, theatre square or holy site.

- Research lab. +% science based on how many universities are within 6 tiles, and +% production based on how many factories are within 6 tiles. Cannot be built within 9 tiles of another Research lab.

City Centre

- Townhall. Unlocks around maybe middle ages. City receives +1 housing in a normal age and +2 in a golden or heroic age. City can run City Charter project: receive additional border growth and gold (but no great people points).

 

[Sostratus]

Some ideas I'm working on (all still very rough):

If you left it to me, the first, easiest bone I would throw would be to have National Wonder buildings that act as a 4th district building in some city. Almost every district is laid out such that there is some visual space in the center (either it's empty or the smallest building lives there) where one could plop a larger, prominent structure for the physical manifestation of the NW. Loosely, the NW for each district would essentially be a "one or two per city" type thing, granting very powerful effects but only for that city. The ruhr valley is a little on the strong side of the power budget I would assign to these. They would unlock throughout the game and allow players to really push a city to new heights in one area.

The more complex version of this is to create a literal way for players to specialize a city once it gets big enough. So, once a city reaches say pop 10, it can build a special city center building. Taking inspiration from the Cathedrals of civ4, what we do to prevent spamming the same ones over and over is have additional conditions: the city must possess the relevant district, and you must have at least N of that district to support one of these buildings. (In Civ4, you needed 2-4 temples based on map size for each cathedral building.) So, on a standard map, you might need 3 campuses to allow a city to build an Academy. Etc. These special buildings would be as prominent as the monument or granary; it would be very obvious you were looking at a science powerhouse because the city center would have a that obvious color of blue in it. And so forth. Then, at higher pops (either every 5 or 10) a city would unlock another "slot" for one of these special buildings. That way, you can't cram them all into one city unless it's absolutely massive, but players with taller empires would have a nice perk.

I'm not trying to make a fully detailed ideas&suggestions post, I'm just trying to emphasize that deliberate specialization as a separate measure from district placement may be the path forward here- it's an action for the player that has impact. All the strategic flexibility of the current system can be maintained. It's a stab at the mono district spam problem, anyways.

 

[acluewithout]

If you left it to me, the first, easiest bone I would throw would be to have National Wonder buildings that act as a 4th district building in some city. Almost every district is laid out such that there is some visual space in the center (either it's empty or the smallest building lives there) where one could plop a larger, prominent structure for the physical manifestation of the NW. Loosely, the NW for each district would essentially be a "one or two per city" type thing, granting very powerful effects but only for that city. The ruhr valley is a little on the strong side of the power budget I would assign to these. They would unlock throughout the game and allow players to really push a city to new heights in one area.

The more complex version of this is to create a literal way for players to specialize a city once it gets big enough. So, once a city reaches say pop 10, it can build a special city center building. Taking inspiration from the Cathedrals of civ4, what we do to prevent spamming the same ones over and over is have additional conditions: the city must possess the relevant district, and you must have at least N of that district to support one of these buildings. (In Civ4, you needed 2-4 temples based on map size for each cathedral building.) So, on a standard map, you might need 3 campuses to allow a city to build an Academy. Etc. These special buildings would be as prominent as the monument or granary; it would be very obvious you were looking at a science powerhouse because the city center would have a that obvious color of blue in it. And so forth. Then, at higher pops (either every 5 or 10) a city would unlock another "slot" for one of these special buildings. That way, you can't cram them all into one city unless it's absolutely massive, but players with taller empires would have a nice perk.

I'm not trying to make a fully detailed ideas&suggestions post, I'm just trying to emphasize that deliberate specialization as a separate measure from district placement may be the path forward here- it's an action for the player that has impact. All the strategic flexibility of the current system can be maintained. It's a stab at the mono district spam problem, anyways.

Yup, like these ideas. I was also just looking a FearSun’s IZ mod. I’d maybe do a few things differently, but there are lots of great ideas in that mod and it’s very well done.

Basically, I think there are some very low hanging fruits to improving the balance of buildings and perhaps improving districts. There is more than one way to improve these elements - I’m not all that attached to any particular solutions. I just really hope FXS (1) do make some changes and (2) those changes actually fit with the core design of the game and are thoughtful.

That last one worries me a bit - the patches after Vanilla were generally well thought through, but some (not all, just some) of the changes in R&F felt like they were made by a different team with a poor grasp of the core game design. Hopefully Ed will be more involved with the next expansion, and hopefully the team will also stand back a bit as ask sensibly “does everything make sense together”. Fingers crossed.