Anyone else barely build districts

[rgp151]

Yeah, all I'm saying is that Germany's bonuses are generally over valued compared to other civs. The Hansa is a good district, but its benefits aren't overwhelming by any means. The additional district capacity sounds better than it really is when compared against civs that can simply grow faster, and thus also build more districts faster. Its not really that Germany can build one more district than anyone else. Other civs also effectively get the same bonus as Germany, its just that it comes via a different mechanic, i.e. faster population growth, and I'd argue that faster pop grown is superior to simply being able to build an extra district because it has additional benefits and also increases production in and of itself. Certainly I've gotten more production out of other civs than Germany, so its not like Germany is even the most productive civ. Trade and population bonuses can both trump Germany's bonuses in terms of maximizing production.

 

[UWHabs]

What.
Germany ramps up fast, but not that fast.
1 chop wont ever get you both a hansa and a comm hub before you reach pop 2.

1 chop gets you the Hansa (or almost - one deer/stone would finish it, a forest chop you probably get 75% of the way there). And unless if they fixed the "bug", Hansa's adjacency worked with a placed Commerce hub, you didn't have to complete it to get the +2 from it. So it's not too hard to get a baseline +5 or +6 from the Hansa, doubled with the policy card, so a base +10 or +12 production. Yes, you still need to actually build the commerce hub later, but they start from a better place than most.

It also gets doubly good because they get lots of IZ, Germany can also get a lot of engineers, so it's not hard to get one of them to rush the Mausoleum, and another that gets you Da Vinci, and suddenly you're not far from a +6 culture Workshop too.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The game is probably already decided by t100, so all this unproven assertations about potential pop growth are kinda moot

 

[UWHabs]

After some of the discussion earlier, I decided to start up a Germany game. And I will say they're not quite as good as I remember. Now, granted, I was playing with tech shuffle on and IZ ended up fairly late in the era, but yeah, the big Germany bonuses don't really kick in until they get Hansa online. And it looks like they did fix the adjacency bug, so you do need to complete the CH to get the adjacency from that - I know earlier you could just have the CHs placed and your hansa would immediately benefit. Also I think earlier on there was another bug where if you placed a district over a resource, it wouldn't clear the resource from a tile (for like Wheat and stuff), so I think the Hansa used to get some big benefits from that.

But that being said, Germany definitely gets way more production than other civs. I've been aggressive at Hansa placements, and only have 1 industrial CS in the game, and my cities production are just bonkers. Like I'm in the medieval era and most of my cities can finish districts in 6-10 turns. With most civs, I really only get that production from 1-2 cities at most. The only times I usually get close to that is if I get crazy HS adjacencies and have a strong Work Ethic game going. Having a cheap Hansa with +7 to +10 adjacency, doubled with the Craftsmen card, definitely has you going strong to get everything up quickly. I just hit factories, and now I'm sure I'll be polluting like crazy as all my cities can hard-build a factory+coal plant in about 6 turns apiece.

So yeah, given all this, Germany is still an interesting civ. They're really set up to ICS like crazy, since even a tundra city should be able to get to size 4 with a trader, and you can have a Hansa+CH+one other district, and the city is actually useful enough that it can hard-build that campus/University. They're not as quick to get going as other cities, since you still need to get that core out, and they really only do come online once you get Hansas. I'd agree they're not top-tier, since they do have some limitations. But they definitely are set to take advantage more of districts since they don't need to grow as big to get as many districts out. They can go even higher since there's 2 engineers that let you surpass district limits, and they should be able to quickly build the Mausoleum, so you don't all the population while still building everything in a city.

 

[rgp151]

@UWHabs Nice assessment. The question, however, is whether they are actually better than a faster growing civ like Cree, Khmer, India, etc. Or even if their cities have more production than those civs at all by any given turn in the game.

Many civs will have more production than Germany much sooner in the game. Many civs will be able to produce just as many districts as Germany, perhaps even sooner in the game, due to faster population growth and higher early production. Can Germany get higher max production eventually? Maybe, if you can get +10 on a Hansa, where no one else can, but again will that really beat out HS + Work Ethic from Khmer or India in addition to their larger population? Will that really be better than the higher gold income of Cree? Will it beat out civs that get bonuses to their Harbors with high adjacency? Shipyard production bonuses are superior to IZs because they net both Gold and Prod at the same time.

It is true that you can get overall higher average adjacency bonuses on the German IZs, and will likely have a higher minimum production in cities, but I don't think Germany gets the highest max production, because all they really have going is the IZ itself. Just having adjacency bonuses on the IZ can't compete with a mix higher population, better improvements (like Mekewaps), and biases toward the use of stuff like Work Ethic.

But yeah, Germany can do ok, however they aren't the gods of production that many believe them to be.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Perhaps game speed makes a difference. I only play on marathon (and larger maps)
My cities seem to hold their own for size (internal trade helps on food/production)


I do try to get Hansa, CH, GP in the capital. CH GP make a +4 if I can get a dam, that's +6.
I also go after Machu Pichu for the mt bonus. (if I have mountains)... That can do insane things.
(of course, that works for all civs)

Tech Shuffle can get some really silly layouts. All bets for anyone are off there. (and yeah, I like using it)

Early on though, the extra district means I can drop 2 so have religion/science going in the first couple cities.
Once the others become avail, ...

Of course, I want all that to fuel a rather large military.
Once I have that...... of course I'm gonna use it!!!

 

[UWHabs]

@UWHabs Nice assessment. The question, however, is whether they are actually better than a faster growing civ like Cree, Khmer, India, etc. Or even if their cities have more production than those civs at all by any given turn in the game.

Many civs will have more production than Germany much sooner in the game. Many civs will be able to produce just as many districts as Germany, perhaps even sooner in the game, due to faster population growth and higher early production. Can Germany get higher max production eventually? Maybe, if you can get +10 on a Hansa, where no one else can, but again will that really beat out HS + Work Ethic from Khmer or India in addition to their larger population? Will that really be better than the higher gold income of Cree? Will it beat out civs that get bonuses to their Harbors with high adjacency? Shipyard production bonuses are superior to IZs because they net both Gold and Prod at the same time.

It is true that you can get overall higher average adjacency bonuses on the German IZs, and will likely have a higher minimum production in cities, but I don't think Germany gets the highest max production, because all they really have going is the IZ itself. Just having adjacency bonuses on the IZ can't compete with a mix higher population, better improvements (like Mekewaps), and biases toward the use of stuff like Work Ethic.

But yeah, Germany can do ok, however they aren't the gods of production that many believe them to be.

Perhaps game speed makes a difference. I only play on marathon (and larger maps)
My cities seem to hold their own for size (internal trade helps on food/production)


I do try to get Hansa, CH, GP in the capital. CH GP make a +4 if I can get a dam, that's +6.
I also go after Machu Pichu for the mt bonus. (if I have mountains)... That can do insane things.
(of course, that works for all civs)

Tech Shuffle can get some really silly layouts. All bets for anyone are off there. (and yeah, I like using it)

Early on though, the extra district means I can drop 2 so have religion/science going in the first couple cities.
Once the others become avail, ...

Of course, I want all that to fuel a rather large military.
Once I have that...... of course I'm gonna use it!!!

My current game, I would say my worst Hansa is +5, and best is around +12. 2 cities near each other just need a Hansa-CH diamond where each touches the 2 others and already your Hansa is +5. It's not hard to arrange that so that each Hansa has 1-2 resources around it. And you can obviously get better if you have more cities coordinating. And that's base yield - all those numbers get doubled with Craftsmen.

I would say the big disadvantage vs other civs high production capacity obviously are that IZ come later than most other districts. Holy sites come super early, and with the right pantheon and setup, can give you a big adjacency that you can turn into production with work ethic. Although obviously that requires some extra work (you need the pantheon and religion and beliefs). Germany has the edge in that their production bonus also comes with a discounted cost, which can't be ignored either. The fact you can get almost all the way there on a single chop can't be discounted either, also that all that production is pretty generic in where you can place it. Most civs that rely on some sort of Work Ethic type play you need the right terrain for that - even "common" spots like rivers for the Khmer you're always going to have some cities that can't fit them in. Whereas Hansa getting from resources and commerce hubs mean you are definitely more flexible and as mentioned above just need 2 cities working together to get at least +5 each. And the extra bonus of basically getting every great engineer means you also have a pretty free choice of wonders to build. There's also a slight extra bonus in getting more districts means your internal trade routes are better. I just switched to Communism with the extra internal trade route card and now the routes to my capital are something like +10 food and +7 production, which also goes a long way to getting cities up and running.

Anecdotally, I do think they get more production for all the reasons listed. Now, whether they can truly better use that vs other civs, probably not. Their other bonuses are relatively weak (combat strength vs CS really doesn't matter, and I'm pretty sure the only U-boat use I'm going to get in my current game is for the memes). And the fact that you kind of HAVE to go down the Hansa/CH route certainly could run into troubles if you are in spots where that's less good. I got lucky in that I had a decent amount of space available - certainly playing Germany on a snaky landmass they're going to run into troubles, since the one thing I do notice is that my coastal cities really are late at getting harbors online. Or if I do opt for CH/Hansa/Harbor early, they're not getting a different district (Campus/TS/etc...) until size 7, so in all reality not any earlier than others. And because I use my commerce hubs for better Hansa adjacency, sometimes they go in awkward spots. Still useful for gold yields and trade routes, but definitely not getting a ton of adjacency off of them. But the fact you are forced there means I have a healthy trade route game and certainly don't struggle for gold.

 

[steveg700]

It's a big pain in the neck to bother with districts with new cities, which means in the early game I generally concern myself with improving tiles, civilians, and, y'know, survival. Chops help, but it's discouraging to mess with districts when that's going to more-or-less occupy a city for an era.

Whoop. That wasn't really about Germany.

 

[rgp151]

It's a big pain in the neck to bother with districts with new cities, which means in the early game I generally concern myself with improving tiles, civilians, and, y'know, survival. Chops help, but it's discouraging to mess with districts when that's going to more-or-less occupy a city for an era.

Whoop. That wasn't really about Germany.

Funny, I do the opposite. I focus on building districts, because they cannot be purchased (generally). I try to build what can't be bought and try to buy as much as I can of what can be bought, which is usually buildings in new or low prod cities.

 

[UWHabs]

Funny, I do the opposite. I focus on building districts, because they cannot be purchased (generally). I try to build what can't be bought and try to buy as much as I can of what can be bought, which is usually buildings in new or low prod cities.

Yeah, that's usually my plan too. Especially with Ancestral Hall, you buy the Granary/Monument/Watermill, use the builder to put down at least a couple improvements, and the city gets pretty quickly to size 3-4. At that point it should at least have some production. It's still a real pain to place a district and see that it's 35 or 50 or 80 or whatever turns until it finishes, but I really have nothing better to do.

Alternately, some cities I simply place them to forget about them and just claim land. If they're just there for a resource or something, then it really doesn't matter what I build. It really is one of the pains of the game, how bad medieval+ cities are just because by that point districts have grown so much in price that it's really hard for a small city to complete them. Even if through growth and whatever the district will only end up taking 25 turns to build, if my game only has 70 turns left, it's not really worth it in many cases. The one thing I definitely have done more is that when you get to those medieval cities, don't worry about adjacency. It's not worth destroying a good tile to get a +2 campus instead of a +0 campus, when your civ is generating 250 science per turn, and that campus won't finish for 30 turns. The district might still be valuable in the end if you have a lot of CS, the library might still be a +6 library. But don't worry about the adjacency unless if you have the right spot for it.

 

[steveg700]

Funny, I do the opposite. I focus on building districts, because they cannot be purchased (generally). I try to build what can't be bought and try to buy as much as I can of what can be bought, which is usually buildings in new or low prod cities.

Yeah, that's usually my plan too. Especially with Ancestral Hall, you buy the Granary/Monument/Watermill, use the builder to put down at least a couple improvements, and the city gets pretty quickly to size 3-4. At that point it should at least have some production. It's still a real pain to place a district and see that it's 35 or 50 or 80 or whatever turns until it finishes, but I really have nothing better to do..

Grannaries, watermills, and monuments cost 240<. Where does the hundreds of gold it takes to buy all of that come from in the early game?

Cities get gold, growth, and production from improvements. And chops.

 

[rgp151]

Yes, very early game I will build Monuments in new cities, but usually after I build a Monument and maybe walls, the rest is purchased, and in settlements 4+, i.e. the 4th or so settlement I'm making, by that point I can buy Monuments generally. Regardless, I'll typically start on districts by that point to come back and buy the buildings later if I can't then.

 

[reddishrecue]

I usually build the districts after I'm done with workers and city centers or units for the barbs. I hardly go wonders because AI usually takes them on deity.

 

[UWHabs]

Yes, very early game I will build Monuments in new cities, but usually after I build a Monument and maybe walls, the rest is purchased, and in settlements 4+, i.e. the 4th or so settlement I'm making, by that point I can buy Monuments generally. Regardless, I'll typically start on districts by that point to come back and buy the buildings later if I can't then.

Yeah, very early in the game, you have to basically hard-build everything, and in those cases, my usual strategy is to get the basic infrastructure down before worrying about the district. I might pre-place the Harbor, for example, but I won't start building it until the city has a granary and monument. Later on, when I have the money, I will buy those, because being able to get the city to size 3 or 4 early is most worth it. I've also often been of the habit later on to buy the first building of the district, even if it's only a few turns to build, just because that's really for the mostpart why I built the district. I'm not building a Harbor for the Harbor, I'm building it for the lighthouse.

I will say districts are also more valuable since I subscribed to the Improved Specialists mod. It's not a game-changing update, but generally adds about +1 to specialists so that they're not quite as completely useless to use. That's a nice little change that just makes you a little more willing to get districts down and replace tiles, without completely altering the game balance.