Just some remarks on all the discussions.
First, siome people said: "We don't need the game to be easier". The fact is: producing more culture would not really make the game easier, especially for a Culture Victory. After all, you gain this victory through Tourism, and Cuture serves as a buff, a shield against foreign Tourism. So if foreign civ produces naturally more culture, they would be more resilient againqst your tourism and thus making the CV more difficult.
Then, an adjacency bonus from luxury resources would make more sense for me for the Commercial Hub. After all, the main thing you do with luxury resources is sell them at high prices. All the great trades routes were for luxury resources after all. An I know that, with luxury resources, you can make a lot of arts (jewelry, pigments, sculptures...) but 1) it doesn't help much writers nor musicians to have access to gems except they live better and 2) while silk garnments can be considered artworks, the ones who greatly profited from the Silk Roads were the merchants, not the artists.
Also, for people saying that Entertainment Complexes and Theater Squares should fulfill globally the same purpose and that culture and amenities should be tied, I say
NO. Entertainment and culture are two different things. Just see nowadays: when the average citizen in a developed country want to be entertained, where does he go: the stadium to see a game or a museum to see painting? The sad reality is that you go to the stadium to be entertained and the museum to be educated. And there is nothing bad in it. And I know that popular entertainment are on the verge between culture and mere entertainment, but still we have this fundamental division:
culture is to fill your brain with new ideas, entertainment is to empty you brain of your personal troubles. The goals are completely different in themselves, enough to justify two different districts. Moreover, TS and EC are not so different: they both give +1 Appeal, meaning that people like as much to go to the zoo than the museum.
Now, the true problem of adjacency. When we talk about adjacency, we have to remember what adjacency means in an abstract way. While I understand the critics of people saying "a campus without workers still produce science", let's imagine that there is actually people in this campus to do the science. What adjacency means then? It's adjacent places or features that help the people working in this place to do their job in a more efficient way. If we look district by district:
- Campus: mountains are the best places to observe the sky, and astronomy was one of the main driver of science in ancient times; jungles and reefs are full of an intricate biodiversity, helping physicians, chemists and naturalists to advance in the ways of science; and geothermal fissures in odd enough to intrigue enough scientists to study it. It's the same for alt-campuses : the Mayan Observatory gain adjacency bonuses because plantations and farms are places without light pollution and fairly flat, meaning that there is no obstacles to observe the sky, makin the astronomers more efficients; and the Seowong is a reclusive place for philosophers, meaning that farther it is from civilization, the better are the scientists in this place.
- Holy Site: moutains and woods were often sacred places where miracles were seen. It then makes perfect sense.
- Commercial Hub: Rivers are the main routes for trade, so a commercial places along a river will make more profit than a one in the inland. The same way, if a commercial hub is near a harbour, then it became some sort of a big two-tile comercial hub with maritime connection where the traders do themselves the trade. And for the Suguba, since religion and trade where very tied so merchants near sites of worship would make more profit.
- Harbor: Harbors make profit through maritime resources , and when a harbor is close to population centers they're more interconnected with the population, so bam! More gold.
- Industrial Zone: Quarries, mines and lumbermills produce resources very useful for industrial zone making them more productive. In the same way, having an Aqueduct bringing water for all the factories in an incredible boon.
Now take a look at Theater Squares. What kind of people are working in it? Artists. And what are the role of the artists? Broadly and very simplified, we can say that artist
create works to fill with awe the spectator and help him think more deeply about the world around him. And what artists needs most? Some would say psychotropes but it a big lie: a lot of artists were no more intoxicated that the average human, and the myth of the "tortured artist that cannot create without his opium" is a myth. If you can't create art without drugs, you're a bad artist. The intoxicated you might be good, but yourself? No. So luxury resources? Bad idea.
No, what artists need is
Inspiration. And where do they take their inspiration? Well, world wonders are a good thing to start: after all, the awe inspired by those monuments would inspire more than one artist. But what else?
Nature. Nature has been the main inspiration for Artists for centuries and it's still is today.
So one thing we could have is:
Theater Squares gain a minor adjacency bonus for each unimproved adjacent tile. Kind of similar to the Seonwong. But some might think it's too easy, so we can change it by:
Theater Squares gain a minor adjacency bonus for each Charming tile and a standard adjacency bonus for each Breathtaking tile. But the problem I see here is that, Mountains being automatically at breathtaking appeal, we'd have a third district that have an adjacency bonus towards mountains, and I don't know for you but my mountains are already crowded enough like that. So many
passable charming/breathtaking tiles or
passable unimproved tiles? It could be a start.
