Tra-la-la. Let me check in and see how my thread is doing.....Gee, seems like nobody is posting in it anymore......Oh, it's been frog-marched into the "Ideas & Suggestions" ghetto. A death sentence for discussion.
I mean, basically this, right?
Are there even that many Campuses built next to mountains in real life? Or Industrial Zones next to Mines?
Well, mines tend not to be near metropolises, but civ has no way to represent low-pop cities like mining towns or farmbelts that export their outputs. The focus is on localized per-city yields, which is sensible in the ancient era but later becomes outmoded as metropolises emerge. Trade routes are a tacked-on feature that basically generate yields from thin air. So, that's a limitation baked into Civ that the adjacency design has to deal with.
The very fact that adjacency is required (rather than just proximity within the same city) is very "gamey", to be sure. However, I would say it's too reductive to say verisimilitude isn't a concern. They just had a lot of legacy noise in there. Are all the great centers of learning in the world found in the heart of jungles? Nope, just carrying over a nonsensical bonus that universities had in Civ V. Giving a major adjacency bonus for campuses is, IMO, an obvious mistake and lets to major have-or-have-not situations with civ's. I'd prefer to have lots of ways to gain minor bonuses for campuses and theaters. Instead, you can rack up crazy bonuses for the former in certain specific situations, and the latter is only gets a serious buff from wonders. It doesn't make for a very engaging puzzle.
One way to address a potential overkill of bonuses would be to have bonuses unlock with unlocking techs. Maybe mountains don't provide a major bonus until after researching Astronomy, for instance.
Of course, these bonuses should not just be thought of as a way to improve districts, but conversely as a way to make certain features on the map more relevant. For instance, I like the idea of giving CH's a bonus for oasis adjacency because the oasis is a pretty unspectacular feature that can't be improved by a builder, doesn't get better with techs, and can't be chopped. Sure, it's a fresh source of water in a desert, but the game is hurting for a reason to bother with desert cities in the first place (again, another side effect of having a tacked-on trading system).
I also like the idea that in some hypothetical overhaul that a resource gives an adjacency bonus equivalent to the type of yield it offers. In other words, jade and amber for theater districts, mercury and tea for campuses, cotton, gems, and cocoa for CH's, incense and tobacco for HS's, and so on.
for city center and +1 of appropriate yield for other districts. And then toss in a policy card in the modern era that doubles those bonuses. It would make urban planning quite fun!
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