District cost and other thoughts

[joncnunn]

I'm thinking that overall district price scaling based on tech should be eliminated with no replacement at all.
As turns go by, there's already a (hidden cost) in that there's less turns in the game to benefit from whatever is built.
In addition, there's already the pop limit per district so that if you want a city to have all the districts it needs to grow anyway.
Lastly, there's now only 2 build no matter what in every city unless it's already nearing end game districts: (Commercial & Harbor and Unique District replacements to them).
Those are mostly only over built due to each and every one increasing the number of trade units; which suggests the possible cure to "overbuilding of these types of districts" would be similar to that of builders & religious type units : Have each trader unit you already have increase the cost of the next one.

Religious unit combat effects: I'm thinking range 10 is way too high; I'd cut it down to a 6 hex range (same as factories)

Passive religious options (one's increasing passive spread rate / passive spread range) : I'm thinking it would both be more effective and more fun if instead they effected religious combat (have one increase religious combat victory bonus and another have 8 hex religious range [instead of 6 that those without this belief would have])

CB: While having denounced a player a few turns in advance makes sense for Formal War, it's too slow a process for CBs. So if you have a CB, I'd allow instantly declaring with that CB without denouncing first.

War Mongler: Remains too high, I'd change to
Classical: Surprise: Minor / Formal: None
Midevil: Surprise: Moderate / Formal : Minor / CB : None
Rean and beyond :Surprise: High / Formal : Moderate / CB : Minor (except for whichever CBs have no WM cost currently)

 

[Victoria]

Limiting the number of districts in cities too much will have some significant side effects like kumasi not being so powerful - not a bad idea.... But japan not getting so much adjacency - not a good idea. I think costs do need to escalate, they just seem like a lot in a new late game city but once you get some help in there they go down

Religious distance matches passive distance which makes sense to me and this distance should help you more than the AI as you shoukd destroy more of them.

I like denouncement CB warning. The AI seems to use it a bit so it is a good warning.... Yes not always.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

Regarding CB, I too think, that the warning before formal war is a fair thing. Five turns is not much to organize your defenses. All of the other CB are already instant as far as I know.

What I'd like to see is a CB incase the AI fails to keep a promise. So if they agree not to settle near me, not to spy, not to convert my cities, I should have a very generous CB against them to make them pay. In earlier versions civs were more likely to yield to demands right after we discovered their spies for fear of revenge. Something similar could be done here: If the offending civ accepts a demand of mine, I lose my casus belli from their broken promise.

 

[Captain Potato]

There's been a bunch of different suggestions for district scaling. Some of them sound really interesting but might not work well in practice. Best thing might be if someone did a few mods so we could try them hands on and see which is best.

For instance, scaling by era sounds really cool on paper. It gives you more advantage to staying in each era till your economy is ready for the shift and stops you from beelining (which is way too strong at present). Would it work in practice? I've no idea. Best way to find out is try it and see.

 

[RealAntithesis]

Things like production costs increasing for whatever reason need to make sense too.

Why do districts increase in cost with technological progress? Perhaps this represents the greater amount of infrastructure that more modern cities require compared to ancient ones. But this reason isn't explained or made apparent to the player in game - so it's just arbitrary and makes no sense (and just has the effect of needlessly and irrationally punishing the player for being good at science). Besides, more complex building requirements in later technological eras should be inherent in the costs of later era buildings themselves (which it is).

Increasing costs for every subsequent unit of the thing produced doesn't make sense either. What is this supposed to represent or abstract in the real world?

The Civ series likes to give itself the appearance of historical relevance - but the game mechanics should also somewhat try to reflect this too. Things that happen for no good reason lessens enjoyment and should be done only where necessary (because it's still a game after all).

 

[Victoria]

Things that happen for no good reason

There will be what someone considers a good reason. Things are not done for no good reason and the scaling costs affect more than just districts so the entire design around this area will have been done by the developers agreeing on it. You will not get an answer very easily from them on this, especially as people aer so critical about it. However you can try and answer it yourself. I do it this way

Chopping escalates, tech and civ costs escalate, in fact most tings escalate over time. Clearly it is a general rule. Ignoring the mechanics of how each one escalates, what is a sensible reason why.

To me the answer is that production also escalates and they are trying to roughly keep things in line .... this means if you race ahead in science and civics things will get more expensive. I suspect its is a design to stop a complete unaway occurring. I really cannot see why peple are so frustrated about it. When I settle a city in turn 150 itsays that district will take 150 turns to billd but with an internal route it suddenly drops to 50 turns, another internal route and its 25 turns.... bang a builder in there with a 100% discount card and a single chop and it can be a lot closer.

The mechanic is there to limit how much people snowball when they get ahead. If districts were the same price and you could produce things in half the time of the opposition you would start to snowball your lead severely.

 

[Jayhawks]

I just don't get the feeling a lot of it was planned out though... It's like they knew they had a successful series, they wanted another one, they tried to change a few things, and the rest they just tried to make work. They are running into the same pitfalls they ran into when releasing Civ 5. No one even built buildings when Civ 5 came out, because war was so much more effective, and you could get nearly 2 units for the price of a barracks. In Civ 6 it's the same way, war is just way more effective and cheap than building infrastructure, and units are way too cheap to build in Civ 6 imo. Even on deity, you can literally just build your capital up and usurp your neighbors lands with some archers. The AI builds buildings faster anyway, so why not let them?

Why do i have to hit spacebar for a unit to end its turn that cannot take any other actions other than to skip their turn? No building production queue, no sentry mode, no steam cloud saves, horrible unit cycling.... Like... what? So many things wrong that are so obviously wrong that I can only conclude that they intentionally released the game this way with plans to fix it later. Big surprise right...

 

[Elucidus]

I agree with Jayhawks, it doesn't seem like it is well planned out, in fact, I feel like it is more of a showcase of things. Going tough the database, you notice a lot of the new "features" civ6 has are only in place on a couple of aspects of the game, even when they might make sense on more or less.

And a mechanic for mechanic's sake detracts from the game, IMO. The precedent for why things should not increase in cost to produce over time and with more technology is the real world. While technologies are an abstract concept they actually decrease in time for development, this is represented by how many years go by per turn. And while production/hammers/shields are also abstract, the cost to build something is based on a real concept and in the real world it actually decreases over time, the more something is produced the easier it is to produce as people discover new and cheaper methods to do so. So while it makes sense that the invention of new technologies take more "science" they ae actually taking less time which is the only measurement we can really use for technologies, it doesn't make sense that the third "worker" I build should cost more, that is like the third tank costing more, I understand the idea behind it, they don't want them to be so easy to produce late game, but it can get ridiculous. I think I may have gone a little off-topic there, sorry.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Just make districts cost 0 hammers, and increase the unlock requirements a bit, I've been saying it since like week 1 and people screamed at me. But it's not sounding very crazy now imo... Cities are already paying a tile and an opportunity cost (district types other than the one planted at the moment), there was never a reason to graft that opportunity cost onto the city's hammer opportunity cost economy - it's just unthoughtoutgarbage, that's a word now.

Regardless of the time metaphor, a builder game that doesn't make the player feel like their cities are making gains in output power with every investment (non output) choice is so so broken. The hammer bottleneck should have been fixed before anything. Planting districts should not hobble a city.

 

[Leyrann]

Just make districts cost 0 hammers, and increase the unlock requirements a bit, I've been saying it since like week 1 and people screamed at me. But it's not sounding very crazy now imo... Cities are already paying a tile and an opportunity cost (district types other than the one planted at the moment), there was never a reason to graft that opportunity cost onto the city's hammer opportunity cost economy - it's just unthoughtoutgarbage, that's a word now.

Regardless of the time metaphor, a builder game that doesn't make the player feel like their cities are making gains in output power with every investment (non output) choice is so so broken. The hammer bottleneck should have been fixed before anything. Planting districts should not hobble a city.

I like the idea of making districts cost 0 hammers, but I do think that adjacency bonuses should then move to the buildings, so that you don't get those for free. Maybe a cheap first building, but well, again, not for free.

 

[EpicWestern]

I would slightly reduce the cost of districts later game, but also remove the "lock cost in" exploit. I think the best way to do this is simply add production costs to all districts not currently under construction as each era passes. That way you don't have to time the construction of your districts to finish before eras complete, but you don't get to essentially cheat to get cheaper districts either. You'd also have to make it so if you switch production once, your cost is no longer locked, so people can't switch back into a district just before a new tech era.