Border Expansion, Can't Micro-Manage?

[CaPtivE]

As far as I know, you CANNOT manually prioritize the tiles you want your city to grow to. I find this issue very surprising and needs a quality of life improvement.

Just like micro-managing which tiles to work, we should be able to direct/specify the culture-driven border expansion.

I find myself spending a LOT of gold every game on purchasing tiles, and most of the time I'm not interested in the target tile the city is planning to grow to. Another annoying thing is that sometimes the city CHANGES this target (purple highlight) from 1 turn to the next, causing confusion and delaying plans.

Bottom line: I think the player should have the choice to micro-manage the direction of a city's border expansion. Is there any mod that does it?

 

[kaspergm]

Don't think there's any mod yet, it's also on my top priority list, but I expect it will require access to game core? I agree current system is horrible, not least because it often says "will annex X hex in 10 turns" and then I figure ok I can wait those 10 turns to save the gold, and then it will annex another hex.

I remember in Civ5 there was a mod that let you choose which tile to "buy" when city was eligible for border expansion, if you picked one further away, you had to pay the cost difference in gold, that was a top QOL improvement.

 

[Tech Osen]

Yeah, weird design.

 

[criZp]

I do think the devs intended border growth through culture like something "natural" outside the leaders control, as if people living near the city gradually becomes more culturally similar to those in the city, and so they merge with the city.

Still, the tendency is to grab resource tiles and natural wonder tiles over other tiles, so I don't know why OP sees the need to alter this so often. I mean, purchasing land with gold IS the way to micro the border growth, if you really want some other tile.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It's obviously intended to force you to spend gold to get the tiles you prefer as a money-sink.

 

[Minou]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves of Civ 6. It would be nice to be able to select the tile you want to expand onto next, but I understand the desire not to add more micro-management. What sucks though is when the game adds an unworkable mountain tile instead of one with Iron! The swapping is very annoying too - nothing more annoying than walking your builder over to the forest you want to chop when it is added "in one turn" and then all of a sudden the chooser switches to another forest 4 tiles away....

 

[criZp]

If the city expands to an unworkable tile it always does this because that tile is closer to the city, while the workable tile is further away. Did you guys not realize this? I think it makes sense.

 

[Chefofrats]

I actually have nothing against how border growth works. Cities and their terrain grow naturally as they would in real life, and if you as the power-that-is want to intervene and alter this organic process, you have to pay for it. It makes perfect sense.

In fact, this is how my very own city, Warsaw, was developed over the centuries, and especially in the last several decades. I live in a part of it that was artificially built up under a utopian plan in the 1970s and 1980s, and now is home to 200 000 people. The government acquired the land and provided the infrastructure and housing, all at great cost. That's how it works when you want to expand where city life itself does not.

 

[hans510]

I always thought that placing a military unit on an unclaimed tile that was adjacent to your territory should increase the chance that tile would be selected for expansion or decrease the amount of time it took to be claimed. Not sure how that would work in practice but I agree having no control other than buying the tile can be annoying.

 

[ShakaKhan]

If the city expands to an unworkable tile it always does this because that tile is closer to the city, while the workable tile is further away. Did you guys not realize this? I think it makes sense.

Yes. Cities always pick up 2nd ring tiles before 3rd ring tiles. This is also an advantage to placing cities closer; if all your cities are 4 tiles apart, then every tile to acquire is within two tiles of a city.

My beef is that (and I'm still R+F, not GS yet, so maybe this has changed) if a tile produces no yield, you cannot swap the tile from one city to another. This leads to:
1.) certain wonders (pyramids come to mind) having to be built in a lower production city and missed because of this.
2.) districts - primary assessment for district placement is adjacency. If nothing is good, secondary assessment is which tiles are otherwise useless, but since you can't swap the absolutely useless ones, you lose out.
3.) the big one - there's a spot, maybe one of the few in your entire empire, that qualifies for a national park. Three mountains in a triangle and an adjacent tiles without a strategic or luxury resource. But alas, one city culturally expanded to one of the mountain tiles, while the other two are in a different city. I mean, you can plan ahead by buying all the tiles in one city beforehand, but should you have to? Should you be permanently blocked out of placing the NP because a different city OF YOURS laid claim to that tile already?

 

[inquisitive_otter]

What bothers me the most is that sometimes the game chooses a different tile when it expands. I’ll have my worker ready on a forest and then bam! The city expands to this other forest 4 turns away...

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Land Surveyors Card!
Economic with Early Empire.
Reduces the cost to purchase a tile by 20%.

 

[cvb]

Cities always pick up 2nd ring tiles before 3rd ring tiles.

Highest priority. Then in the same ring tiles with resource are preferred over resourceless. Then the higher number of yields is picked (all types count the same, even if you may say eg. 3gold = 1production = 2/3culture) ...

All other things being equal, it even chooses that 2nd ring tile, which allows you to buy a 3rd ring resource tile!!

You can quite reliable predict the sequence of the first picked tiles in the 2nd ring and know you have to buy the resources in the 3rd ring, if you want them early. I like the rest of randomness.

Maybe civ7 should have ONE central switch controlling desired randomness throughout the game.

.

 

[Minou]

I have definitely seen the chooser take an unworkable tile over a workable one in the same ring. I feel this happens more often with Natural Wonders - eg take a second ring Piopiotahi time that cannot actually be used over a forest or something also in second ring.

 

[criZp]

Might be that appeal also factors in then. Natural wonders can be turned into national parks so it's not like they are useless.

 

[CaPtivE]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves of Civ 6. It would be nice to be able to select the tile you want to expand onto next, but I understand the desire not to add more micro-management. What sucks though is when the game adds an unworkable mountain tile instead of one with Iron! The swapping is very annoying too - nothing more annoying than walking your builder over to the forest you want to chop when it is added "in one turn" and then all of a sudden the chooser switches to another forest 4 tiles away....

100%. At least commit to the next-expansion tile! I still think the player should be able to choose where the city should grow. Spending gold to purchase a tile will still be needed when you want to access it right away! Natural growth should also be directed by the player if he wants to, it's part of city-management!

 

[Chefofrats]

Altering "natural growth" must come with a cost though, like any government regulation. Perhaps indicating where you want the city to expand to should cost 33% or 50% of the instant tile purchase price? Consider what such a move would involve in real life - perhaps providing infrastructure (roads etc.) as an incentive for people to expand there rather than elsewhere, or maybe subsidizing the purchase of land for private enterprise. Either way, there would be a cost.

 

[Karmah]

Do I want to pick 'my tile', yes. Should it be so? No, or rather not for the only reason that it is what I want. And I would not want it otherwise.
The 'natural growth' being a huge part of the game mechanism, affecting so much of the rest, I think I can feel safe.
The game, in RP terms- your population, picks a land that offers a combination of attractive (bonus of sorts) , simple to settle (flat land over hills for instance ), with a good number of neighboring owned tile (so second ring over third for instance ). It does not create a path over two rings to reach this luxury or this iron you need on the third. That is something you need to do, choosing to commit to it by spending gold. And yes your people might have chosen to settle in a river bank plain rather than this nice hill with coal.