District Cost Mod 3.00

[PlotinusRedux]

PlotinusRedux submitted a new resource:

District Cost Mod - Changes district cost to scale base on number of identical districts already built

Simple mod that changes district cost to scale based on the number of identical districts already built rather than with science progress and relative number compared to other civs.

The idea is that (1) scientific improvements shouldn't make districts more expensive to build and (2) there is currently no disadvantage to going wide rather than tall. This provides at least a district cost increase to going wide.

This is completely experimental--I don't know if it will turn out to be a good...

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[PlotinusRedux]

So I'm liking this general idea playing through it so far, but I need to adjust base costs of districts up to be more in line with their era since that's not being done automatically by the increase per tech anymore. 60 hammers is fine for your first holy district however late you build it, but your first industrial zone and hanger shouldn't be 60 hammers. Maybe start each district's base cost at its current base cost * the era of the tech needed to build it.

 

[Leyrann]

Just popping in, because I'd been thinking about getting this same change through as well, but I had an additional idea to go with it: Not only do districts get more expensive based on how many of those districts you already have, they also get more expensive based on the amount of districts the city in which you want to build it already has. Maybe you like it?

 

[PlotinusRedux]

PlotinusRedux updated District Cost Mod with a new update entry:

District costs increase with number--balance update

Changes:

* Base district cost is now multiplied by the era of the tech or civic required to produce it;
* Costs increase per copy at the rate of 1/6th the new base cost for 1 per city districts, and 1/12th for multiple per city districts (i.e., neighborhoods).

With harbors and commercial districts at 60 + 10 per copy, it was just too easy to spam cities with both, creating 2 trade units and giving a destination that gave +4 production just from those 2 improvements alone. Add that to 60 +...

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[Lucas A.]

Good Job.
I was thinking of doing something like that. My idea was:
1. Districts has a base cost of 100;
2. Placing a district inceases the cost of future districts of the same type by 30 and other types by 15 (maybe 10 or 20);
4. Unique districts has half cost;
3. 1 & 2 didn't apply to Neighborhoods (Aqueduct, Aerodrome and Spaceport, probably);
4. Neighborhoods has a base cost of 400 and increases by 100 when you place one. (Same rule for Aqueduct, Aerodrome and Spaceport, each of them with own value)

and Maybe: Placing (or finishing?) a district reduces the cost of districts of the same type by 5 for other civilizations (it's to replace the -25% district cost if you are below average quantity of districts of that type)

Edit: The only bad side of this type of mechanic is the fact that conquering good cities becomes stronger, the only way I have figured out to counter it is making military units increase in costs too.

Edit 2: I just prefer my way over yours because all districts have almost the same base value (some adjacencies and 1 Great Person point), but having Campus at 60+10, Commercial/Harbor 120+20 and Industrial 180+30 will make people keep spamming campus and makes Commercial/Harbor worthier than Industrial.

 

[PlotinusRedux]

Lucas,

IMO, trade routes are king, as are the districts that give production bonuses as a trade route destination. Campuses only provide 1 food, so they're a waste of a district in most cities. Commercial and Harbor both add trade routes and production bonuses as destinations, so I spam them in all of my cities--that +20 per starts to add up. Industrial adds production bonuses as destinations, plus add production to all cities in 6 tiles (with factories and power plants), which makes them about even with Commercial and Harbor in my mind--but since they require a later tech to build, by the time you can build them your have more production to do so.

That said, as a start I just went with the era of the tech/civic required for a district and multiplied it's base cost by that. I'm fully open to tweaking the cost of each district as we see how that plays out.

Space ports had no increase by default, so I didn't add one or change its base cost at all.

I'm using the game's built in but undocumented "COST_PROGRESSION_PREVIOUS_COPIES" to handle the actual increases and just telling it how much to increase each district by per copy. I haven't tested whether it also counts districts already built in captured cities (or if it goes down if one of your cities with districts gets captured).

 

[RushSecond]

Yeah I was ABOUT to make a mod like this, only I REALLY wanted to encourage getting many different types of districts instead of getting the same one in every city. I would actually set the cost to 60 + full 60 MORE for every district of that type. That would really make you consider whether getting the 5th commercial hub is more worthwhile than a theater square that costs 1/5 as much, and also really reign in the infamous ICS.

Also, any reason why neighborhoods and aqueducts scale in cost at all? I'd think they should just be a flat cost similar to Spaceports, since spamming them doesn't really help.

Here's what I'm playing with currently:

UPDATE Districts SET CostProgressionModel = 'COST_PROGRESSION_PREVIOUS_COPIES', CostProgressionParam1 = Cost WHERE CostProgressionModel <> "NO_COST_PROGRESSION" AND OnePerCity = 1;
UPDATE Districts SET CostProgressionModel = 'NO_COST_PROGRESSION' WHERE CostProgressionModel = 'COST_PROGRESSION_GAME_PROGRESS';
UPDATE Districts SET Cost = 300 WHERE DistrictType = 'DISTRICT_NEIGHBORHOOD';
UPDATE Districts SET Cost = 150 WHERE DistrictType = 'DISTRICT_AQUEDUCT';
UPDATE Districts SET Cost = 75 WHERE DistrictType = 'DISTRICT_BATH';
UPDATE Districts SET Cost = 150 WHERE DistrictType = 'DISTRICT_MBANZA';

 

[Onii-chan]

Honestly this is how I thought the district scaling would work prior to the game's release and I still think it makes way more sense than having it scale based on scientific advancement. So I would definitely prefer to play with this in the future

After playing with it for about half a game though, I will agree that the exact numbers might need some tuning. Currently feels a bit too fast to build districts in general. I appreciate the idea of having them all in separate categories in order to encourage more diverse district placement, but in that case the scaling should be a bit bigger for every district of the same type. 1/6 is too low. 1/3 sounds more reasonable to me

 

[PlotinusRedux]

Onii-chan,

Was that with v0.1 or v0.2? I was thinking the 1/6th might be enough with the increased base cost of v0.2.

RushSecond,

No real reason for Aqueducts and Neighborhoods to increase in cost, I just kept them that way since they did originally, though only at 1/12th the base rate. Just a general part of making wide more expensive, I guess.

 

[PlotinusRedux]

PlotinusRedux updated District Cost Mod with a new update entry:

Balance Changes

See main page for full description, but basic changes from v0.2 are:

(1) Set the increase per copy to 5/12 the original rather than adjusted cost, which means 25 hammers for most districts;

(2) Changed the special district discount to 1/3 instead of 1/2 so it's not quite as OP (for Germany in particular).

Main page has the updated list by district, and forum will have a post on my thought process.

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[PlotinusRedux]

See the Overview Tab for the new details. Version 0.2 had widely different increases for districts based on the era in which they became available--I've standardized that to around 25 for most districts, but left in the increased initial cost by era.

Basically, most districts were too cheap in v0.2, and the balance between them was way broken.

Even with this adjustment, countries like Germany still seemed way too powerful with half cost Hansas starting at 90 and increasing by 12 compared to normal industrial districts starting at 180 and increasing by 25, so I adjusted special districts to be 2/3rd's the cost of the standard districts to make it a little less absurd--so Hansas now start at 120 and increase by 17--still a significant advantage.

Someone posted the formula for the existing tech/civ system (https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/5947kp/civ_vi_mechanics_how_district_production_cost/ if you're curious), which showed that by the time you complete the tech or civics tree, district costs have increased 1000%--i.e., 600 hammers for most districts--so I chose 25 as that also gives a 1000% increase at a bit over 20 copies, which seemed about right for an end game normal sized map.

I did some work on adjusting the multiplier automatically on map size, and per the tuner they were adjusting the in memory Districts table, but apparently by the time the events I was using fired, each civ already had its own copy of that table somewhere I haven't found yet. For instance, I could adjust the base cost of holy sites to 1000, but they when you actually went to build one, the production card would say 1000 hammers at the top but 60 as the adjusted cost at the bottom. So I'm still working on that.

In the meantime, people can do that manually for different map sizes if they want--I put suggested values in the comments of Districts.sql in the mod folder.

 

[PlotinusRedux]

Do captured districts increase the cost of building new districts?

I believe so, though I haven't tested it rigorously.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

is this compatible with the winter patch?

 

[PlotinusRedux]

is this compatible with the winter patch?

Yes, it didn't need any changes for the Winter Patch.

 

[stlh2opolo]

Just dropping in to say that I just used and love this mod! I haven't finished more than one game with it, however, so I will drop in with some better feedback soon. I just hate the vanilla way districts scale.

 

[Gort]

I like the idea of this mod a lot. It's definitely going into the mod folder alongside AI+ next time I play.

 

[PlotinusRedux]

PlotinusRedux updated District Cost Mod with a new update entry:

Summer Patch Update

Summer Patch Update

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[plus]

i tried your mod once, i always play marathon, but for me the price at the beggining was just too cheap..
buliding holy site in first city cost me like 16 turns..for me that's too short.
can u make the mod to lets say start with a base cost of 30 turns ,and than like increase ?