Adjacency bonuses

rockhpi

Chieftain
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Nov 2, 2001
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Some background: I've played every Civ game starting with II. I play King, I have in the last year or so won a couple of science victories and a couple of Diplomatic victories. I have been slowly picking up info, mainly from these forums, sometimes YouTube videos (I've had this game since the day it came out and I'm still finding out some game mechanism I had no idea about).

I've never paid a lot of attention to adjacency bonuses because my choice of city placement usually revolves around resources or needing a Port or whatever. But I've seen articles or posts where people make triangles (or squares or stars) of cities that can have districts adjacent and rack up monster bonuses.

So I started a game with Egypt and I was able to place 3 cities near each other and I made sure they could have their campuses adjacent. 3 clustered campus districts! I'll be swimming in science! I was behind everyone the whole game.

I built campuses in all the other cities I founded. I had the policy that increases campus adjacency. Other civs crushed me in science. I did worse with science than in games where I ignored adjacency. Around 1900, Catherine waltzed across my border and attacked my field cannons with her Death Robot and I decided to call it a day.

So is this an Egypt thing? Do I seriously misunderstand adjacency? I don't understand how I could be that far behind the entire world.
 
Making triangles of districts is most helpful when the districts in them get major bonuses from each other in addition to the minor bonus that all adjacent districts give. For instance, a City Center + Harbor + Commercial Hub triangle is good, because the commercial hub and harbor each get +1 gold from 2 adjacent districts, AND you get +2 gold for harbor next to commercial hub and +2 gold for harbor next to city center, making for a total +6 gold (and another +2 gold if the commercial hub is next to a river, and +1 for every water resource next to the harbor). Other examples are Industrial Zones getting +2 production from aqueducts, dams, and canals; and Theater Squares getting +2 culture from entertainment complexes and water parks.

Campuses, on the other hand, get no major adjacency for any type of district - the best they get is the universal +1 to main yield from Government plazas and +1 for 2 adjacent districts. With campuses, you're much better off aiming for tiles adjacent to lots of mountains, geothermal fissures, and reefs.

Hope that helps! ^_^
 
Clustering is a minor source for campus adjacencies since adjacent districts provide only a +0,5 bonus. If you have a reef or a geothermal fissure you can get a +2 just from having it adjacent to your campus which would require 4 districts if you did it with clusters. So for campusses you are generally looking for places with already high adjancencies and build them there. Afterwards you might still be putting two districts next to it the campus to raise its adjacency.

If you are looking at some other districts clustering makes more sense. For example you get a +2 bonus in industrial zones for aquaducts and dams. So if you settle your cities as close as you can and have the right territory you might be able to place 2 aquaducts and a dam next to an industrial zone to gain at least +7 adjacency on it. You will be able to get the IZ from the second city next to two of the three infrastructure districts and get a minimun of +5 on this one as well.
Theater squares cluster nicely with entertainment complexes since TSs get +2 from ECs and commercial hubs with harbors and a river since CHs get +2 from harbors and a river each.
 
Clustering generally works best in the following cases:

- Industrial zones near rivers, where you make sure that the industrial zones get adjacent aqueducts and dams (even multiple ones if you can manage). You can easily rack up something like a base +6 industrial zone that way, and later boost that to +12 with the +100% adjacency card. Even higher yields are possible if you lay it out well.
- When clustering any districts as Japan, as they get +1 to the respective yield regardless of what kind of district you cluster.
- With a government plaza in the middle of a cluster, as it provides +1 to the surrounding yields.

As @Buktu pointed out, Campuses are one of the districts you generally don't want to cluster (same applies mostly to Holy Sites), simply because naturally occurring features (mountains especially) generally provide more adjacencies than any clustering will get you.

At max you can get +3 adjacencies to a campus if you cluster it, but setting that up will take a long time, whereas finding a Campus spot surrounded by 3 mountains (or 1 mountain and 1 geothermal fissure) will give you the +3 a lot easier. And if you are very lucky, you can get some ridiculous base yields like +8 science campuses (albeit not a regular thing) with something like a Campus spot surrounded by 3 geothermal fissures and 2 mountains, something a district cluster will never be able to get you..
 
Civilization-specific traits may also influence that. With Japan, clustering (any) districts give better results overall so they are incentivized to do that. With Germany, their unique district incentivizes triangle/diamond with commercial hubs. With Mali, their unique district do the same with holy sites while losing the usual harbor triangle combo. With terrain-based adjacency bonuses (Brazil, Australia, Netherlands, Gauls) clustering may be less attractive.
 
Civilization-specific traits may also influence that. With Japan, clustering (any) districts give better results overall so they are incentivized to do that. With Germany, their unique district incentivizes triangle/diamond with commercial hubs. With Mali, their unique district do the same with holy sites while losing the usual harbor triangle combo. With terrain-based adjacency bonuses (Brazil, Australia, Netherlands, Gauls) clustering may be less attractive.
You forget Korea with their Seowon, and even though it's just one District, it sort of incentivizes not clustering your Districts around Seowons and clustering Farms and Mines around them.
 
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Clustering generally works best in the following cases:

- Industrial zones near rivers, where you make sure that the industrial zones get adjacent aqueducts and dams (even multiple ones if you can manage). You can easily rack up something like a base +6 industrial zone that way, and later boost that to +12 with the +100% adjacency card. Even higher yields are possible if you lay it out well.
- When clustering any districts as Japan, as they get +1 to the respective yield regardless of what kind of district you cluster.
- With a government plaza in the middle of a cluster, as it provides +1 to the surrounding yields.

As @Buktu pointed out, Campuses are one of the districts you generally don't want to cluster (same applies mostly to Holy Sites), simply because naturally occurring features (mountains especially) generally provide more adjacencies than any clustering will get you.

At max you can get +3 adjacencies to a campus if you cluster it, but setting that up will take a long time, whereas finding a Campus spot surrounded by 3 mountains (or 1 mountain and 1 geothermal fissure) will give you the +3 a lot easier. And if you are very lucky, you can get some ridiculous base yields like +8 science campuses (albeit not a regular thing) with something like a Campus spot surrounded by 3 geothermal fissures and 2 mountains, something a district cluster will never be able to get you..

The caveat here is that making triangles (or simply getting multiple nearby districts for that extra +1) can be useful in campuses to "top it up". For example, with the changes to needing +4 for the late game policy cards to help, I find I look for maybe a +3 campus spot (ie. 3 mountains), and then make sure I can also put 2 districts next to it too, to get up to that +4 mark.

The other case it can make sense to "cluster" is to try to cluster around a major feature. So, for example, if you have a couple geothermal fissures nearby, then trying to cram as many campuses in that area might help you as well. Or trying to pack as many theatres next to a wonder as you can, gaining those half point here or there can help.
 
For instance, a City Center + Harbor + Commercial Hub triangle is good, because the commercial hub and harbor each get +1 gold from 2 adjacent districts, AND you get +2 gold for harbor next to commercial hub and +2 gold for harbor next to city center, making for a total +6 gold (and another +2 gold if the commercial hub is next to a river, and +1 for every water resource next to the harbor).

This might be a little off topic on a thread about districy adjacency but is this a good investment of your production and district slots? My understanding is most of the Gold generation would be from the Trade Route capacity and having both in a city just grants one so it feels like you'll end up with a Trade Route short from the investment (unless in Secret Societies mode with Owls of Minerva of course).
 
This might be a little off topic on a thread about districy adjacency but is this a good investment of your production and district slots? My understanding is most of the Gold generation would be from the Trade Route capacity and having both in a city just grants one so it feels like you'll end up with a Trade Route short from the investment (unless in Secret Societies mode with Owls of Minerva of course).

If you have a good spot for it (two or more sea resources surrounding the harbor) I think it's still worthwhile to have at least one "golden triangle" city. You can stick Reyna there with a few promotions and ramp up your gold generation for the rest of the game (also frees you to use more internal trade routes if you want), you get the era score for both harbor and CD (if you build harbor first), and if you build a shipyard you get a lot of production out of it too.

It's definitely not as impactful as it was in vanilla (when you get two trade routes), so I wouldn't build them both in every coastal city, but one or two cities as your financial powerhouses I think is worthwhile.
 
If you have a good spot for it (two or more sea resources surrounding the harbor) I think it's still worthwhile to have at least one "golden triangle" city. You can stick Reyna there with a few promotions and ramp up your gold generation for the rest of the game (also frees you to use more internal trade routes if you want), you get the era score for both harbor and CD (if you build harbor first), and if you build a shipyard you get a lot of production out of it too.

It's definitely not as impactful as it was in vanilla (when you get two trade routes), so I wouldn't build them both in every coastal city, but one or two cities as your financial powerhouses I think is worthwhile.

This is my solution to the exclusivity between Harbor and Commercial Hub districts.



Here, Biruta built the Cothon (Harbor replacement) adjacent to a Commercial Hub from another city using the method illustrated here to place districts from a city adjacent to another City Center. The district adjacency becomes more impressive but there are two disadvantages to this setup though:

1. The Commercial Hub city needs to be founded well in advance before the Harbor city. This might be disadvantageous strategically if founding the Harbor city earlier is more critical.

2. Reyna's governor bonus would be less effective since the Commercial Hub doesn't belong in the Harbor city.
 
It is not just raw science that wins games. Getting Eurekas accounts for a lot of science.

Also in most cases quantity > quality. 20 campuses with mediocre adjacency will beat 5 good campuses often.
 
It is not just raw science that wins games. Getting Eurekas accounts for a lot of science.
At least 20 Eurekas could increase your chance of winning a game by at least +5%. This is why Babylon requires experience: a good knowledge of Eurekas is crucial to any strategy, especially Babylon's.

To add to the topic at hand: Ley Lines and the Hermetic Order.
 
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