District Discount Mechanism

[PotatoMcWhiskey]

The Rule can be simplified really easily into a digestible statement that is very clear.

Variable U = Number of Unlocked Specialty Districts.

Variable C = Number of Completed Specialty Districts

Variable Px = Number of Placed Specialty Districts of a particular type where x is a shorthand for the district E.G. PIZ = Placed Industrial Zones, PCH = Placed Commerical Hubs

IF C >= U
AND IF C/U > Px
THEN DISCOUNT IS APPLIED
ELSE YOU ALL OUTTA LUCK BOI

 

[Timewarp]

The Rule can be simplified really easily into a digestible statement that is very clear.

Variable U = Number of Unlocked Specialty Districts.

Variable C = Number of Completed Specialty Districts

Variable Px = Number of Placed Specialty Districts of a particular type where x is a shorthand for the district E.G. PIZ = Placed Industrial Zones, PCH = Placed Commerical Hubs

IF C >= U
AND IF C/U > Px
THEN DISCOUNT IS APPLIED
ELSE YOU ALL OUTTA LUCK BOI

The C >= U line deals with placing the first specialty district of a certain type.
The second line deals with the second and later ones.

When the number of placed districts of a certain type is 1, then C just has to be 1 more than U.
So getting a second district of each type is only a bit harder than the first one.
Getting discounts on a the third specialty district of each type is a bit tougher.

Potato gave the mathematical summary (thank you for that, very concisely stated).

The practical summary seems to be:

For the first district of each type, make sure that you have U specialty districts completely built.
For the second district of each type, make sure that you have U+1 specialty districts completely built.

For the third district of each type, generally you will expect to have U = 9, but if you skip the Holy Site and Harbor technologies you can keep U = 7.
As per a previous post, this means if you skip the Holy Site and Harbor technologies (U = 7) you get discounted third districts when you complete your 15th district. 6 cities? Probably 7.
Once these are researched, then you need 19 completed districts. 8 cities?

In both cases, this means that each city has to have at least one completed district, most have at least 2, and several have 3 or even 4.

I understand the theory (THANK YOU EVERYONE!!!). Now to put it to practice and work out all the details. I will be switching between King and Emperor for a while. Wish me luck!

 

[Victoria]

I had no issue with @Lily_Lancer ’s formula, must be my head as I prefer their formula.
Let us not forget who bought this thread up

Good luck with those aggressive civs and barbs @Timewarp

 

[PotatoMcWhiskey]

Lily did a great job researching this but their presentation of the formula/problem left a lot to be desired imo because it took me two years to be able to parse this thread (and as a result of the unclear original presentation all following discussions where incredibly confusing as well) until I sat down and broke each sentence into its component part and reconstructed it as a definitive statement.

I wrote the simplified mathematical rule for people like me who have reading comprehension difficulties in informal language.

Case in point:

"The C >= U line deals with placing the first specialty district of a certain type."

At no point in OP i got the impression that these are seperate rules dealing with different cases.

In fact, this is the single most confusing thread on the forum because different people trying to explain the problem constantly contradict each other. One minute I read that the rules are and AND statement where both need to be true, next ai'm reading that each rule deals with a different situation. Is this not really obviously confusing to the observer?

I thought I understood this but everytime I think I have it figured out someone makes a statement that contradicts my knowledge. Can we get a definitive, clear write up on how this actually works (what I've been trying to do, but failing)

 

[Victoria]

Can we get a definitive, clear write up on how this actually works (

What lily has written at the start in fact covers all of the district cost mechanisms but it seems fairly explanatory as in
“It shall meet the following conditions”
A.
B.

The only confusion I see is he also numbered the a/b definition lines which was unnecessary. Also English is not his first language so I will grant you it can be a bit loose seeming.

OK I will give it a go but some things do not work in simplified terms.

Another one is chop discounts. It was explained well by @Boyan_Sun but everyone still needed clarifications and tried to rewrite but still caused confusion. I think you would find the main chop thread more confusing than this. Need to look at doing that too.

Even explaining the combat damage formula simply is not easy... and just for the record, the original investigations were done by me because I did not believe the reddit discoverer of the district discounts claim that district discounts were global because I could not get them to work. Also a well known MP admin requested clarification. I do the donkey work in many things and get the mathematicians to sort out the formula. What threw us off was the discount being refreshed only when a tech finishes, there are many things in the game poorly done ... climate screen does not get updated every turn for example but at least that was easier to validate.

Anyways, gimme a week coz It’s my partners bday party and weekends are hell here, work is a lot more relaxed, I even watch the odd potato stream at work. I’ll think it in my signature list and also here.

 

[RealHuhn]

It doesn't matter how you describe the mechanism mathematically or which variables you use. You always end up with the same excel chart and the same rules.

You can also say this (using @PotatoMcWhiskey variables):
1st discount is unlocked when C=U
2nd discount is unlocked when C=U+1
3rd discount when C=2U+1
4th discount when C=3U+1
5th discount when C=4U+1
6th discount when C=5U+1
etc.

The discount is always a global discount and applies to every unlocked specialty district at the same time. When you unlock, for example, the third discount but already have 3 completed or placed campuses, you don't get the discount for the campus. But when you only have 2 campuses and unlock the 3rd discount, you get one discounted campus. That's how it works.

Just use my excel chart or make your own with pen and paper. Forget all the math. You don't have to calculate anything.

Edit: Is this understandable?

 

[Victoria]

Edit: Is this understandable?

It is surprising how people’s heads work completely differently and don’t like spreadsheets etc.
It is easy to forget the average IQ is roughly 100 and can struggle with this.
Don’t mock the less clever, they cannot help it and it leads to an unpleasant world.

 

[RealHuhn]

It is surprising how people’s heads work completely differently and don’t like spreadsheets etc.
It is easy to forget the average IQ is roughly 100 and can struggle with this.
Don’t mock the less clever, they cannot help it and it leads to an unpleasant world.

I think you've misunderstood me. I'm laughing because I start to question my own ability to explain this stuff, not because I assume I'm smarter than others here . I only try so hard because I want to share this knowledge with others. It's not easy to understand at first but after you get it, it makes the game a lot more enjoyable, at least for me.
Having said that, you are right about the average IQ. I actually think that the average CIV player is pretty smart though.

 

[PotatoMcWhiskey]

I understand the maths behind it, I'm trying to gain a deeper understanding of exactly how the mechanic works so I can explain it when I start using it in my videos and so on.
I'd like to do a guide explaining exactly how it works and what the exact rules are which is why I'm being a stickler for descriptive precision and thats why I'm slightly frustrated because I should be able to understand this but can't haha.

I feel like I understand it, but I read a contradiction here or there and I haven't put the legwork to actually research it myself so I need to rely on others. Hopefully that clears up my frustration with not fully understanding the fundamental.

Its the difference between looking up a times tables to figure out that 5x6 = 30, and being able to understand the underlying mathematical theory as to why 5x6 = 30, does that make sense?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

As for your confusion:

The openings post is correct, and you reworded it correctly in post 81.

The AND confusion: It is highly probably programmed as an AND requirement.
However, when looking at discount for your first district, the second part of the requirement doesn't matter, it is always >0 after you have built a single district.
When you are looking at the second district, you want C/U >1, meaning more districts than techs (C>U), meaning now the first part is always true when the second part is true and thus irrelevant.
So in practicality, the first rule is what matters for your first district, the second rule is what matters for your second district. (and higher)

I also like realhuhns representation in #86 That represents how my head processes it.

 

[Timewarp]

I had no issue with @Lily_Lancer ’s formula, must be my head as I prefer their formula.
Let us not forget who bought this thread up

Good luck with those aggressive civs and barbs @Timewarp

Thank you.

Aggressive Barbs I deal with using lots of archers. Which is not an original formula, people on this forum have beat the idea into my head that archers are very powerful in the field.
Aggressive Civs I intend to use methods that PotatoMcWhiskey and Marbozir have demonstrated multiple times over on YouTube:

Have enough defense to hold them off at first. This means having quite a few archers spread through my empire.
Then spam archers - as well as the same archers used to subdue aggressive barbarians - to eliminate the attacking civ's units as they send, I mean suicide, EVERY ONE of their military units.
Then, they tell you they have no more military units by offering gold for peace.
Then you take the two or three melee units, 1 battering ram, and your experienced archer team to take over their civ.

So, what PotatoMcWhiskey and Marbozir seem to be claiming - and are definitely demonstrating - is that aggressive nearby civs are a bonus. They suicide their armies against you, making your units, mostly archers, experienced, and then they have defenseless easy to take cities.

They both go through this exercise so effortlessly that it seems like once you get used to it, it is not a hard process. In fact, if it weren't for the differences in their accents, it would be hard to distinguish their playing styles. They both play the actual attack phases so quickly and confidently that it leads me to believe that I will learn how to do this once I've gone through the process a few times.

Oh yeah, both of these people get comments about the mistakes they made along the way. The complaints seem so trite. People watch masters in action, and then gripe about the lack of perfection.

I am still working on playing the beginning decently, so I have not gotten to the point of getting other civs to attack me so that I can take them over. One step at a time. The step of getting 10 cities by turn 70 has turned out to be not so easy. I think that is the target you set in a previous post. I am about half of that. I want to get to at least 7 or 8 - not as good as you seem to always get, but at least I'll be in the ballpark - before moving on to the next phase of the game.

 

[RealHuhn]

The step of getting 10 cities by turn 70 has turned out to be not so easy. I think that is the target you set in a previous post. I am about half of that. I want to get to at least 7 or 8 - not as good as you seem to always get, but at least I'll be in the ballpark - before moving on to the next phase of the game.

So you want to go super wide in the first 70 turns AND get early districts? I don't think that's optimal. That's a lot of unimproved land and bad production. Most of those cities will be useless for quite a while. If you want to use the discounts, I think it's better to expand in waves until around turn 120, depending on available land of course.

I often expand like this:
1. Get 3-4 cities as soon as possible, let them build one district each, slot the -50% settler card and build one settler per city. You lose 1 population per city but that's totally fine. I use my gold to buy what I need most, often a builder or a monument.
2. The second wave of cities builds the first round of discounted districts and your core cities build a 2nd district (also discounted). Rinse and repeat. I go Liang first to get better builders. That's essential to get enough production going. I always settle my first core cities near good production tiles as well (at least 1 in 1st ring)!
3. After that, Magnus to make chops more effective. Depending on the civ I also get his food promotion and put him in my government plaza city for an early +2prod/+5food trade route (depending on 2nd district) which can boost other cities very effectively.
4. Next priority is most likely Amani to get CS alliances and era score.

I always see people complaining about the Audience Chamber but it's awesome for this strategy, especially when I go for three early holy sites and a Monumentality golden age. That extra +3 housing is just so good to reach size 4, 7 and 10 earlier and be able to place more districts. It also allows you to delay granaries and settle locations without access to fresh water earlier, for example coastal cities without a river.

This is just one possible opening though. If you want to go super wide I think it's best to just place a campus or whatever everywhere without building it and completely focus on expansion (or war) for the first 80 turns or so. Then catch up and slowly unlock discounts again. With exceptional land or a civ with an early unique (cheap) district, you can probably do both but that's not the norm. Sometimes you are stuck with 7 cities on turn 100 and that's ok, too. You can always go tall and win anyway

 

[Timewarp]

So you want to go super wide in the first 70 turns AND get early districts?

On Deity, I want to have a decent position at turn 70. So far I am not even close. Well one time I was kind of ok. I want to have a strategy that will work on Deity so that when I play on Emperor to iron out my strategies, I'll know it at least is close to what I'll eventually be doing on Deity.

Right now I plan to practice your "mini-guide to deity opening play". It sounds doable. I'm a bit fatigued about the frustrations from my deity attempts, but on the other hand I know what I'll be up against. Now I just need to grind this out in ways that are fun, which for now will mean returning to easier levels.

Your last paragraph is quite helpful to me. One of the problems I had is that I was trying to do too much in too short a time.

Also, in retrospect there was a second game where I was kind of ok.

Most of those cities will be useless for quite a while.

I was AMAZED at how useless my cities were in one game. It motivated me to start a game on the easiest possible mode, Settler I think it is, and I went through the tech and culture trees so that I could create each kind of district. For each district, I carefully read the benefits provided by this district. I was almost stunned at how little most of them do. And I also understand why adjacency bonuses are so important.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Whoever was it that set a level 70 target said 7 cities at turn 70.

That happened to exactly coincide with my builder games. When i am building my own settlers, i always seem to settle the 7th by turn 70. 7 total cities is also what i seem to build when i am building. (at first that was my hard goal, i wanted xCC and since there's 7 governors, 7 seemed like a perfectly good number. 7 turned out to be perfectly enough to totally dominate the AI on all VC's except conquest by turn 150-200.)
I too btw, have only built the audience chambers so far and don't understand any of the complaining.

Realhuhn's opening points seem very similar to mine. Although, when having met some militarist CSes, i try to build all settlers from capital. This also leads to 7 cities by size 70. I just don't like weak cities producing settlers, and cascading the weakest of them in taking longer each time the others finish one. It is a less optimal use of the 50% production card which now only works for 1 city, but its better with the mil. CSes, and the capital is often strong enough to catch up with districts later. In the end it doesn't matter so much, as long as you keep focus on getting those settlers out asap.

I like your last paragraphs. I used to always conquer before gathering the storm. Back then, i would target to have conquered15+ towns by turn 100. I would add a few settlers myself in the second half of those 100 turns after building pure units in the first half bringing my total to 20-25 cities by turn 100. However: that was before GS, conquering was easier then. Those cities just had 1 or 2 empty districts.
For me it was also a bit of an eye opener. When i used to be conquering worlds, i would get those 20 towns by turn 100. They would all get a campus and very little attention, i never cared much about the adjacency bonus. All those cities sucked anyway and were only good to receive those city state bonusses. Now i am doing 7 self built cities and indeed, i am doing what i can to get maximum adjacency and i am amazed at how good they are. Seeing how much my cities are better now, i actually doubt if conquest can still do better now that my goal is no longer to get as many towns as possible to abuse the over powered CS bonusses. I don't consider it being stuck with 7 cities and still win, i consider it well more than plenty to totally dominate and build half of all the wonders without much problems. I feel like a wonder addicted noob again. But what else do you do when you don't want to conquer the world ?

 

[Victoria]

Whoever was it that set a level 70 target said 7 cities at turn 70.

This was me, and also if you hunted back to to the 10 by T100 is was also me.
It was not about brilliance or anything, just by observation. Early on everyone was talking about yardsticks but not producing any so I banged out a nice sounding round number one but a year and a half later it was clear that either by settling OR conquest the good relativistic yardstick was 7 by 70. I found if I hit this then in essence the game was yours to lose and the war or peace methodologies roughly met at t70. However, I am on a new phase now which is not so clean cut. I am playing with a concept I call pseudo war where even 3-4 cities by T70 is Ok as long as you are pillaging enough. It is complex but to give you an example, attacking a Brazilian city with a campus and library will give you say 150 science in pillage. You take the city, fix the campus, chop in a uni, build some mines and sell it back.
You now have a very tidy nest egg for next time. The thing is it is not the science so much as the mines that makes this strong. Gold pillages rack up to the thousands and you can just buy all your universities, chopping becomes more irrelevant. It is not a clear strategy yet as there are many variables but done well you are allies with many and bleeding a few. You are enemies with your neighbours and friends with the rest. It is possible to do this without racking up huge grievances also but early situations do stop it sometimes.
It is a little off-topic but it is no longer about discounts or placement, they are things you still use but they are secondary.
The key thing is you do not need holy sites any longer as faith pillages are huge. This means less discovered districts as holy sites and harbours can be avoided.

 

[Timewarp]

I am very happy that I remembered 10 cities by turn 70 it incorrectly. Thank you both for the correction!

Right now I need to put all of this good information to practice. I plan to switch between King (easy mode for me just to relax and have fun and learn new civs and strategies) and Emperor (a bit more serious play). When King just gets too boring I'll stop even playing there and do my exploratory work on Emperor. I plan to stay away from the highest 2 difficulties at least for a while.

Thank you all for the really great input. I very much appreciate it.

I think you've misunderstood me. I'm laughing because I start to question my own ability to explain this stuff, not because I assume I'm smarter than others here . I only try so hard because I want to share this knowledge with others. It's not easy to understand at first but after you get it, it makes the game a lot more enjoyable, at least for me.
Having said that, you are right about the average IQ. I actually think that the average CIV player is pretty smart though.

I am ALWAYS questioning my ability to explain stuff. Sometimes people understand what I am writing, and other times it seems like what I wrote and what others understood are completely different. All we can do is to keep plugging away. And if someone states something I wrote in a different way, then that means these things: they understood what I wrote, they mostly agree with it, and they are expressing it in language more suitable to their own thought processes. Which increases the odds that others will understand what I originally wrote as well.

 

[Victoria]

OK... I have created a guide which will probably just confuse things more but at least I have tried
If nothing else it collates all the information from various discussions.
If people can check it for accuracy it would be appreciated. Also anything they disagree with I am glad to remove / alter. I am just glad to get to the end of it after CPL_Yoshi's original question in June 2017.
@PotatoMcWhiskey ... said I’d bump you... revisiting your formulas made me realise they are what was in the first post, just must be the English used, hopefully my kiwi English makes sense to an Irishman.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-vi-district-discounts.27783/

Linked on my signature line also.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Haha, it looks confusing indeed (we were just simply counting all the time and now you start about average districts)

"You will not get any discount having researched just one district type."
thats a confusing line. Of course it is true because districts < researches. But the line being there, without explanation why its there adds confusion imo.
I find the examples in general to be rather confusing, but thats because it all shifted to talking about average districts instead of just counting a=b, a>b, a>2b.

One error: "e have 2 civic districts" also the entertainment district which cant be avoided.

"District Discounts or District Placement?"
I dont really agree on seeing these as opposites very much. In either case, i am building my districts as soon as my cities have a spot available. In either case i am scrambling to get my cities to provide more spaces asap (both trough expansion and growth).

 

[Victoria]

we were just simply counting all the time

But you were not. It is an average and knowing that you can do it in your head without spreadsheets. But yes, this is an area that is difficult to fit everyone's head. Ah well I link it to here so they can always find alternatives here.

But the line being there, without explanation

I'll bang one in... thanks! I love the criticism as it is fair and accurate

I dont really agree on seeing these as opposites very much.

And you are right, they are not mutually exclusive, I'll alter or drop

 

[PotatoMcWhiskey]

OK... I have created a guide which will probably just confuse things more but at least I have tried
If nothing else it collates all the information from various discussions.
If people can check it for accuracy it would be appreciated. Also anything they disagree with I am glad to remove / alter. I am just glad to get to the end of it after CPL_Yoshi's original question in June 2017.
@PotatoMcWhiskey ... said I’d bump you... revisiting your formulas made me realise they are what was in the first post, just must be the English used, hopefully my kiwi English makes sense to an Irishman.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/civ-vi-district-discounts.27783/

Linked on my signature line also.

Great Write up thanks! <3