Border growth

[WackenOpenAir]

I havent really gotten much into Civ6 before and im sure there have been discussions about border growth that i missed. I am not really interested in the current situation being good or bad here, im sure that has been discussed. I am interested however in how to handle it the way it is.

As i had already come vaguely aware that border growth is rather slow in civ6, i figured "oh thats because im spoiled by choosing tradition every time in civ5". So i figured i'd start with a monument in every city like many people do when choosing the liberty option in civ5 and expected that to be the cure. Unfortunately i was dissapointed.

The value of the monument for borders is of course the biggest when the other factors that provide culture are the smallest. Even if you have nothing else than normal population growth however, over the first few dozen turns after construction, the value of the monument grows to add about 1.5 tiles to your city radius but due to ever increasing culture per tile cost, it never grows beyond that number. Add to that the fact that it is an investment that takes this few dozen turns to pay back for itself and we can conclude that building a monument isnt really better than buying a single tile (of couse it has other effects so im not saying not to build any monuments at all)

Border growth formula and table of cost that comes out of that:

Spoiler :

=10+(6*A2)^1.3

Tiles grown -cCulture cost - Cumulative
0 10 10
1 20 30
2 35 66
3 53 118
4 72 191
5 93 284
6 115 399
7 139 538
8 163 702
9 189 890
10 215 1105
11 242 1347
12 270 1617
13 298 1915
14 327 2242
15 357 2600
16 388 2987
17 418 3406
18 450 3856
19 482 4338
20 515 4852

So what do you guys do to handle border growth ?
How many of these monuments do you build and when ?

Of course we want to price-lock our districts asap when they become available. So do you go out of your way to gather gold for that purpose and how ? do you lock them in sub-optimal positions or do you delay putting them down ? Same for when feudalism comes around, we want to build clusters of farms and cut many forests/junles/marches etc to boost our cities. For that we need tiles however...

 

[gimper42]

It really depends on how the game is going. I tend to try for domination victories. Monuments get built late, usually. By late I mean after I have built 90% of my army that will be used for most of the game. This army could be large or small depending on a lot of things. The only times that I have successfully negotiated a monument build in my capital before the end of the Classical Age is probably when I have extremely high production from that amazing natural wonder that doubles base terrain yields or a tight grouping of spices in woods. If there was a monument present in a freshly captured city, I immediately repair it. If I can build a monument in, say, around 15 turns or fewer in a freshly captured city and there is no need for a district or builder, then I build it right away. Monuments tend to show up pretty late in my own cities, but again, this greatly depends on how the game is going. If I find myself steamrolling my nearby opponents, I might prioritize infrastructure over military sooner.

As far as border growth and when I place districts, I don't plant districts ASAP to lock their costs. Maybe I should do this, but I prefer optimal placement over controlling costs in that fashion. In that direction, I will buy a tile if it puts something important in the optimal position. I also try to chop any terrain feature before planting a district, when feasible (which ends up being most of the time - I'm fairly obsessive with this).

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I don't really build Monuments for border growth. It's a nice consequence, but the main point of Monuments (actually, massed Monuments from 10+ cities) is researching key civics faster.

If I want to place a district, I buy the tile. Unless I need to do it for many cities or need to upgrade or buy units, I usually have the money for that. If not, I wait a couple of turns to get the money.

Also, I don't really use farm triangles. Usually trade routes and Granaries/Water Mills/Lighhthouses get me enough food. I also have Plantations/Pastures/Camps around to give me 1 housing.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

ye ive read more people saying the trade routes is enough to get all the needed food. Doesnt that come pretty late though ? you basically need a commercial district in each city first to get the trade route, and then produce the trader. Meanwhile you would have like to build those science districts asap.

I could possibly see it happening if i didnt build any monuments at all and just used all the production to get both science and trade districts up asap. But that means absolutely no culture for civics... Otherwise, getting all that stuff running after turn 100 is simply too late.

And if not farms, then what to do with all the flat lands ?

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

ye ive read more people saying the trade routes is enough to get all the needed food. Doesnt that come pretty late though ? you basically need a commercial district in each city first to get the trade route, and then produce the trader. Meanwhile you would have like to build those science districts asap.

I could possibly see it happening if i didnt build any monuments at all and just used all the production to get both science and trade districts up asap. But that means absolutely no culture for civics... Otherwise, getting all that stuff running after turn 100 is simply too late.

And if not farms, then what to do with all the flat lands ?

4 pop is quite doable without farms and allows you to place 2 districts. One of them would probably be Commercial Hubs/Harbours, and the other maybe Campus/Entertainment Complex or your Victory District.

Traders may come from more productive cities too, or bought with gold.

I usually leave flat lands unimproved. Improving them cost Builder charges, which I usually save for better tiles or chops. Those give more return on investment than an improved tile I'll never work.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

ye i wasnt really worried about the 4 pop for 2 districts, more about the production needed for 2 districts everywhere + at least some monuments + traders. I have the impression that it can make for a really strong game (as the commercial districts also add a lot of income if you get some CS to go with it) but im afraid it might be a bit slow for gotms. Ill give it a try out though.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

ye i wasnt really worried about the 4 pop for 2 districts, more about the production needed for 2 districts everywhere + at least some monuments + traders. I have the impression that it can make for a really strong game (as the commercial districts also add a lot of income if you get some CS to go with it) but im afraid it might be a bit slow for gotms. Ill give it a try out though.

I've found that military and expansion are more important than districts in the early game. Districts can come later, after you've secured some good spots for your cities (which may include your neighbours' capital ). I usually build either Monuments, Granaries or Commercial Hubs while I wait for a new city to reach enough pop to build a Settler.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

yes obviously military is the nr1 priority, i got that part down pretty well. (obtaining 20-30 cities before turn 100)

I have never gotten myself to late game yet though. I just opened a final save file i downloaded from a succesful GOTM player.
I realised something that comes as kind of a shock after 5 civ itterations of pushing population to the absolute max: You dont need your cities to be any bigger than size 4....

As a side effect, that also fixes the border issues. Size 4 cities dont need big borders at all.

Thats kind of a disappointment to me really after all the things i gotten used to in previous civ's.
When i first heard of the districts, i figured that was a means to make us specialize our cities. Turns out it is not, it is merely a means to push for more wide/ics strategy.

Imo this needs major re balancing. I would suggest combining some old with new:
-Let the buildings inside a district be multipliers on population, for example base science = 0.5 per pop. library = 1.0, uni = 3.0 research lab = 6.0.
-Make it a bit easier to grow cities large.
-Make border expansion a bit faster in early-mid game to accommodate for higher growth and disconnect it from culture. Make us build a few dedicated culture cities if we want civics rather than a monument in each.
-Make the districts more mutually exclusive for the higher tier buildings, for example by needing 1, 2 and 3 population to actually occupy these buildings so that you wont have the population to spare to do it for multiple districts except maybe in a few cities very late. So you'd need to have 6 unproductive citizens to make your city produce a lot of science/gold/culture and thus carefully balance that with food/production, probably resulting in reduced production after you have the tier 3 building to make it harder to build another one. But then it would produce well over 100 science or gold in 1 city.
-Same for the factory stuff, but they are regional, so you only need a few cities where your pop is occupying those factory buildings.
-Make us spend require gold in late game (by upkeep on libraries / factories if you like, or whatever else) so that we cant choose to build only science cities or only culture cities but actually will require a few commerce ones.

Best would be if the numbers could be tweaked in such a way that both wide and tall strategies are viable or even a mix with a few tall core cities and a bunch of smaller peripheral cities

And on a final note, make conquering cities harder. As it is now, conquest is better than any other investment by leagues and every victory condition pretty much starts with playing domination-like first. Even from the very start, its better to build units than settler.

 

[Jarms48]

If I need a lot of border growth quickly I'll just research two civic policies down to 1 turn each, swap in the 20% cheaper tile purchases, buy everything I want, and then next turn swap my old civic card back in.

 

[Victoria]

I normally play peaceful and typically deal with it by using gold. I had never really considered using civic culture overflow but I tend to be swapping my cards so much already for CS and chop overflows but great idea and will consider.

The value I get to expanding out to plains hills is quite big, production is a biggy.
Also because I play a strong CS game and tend to get a theatre early in a couple of production cities, as long as I have found a culture CS or two I am racing. Once I have the writer slots filled and printing discovered I expand OK but still buy the odd tile.

Monuments I build with medium priority, i want the culture to get to higher civics and barely consider the border growth because, as you say, its v slow

Border growth I think is a bit like movement. Viewed as more restrictive but a mechanic that adds to the strategy of the game which thankfully limits lockdown a fair amount.

 

[greygamer]

I build monuments early in my expansion cities unless they have a low (<5 housing cap) in which I build a granary. I try to keep culture and science balanced as the game progresses, I'll even build the odd theatre district in the larger cities.

 

[Arent11]

I realised something that comes as kind of a shock after 5 civ itterations of pushing population to the absolute max: You dont need your cities to be any bigger than size 4....

As a side effect, that also fixes the border issues. Size 4 cities dont need big borders at all.

Yep, that's the easiest solution.

(1) Use gold to buy tiles
(2) Build many small cities & ignore housing/growth
(3) Use certain policies
(4) If you run out of production tiles: Use unique improvements instead of farms
(5) Use some central theatre cities that have border growth & 'steal' tiles with the surrounding cities

 

[paulthebug]

I realised something that comes as kind of a shock after 5 civ itterations of pushing population to the absolute max: You dont need your cities to be any bigger than size 4....

As a side effect, that also fixes the border issues. Size 4 cities dont need big borders at all.

Hi WackenOpenAir, I was wondering if you remember those crazy rexing in CiV II?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Haha, civ 3 yes.

But it least there i did grow proper cities in the core and left the ICSing for the corrupt remainder of the map...