[R&F] Civ of the Week: Germany

[acluewithout]

• Leader: Frederick Barbarossa

• Leader Ability: Holy Roman Emperor, Batman! Additional Military Card Slot, and +7 CS versus City States.

• Civ Ability: Free Imperial Cities. Your cities can build an extra district.
  
  
• Unique Unit: U-Boat. Unique Naval Raider, which replaces the Submarine (unlocks at Mercantilism, upgrades into Submarine). Combat Strength 65, Ranged Strength 75, Attack Range 2, Movement 3, Cost 430 (cheaper than a normal sub), Maintenance 6, upgrades to a yellow submarine. I mean nuclear submarine. Also gets +1 Sight and +10 CS fighting on Ocean Tiles.

• Unique Infrastructure: Hansa. Unique District that replaces the Industrial Zone. Half the costs of a normal Industrial Zone (27 hammers v 54). Same as a normal Industrial Zone except for cost, and adjacency from Commercial Hubs (+2) and Strategic, Luxury and Bonus Resources (+1) instead of Mines and Quarries.

• Leader Agenda: Iron Crown. Likes to capture City States. (No wait, isn't that every Civ in RnF?) Anyway, likes Civs that don't associate with City States. Dislikes Civs that Suzerain or Capture City States.

• Suggested Reading List: None.

Notes:

• Sorry for the unexpected break last week. This week is Germany. Because Germany are fun. Going forward, I'm going to combine Industrial and Modern Era Civs given there are only two Modern Civs.
  
  
• Hey FXS, I see what you did there. Freddy's Hansa gets +2 from Commercial Hubs, and Free Imperial Cities lets you place both a Hansa and a Commercial Hub into a city with one pop. Nice.

• Previous CotW: Ancient: The Full Monty, Cree, Gilgabro, Greece, Hiccup Horrendous Haddock (Harold) the Third, Nubia, Egypt Classical: Kongo, Point Break, Price of Persia, Rome, Sythia, Medieval: China, Georgia, India, Japan, Khmer, Mongolia, Poland, Zulu; Renaissance: Indonesia, Netherlands, Spain, Mapuche, Korea.

 

[Tech Osen]

Very short: their abilities compliment my playstyle as a builder so well that it feels like cheating when I play them.
As an AI I find him annoying cause he complains about every envoy I send and then proceeds to capture the city state. Game I'm currently playing he was my neighbour. He took 4 nearby city states. Took my mongol horde over and corrected the situation.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The only civ where IZs are not a waste of space (and mostly because it has extra space.) Germany's not the powerhouse it was in vanilla because Magnus has sort of taken over the production thing, you can throw builders into spaceships and spaceports are purchasable, CS bonuses were moved to the t1/t2 buildings, and also the number of districts in a city definitely have diminishing returns. But on the other hand, they can do very well when food and growth is limited, and thus are still very adaptable since they can always just pluck a CS out to take when needed.

Leader Ability: Holy Roman Emperor, Batman! Additional Military Card Slot, and +7 CS versus City States.

A very powerful ability, due to military cards being rather important early on. This also allows to take crap like Classical Republic without worrying about where to put conscription. You probably shouldn't use it anyways though. You'll be able to keep military production up at all times. Later in the game you can always put on the logistics card so you move around faster. And you could also become a fascist if you wanted 5 cards, but that would just be silly.

Finally, sometimes an enemy will get a CS ally fast, and they'll attack your flank. With Germany's ability, these become mere flies and won't take you by surprise. And sometimes you just have nothing to take, and this is a free conquest.

Civ Ability: Free Imperial Cities. Your cities can build an extra district.

Germany's main ability. It lets you shove a Campus, theater, and commercial district in easily at pop 4. Any crap city can also do a campus/theater or campus/harbor combo without having to worry about waiting for growth. You can do more with less. Stuff like Oracle or Divine Spark will be very helpful since they'll have more districts.

Unique Unit: U-Boat. Unique Naval Raider, which replaces the Submarine (unlocks at Mercantilism, upgrades into Submarine). Combat Strength 65, Ranged Strength 75, Attack Range 2, Movement 3, Cost 430 (cheaper than a normal sub), Maintenance 6, upgrades to a yellow submarine. I mean nuclear submarine. Also gets +1 Sight and +10 CS fighting on Ocean Tiles.

It's not that great, but submarines are still good units to begin with, if you don't have coal for some reason.

Unique Infrastructure: Hansa. Unique District that replaces the Industrial Zone. Half the costs of a normal Industrial Zone (27 hammers v 54). Same as a normal Industrial Zone except for cost, and adjacency from Commercial Hubs (+2) and Strategic, Luxury and Bonus Resources (+1) instead of Mines and Quarries.

A very good district, as this is the only district that is dedicated to enhancing production. Some people may have lied to you and claimed that Industrial Zones are useful, but it's clearly not. The main thing that seperates the Hansa away is that IZs are reliant on hills (that means the city already has production....) and do nothing for cities that don't have good production. Hansas can boost the production these cities thanks to its cheap cost and good synergy with hubs. Of course, IZ buildings themselves are still by and far garbage sans factories, so besides the factory in a central location, most of your Hansas will probably be blank unless you come across a Industrial CS.

Leader Agenda: Iron Crown. Likes to capture City States. (No wait, isn't that every Civ in RnF?) Anyway, likes Civs that don't associate with City States. Dislikes Civs that Suzerain or Capture City States.

I honestly have no idea how this really works. Sometimes he complains when you get suzerain, other times he doesn't care.

 

[ezzlar]

U-boat is available at electricity.

 

[Disgustipated]

Yeah they are one of the couple modern era civs in the game based on uu. Which is kid of strange given the leader is from way back (sorry, can't remember when he ruled off the top of my head). Of course no more strange than Gandhi in the game with an elephant based uu.

I definitely want to play a game with them as it's been quite a long time since I played them. But honestly I feel the Dutch blow them out of the water in every category. But half price IZ's aren't bad. I just don't like attacking city states. It's always my luck I start near city states with pretty good bonuses. Often even getting the free envoy.

I want to like Germany, but I just don't like how the civ was designed. I used to play Germany all the time in civ 4 days.

 

[acluewithout]

I really like Germany, but they also frustrate me.

The IZ is ... annoying. I mean, I think the Hansa itself works really well, but it just makes it so clear to me how rubbish the normal IZ is, and then that winds me up. Then, after you build the IZ, the buildings are just rubbish. I think they’re also hurt a bit by Pikes being rubbish, given Germany is the sort of Civ that will be teching in that part of the tree anyway and do sometimes want to turtle. Hopefully FXS will address these things in the next expansion. If not, maybe I’ll work on some mods...

Okay. So leaving aside the things that annoy me. What’s good?

Well. I love the card slot and CS bonus. Germany is the only Civ with military bonuses that them doesn’t feel overpowered. Really good fun.

I like the submarine. It’s random. But it’s also punchy and let’s you swing back to do some Naval stuff after you have your economy up and running.

And, really, for all it frustrates me, I do like the whole Hansa Commercial Hub extra district thing.

RnF has definitely made Germany less powerful. But in a way that sort of makes the, more fun too.

 

[Disgustipated]

• Leader Ability: Holy Roman Emperor, Batman! Additional Military Card Slot, and +7 CS versus City States.
• Military card slot is okay, but still mostly a convenience issue (so you don't have to swap professional army in and out). +7 versus CS, I talked a little about above. Yes I know that conquering a city state will lead to better yields than what they give you (eventually), but like in my current game, I was the first to meet this city state, and right now I'm getting +2 of a currency. Maybe I will conquer them after they build their appropriate district, but for the most part I never conquer city states in my games. This doesn't fit my play style.

One possible use for the military card slot is you could slot in a raiding policy for your u-boats. I haven't actually done this, but could make Germany a good raiding civ. But u-boats come so late...

Does anyone know what diplomatic hit you take when declaring war on city-states? Is it equivalent to a formal war or surprise war?

• Civ Ability: Free Imperial Cities. Your cities can build an extra district.
• This usually isn't that big for me because I'm not afraid to grow my cities big. I'm not one of those people who try to limit their city growth. Even if it may be a better strategy I won't do it for RP reasons. Still useful early on for getting that Hansa adjacency.
  
  
• Unique Unit: U-Boat. Unique Naval Raider, which replaces the Submarine (unlocks at Mercantilism, upgrades into Submarine). Combat Strength 65, Ranged Strength 75, Attack Range 2, Movement 3, Cost 430 (cheaper than a normal sub), Maintenance 6, upgrades to a yellow submarine. I mean nuclear submarine. Also gets +1 Sight and +10 CS fighting on Ocean Tiles.
• It's a little cheaper, and I guess the ocean strength is nice, though AI's seem to keep their ships near shore a lot, and most of my naval combat ends up there. It's okay I guess. I'm likely to never be at war this late in the game, at least not one conquering cities (unless going for conquest victory). Subs are a great unit to harass the enemy with and pillage their improvements on land tiles along the coast.

• Unique Infrastructure: Hansa. Unique District that replaces the Industrial Zone. Half the costs of a normal Industrial Zone (27 hammers v 54). Same as a normal Industrial Zone except for cost, and adjacency from Commercial Hubs (+2) and Strategic, Luxury and Bonus Resources (+1) instead of Mines and Quarries.
• Not as good as Netherlands as I mentioned above, except that they are half price. But Netherlands can usually get their +2 right away (next to a river) where as with Germany you have to wait until you get a commercial hub up. That's 2 districts you have to build, neither one will win you the game. You aren't building campus districts and theater squares while you are building those.

• Leader Agenda: Iron Crown. Likes to capture City States. (No wait, isn't that every Civ in RnF?) Anyway, likes Civs that don't associate with City States. Dislikes Civs that Suzerain or Capture City States.
• Good luck not t'ing him off. Your best bet is to make a friendship with him early on. Once I make friendships, I find it's easy to renew them, even if he gets on me for sending envoys to city states.

This is my game. It's not a great start. It actually seems like a fairly challenging start, though should be easier if I eliminate a nearby civ, otherwise I won't have much room. But of course I get no bonuses for combat for other civs. That's why I find the city-state bonus worthless. I'll warn you, my start has been not so good, but it's only King level, so not so bad.

Spoiler :

 

[Kmart_Elvis]

I know people don't usually like Freddy in their games, but he's always really cool with me, and is often my Ally.

Now, John Curtain, on the other hand, declares war on me every game.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Going straight to apprenticeship with Germany works well because that Tech path unlock several districts early which work well with the extra district slot and it also unlock the hansa.

 

[Sostratus]

To me, Germany is probably my favorite civ because they have a builder emphasis but with some well rounded traits. Who am I kidding, I just love the Hansa.
Easily the greatest district in Civ6 because it profits heavily from 1) city spam 2) absolute abuse of placement mechanics.

Unique Infrastructure: Hansa. Unique District that replaces the Industrial Zone. Half the costs of a normal Industrial Zone (27 hammers v 54). Same as a normal Industrial Zone except for cost, and adjacency from EACH Commercial Hubs (+2) and Strategic, Luxury and Bonus Resources (+1) instead of Mines and Quarries.

Emphasis mine.
Many people don't notice this bonus is for each CH, not one time, when they play Germany. If you're just plopping a hansa next to a CH and a resource or two, boy are you leaving a pile of winning lottery tickets on the table.
The first thing you'll want to do is pump those settlers into every spot you can; every three tiles makes this ideal. Sometimes you might want to leave a little extra for a planned big city like your capital or a ruhr/petra/etc city.
Second thing is leverage that free district slot to the hilt and drop two districts the turn you found the city to lock in their costs (unless you need a turn or two to get your free ancestral builder to chop that tile.) So now, it doesn't matter how long it takes, you won't be paying more for those districts.
What this means you should be doing is taking the densest blanket of cities you can and grouping them into clusters of 3-4, and then coordinating the CH/hansa spam within those clusters. If only I had an illustrative image sitting on my hard drive for this purpose:

Naturally, you can rotate any shape and swap the CHs and hansas depending on where resources are sitting and the land available.
Remember that the "Diamond" is going to grant each hansa +5 adjacency minimum since it's 2 hubs @ 2 each +2*0.5 for district adjacency. But three cities can guarantee each Hansa is next to at least 2 hubs, where pairing cities would require 4 cities normally. And so on. Sometimes, certain cities will clearly be more valuable than others, so you can throw egalitarianism to the wind in a 4-city cluster scenario allows 3 hansas to each have 3 adjacent hubs and the last one can just go wherever. Always run craftsmen.

The best you can do for one city, if you have the perfect terrain free of mountain tiles, is completely surround a single hansa with CHs (you need a big loop of 6 cities to do this.) The other Hansas can always at least slot in with 2 CHs and maybe some resources, but they don't matter. The central Hansa will end up with 15 adjacency (12 from CH, 3 from generic district adjacency) which of course you would push to 30 with craftsmen. And if you can swing a modern era or later dark age, you can slot collectivism for another +100% and achieve 45 production on that tile.

Since you're building all these hansas, and you have a lot of hammers, you can grab many Engineers. Make sure you get mausoleum of halicarnassus, and try hard to snag da Vinci, James Watt, and Tesla. Every workshop can give an extra 2 culture, and Watt will make all factories have 7 local production (his bonus does not actually adjust the regional aura, so this local number will override the +3 from nearby factories) which essentially turns the factory into a net +4 production building, which is pretty nice. Tesla obviously to make a super region where every city gets an extra 4-8 production (which will be a lot; since two charges of tesla gives a 12 tile aura, and you packed all those cities together.)

All the building was going on between a cluster of cities, which means you'll still have plenty of free space for farms to get that population up to at least 10. Slam down those campus/Theaters and you're off to the races. I strongly recommend, where difficulty allows, aiming to get a Work Ethic religion.
What I ultimately love is that not only can the hansa be absurdly productive, but like others have mentioned, you can create this production anywhere, making even a pure flatland city useful. Plus, the extra production is useful even if you just run projects at the end of the day. I always find these games get out of hand fast.
I hope the Dutch IZ is okay with second place

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Okay. So leaving aside the things that annoy me. What’s good?

Germany have one of the strongest economies in the game backed up with a very flexible and strong military. Their main weakness is perhaps a lack of focus, they can do Everything but outside of Maybe having very good production there is somebody that do a specific area better than Germany but being good at Everything is a very good thing.

 

[acluewithout]

Germany have one of the strongest economies in the game backed up with a very flexible and strong military. Their main weakness is perhaps a lack of focus, they can do Everything but outside of Maybe having very good production there is somebody that do a specific area better than Germany but being good at Everything is a very good thing.

They’re also great a Gold because you can and will build heaps of Commercial Hubs. They are also good a Religion, Culture and of course science because you can use all their production to run projects.

 

[SelmanV]

This is kind of random but is anyone else really annoyed that Firaxis called the unique German Industrial Zone the Hansa?
The Hanseatic League was a confederation of towns around the Baltic Sea.
It can't really be condensed into a district, and if it had to be, it would make more sense for it to be a Harbour.
Also, it wasn't strictly a German phenomenon, Scandinavian and Latvian and Russian towns were part of it too, and the Hanseatic League towns were very much independent and out of the control of the Holy Roman Emperor.

 

[Sostratus]

This is kind of random but is anyone else really annoyed that Firaxis called the unique German Industrial Zone the Hansa?

They gave them the Hanse unique bank in Civ5, which gave them extra production for trade routes to city states. Of course, the street carnival district really doesn't make sense either.
But there are a number of very influential german cities in the League, and the civ ability with the district is really capturing the concept of densely developed, highly efficient economic zones. It's better than civ4 giving them the "manufacturing plant!"
I like that some civs with a lot of history have pieces from throughout their history. I only dislike the Uboat because, while it can be really handy, a Panzer or Landsknecht would be much more useful generally. Although that might make germany too good!

 

[Tech Osen]

This is kind of random but is anyone else really annoyed that Firaxis called the unique German Industrial Zone the Hansa?

My limited knowledge of the Hansa was that it was a trading federation so a unique harbor or commercial hub would have made more sense but I think half cost CHs would be a little too much.

As for the U-boat: I usually play continents with high sea level and it still feels like not enough sea. Not near the 70-30 ratio we have on earth. Making this ability rather limited.

 

[cvb]

The Hanseatic League was a confederation of towns around the Baltic Sea.

Also, it wasn't strictly a German phenomenon, Scandinavian and Latvian and Russian towns were part of it too, and the Hanseatic League towns were very much independent and out of the control of the Holy Roman Emperor.

Well, it was bigger than that ... looking it up, I found even France, Scotland & Iceland in the west.

Cities of the Hanseatic League federation:

Belarus
Polozk, Vitebsk

Belgium
Bruges

England
Boston, Ipswich, King's Lynn, Kingston upon Hull

Estonia
Narva, Pärnu, Tallinn, Tartu, Viljandi

Finland
Turku, Ulvila

France
La Rochelle

Germany
Ahlen, Alfeld, Anklam, Attendorn, Bad Iburg, Balve, Beckum, Bockenem, Brakel, Brandenburg, Braunschweig, Breckerfeld, Bremen, Brilon, Buxtehude, Demmin, Dorsten, Dortmund, Drolshagen, Duderstadt, Duisburg, Einbeck, Emmerich am Rhein, Frankfurt (Oder), Fürstenau, Gardelegen, Goslar, Göttingen, Greifswald, Gronau (Leine), Halle, Haltern am See, Hamburg, Hameln, Hamm, Haselünne, Hattingen, Havelberg, Helmstedt, Herford, Hildesheim, Höxter, Kalkar/Grieth, Kamen, Kiel, Köln, Korbach, Kyritz, Lemgo, Lippstadt, Lübeck, Lüneburg, Lünen, Magdeburg, Marienmünster, Marsberg, Medebach, Melle, Meppen, Merseburg, Minden, Mühlhausen, Münster, Naumburg (Saale), Neuenrade, Neuss, Nieheim, Osnabrück, Osterburg, Osterode, Paderborn, Perleberg, Pritzwalk, Quakenbrück, Quedlinburg, Rheda Wiedenbrück, Rheine, Rostock, Rüthen, Salzwedel, Schwerte, Seehausen, Soest, Solingen, Stade, Stendal, Stralsund, Sundern, Tangermünde, Telgte, Uelzen, Unna, Uslar, Vreden, Warburg, Warendorf, Werben, Werl, Werne, Wesel, Wipperfürth, Wismar

Iceland
Hafnarfjörður, Stykkishólmur

Latvia
Cesis, Koknese, Kuldiga, Limbaži, Riga, Straupe, Valmiera, Ventspils

Lithuania
Kaunas

Netherlands
Bolsward, Deventer, Doesburg, Elburg, Groningen, Harderwijk, Hasselt, Hattem, Kampen, Maasbommel, Oldenzaal, Ommen, Rijssen, Roermond, Stavoren, Tiel, Venlo, Zutphen, Zwolle

Norway
Bergen

Poland
Bialogard, Braniewo, Chelmno, Darlowo, Elblag, Frombork, Gdañsk, Goleniów, Kolberg, Koszalin, Krakow, Kwidzyn, Lebork, Malbork, Olsztyn, Slawno, Slubice, Slupsk, Stargard, Strzelce Opolskie, Szczecin, Torun, Wroclaw

Russia
Belozersk, Ivangorod, Kaliningrad, Kingisepp, Porkhow, Pskow, Smolensk, Tikhvin, Torzhok, Totma, Twer, Velikij Ustjug, Veliky Novgorod, Vyschnij Volotschjok, Wologda

Scotland
Aberdeen, Edinburgh

Sweden
Kalmar, Nyköping, Skanör-Falsterbo, Visby

 

[cvb]

and out of the control of the Holy Roman Emperor.

This Emperor had to be elected by the Kings, Dukes, Princes ... of the several/many! german ... sub states. Also the "Freie und Hanse - Städte/Cities" were quite independent from both (and often _very_ rich from free trade etc).

So that explains maybe a bit Frederick Barbarossa's stance towards city states, mood & dialogues shown in the game.

 

[Disgustipated]

Emphasis mine.
Many people don't notice this bonus is for each CH, not one time, when they play Germany. If you're just plopping a hansa next to a CH and a resource or two, boy are you leaving a pile of winning lottery tickets on the table.
The first thing you'll want to do is pump those settlers into every spot you can; every three tiles makes this ideal. Sometimes you might want to leave a little extra for a planned big city like your capital or a ruhr/petra/etc city.
Second thing is leverage that free district slot to the hilt and drop two districts the turn you found the city to lock in their costs (unless you need a turn or two to get your free ancestral builder to chop that tile.) So now, it doesn't matter how long it takes, you won't be paying more for those districts.
What this means you should be doing is taking the densest blanket of cities you can and grouping them into clusters of 3-4, and then coordinating the CH/hansa spam within those clusters. If only I had an illustrative image sitting on my hard drive for this purpose:

I should have tried harder to do this in my game. I was too focused on individual city adjacency and not multiple cities. But I just can't place my cities that close. It's something that bothers me aesthetically. Even in Civ2, the days of real ICS, I couldn't do it. There's that part of me that longs to work every single available tile, even if my games generally end before my cities reach size 30. I also don't lock in districts, I have once or twice, but I often forget. And I don't really care for that mechanic anyways, seems exploit-y. And I messed up worrying about putting commercial hubs next to rivers.

Make sure you get mausoleum of halicarnassus

Couldn't get it in my game. My coastal cities were some of my last, and weren't that great, and I didn't have good placement for it.

I had quite a slow start due to who my neighbor was in post #7 above. Normally that +5 combat bonus doesn't bother me that much, but this game I had a slower start due to not a great capital location. And Teddy wisely used Agoge it seems, because he was pumping out archers like crazy. I had to build a formidable army to take his cities. I also took one city-state and stopped after that to focus on building districts and settlers. I'm about halfway through my game, just started the Big Ben wonder. I had to get Teddy out of the way, because I had absolutely no room. I even built my 2nd city behind my capital, and Teddy still complained about settling too close to him (he forward settled my capital). He had to go.

RnF has definitely made Germany less powerful. But in a way that sort of makes the, more fun too.

Though regarding recent patches buffing city state strength, Germany's combat bonus becomes a little more useful. And if you don't mind the diplomacy hit, you can indirectly make money taking over city states and pocketing all that gold from emergencies. Though emergencies don't always trigger. Could try taking a city state, win the emergency, let the city state flip, and take it again. Though I'm not sure if you can get a 2nd emergency for the same city-state, but I bet you can if you get the good roll.


As I mentioned above, I didn't plan my districts between multiple cities that well. And I'm one of those types who has trouble removing resources. I almost never do it. Here is my best cluster between cities. I probably should have ignored the +2 of commercial districts next to rivers and went for clusters like above. But instead I concentrated on having Hansas near rivers so my commercial hubs would be decent. But the cluster above would have been better.

Spoiler :

+6 is the highest I could get, but most of mine are only +4. I still haven't ran the adjacency card for industrial zones yet. I'm running Natural Philosophy instead. Communism seems the best bet with Germany for 5 year plan. I wouldn't run any other tier 3 government with them.

Spoiler :

Overall Germany isn't as bad as I remember them. The more you put into them, the more you'll get out of them. The Hansas did help me get my 2nd district up faster as I built most of my hansas before commercial hubs. Though I reversed one to make sure I got the era score for +4 industrial zone. I do love being able to build everything faster. But of course with the builders building spaceships as mentioned above, the production is less useful in Rise and Fall. But it is fun. The ultimate builder civ.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Emperor/Fractal game.... can't seem to roll a good start as Germany. But here you have it.

Kinda flat looking though; lots of resources for Hansas though I'll probably cut the stone down anyways. Also a Great Zimbabwe although that wonder is sort of a meme. No good luxury resources (why does this happen so much). Guess I'll settle it on the cotton.

That wasn't a good idea. It's like mostly flatland and probably worse compared to if I didn't move. Will just make good use of those forests before I chop them. Guess I'll settle a 2nd city near the hills in the west for an Oracle city.

Oh look, Horse Barbs

Spoiler :

Fortunately Germany can always be running the anti-barb card.

A while later the capital is mostly clear cut, and thus the production from land is nearly nil. But everything needed has been chopped out, and we do have a +10 Hansa

I screw up by building an encampment instead of a theater in the capital. I guess I thought I already had one but that was actually the Great Lib. :S

Very few cities though but with control over most merchants, scientists, engineers, and writers, it's not much to worry about. Invaded Indonesia and later Japan in a most lackluster manner.

Spoiler :

Meanwhile, Scotland was talking trash across the rather narrow sea, so U-boat time!

Spoiler :

I also attacked Brazil in the end, just because I could. Formed an alliance with the Dutch again, using an economic alliance to get even more gold from the Great Zimbabwe capital.

Capital @ end

Spoiler :

The actual production city

Spoiler :

I tried to use Vertical Integration here, but just didn't have enough factories going. Sort of a waste of time.

Spoiler :

Oh yea, Great Engineers still suck.

 

[Sostratus]

But I just can't place my cities that close.

Even looking at the screenshot provided, your cities are close enough. Mainz-Frankfurt-Washington are close enough that you could have built a cluster between all of them, and even bremen could contribute if you place in the 3rd ring.

Example (without removing resources, which we usually don't want to do since that's all the more adjacency)

Spoiler :

Which is a basic triangle pattern. Now, Each hansa is going to be the same here, and each has: 1 resource + 2 Hubs + 4 districts = 1+2*2+4*0.5=7 production. Which you could make 14 with craftsmen. (Definitely run the card.

And don't worry about CH on rivers: the +2 is small potatoes compared to what the buildings put out.)
Here's a slightly better configuration (crescent):

Spoiler :

Washington and frankfurt still get 7, but Mainz can get 8 here. This would be more convenient layout if you wanted to adjoin Bremen into the mix.

Okay, one more:

Spoiler :

You can even get a city up to 11! Most interestingly, the city that gets 11 can actually be Mainz, Bremen, or Frankfurt. That's 22 production with craftsmen!!

It's a lot of mental planning at first, especially for larger combinations, but you get used to it and can start to see where you can put stuff. I don't blame people for not wanting to put that much effort into a game they play for fun. But for any other civ to get a full 6 production on an IZ, they need to have all six tiles around each IZ mined or with districts (japan.) - minimum 19 tiles for 3 cities with perfect overlap. Whereas germany can do it here for 3 cities with 6 tiles total. (If we didn't have the resources each hansa would be at 6 in the first image.)

There's that part of me that longs to work every single available tile, even if my games generally end before my cities reach size 30.

You don't even have to ICS to do this (although it makes germany stronger.) Look at how much space is available to the 4 cities in the screenshot above: each has a huge swath of tiles outside the middle to themselves, with one quadrant of their workable area shared in the hansa cluster. A much lower effort than ICS way to play this is to just say, okay, i'm going to settle a bunch of these trios of cities, and those little groups of cities will sort of break my empire up into regions.