Civ VII Districts

[GeneralZIft]

Do you guys really want Districts back?

For me it feels like they really slow down the pace of the game by forcing players to plan ahead and what not.
I know it sounds weird, but think about playing Civ online, with friends, or just when you don't want to spend ages on one game.

In Civ 5, and perhaps arguably the older Civ games, the focus is more on the grander strategy;
Rather than microing all the different minute elements of the game (Builders, Governors, etc.)

I think it's within Paradox's best interests to tone down the excessive micro going from Civ6 to Civ7, and part of that might be, rightfully so, the Districts.

This is a very short thread, because I don't have too much time to elaborate (sorry!) but you guys get the idea

PS> I think that unstacked Wonders are not so bad, but Districts, and all of their adjacency combinations are just so damn tedious...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There are several things that make the return of Districts almost mandatory:
1. If Firaxis wants to continue to "put everything on the map" then the alternative to Districts is trying to place individual buildings around the city center - at the very thought of which I start shuddering.
2. 'Laying out' the cities on the map helps to show graphically the immense modern sprawl of urbanization which started after the Industrial Revolution: you can walk the circuit of classical Athens' walls, the boundaries of the classical city, in an afternoon. Today Athens covers most of the Attic plain, and if someone wanted to recreate the march back from Marathon on the far side of the peninsula today, they'd be dodging city traffic all the way!
3. Putting more of the city on the map also allows the cities to be 'personalized' by graphic architecture, individual structures and the layout of the Districts. I don't know about anybody else, but I like the fact that at a glance I can tell the difference between my Chinese Civ VI cities and my Norwegian ones. Stuffing the entire city back into a single tile destroys that effect.

Which does not mean the current state of Districts in Civ VI doesn't need some serious revision. For starters, take any Adjacency bonuses and put them on the buildings in the Districts, and then in most cases make it mandatory that city Districts be adjacent - the disconnected Districts scattered all over the map looking for adjacencies is a travesty of historic cities and turns what should have been a great system into a graphic travesty.
IF (and I think it would be a Very Good Thing) the game adds separate Less-Than-City settlements to the map, then they can be separate and distinct graphically as well, while the 'City' Districts should reflect the fact that they are part of a larger urban entity.

Wonders should each have specific placement rules. Some are best shown in one of the City Districts, others far removed from the city, others only on the coast in or outside of the city, etc. It makes no sense at all to put a Cathedral or an Opera House away from the City Center, or try to put Ruhr Valley or Stonehenge inside a city district.

 

[GeneralZIft]

If the aim is historical accuracy, than they are way off - we didn't have massive scientific campuses way off the city back before we even had the wheel.

If the aim is gameplay, they've missed again, because I've never felt a feature be so detrimental to an experience by adding excessive micro / planning.
But more importantly, by adding a level of imbalance depending on the starting location.

Maybe districts don't need to be deleted, but maybe they need heavy thought on what "Districts" truly are.

One issue for Civ 6 is that specialists are useless and tall cities are garbage. Part of the problem ARE the districts. When you don't have much space, then you can't have take up all this land with your perfect adjacency, well thought out, district placements.

I hope my point was made well, I'm not sure if it was - Civ 6 gameplay is linear and it hates tall games, it hates a stray city because of loyalty, it hates specialists and it really hates flat starts, or arid starts or basically anything that isn't plain hills.

It's just my opinion, hopefully I don't get nuked for it

 

[bene_legionary]

I always thought that districts were satellite towns, where on the scale of Civ 6 wouldn't fit so well. Shenzhen is the commercial hub and Foshan the industrial zone of Guangzhou; Tianjin the harbour of Beijing, Erlangen the campus of Nuremberg, etc.

I agree with everything that's been said here. I've been thinking about making settlers settle a specialty district instead of a city centre, but that needs more ironing before it's smooth.

 

[Xandinho]

Districts should appear more visually integrated into the city to look like extensions of it. This is something that really bothers me in Civ6, districts look like loose and disconnected pieces of cities. There should be two types of districts: 1) districts that are extensions of the city, could only be built next to the city center and would look a lot like that, and 2) districts like dams and canals, that would not need to be build adjacent to the city center because they are not extensions of urban centers.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I always thought that districts were satellite towns, where on the scale of Civ 6 wouldn't fit so well. Shenzhen is the commercial hub and Foshan the industrial zone of Guangzhou; Tianjin the harbour of Beijing, Erlangen the campus of Nuremberg, etc.

That's always been the argument, but it doesn't stand up in Civ VI.

First, because the Districts simply don't look like separate cities, so graphically the on-map districts look like what they are - disconnected fragments of a larger city.
Second, because the 'zone' cities are a post-Industrial phenomena. The closest thing to a separate Commercial District in a classical city was the Camel's Pasture (Gaugamela) outside Arbela/Erbil, and that was just an open field where caravans could gather before they set off - no sign of any structures at all. The most common 'separate district' was a Harbor on the coast from a nearby inland city: Ostia for Rome, Pireaeus for Athens, and even Humankind recognizes that Harbors should be potentially separated from the main city.
And, by the way, today both Ostia and Pireaeus are indistinguishable from Rome and Athens, because in rthe last century all urban areas have expanded dramatically.

Having a set of separated 'districts' only makes any sense after there are fast transportation means between them: railroads, motorized river boats, highway and motorized transport. Before that, an overland journey by oxcart could make, even on a good Roman-type road about 15 - 20 kilometers a day, and within a city virtually everyone moved on foot or sedan chair or its equivalent, so the maximum 'city' you could cross in a day was about 20 - 30 kilometers. And if it takes all day to get there, you ain't visiting that part of the city very often, so in fact most pre-automobile cities were less than 5 kilometers in all directions. Note that until the 20th century, 'New York' consisted of the Separate Towns of Bronx, Manhatten, Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem etc. The city didn't grow to include all of them until it was possible to physically get to them without having to stop for a meal break coming and going . . .

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I think that unstacked Wonders are not so bad, but Districts, and all of their adjacency combinations are just so damn tedious...

I would rather the tedium be reduced with improvements how players interact with the game rather than having to remove a feature - districts - that I enjoy. For example with civ 6 style districts integrate the pins into planning adjacencies and the build queues and you make city planning easier and quicker.

 

[dagriggstar]

I would like for VII to actually define what the difference is between a building and an improvement. I mean, if I told you that a Ziggurat is a place where Sumerian gods were worshipped you would probably expect it to be a replacement for a temple/shrine, but actually it's an improvement ! Then somehow a Stave Church is a building !

I think buildings should be small structures and I do think they should be placed on the map (between tiles on the corners)
Improvements are larger structures that take up more space, usually this would be agricultural in nature (farms, mines for instance)
Wonders still take up a single tile
I would then just have like an Urban Sprawl district, if you have 3 or more buildings (any type) around a single tile, it becomes a suburb/neighbourhood/urban tile.

I agree city planning takes too long, but I also find it fun, so I think they just need to simplify adjacencies. Like, adjacencies can only apply to other man-made structures and use terrain/features to restrict what can be built where. So instead of looking at 36 spaces something can go you're looking at like 6.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I would like for VII to actually define what the difference is between a building and an improvement. I mean, if I told you that a Ziggurat is a place where Sumerian gods were worshipped you would probably expect it to be a replacement for a temple/shrine, but actually it's an improvement ! Then somehow a Stave Church is a building !

I think buildings should be small structures and I do think they should be placed on the map (between tiles on the corners)
Improvements are larger structures that take up more space, usually this would be agricultural in nature (farms, mines for instance)
Wonders still take up a single tile
I would then just have like an Urban Sprawl district, if you have 3 or more buildings (any type) around a single tile, it becomes a suburb/neighbourhood/urban tile.

I agree city planning takes too long, but I also find it fun, so I think they just need to simplify adjacencies. Like, adjacencies can only apply to other man-made structures and use terrain/features to restrict what can be built where. So instead of looking at 36 spaces something can go you're looking at like 6.

Buildings and improvements should definitely stay separate, but to be fair, it's hard to quantify what makes what.
Agree on Wonders.

I agree on your take of the simplified adjacencies, I think that would go a long way.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Districts should appear more visually integrated into the city to look like extensions of it. This is something that really bothers me in Civ6, districts look like loose and disconnected pieces of cities. There should be two types of districts: 1) districts that are extensions of the city, could only be built next to the city center and would look a lot like that, and 2) districts like dams and canals, that would not need to be build adjacent to the city center because they are not extensions of urban centers.

This is my favourite reply, I think restricting districts to being directly next to Cities would reduce the headache and also increase the "realism" (believability?) of ancient cities having distinct districts, and attaching aqueducts in places that make sense.
Totally on board for this.

 

[kaspergm]

Districts should appear more visually integrated into the city to look like extensions of it. This is something that really bothers me in Civ6, districts look like loose and disconnected pieces of cities. There should be two types of districts: 1) districts that are extensions of the city, could only be built next to the city center and would look a lot like that, and 2) districts like dams and canals, that would not need to be build adjacent to the city center because they are not extensions of urban centers.

I fully support this. I hate the disconnected cities of Civ6. To adjust your suggestion a bit, I don't think all "special"/urban districts (Campus, Commercial Hub, Holy Site, Theatre District, etc.) need to be adjacent to city center, I just think they need to be adjacent to city center or another special/urban district. So something like City Center - Campus - Commercial Hub should be ok, but not City Center - farm - Commercial Hub. (I also hope we'll get something like the borough districts from City Lights integrated into Civ7 to simulate really big cities, they can go instead of the "neighborhoods" from Civ6 is need be.)

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I always thought that districts were satellite towns, where on the scale of Civ 6 wouldn't fit so well. Shenzhen is the commercial hub and Foshan the industrial zone of Guangzhou; Tianjin the harbour of Beijing, Erlangen the campus of Nuremberg, etc.

Second, because the 'zone' cities are a post-Industrial phenomena. The closest thing to a separate Commercial District in a classical city was the Camel's Pasture (Gaugamela) outside Arbela/Erbil, and that was just an open field where caravans could gather before they set off - no sign of any structures at all. The most common 'separate district' was a Harbor on the coast from a nearby inland city: Ostia for Rome, Pireaeus for Athens, and even Humankind recognizes that Harbors should be potentially separated from the main city.
And, by the way, today both Ostia and Pireaeus are indistinguishable from Rome and Athens, because in rthe last century all urban areas have expanded dramatically.

Incidentally, the districts mechanism in Civilization VI has always made natural sense for a modern city like Beijing, where there are distinct (albeit repeated) zones resulting from centralization, blobbing, and redevelopment. A rough mockup (with copious use of mods) can be seen below:

Spoiler :

What districts do not capture as well about Beijing would be the limit of one type per city as well as the endless industrial/commercial/residential sprawl outside the core. They also have the aforementioned issues of not really representing how cities developed historically or the impact of industrialization and modernity.

 

[Henri Christophe]

I like districts how they are in Civ 6, I don't want that to change

 

[bene_legionary]

At the scale of Civ 6, it looks like Beijing's swallowed up Zhangjiakou and Kalgan too!

Anyway, I think that adjacencies could come from buildings within, not totally inherent to districts from the get-go. With different non-compatible buildings, there are different choices to be made. Some buildings provide different bonuses too; per pop, per feature, per Great Work, etc.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

At the scale of Civ 6, it looks like Beijing's swallowed up Zhangjiakou and Kalgan too!

Anyway, I think that adjacencies could come from buildings within, not totally inherent to districts from the get-go. With different non-compatible buildings, there are different choices to be made. Some buildings provide different bonuses too; per pop, per feature, per Great Work, etc.

One of the advantages of 'dropping' adjacencies down to the Building level is that the Districts can become a lot more flexible, and the options available (good and bad) to the gamer dramatically increased.
By making Districts 'generic' they can be specified entirely by the types of buildings in them, and their bonuses might change as the game progresses - Urban Renewal has been an urban constant since Uruk, after all.

So, an early 1-tile city can still, in its single City Center tile, have a Religious Building and an early Commercial building along with its (mandatory) Political Center (Palace, Chief's Hall, Megaron, etc), both of which might later be moved to separate Districts with other buildings of their ilk to gather more adjacency and other bonuses.

Part of the 'religious game' might even be the requirement to place Temples near or next to certain Buildings - a God of the Sea might have to have his/her Temple on the coast, or in the Harbor District for maximum Bonuses and effects, a Judgement God might require that his/her Temple be next to the Palace, a War God next to the Encampment/barracks etc.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'd also like to keep districts but do not mind changing them at all either.

I agree for the most part of what other people say about the spreading out of districts not making much sense both from a graphic perspective and historical perspective. That's why I think most of them should at least be adjacent to the city center until you reach say Urbanization in the Industrial Era.
Districts like Harbors and Encampments are the exception.

I'd also love for unique districts to be even more unique then they are in Civ 6. They already kind of started it with Vietnam's Thanh, which is an Encampment that can generate culture.

For example I would love for a Korean Seowon in Civ 6 to be a campus replacement, but also generate culture and have the ability to build a shrine, which could usually only be done in a Holy Site.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I like the district mechanism, but I'd like to see three major changes.

I want districts to span multiple tiles and have finite "building budgets", so that you can only build a certain number of buildings on a tile before having to expand the district. City planning is an element in the game I really enjoy, and this I feel will expand it further. I think it will be much more fulfilling to see my cities develop larger districts toward the late game than to spam improvements to fill up empty space.

I don't think empty, unworked districts should provide yields. I'd modify the adjacency mechanic to give percentage boosts to yields provided by citizens working a district. This will help make playing tall more viable.

Most districts should provide amenities to nearby cities. Access to good education, availability of variety of goods produced domestically and imported from elsewhere and exposure to culturally enriching experiences are all things that attract people to big cities, but they game doesn't recognize that. This will also make playing tall easier.

 

[mitsho]

1. @Boris Gudenuf proposal above. A district placed should become scientific if it has two science buildings in it, and the bonus should change depending on whether the third is a commercial, industry or religious one.
2. I want the limiting factor for buildings to be building slots, not the production needed to build them. That way, you can change them around and have lots more options. That seems more fun and requires less planning than territorial adjacencies. A plus for flexibility.
3. The rest of the districts get changed to infrastructure - or vice versa. Instead of the best strategy being to fill the map with infrastructure asap, citizens working the tiles should improve them visually on the map. Citizens placed on districts become specialists. Infrastructure like mines still exist, but building a fort doesn't make it's tile useless economically. But for example moving a horse ressource or doubling it would be such a district/infrastructure mixture. Fewer stuff = less cramped buildplan.

I hope you get what I am driving at: the current game has way too many options for what to put on a tile: improve ressource, build infrastructure, build unique infrastructure, build district, build city, build special district, and so on. The map is way too small for that/it takes too long to fill up a big city (= better build smaller ones).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I like the district mechanism, but I'd like to see three major changes.

I want districts to span multiple tiles and have finite "building budgets", so that you can only build a certain number of buildings on a tile before having to expand the district. City planning is an element in the game I really enjoy, and this I feel will expand it further. I think it will be much more fulfilling to see my cities develop larger districts toward the late game than to spam improvements to fill up empty space.

I don't think empty, unworked districts should provide yields. I'd modify the adjacency mechanic to give percentage boosts to yields provided by citizens working a district. This will help make playing tall more viable.

Most districts should provide amenities to nearby cities. Access to good education, availability of variety of goods produced domestically and imported from elsewhere and exposure to culturally enriching experiences are all things that attract people to big cities, but they game doesn't recognize that. This will also make playing tall easier.

Again, posted on this stuff before, but since we are still discussing it . . .

We can get the same effects you are looking for but also keep a simpler District layout by keeping all Districts the same size but changing the size of the Buildings inside them.

Example: assume that all Districts have 5 Building Slots at all times, and the District always takes up one tile.
Early in the game, most Buildings would be 1 Slot in size: Granary, Market, Palace, Monument, etc.

But later Buildings could be much bigger, and Wonders, many of which would require to be built inside a city, would from the start be 2 slots or more in size (Angkhor Wat, for a frequent Civ-Wonder example, is an entire city all by itself!). So, for example, a Workshop might still be 1 slot, but a Textile Mill (early Factory) would be 2 slots, and a 1-slot Power Plant adjacent to it would make the whole 'factory complex' 3 slots but much more powerful than the old hand-craft Workshop ever was. Late Game Factories, Universities, Research Centers, would all be major developments spanning 3 or more slots each, but adjacencies in every case include the adjacent Districts so these would have greatly increased effects as well as 'mere' size differences.

Specialists, the population actually working, would apply to the Buildings, not the Districts. And the number of Specialist 'slots' should vary by the size and development of the Building. A Workshop might be a 1-slot Building with 1 Specialist slot. The Factory that replaces it might be a 2 - 3 slot Building with 4 - 5 Specialist slots (Think the Ford River Rouge Plant in 1920 with 30,000 workers, and in WWII with 3 shifts working over 75,000: a far cry from a few hundred craftsmen hammering away in street-front workshops!). This would also allow the extreme concentration of working population seen in the late Industrial to Modern Eras and greatly enhance Tall play if you want to go that way.

Amenities between cities, like much else, depends on rapid transport. When it took days to travel between Athens and Corinth, nobody in Corinth got any Amenity fromTemples or other structures in Athens. When the railroad, airplane, automobile or powered ship allowed you to travel between the cities in an hour or two, then and only then could they be said to 'share' Amenities. That's another of the Game Changing differences between the Pre-Industrial and Post-Industrial (post railroad/steam ship) game.

 

[rocksinmypath]

We can get the same effects you are looking for but also keep a simpler District layout by keeping all Districts the same size but changing the size of the Buildings inside them.

I didn't mention this in my earlier post because I didn't feel it belonged to this thread, but I'd like to see the game allow multiple instances of the same building in a city. Specifically for industrial zones, what I have in mind is allowing players to build multiple factories in a city, each responsible for manufacturing a certain product, like clothes, cars, computers, etc. which become available as relevant techs unlock. These would provide amenities like luxury resources do, and they can even provide some additional boosts to things like tourism if a player manages to start producing them before anyone else obtain a sort of monopoly. Essentially, I'm looking for something like industries or corporations from the Monopolies mode, except these things would live inside industrial zones, and I don't want the "one industry per city" restriction. I suppose we could imagine that a single factory can produce many types of goods, but this doesn't feel right to me.

Amenities between cities, like much else, depends on rapid transport. When it took days to travel between Athens and Corinth, nobody in Corinth got any Amenity fromTemples or other structures in Athens. When the railroad, airplane, automobile or powered ship allowed you to travel between the cities in an hour or two, then and only then could they be said to 'share' Amenities. That's another of the Game Changing differences between the Pre-Industrial and Post-Industrial (post railroad/steam ship) game.

I like the idea of easier amenity sharing between cities as empires progress through the eras, but I'd approach it a bit differently. Instead of restricting amenities from a district to its home city early in the game, I think it would be better to have amenities affect city centres within a small area (1 tile radius) at the beginning, and increase this as the game goes on. If I build a holy site two tiles away from its home city centre, and there's another city centre two tiles away, does it really make sense that it provides amenities to one city and not the other? Maybe this can even be a solution to the problem of disjointedness between districts and city centre. The game won't force you to place districts next to city centres, but you'll be rewarded if you do.