Disctrict scaling too punishing

I don't see how chopping is overpowered, you still have to build everything else, so they are not making you ignore other parts of the game.

The only thing they are doing is making people buy more workers because now you need the charges for improvement and chopping.

You may think they are better than what they are because you were playing in online speed where yields from features don't have the same time to make up for not chopping. the slower the speed the worse chopping becomes.

I love the chopping mechanic, it adds another layer of strategy to the game like predicting where your districts will go and chopping before building them without losing turns to do it (sometimes I still lose turns because I didn't predict and had to wait the builder get to the tile and chop it before placing the district). And they add interesting mechanics like moving out of your border with builders being scouted by military to clear forests in tiles that you think you will never get.

 

lol this is clearly a cheat, sure you can do that, but its not even remotely a strategy

 

If anything it is realistic because our civilizations did and still do extract a lot of forests/rainforests to get the "yields" in a pretty predatory way.

 

btw, did you check if chopping yields are scaled with game speed? I think they should be (personally playing on Online speed only), but if not.... it should be considered as bug.

 

I've been thinking the right way to play it is to build as few districts as possible (1 holy site if you want religion, 1 campus, maybe 1 hub if you need the extra route for production) until you have the industrial ones, than go crazy with them. I'm starting to think that beelining for apprenticeship, even if you miss a few eurekas, might be a very valid strategy.

 

what for? it costs too much compared to its output early game. Its risky as you sacrify expansion oppurtunities.

Try to reserve one high-productive city for district constuction, and send trade routes from other cities there. They will give you solid +production in each city.

 

nah, comercial hubs are better than industrial districts because without factory you are getting the same as just building a mine or two from the early industrial zone. Traders are godly in making your new cities grow and only get stronger as the game progress, also you get the roads up faster.

An early campus is good if you can build it before getting too many techs, otherwise the cost goes up too much to make it worth more than builders/settlers/comercial hubs/buildings. It's worthy rushing the campus tech and just placing it down to lock the production cost, and them switch to it after you produce the more important stuff.

 

Probably not a bug, because probably they don't want costs changing while you are building something.

And you are limited as to When you can put them down....you have to have the population to do so.

 

Problem is, the average player doesn't know anything about this mechanic and it's neither explained in the game nor does it make any sense. Since I've known about it, I've changed my whole strategy. I avoid getting cheap techs and civics as much as I can and backfill techs only when it becomes necessary. This also means that I have to micromanage my research constantly, switch to other techs one turn before completion, be careful about eurekas etc.
It's still fun but it just feels so wrong.

By the way, this also means that building an early wonder instead of expanding as quick as possible is actually a very bad idea. Even without a wonder, the 3rd and 4th city really start to struggle building districts. The longer you wait to expand, the more impossible it gets to get anything done in new cities. At least until your trade route network is up and running. I don't think this is intended. Why even add early wonders to the game then?

 

I do think it is a bad mechanic.

They probably should increase district costs with number of (specialty not Aqueduct/Neighborhood...but maybe including city centers) districts, rather than techs+civics

 

The overpowered aspect is that you can chop regardless of borders and it will still end up in a city, not sure of the exact mechanics, but i have been 6-8 tiles away and it still works. The exact same issue existed in civ 5, until they put a requirement that had to be inside your territory to get the rewards.

 

I don't think there's any limit by distance on chopping at all. It's crazy. It is a 100% effective cure to the absurdly high district costs.

I'd like to see them go to a model where chopping forests delivers 100% of its production when it's within 3 tiles, but then it rapidly scales down as you move further and further from the city. A forest 6 or more tiles away should be useless.

 

I think one problem that I have is that I don't develop very many tiles on my cities. It used to be you could just build a few workers, automate them, and completely forget about land development. Now you have manually direct every worker action and you have to keep building more. The net result of all of this is that a lot of tiles just never get developed.

I suspect that players who never automated their workers are having an easier transition to Civ 6 than lazy bums likes myself.

 

Well, let's see the options:

If you link district cost to the number you build, then that ironically encourages even more homogeneity. There will always be a best district, and if costs increase per district, then always just build that one and nothing else. Maybe build another if it's really, really worth it. That's it. Save the cost for another city.

If the cost increases per city then we're back to Civ 5's restriction on expansion and conquering, only much more harsh. Districts in this game are how you do everything. Expansion in Civ 5 only limits your science. Expansion in a city-limited district game would limit everything, especially production.

If we limit it per Era, then that's functionally the same as limiting it to tech, only you're encouraged to backfill techs you have no need of pursuing just to halt an big advance you don't want. You'll maybe want to pillage your own Campuses from time to time.

And we're back to the current system, which limits it per tech and civic - which really only encourages balancing your production and tech advance to go hand-in-hand. No more teching up massively and then being completely unable to implement your theoretical discoveries. Arguably that might be what happened to Ming China. LOL?

 

Just don't scale districts, that's it.
It just doesn't make sense to scale the size of districts and civilian units.
So the AI will spam it, so what?

 

So far I have adjusted by beelining districts, placing them and coming back to them later when I have decent production to pump it out in 10 or so turns. But I find that the only districts that I bother building are commerce, harbor, industrial and the odd encampment or two. I don't even bother with campus or theatre unless I am pursuing that victory type. Maybe a centrally placed entertainment district if amenities become scarce. Non-specialty districts notwithstanding, of course.

I feel like the current meta is stifling the designer's vision. Why build that campus when you can devote that production to building another city? Each pop produces 0.7 science naturally, so 7 per 10 citizens. a campus with a library and university produces 6 science, ignoring possible adjacency bonuses (which is at best another 3 or 4 90% of the time). I'd rather expand and build another commerce hub and net another trade route and produce that science via population, than tie up a city producing a campus.

 

Well, commerce, harbor, industrial are all essentially production/growth districts, since first two give trade routes that internally give food and production and industrial gives production by default.

And due to district cost scaling, production is the king. And food gives more people that give more production.

What I found is, that in case I end up with religion and belief that gives food for shrines and temples, that I usually build that district everywhere too.

 

The costs are very high and the gameplay of placing without intending to build for hundreds of years is pretty janky. I don't absolutely hate it, since that trick/bug helps, chopping helps (less so since I play on epic but still), and the factory/powerplant hammer explosion arrives as they are getting super expensive (new outposts away from the factory zone are definitely rough though).

I'm not in love with the alternate scaling solutions either. Not scaling them at all...I wouldn't mind, I'm not sure what that would do to game balance though. Could also just lower the scaling slightly, or maybe alternate ways to put production into them (with gold or food maybe?).

 

Exactly. Each city needs these districts to contribute to your empire, which means they tie up your slots so you can't use them to specialize your cities into science cities, culture cities etc, which the designers envisioned. At least until the city grows to like size 10 when you finally get a spare district slot to build something other than commerce/harbor/industrial. Since each citizen produces science and culture by itself, it's almost always better to just expand and add yet another commerce district.

I think that the most elegant solution is to give all Civs the Aztec's ability to spend builder charges on districts, and give the Aztecs a different ability

 

Seems like a fairly solid mechanic for holding back people are who are ahead a little without being too ridiculous. It does encourage leaving certain techs behind and beelining fairly strongly.

How sure are you about the average districts? It would there seem like as soon as one person builds a district everyone else should then get the 25% discount since the average number would be .125 on an eight player map. Or do you mean the modal player?