[NFP] [discussion] Major flaws of Civ VI - part 2: Flat yields vs. scaling yields

[Archon_Wing]

The main problem with flat yields is they often make t3 buildings pretty useless because it's just a few yields; why build it at all? In GS they sorta fixed it by giving them even more yields but it doesn't really solve the problem

Percentage based yields should have gone to t3s and wonders. This is a reason why most of them are underwhelming, except the ones that actually do increase something you do by a significant percentage (Kilwa, Pyramids, Oracle...)

And yea the death of the specialists really does play into this.

 

[dagriggstar]

I think it's worth separating yields from the buildings discussion. I'm a proponent of buildings going between tiles and mostly getting rid of the need for districts.

I think civ has a problem with what I'm going to call "progress" yields, traditionally science but now also culture. I think the biggest driver of science should be some mechanic that encourages you to co-operate with other factions, rather than building science buildings/more population. In a civ 6 sense, that may look like library yields +1 science for every peaceful foreign city within 6 tiles (Maybe not exactly this, but something along these lines). My baseline logic is that by being more open to other cultures (and ideas) that scientific progress would be encouraged and move faster.
For civ 7, maybe all players with open borders with each other form a "tech group", essentially pooling their research together.

 

[shaglio]

Some good points in the above. I think a lot of this is really dealing with the "v1" edition of districts, and now that we see the basics, there's a lot of new ways they can go that would really help. Some of the changes I would love to see in a civ 7:
1. districts and buildings need population to work them. Perhaps city-centre buildings would be immune, but they already gate districts by population. What if they changed the model up so that instead of getting large yields from a building, and then small yield from the "specialist" slots, it was completely turned around to give only a minimal base yield, but a large yield per pop? So, you build a campus and it gives 0 unless if you have a person assigned to it to work it for the adjacency. Then you build a library, and again, it yields basically 0 unless if you have a person who can be assigned there. This, to me, would have a double bonus - for one, it means that you can't rush a size 1 city campus, since you only have 1 population point to play with, nobody is available to work the research lab there yet, so the city would need to grow to size 3 or 4 before you get the bonus from that.
The added bonus to this is that you then have a perfectly natural mechanism to limit their building - no reason why you can't build a campus, commerce hub, harbor, and industrial zone in your size 1 city, but more of them are going to run abandoned until you get enough workers for them. And then you also have a natural way to simulate industrialization and urbanization - play around with amenities, food caps, housing caps, food costs, etc... to be able to switch from having more people work the "fields" to having more people work the "factories".

I know this is sort of a tangent, but if the above suggestion is implemented in Civ 7, I'd like to see a checkbox (maybe at the City Screen level) that says "Auto-assign new population." Then I can decide for each city whether I want new population to be assigned automatically like it is now (perhaps even maintaining the yield-focus radio buttons) or whether I want to be notified that a new citizen is available to be assigned manually (like the way new governors are handled).

This would allow for a bit more micromanagement for players who like it without forcing everyone to have to use it. But it also isn't as overly micromanaging as it is now where you have to constantly monitor every city in your empire every turn to see which ones are going to increase population on the next turn.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The main problem with flat yields is they often make t3 buildings pretty useless because it's just a few yields; why build it at all? In GS they sorta fixed it by giving them even more yields but it doesn't really solve the problem

Percentage based yields should have gone to t3s and wonders. This is a reason why most of them are underwhelming, except the ones that actually do increase something you do by a significant percentage (Kilwa, Pyramids, Oracle...)

And yea the death of the specialists really does play into this.

I usually only construct buildings for GPP, a market for a trader, or a particular eureka/inspiration

Or because it is Civ6 midgame and sheer boredome

 

[Socrates99]

The flat yields don't really bug me. I hate the tall v wide balance stuff. "Expand" is one of the "Xs" in 4X. That being said I do wish there were more things encouraging players to cultivate really awesome big cities.

Honestly if there were a mechanic to improve large cities it'd be specialists IMO. A campus specialist should be cranking out a minimum of 5 or 6 science per turn to make it worth working, same for the other districts. Why work an IZ when practically any production tile is better? They just need to improve specialists. I'd even be happy if they contributed more to recruiting great people. Make them worth it and it'd be useful to build big cities.

I'm just really apprehensive about anything that even starts to take steps back towards V's awful 4 city schtick.

 

[UWHabs]

The flat yields don't really bug me. I hate the tall v wide balance stuff. "Expand" is one of the "Xs" in 4X. That being said I do wish there were more things encouraging players to cultivate really awesome big cities.

Honestly if there were a mechanic to improve large cities it'd be specialists IMO. A campus specialist should be cranking out a minimum of 5 or 6 science per turn to make it worth working, same for the other districts. Why work an IZ when practically any production tile is better? They just need to improve specialists. I'd even be happy if they contributed more to recruiting great people. Make them worth it and it'd be useful to build big cities.

I'm just really apprehensive about anything that even starts to take steps back towards V's awful 4 city schtick.

There are some stealth tweaks like the T3 buildings giving some extra yields to specialists which either didn't exist early or else simply I never paid attention to. But yeah, it's one of the most disappointing aspects of civ 6. Like, playing the specialist game was one of the best parts of civ 4, and while we don't need to make them that good, it's annoying that, for example, an engineer is basically useless unless if you have run out of tiles to work, it's hardly even any better than working an unimproved tile. Yeah, if you made them worth 5 or 6 apiece, that would be even bigger. At that level, you could legit actually get 20 or 30 production from even a crazy adjacency IZ, and that could legit be a way to gain that late production, especially if you didn't have mines nearby. Right now, unless if you can find yourself an aqueduct triangle, it's hard to build one, and I'm very rarely if ever going to work a specialist slot before I absolutely have to.

 

[choevi]

For instance, Observatory (offers/improves campus adjacency from mountains) vs. Wildlife Institute (offers/improves campus adjacency from jungles) vs. Marine Research Centre (offers/improves campus adjacency from reefs), etc. Expanding on these choices would have excellent synergy with several of the suggestions from above, for instance you could put different buildings in districts of the same kind with overlapping AOE.

I very much like the idea of different, mutual exclusive buildings per tier, but obviously those wouldn't be real strategic choices as you'd always go for a marine research center when next to a reef. I do see how this would work with the area of effect approach, in the same way that now makes you alternate between entertainment district and water parks. But it would be much more fun if there were different options that could all potentially be valid, depending on your play style, avoiding a dominant strategy. I like that for tier 1 encampment, you have to choose between the kind of unit that will benefit from it or that it's either food or shopping in a neighborhood district and I think this mechanism should be used more often.

 

[kaspergm]

The flat yields don't really bug me. I hate the tall v wide balance stuff. "Expand" is one of the "Xs" in 4X. That being said I do wish there were more things encouraging players to cultivate really awesome big cities.

Honestly if there were a mechanic to improve large cities it'd be specialists IMO. A campus specialist should be cranking out a minimum of 5 or 6 science per turn to make it worth working, same for the other districts. Why work an IZ when practically any production tile is better? They just need to improve specialists. I'd even be happy if they contributed more to recruiting great people. Make them worth it and it'd be useful to build big cities.

I'm just really apprehensive about anything that even starts to take steps back towards V's awful 4 city schtick.

I definitely don't want to go back to Civ5's 4-city meta either, that was really silly. I agree bigger should be better in Civ (and in 4X games in general), but that should go BOTH for bigger in the form of wider AND for bigger in the form of taller. Civ5 catered very much to tall but not wide, Civ6 caters very much to wide but not tall. Ideally what we should cater for is wide AND tall, with the obvious control mechanism being stuff like food, health/housing and happiness.

I agree very much what others have said in the last posts also, we need specialists to be better. Working an engineer in a factory should give more production than having a generic worker working in a mine, or alternatively, the specialist needs to give additional yields such as gold and science beyond just production. Having scientists work as specialists in your universities and research labs should be the primary source for your science, not just having the buildings standing unworked.

I very much like the idea of different, mutual exclusive buildings per tier, but obviously those wouldn't be real strategic choices as you'd always go for a marine research center when next to a reef.

Well yes, I agree, those examples are not really strategic options, but rather a means to introduce a late(r)-game adjacency mechanism that prevents you from getting those magical yields from turn one just by placing the empty district next to the appropriate feature.

 

[LastSword]

Obviously Districts are the main theme that defined civ6 and they or their implementation are responsible for game's success or failure.
Even though the direction could be seen before, the civ6 cemented a transition from macro to micro-theme of the series (I believe the trend will continue with eventual civ7).

The Science supremacy was always present in the series, yet civ6 amplifies the issue by an AI that notoriously can be seen even 3-4 eras behind (and I mean "healthy" civilizations that were not reduced to rump states). I am not sure what was the point of this design.
Cities no longer look like cities, game offers a board with unscalled objects. Either refreshing or blasphemious.
Naval aspect of the game was at least greatly reduced in importance. Maybe there is some positive aspect of it, I don't know.
Game centered about the careful city-planning offers no place for interruption which led to introduction of loyalty and its city-flipping. (How AI could dare to interrupt my city-plan!) It led to a circucal blobs being a dominant shape of empires.
Overall interaction with other civilizations was marginalized/trivialized (despite some efforts like "emergencies" and "alliances"). In fact civ6 introduced natural disasters which if turned on are the biggest interaction game offers to a singleplayer gamer. (finally something about yields) Now, it is my personal opinion, but constructing builders to repair/rebuild objects destroyed by disasters could be the most tedious/boring thing civ series ever offered. Funnily GS also introduced something that can mess up with careful city-planning: sea-level rising.
Careful city-planning with unremovable districts lead to static gameplay: "I am gonna leave this spot for X object that will be available 2 eras later". Too bad NFP didn't introduced something like dynamic district adjacencies that would be unveiled with discovery of tech/civic unlocking district. Though more importantly, game is undynamic and there is a little need to adapt to situation, game even punishes not sticking to one set direction/plan. In general playing feels like unchecking next positions on pre/early-made list.

Yields are a matter of numerical balance. Something to think about before every new game: is it time to 10x the sensitivity of them to allow a better balance? (I mean 2 Food into 20 Food or 2.0 Food)
I would definitely not want to see mentioned AoE prevention of the same districts, I believe allowing civs to specialize on single-aspect can be a future of series and is an important part of allowing variety in the gameplay.
Obviously I also do not believe civ6 tried to make science less of a universal win factor (eventually it failed completely). I would rather say civ6 forgot to make science less important while allowing more diverse yield-specialization. In general tech tree is an archaic stuff by now.
Alternative Buildings are something to think about, yet I feel like I prefer no AB to badly made AB.
Industrial Zone can represent an aggregate of highly-skilled craftsmen that work in houses, Workshop adds designated place with tools/machines for better productivity. Also I don't like reading stuff like "it is historically/realistically inaccurate in my opinIon, please change".

 

[Unmitigated Gaul]

I think reducing base adjacency and then boosting it with cards would be a more complex but also more fun/reasonable way to handle districts like campuses.

Campuses should be able to be boosted by cards if they’re near, for example, holy sites or encampments or commercial hubs or harbors or whatever. Perhaps the holy site card is only available in the classical-Renaissance era, and then after the industrial era, you’d get more benefit from an encampment or commercial hub?

I can get the holy site adjacency from mountains but I cannot for the life of me figure out how that works for campuses.

On the other hand I have no concern with industrial zones. To get their adjacency up you need to invest a lot of production into green districts.

 

[Socrates99]

Not sure if I like the idea of nerfing base adjacencies. About the most fun thing about VI is planning cities around the terrain. I've seen multiple suggestions for nerfing adjs. Not on board at all.

Tbh I'd add more adjacencies to other districts. Pokhiel has one that improves encampments with major adjacency from strategics. I love it. In some cities it's a great replacement for an IZ in cities in range of another city's IZ. Especially if it has 2 or more strategics to use for adj. Ive also used a mod that adds a major adj to theater squares for Natural Wonders.

Nerfing terrain based adjs is just not a great idea. Strengthening other districts we would provide impetus to grow bigger to gain those extra districts.

 

[ezzlar]

One way to go would let the adjacency bonus set some kind of limit yield. It could set the output for a specialist. It could determine the yield of the different tier buildings etc. A tall city with lots of population and buildings would benefit from the high adjacency in some way while a pop 2 city couldn´t get something useful out of it.

 

[Abaxial]

There is a similar issue with bonuses to combat units. If you have a +5 modifier to a combat strength of 10, that's a big deal. If your units have a native strength of 50, +5 is not so useful.

 

[Socrates99]

There is a similar issue with bonuses to combat units. If you have a +5 modifier to a combat strength of 10, that's a big deal. If your units have a native strength of 50, +5 is not so useful.

Doesn't Civ VI's combat work in strength differences rather than overall str of a unit? So a unit with a CS of 20 would be at the same disadvantage to a unit with a 25 as a unit with a CS of 50 to a unit with a CS of 55.

 

[kaspergm]

Doesn't Civ VI's combat work in strength differences rather than overall str of a unit? So a unit with a CS of 20 would be at the same disadvantage to a unit with a 25 as a unit with a CS of 50 to a unit with a CS of 55.

It does work exactly like you say. So a +X modifier gives the same advantage at all stages of the game.

Not sure if I like the idea of nerfing base adjacencies. About the most fun thing about VI is planning cities around the terrain. I've seen multiple suggestions for nerfing adjs. Not on board at all.

Tbh I'd add more adjacencies to other districts. Pokhiel has one that improves encampments with major adjacency from strategics. I love it. In some cities it's a great replacement for an IZ in cities in range of another city's IZ. Especially if it has 2 or more strategics to use for adj. Ive also used a mod that adds a major adj to theater squares for Natural Wonders.

Nerfing terrain based adjs is just not a great idea. Strengthening other districts we would provide impetus to grow bigger to gain those extra districts.

Like I also said in the OP, I agree that removing adjacency bonuses is not the way to go, because like you say, the hunt for adjacency bonus is fun, and the game must be fun almost above all else. Also I agree that just nerfing them to the ground is not the way to go either, because it will just end up like the rationalism card and become irrelevant.

When that's said, I do think there is room for improvement. Some districts - like Theatre Square and Industrial Zone - sit in a great place imo, because their adjacency is likely to increase as game progresses, and you have ways to control and influence that adjacency yourself through your game style and management decisions. That's win.

On the other hand, Holy Site and most notoriously Campus sit in a really bad place, because you can get pretty massive and very significant bonuses right from turn 1 of the game, by factors which you have zero influence over other than just the luck of the draw in terms of your starting position. That's bad. And the fact that those Campus adjacencies can easily be enough to start your snowball towards an easy win makes it even worse.

And then there are districts like the Entertainment Complex and Encampment that have no adjacency bonuses at all (not to mention the fact that EC also has no associated great person). They did improve the EC a tiny bit by making it boost the TS, but still, the fact that it has no adjacency makes little sense. If they felt giving it extra amenities from adjacency would be too much, they could have given it gold, which after all would not be a stretch logically. Encampment pretty obviously should get a production boost from strategic resources.

 

[UWHabs]

It does work exactly like you say. So a +X modifier gives the same advantage at all stages of the game.


Like I also said in the OP, I agree that removing adjacency bonuses is not the way to go, because like you say, the hunt for adjacency bonus is fun, and the game must be fun almost above all else. Also I agree that just nerfing them to the ground is not the way to go either, because it will just end up like the rationalism card and become irrelevant.

When that's said, I do think there is room for improvement. Some districts - like Theatre Square and Industrial Zone - sit in a great place imo, because their adjacency is likely to increase as game progresses, and you have ways to control and influence that adjacency yourself through your game style and management decisions. That's win.

On the other hand, Holy Site and most notoriously Campus sit in a really bad place, because you can get pretty massive and very significant bonuses right from turn 1 of the game, by factors which you have zero influence over other than just the luck of the draw in terms of your starting position. That's bad. And the fact that those Campus adjacencies can easily be enough to start your snowball towards an easy win makes it even worse.

And then there are districts like the Entertainment Complex and Encampment that have no adjacency bonuses at all (not to mention the fact that EC also has no associated great person). They did improve the EC a tiny bit by making it boost the TS, but still, the fact that it has no adjacency makes little sense. If they felt giving it extra amenities from adjacency would be too much, they could have given it gold, which after all would not be a stretch logically. Encampment pretty obviously should get a production boost from strategic resources.

Yep. Although in the above, I don't terribly mind how holy sites work, since they can have strong upfront yields that don't (generally) improve over time, but it's not as big of a deal. Like, sure, being able to place a +4 HS vs a +1 HS early on can make a difference, but the change will still take a while to pay off. It can snowball you with a monumentality golden age, and if you get the doubly awesome start with the right pantheon it can be broken when Russia can finish a +9 holy site by turn 25 of the game. But other than those rare cases, mostly it simply opens up new options. I think it also helps that there's many varying uses of faith even that early - as mentioned, maybe you use it to expand with a monumentality golden age, or you use it build and spread a religion, or you use it to target a specific great person. So even in those "gamebreaking" cases, you still have flexibility around it.

However, campuses certainly can totally break the game. When your early civ is only bringing in 4-8 science per turn (from pop, maybe a random tile with +1 science, maybe a couple early CS envoys), the difference between a +1 campus and a +4 campus is absolutely massive. They did a great job with the change to bonuses from envoys to space them out more and backload them, but the core campus adjacency still can break things. I remember before that envoy change, I had a game where I didn't even get a campus, but was just lucky enough to start near 3 scientific CS, and my science was going so fast just from that +6 that I couldn't keep up with it. And because science just throws you forward, and speeds along everything else, the snowball factor is just so large.

 

[Karmah]

Yep. Although in the above, I don't terribly mind how holy sites work, since they can have strong upfront yields that don't (generally) improve over time, but it's not as big of a deal. Like, sure, being able to place a +4 HS vs a +1 HS early on can make a difference, but the change will still take a while to pay off. It can snowball you with a monumentality golden age, and if you get the doubly awesome start with the right pantheon it can be broken when Russia can finish a +9 holy site by turn 25 of the game. But other than those rare cases, mostly it simply opens up new options. I think it also helps that there's many varying uses of faith even that early - as mentioned, maybe you use it to expand with a monumentality golden age, or you use it build and spread a religion, or you use it to target a specific great person. So even in those "gamebreaking" cases, you still have flexibility around it.

However, campuses certainly can totally break the game. When your early civ is only bringing in 4-8 science per turn (from pop, maybe a random tile with +1 science, maybe a couple early CS envoys), the difference between a +1 campus and a +4 campus is absolutely massive. They did a great job with the change to bonuses from envoys to space them out more and backload them, but the core campus adjacency still can break things. I remember before that envoy change, I had a game where I didn't even get a campus, but was just lucky enough to start near 3 scientific CS, and my science was going so fast just from that +6 that I couldn't keep up with it. And because science just throws you forward, and speeds along everything else, the snowball factor is just so large.

If you give say 10 science to the palace (and rework the cost of the first techs accordingly) then four is still nice but not so strong, while you keep the same mid-late game. Just throwing a random thought here.

 

[whyidie]

Obviously Districts are the main theme that defined civ6 and they or their implementation are responsible for game's success or failure.
Even though the direction could be seen before, the civ6 cemented a transition from macro to micro-theme of the series (I believe the trend will continue with eventual civ7).

Game centered about the careful city-planning offers no place for interruption which led to introduction of loyalty and its city-flipping. (How AI could dare to interrupt my city-plan!) It led to a circucal blobs being a dominant shape of empires.

Yes! Initially I thought I would be ok with this, but the game becomes an absolute slog unless you build according to the circular blob. This (also agree 7 will likely tip in this direction) and the need for balance are the two prevailing themes of this iteration that I have tired of the most. Hat tip to the makers for giving me the occasional OP strategy or Civ. That kept things interesting.

Careful city-planning with unremovable districts lead to static gameplay: "I am gonna leave this spot for X object that will be available 2 eras later". Too bad NFP didn't introduced something like dynamic district adjacencies that would be unveiled with discovery of tech/civic unlocking district. Though more importantly, game is undynamic and there is a little need to adapt to situation, game even punishes not sticking to one set direction/plan. In general playing feels like unchecking next positions on pre/early-made list.

Yields are a matter of numerical balance. Something to think about before every new game: is it time to 10x the sensitivity of them to allow a better balance? (I mean 2 Food into 20 Food or 2.0 Food)

Generally speaking, yes. I'm all for fattening vs flattening. As we see in this thread the risk is balance for the sake of balance and the cure is generally to flatten. Fat is flexible and this flexibility is rich.

Sometimes you get a start with great early science adjacency, sometimes you get a late blooming IC start.

So long as either is possible but not guaranteed, its fat. If the only guarantee is that neither is possible, its flat.

I was hoping this thread would attempt to solve the lack of dynamism in the mid to late game if you haven't setup your cities according to script. Instead it seems like a lot of the solutions would take away from early game dynamism, which is in alarmingly short supply outside of deity.

Like the idea of building choice. Intrigued by ability to move districts. Love anything that reduces district build times in the late game if you didn't plan accordingly. Maybe its more dependencies or boni for strategic/bonus resources. Would it be so bad if coal cut IZ build costs in half ? Or copper gives a +5 adjacency boost ?

Yes, this goes against planning and adds RNG, but if done properly that R can reflect the difficulty of maintaining a leading empire over thousands of years. Gives you deity types something interesting to do in the late game and gives sub par players like me hope that I can luck myself out of a bad start...or maybe even impetus to expand after the classical era.