District Cost Increase

[nzcamel]

Quill18 have a 5 city empire with about 1 or two district per city and his district cost are in the low 200s which is about the same as the cost of a medieval era unit.

I can live with that

 

[Calouste]

Production and consequently hammer costs seem to be significantly higher in the later stages of Civ6 than they were in Civ5. The Sydney Opera House is 3300 hammers for example.

 

[Akkarin]

So no streamer has explicitely talked about how high the cost increase is ?

 

[Silverdawn]

In Quill's Norway stream, districts like the Holy Site are at 400 production vs. base of 60 production. Different districts had different costs. This clips starts out when they are trying to figure out why it is costing so much to build.
https://www.twitch.tv/quill18/v/92413450?t=53m

He had already sunk a few turns into the district he was building.

 

[Sansa_Stark]

So, with all that negativity on the forum these days, what about this issue?

There seemed to be lot of concerns about this, but as far as I can tell, costs were rising all the time, but it was still reasonable to build any district in any semi-developed city - and none of the streamers I saw was actually caring about production. So in my view, this seems to be balanced pretty good.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

District cost increase is interesting because it allow for strategies such as not building early districts to be able to build up commerce hubs and industrial districts which may be the best districts in the long run because these are what build your economy.

So if you can get off with few or even non early game districts you may be better of in the later parts of the game.

Im pretty sure district cost is not increased by cities. From what I have seen district cost seems to increase by +1 each turn and +1 for each district you have up to +10 per owned district.

 

[Ovarwa]

Not thrilled with this design choice.

Limiting the number of districts to population and tying bonuses to the map are both great design choices, in my opinion: They force players to make hard choices about what to build, because there isn't room to build everything and because no actual city is a blank slate in which an ideal plan is equally good.

But as the cost of districts goes up, it is no longer a matter of what to build but of whether to bother. As the game goes on, the incentive increases to just ignore this aspect of the game entirely, in favor of improvements and especially military units to steamroller the opposition (and take their expensive districts).

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Districts that have never been built seems to have their cost reduced to 75% after some point (probably after you have built several different types of districts).

In all instances it seems that district cost is base + turn-1 + something else.

I don't think city numbers have much to do with district cost as Quill18 did not get much more expensive districts in his Rome game.

 

[Acken]

If it depends on turn time it is one of the weirdest system they could come up with.

 

[joncnunn]

I don't think city numbers have much to do with district cost as Quill18 did not get much more expensive districts in his Rome game.

Unique Districts don't appear subject to be subject to the increase. And even regular districts were cheaper that most military units in the Information Age.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well things it might reasonably depend on

"Time" factors
-game turn
-era
-number of techs/civics

"District" factors (which districts are included)
-city center?
-captured?
-neighborhoods?aqueducts?

District specific factors
-has this district been built yet? (Seems to give a discount in the increase)

 

[elitetroops]

In the last part of Quill's Rome game districts cost 600 production, it stays the same over several turns regardless of him building more districts. That appears to be the cap. The districts he hasn't built as many of (Aerodromes and Theater Squares) only cost 450 production.

 

[joncnunn]

In the last part of Quill's Rome game districts cost 600 production, it stays the same over several turns regardless of him building more districts. That appears to be the cap. The districts he hasn't built as many of (Aerodromes and Theater Squares) only cost 450 production.

That ties well with what I observed during his game play (in early to mid game in terms of # of turns to produce all districts other than Baths increasing over time and later on reversing and getting cheaper (in terms of # turns) over time.)

Note though that he didn't build many encampments either until video #19 in which some of his cities ran out of things to do other than build a new district.

 

[Calcifer]

Let me recap a couple of things that I understood watching some playthroughs:

1. District cost is global, because it is the same in every city. So we can definitely exclude all variables coming by the specific city (with the exception of neighbourhoods, read below).
2. District cost is the same for every type of district, with some exceptions:
   1. Unique districts have 50% discount.
      
   2. Some types of districts have a 25% discount in production cost. Not sure on the rules for the discount, there could be a lot of ways to define them. They most likely depend on how many district of each type are built in your empire.
   3. Neighbourhoods get a discount if there are some built in that city already. If there are none, you pay the default cost.
   4. Aqueducts get a 16.67% discount, because their base cost is 50 instead of 60.
   5. Spaceport probably has its own cost, independent on other districts' cost.
3. The higher cap for district cost is 600 at standard speed. Exceptions listed above still apply.
4. District cost does not increase when you start building a district in another city.

It's hard to say something more than that. Anyway it is true that district cost increases over time regardless of the number of cities and districts. That could depend on lot of factors: turns, techs, population, average city production, and so on. I didn't catch a linear progression with neither turns nor population, sometimes the cost grows and sometimes it remains the same. Maybe it goes by "blocks" (for example +10 hammers every 6 population).

 

[homan1983]

What if districts aren't increasing with turns but rather techs, and because of the pacing of techs being off (people reaching the end at 1600ad), then science and increase in cost is outpacing production?

In any case this is probably the part that is most likely to get tweaked.

 

[Big J Money]

As far as this general concept goes, I have to say I like it. Hear me out!

It doesn't prevent wide. You don't need districts for a city to be valuable. Cities can still grab strategic resources, new luxes to help your core cities, 'old' luxes to allow more wide cities, production for military, terrain for pantheon or other unique bonuses or unique improvements, grabbing terrain for strategic reasons, terrain for dig sites, terrain to limit growth of opponents and to make the march toward your core cities more difficult for enemies, etc, etc. I might be forgetting something else pop could be good for.

It does mean that we will likely have some handful of cities 2-5? which are much better, taller, "districted" cities. These will be the core cities of empires. They won't be the only tall cities, since you can have farms anywhere, but they will be the only highly developed tall cities. Or perhaps it will be possible to go wide and specialize districts, placing 1-2 in each city only.

On top of that, civs with unique (plus Germany's 1 'free' district) will be able to have those districts in their wide cities, but they will have to go about it strategically. I'm not opposed to the idea of some civs having better or more specialized wide empires, as long as it's balanced out in the end.

I think the crux will be if new cities or city centers end up contributing to the inflation. If they don't, then you can go wide to your heart's content, and then start putting down whatever districts you want to have in your wide cities. If they do, then probably the best way to have a unique district in every city will be to settle a city, build the district, rinse and repeat. Each city's UD will be more expensive.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Discussion on new Global Happiness System idea moved to new thread in Ideas & Suggestions: http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/global-happiness-system-idea.599183/