Civ 7 - City walls incorporate districts adjacent to city center

[Topper Gaming]

Greetings fellow gamers!

I'm relatively new to the forum so I hope this thread does not already exists. If that is the case, I'm very sorry for the potential spam!

I was playing what could be my thousand game of Civ 6 yesterday and, while pillaging a commercial district, I realized how strange it is that a city would put its market and its bank (or treasury) outside of the city walls. It should be in the city's interest to provide citizens with accessible services and protect their infrastructure.

Historically, cities tend to have its markets, banks, theaters, libraries/universities inside the city walls. A very small portion of cities in the medieval and renaissance times left their district unprotected. Sometimes even harbors would be integrated in the city walls to avoid naval invasions straight into the city, but that is more unusual. Harbors have often been a weakness for coastal cities and the target of naval siege. This suggests that maybe a harbor could create an opening in the walls that units can use to enter the city.

So I thought, why not having a dynamic system for walls that would surround districts attached to the city center once the cities are built? Also, if you build a district after the walls are in place you could run a city project that builds the incorporates existing unprotected districts in the walled city.

This would protect the cities districts from pillaging so far the city walls are standing.

Ciao and don't put pineapple on pizza!
Topper

 

[PiR]

I like the idea and this could also be a mod for Civ 6. But to make sense it would require to make all district adjacents I guess. You can't really have a gap between the protected zones.

 

[Topper Gaming]

True that! It could very well be a mod for Civ 6 too!

I do not think you need the district to be adjacent. The way I picture it is for the walls to be continuous, which means that the graphics of the wall would surround the tiles of the city center and its adjectives districts in a continuous line, similarly to what the boarders of a city do.

Also, I think this should only apply to districts adjecent to the city center, meaning that there would not be any gap in between the walls. It is up to the player then to plan his/her cities so that he/she can protect the districts of interest. I think it would add another layer of complexity and personalization to the game.

 

[PiR]

Interesting, yes. Maybe you should move this topic to the mods section and work on a mod

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I like the idea and this could also be a mod for Civ 6. But to make sense it would require to make all district adjacents I guess. You can't really have a gap between the protected zones.

Adjacent Districts should be a requirement, as in Humankind, already. It makes no sense to spread an Ancient or Classical city all over the map. Instead, require adjacent placement from Districts, but some 'districts' become distant Settlements. Prime candidates: Holy Site (think Delphi, far away from any Greek city) and Harbor (think Ostia and Piraeus, the 'harbor cities' of Rome and Athens, respectively). Later, better transportation will allow you 'spread out', but until the Industrial Era, cities didn't spread much past the distance someone could walk in a fraction of a day.

Adjacency Bonuses shouldn't come from the terrain very much, they should come from Buildings in the Districts. Several of us have posted and discussed this before, but basically your Districts would be 'generic' until you started putting buildings in them, and that would 'specialize' them - and give adjacency bonuses to other Buildings in that and neighboring Districts.

The Modern Era, with personal powered transportation, is when you can justify cities sprawling all over the map, covering 100s of square miles like virtually all the major cities in the world today - modern Athens spreads from one side of the Attic peninsula to the other, whereas you can walk the circuit of the walls of the classical city in one afternoon (been there, done that) - and, of course, there is no attempt to put a wall around the modern city, or any other modern city.

 

[Evie]

I view most of the specialized districts that way. Cambridge (to London, at the scale of the game) is an outlying campus district (Oxford isn't, of course; it's a world wonder). And then there's North American college towns. Versailles and El Escorial are outlying (or were, in Versaille's case - not so outlying anymore) Government Centres.You already mentioned Ostia and Delphi. Candidates for industrial cities are a dime a dozen with mining towns and factory towns. And remote resort towns for the entertainment and relaxation of the upper (initially) and increasingly middle classes are littered across the pages of history from Baiae and arguably even Pompeii through to Karlsbad or any other thermal spring town you can think of all the way to Cape May/Atlantic City or Orlando. (Vegas is probably a city centre tho)

Some (cultural plaza, commercial quarter too) are a little harder of course.

What I would like to see though is the ability to designate each of your city centre as a specialist district of your choice, so you could get adjacency bonuses and build district buildings of that chosen type right in the city centre. Representing how different central cities are specialized in different things.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I view most of the specialized districts that way. Cambridge (to London, at the scale of the game) is an outlying campus district (Oxford isn't, of course; it's a world wonder). Versailles and El Escorial are outlying (or were, in Versaille's case - not so outlying anymore) Government Centres.You already mentioned Ostia and Delphi. Candidates for industrial cities are a dime a dozen with mining towns and factory towns. And remote resort towns for the entertainment and relaxation of the upper (initially) and increasingly middle classes are littered across the pages of history from Baiae and arguably even Pompeii through to Karlsbad or any other thermal spring town you can think of all the way to Cape May/Atlantic City or Orlando.

I'll grant that all you say is conceptually true at the ground scale of the game. BUT the ground scale of the game is a myth, since individual battles involving less than 10,000 men in the Ancient Era (largest permanent unit in Sumer/Egypt = 600 - 1000 men, so we're talking about 4 - 6 units on a side) IRL would cover maybe a square kilometer, on the game map stretch from one city to the next. Forget ground scale.

Instead, look at the Visual Scale, which is what Civ VI is all about - individual units shoulder to shoulder on the 'battlefield', a city center Palace surrounded by the city - except that now, the city is broken up into fragments that scatter all over the map from the beginning of the game.

Late game, sure - the northeast coast of the USA is a near-solid mass of city and suburb from Boston to Richmond. Central coastal China - same thing. But as late as the Modern Era, that was not true, or only true for a few large Urban masses - New York City, Paris, London, Chicago, Los Angeles - all spread across 100s of square kilometers, but they were distinct, individual urban cores, and so were the 'satellite' cities like Gary/Milwaukee to Chicago, San Diego to Santa Barbara corridor to Los Angeles, New Haven to Trenton corridor to New York City.

There was a distinctly different Look to cities before mass individual transit: they huddled together. "Southwark" was a separate political and suburban area from London across the river: New York City meant Manhatten Island - and only part of that - and Bronx and Brooklyn were separate towns. It is that Visual Distinction that, to stay in keeping with the rest of the game, I think we have to capture, and that is best done by forcing a close focus and adjacency on early Districts - and allowing a sprawl of the same Districts by the end of the Industrial Era.

I don't think I'm alone in this concept. The forthcoming Humankind game requires all Quarters (Districts) to be adjacent to an existing Quarter except for exceptions as I noted: Holy Sites, Harbors, and Forts. But later in the game, since there is almost no limit to the type and number of Quarters that can be 'attached', the city can sprawl across its entire Region and regions can be consolidated into a single larger Region so that, by the last Ages of the game, massive sprawling Megapolises can be formed covering a large percentage of the continent - as is true today in parts of the USA, Europe, and Asia.

Mind you, I think Civ VII can potentially do this better than Humankind, by having distinct clusters of
visible-on-the-map Buildings in the Districts so that (again) Visually distinct economic or entertainment or industrial areas show in its cities and separate 'feeder' towns and settlements like mining camps or harbors show (in the early game) as separate towns and merge with, or are engulfed by, the urban center later.

 

[Evie]

Yeah, no.

I'm not doing visual scale because the visual scale is determined by gameplay decision (trying to put buildings on the map so information is available at a glance) and/or computer limitation (what kind of map size can the software and hardware sustain).

It's a gameplay abstraction, it won't ever look realistic because there's no way with current technology and programing to represent in-game buildings at a scale where they're reasonably visible on the map, and still have a map that's large enough to have reasonable distance between settlements. Trying to make that realistic amounts to going after windmills.

It's like those fantasy (or medieval for that matter) maps where mountains and trees and buildings are all on different scales that suit the need of conveying information to the viewer: an abstraction designed to emphasize the most important locations, at the expanse of game accuracy.

The buildings don't (necessarily) literally occupy the whole tile: that's just a graphic representation to indicate that there is an industrial zone - a factory town - in that particular area of the map, even if it doesn't occupy the whole tile.

 

[Naokaukodem]

don't put pineapple on pizza!

No more than (b)ananas ! :french:

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Yeah, no.

I'm not doing visual scale because the visual scale is determined by gameplay decision (trying to put buildings on the map so information is available at a glance) and/or computer limitation (what kind of map size can the software and hardware sustain).

It's a gameplay abstraction, it won't ever look realistic because there's no way with current technology and programing to represent in-game buildings at a scale where they're reasonably visible on the map, and still have a map that's large enough to have reasonable distance between settlements. Trying to make that realistic amounts to going after windmills.

It's like those fantasy (or medieval for that matter) maps where mountains and trees and buildings are all on different scales that suit the need of conveying information to the viewer: an abstraction designed to emphasize the most important locations, at the expanse of game accuracy.

The buildings don't (necessarily) literally occupy the whole tile: that's just a graphic representation to indicate that there is an industrial zone - a factory town - in that particular area of the map, even if it doesn't occupy the whole tile.

Here's a Flash: virtually ALL game maps are 'out of scale'. The primary consideration in all GUI has to be to convey information, because merely making a pretty and accurately-scaled animation on the screen does not make for a playable game. I'm afraid that is going to be one of the problems with the new Humankind game: the maps are gorgeous, and overall much truer to realistic scale than anything in Civ, but there are at least 3 times more Buildings and constructions possible in their cities, and no graphic indication anywhere of what you have built. Already in their Open Devs that has been a source of confusion as it becomes increasingly difficult for a gamer to keep track of what's going on in his Faction or Cities - the game's visual representation on the screen gives him very little help, and virtually no help 'on the map'.

So, whether any of us 'do' Visual Scale or not, Civ has decided to put buildings on the map and grossly distort the 'ground scale' in favor of visibility, and I doubt very much they are going to change that in Civ VII - especially since, compared to Amplitude's game, it is now a major visible difference between Civ and its competition in the 4X semi-historical category of games.

Now, I am firmly in favor of redesigning the current state of Civ VI graphics to better approach a real compromise between Visual and realistic Scales. I think there is such a compromise possible, even if the result may not be as visually accurate to ground scale as Humankind, but if it gives me more useful information it will be much more playable. If I just want to watch a pretty picture, there are other places than games to do it.

 

[Evie]

And I'm not in favor of doing that. I'm in favor of acceping that given the visual scale compromises, arguing that the city/district system must necessarily reprsent one single giant city rather than a collection of diverse communities occupying a broader region is nonsensical, and trying to limit gameplay along those lines in the name of a compromise between that interpretation of the game and the map is just...not sound.

It's just seems far more reasonable - and far less limiting on gameplay - , given all those abstractions, and the scale of "cities" and their three-tile radius in this game, and the fact that the gameboard is still supposed to be a full planet, not just a single region (unless X-wrapping is turned off), to view a city in Civ VI term as a region with its central city, and a number of other communities in the same area, than as one single uninterrupted urban sprawl.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And I'm not in favor of doing that. I'm in favor of acceping that given the visual scale compromises, arguing that the city/district system must necessarily reprsent one single giant city rather than a collection of diverse communities occupying a broader region is nonsensical, and trying to limit gameplay along those lines in the name of a compromise between that interpretation of the game and the map is just...not sound.

It's just seems far more reasonable - and far less limiting on gameplay - , given all those abstractions, and the scale of "cities" and their three-tile radius in this game, and the fact that the gameboard is still supposed to be a full planet, not just a single region (unless X-wrapping is turned off), to view a city in Civ VI term as a region with its central city, and a number of other communities in the same area, than as one single uninterrupted urban sprawl.

Given that the individual Districts in Civ VI look like individual Districts and not minor settlements, suburbs, towns, or any other separate entity, I find that interpretation unsustainable, and to me it simply looks as if someone hit a city with a humongous hammer and scattered its constituent parts all over the map.

As for 'limiting game play', I thought that was what game rules were all about - without limits, it is merely an expensive sandbox. And having accepted limits, I propose that those limits should be at least semi-historical, and therefore that at least early in a game that supposedly starts by representing events since 4000 BCE, the city will represent a distinct and separate city and not a conurban sprawl of any kind.

But it is in the nature of any game with as many things in it as Civilization, that each of us will have a different vision of what we want, like, and want to play.

 

[Evie]

Fair enough.

But I will point that the rules as they exist (and I support) generallyn(with some exceptions, eg gaul, encampmenrs) don't prevent you from playing as you want (though it may not be optimal); the rules you want would prevent me from approaching the game as I prefer.

I wouldn't be opposed to adding benefit to make expanding near the city core early more preferable, shifting to further away later in the game. Perhaps higher adjacency bonuses for the center first, but that would be overtaken by increasing bonuses for more remote locations later in the game?

The AI would then naturally be encouraged to settle in what you feel to be the most natural way in most cases since that's where the bigger bonuses are. While I would still be able to play my way when it better suit how I envision my city (or, you know, when I want to plan for a long term advantage).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Fair enough.

But I will point that the rules as they exist (and I support) generallyn(with some exceptions, eg gaul, encampmenrs) don't prevent you from playing as you want (though it may not be optimal); the rules you want would prevent me from approaching the game as I prefer.

I wouldn't be opposed to adding benefit to make expanding near the city core early more preferable, shifting to further away later in the game. Perhaps higher adjacency bonuses for the center first, but that would be overtaken by increasing bonuses for more remote locations later in the game?

The AI would then naturally be encouraged to settle in what you feel to be the most natural way in most cases since that's where the bigger bonuses are. While I would still be able to play my way when it better suit how I envision my city (or, you know, when I want to plan for a long term advantage).

Since Amplitude's Humankind game already uses the 'adjacency required' for its Quarters (Districts) I confess a lot of my thinking has been influenced by how their system works. That has changed in several of their 'Open Dev' versions of their game, but basically there is no limit to the number of copies of a Quarter you can have in a city, encouraging a massive sprawl of urbanization, especially in the last half of the game. On the other hand, within a 'region' containing a city, you can also put non-adjacent Harbors, Holy Sites, and Forts, and later Hamlets, and if you attach an Outpost and its region to a city the Outpost becomes an Administrative Center and you can 'attach' Quarters to that.
That leaves a lot of scope for 'non-adjacent' Districts/Quarters while still keeping an early City Core of adjacent Quarters.

There are serious problems adapting this to Civ, though: trying to build Libraries in half a dozen Research Quarters or Markets in multiple Commercial Hubs springs to mind, since Humankind doesn't show any of their buildings they can get away with simply building a single 'Food Market' or 'House of Scribes' and it applies to the entire City.

Still, I am (at the moment!) convinced that there is a way to get what we both want: an at least semi-historical city development around a basic Core combined with the possibility of also creating outlying, possibly specialized 'towns' or settlements with certain Districts.

For instance, I could see having a separate generalized Settlement District that can be placed anywhere, and that allows you to place Improvements of all kinds around it, and then 'fill' the District with specialized structures that exploit those Improvements - a Forge, Smelter, or Steel Mill to exploit Mining operations, a Grain Elevator complex for Farms, a University or Research Center (like Cambridge or Silicon Valley), etc. - which would represent 'outlying' smaller cities/towns from the Main City.

 

[Evie]

I don't know that this would work for me as I like to be able to consider each district as its own separate settlement. If I can only build them as adjuncet to existing settlements, or settlment districts, this doesn't work so well. Still better than nothing, of course.

And not that far from where I was leaning with my own adjacency -based ideas - with the CS being a very strong ajacency bonus at first, but something like the neighborhhods also providing that bonus later. Just I'm approaching the notion from the carrot end (encourage districts, whatever they may be, close to population centres) while you're approaching it from the stick end (limit districts away from population centres/cities.

HK's system sounds interesting for sure, but HK has a very different approach to geography and territory, so I would think it nest to approach civ without too much HK thinking.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't know that this would work for me as I like to be able to consider each district as its own separate settlement. If I can only build them as adjuncet to existing settlements, or settlment districts, this doesn't work so well. Still better than nothing, of course.

And not that far from where I was leaning with my own adjacency -based ideas - with the CS being a very strong ajacency bonus at first, but something like the neighborhhods also providing that bonus later. Just I'm approaching the notion from the carrot end (encourage districts, whatever they may be, close to population centres) while you're approaching it from the stick end (limit districts away from population centres/cities.

HK's system sounds interesting for sure, but HK has a very different approach to geography and territory, so I would think it nest to approach civ without too much HK thinking.

HK's big problem/difference from Civ is that they treat all infrastructure/Buildings as general: essentially you build one Bank, Granary or Market and they provide bonuses to every appropriate District/Quarter no matter how many there are in the city. That allows them to have by my estimate over 90 'Buildings' to Civ VI's less than 30, but it also makes the mass of Districts/Quarters just that: a nearly indistinguishable Mass.

Earlier today I started playing with the idea you just mentioned: making adjacencies stronger in Buildings/Infrastructure that are close to Population. In other words, you could have a Holy Site out in the country, but one placed next to the City Center or adjacent to a bunch of Neighborhoods would provide extra adjacency Bonus to Temples, Shrines, Worship structures because they can be accessed by more people. Similar adjacencies would apply to things like Markets, Entertainment, Cultural structures - what's the point of having a Market if it's far away from the population?

This is promising. You could still scatter Districts all over the countryside, but if adjacencies are tied to Buildings rather than Districts, including Buildings in other types of Districts (Factory next to a Seaport for faster Ship building, for example, or Market next to as many transportation nodes - Airports, Harbors - to enhance Trade) and structures that serve the population like Entertainment, Religious, or Food are enhanced by being next to the population, then the emphasis is back on the Gamer's Choice:Build a Holy Site far from the City Center because, for instance, it's surrounded by forest and your Stave Church gets a nice bonus from that, or build it next to the City Center and reap the bonuses from being accessible to the City population.

Bonuses per Population Point have received considerable discussion in HK, because their cities can reach 50+ or more population in the late game, but they could also serve to take the place of a lot of the inane adjacency bonuses in Civ VI (My favorite, the Campus bonus for Mountains. I always thought that would come as a real shock to, say, Cambridge, Harvard, the Sorbonne, Humboldt - in fact, it's hard to think of a major university IRL next to a Mountain) - thus actually giving you more freedom to place Districts, since the best adjacencies would be attached to other Buildings and Districts, not vagarities of terrain and map.

And, finally, IF certain Districts can be built Either adjacent to a City Center or string of Districts to it or Separate - like Harbors, Forts, Holy Sites, AND you can 'attach' certain Districts to those 'independent' Districts - like a Commercial Hub or Industrial Zone next to a Harbor, or, say, a Theatre Square next to a Holy Site (which is not a bad in-game description of the Delphi complex in Classical Greece) for Religious bonuses to Culture, then we can still build our Central Major City Complex and have developing 'outlying' towns/cities as well.

 

[Evie]

Yeah. Mountains for holy sites make a great deal of sense (remote monasteries and what have you - holy site is one of the very few, maybe only district whose city adjacencies I would not push too much), but for Campuses? Whaaaat.

If anything I'd focus the campus on adjacencies bonuses for other specialized districts. You want the campus in a location close to its diverse subject matters - close to the commercial quarter were traders develop new instruments of trade to be codified into laws, close to the theologians in their monasteries, close to the centres of power where great matters are discussed! Later on, as natural science becomes a juggernaught, more natural sites (preserve, national park) and landmark features could come in, but as an complement. Late game universities could end up in wilder areas (think secondary campuses and major project sites in in scientifically unique locations), but for most of the game they would want to be in the urban lands.

Adjacency based on city level where a city grow from village to town to city to metropolis with different levels of adjacency bonuses based on population and possibly other factors could work (and reward tall play), but using actual population number would be difficult to balance. Of course, the district cap already tries to do that.

 

[PiR]

virtually ALL game maps are 'out of scale'.

Just the map?

human > moutain
crab > fishing boat
horse > house
fish > tree
donkey ~= human foot

Still beautiful though

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Just the map?

View attachment 597546

human > moutain
crab > fishing boat
horse > house
fish > tree
donkey ~= human foot

Still beautiful though

Those are all realistic, in their own way:
Human = Colossus
Crab = they never stop growing, so this is just one that survived for a loooooong time
Horse = must be the 'Trojan' breed
Fish = Everything in the Ocean grows bigger than on land
Donkey = haven't you ever heard of Shank's Mare? Besides, Donkeys are the Embodiment of Human stubbornness in the face of Facts, and that has no upper limit on its size.

But seriously, all the icons in-game are 'way out of scale, and that's not likely to change. I think they could be a little closer to 'scale', by using a multi-figure model like Civ V or Humankind, which would make them identifiable and give the information required graphically without the necessity for individual figures towering over forests and skyscrapers. Given that Civ VI went with a starkly cartoonish Overscale representation of almost everything other than basic terrain, the current design is explainable, but looks less and less acceptable when compared to Humankind's terrain visually - but it still conveys all the information clearly, which, after all, is the real purpose of GUI.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Mind you, I think Civ VII can potentially do this better than Humankind, by having distinct clusters of
visible-on-the-map Buildings in the Districts so that (again) Visually distinct economic or entertainment or industrial areas show in its cities and separate 'feeder' towns and settlements like mining camps or harbors show (in the early game) as separate towns and merge with, or are engulfed by, the urban center later.

Yes.
Actually farms, mines, and even 'woodsman camps' actually has its own settlements. Early farmlands were built WITH (and as part of) villages and subdistricts, same goes to mines and with society became luxurious.. woodcamps for woodsman to hunt or gater exotic goods from the wild. and these were NOT just workcamps but consists of its own administrative units (and including junior imperial magistrates, revenue services, law enforcements (sherriffs style)), public service even in basic form like waterworks (Aqueducts of all kinds and not just Roman sytles, markets and squares and maybe even a small defensive systems like a few towers (and this includes 'Castles' in the most primitive form-which were actually fortified resident no bigger than cottages but taller AND OR a kind of Police Station), and not just a plain farmlands with barns and farmers or mines were only living persons there.