Do You Have Specialized Cities?

[avl8]

Ive found that during early game I use highly specialised cities: 2 campuses, 1 holy site, 1 commerce, 1 industrial, 1 or 2 harbors depending on the map.
During medieval most of my cities have already at least 1 of crucial districts: commerce or industrial.

Things might get changed when Firaxes brings out a balance patch or a expansion. Meanwhile the whole thing about ICS and building unlimited number of districts are freaking imbalanced.

 

[Roxlimn]

Industrial is overhyped. You need them after Industrialization (appropriately enough). Before that? If it's going to have something like a +4 adjacency bonus, then it might be worth building in the city. Otherwise, it's better to build Harbor, and then Commercial. The internal route to the city with the IZ is cheaper and will be worth more than an actual IZ with a +1 hammer bonus.

The population acts as a stopper. Before pop 13. You can only build 4 Districts in a city. If the city is good for an Encampment and a Holy Site, then you may want to hold off on the IZ. Heck, if your religion has Religious Communities and Pagodas, you might want to spam that!

 

[Dargov]

Well, can't get more homogeneous than the current system where you construct Trade Hubs, Harbors and Industrial/Entertainment Districts in every city.
The way the system is currently set up there will always be a "best" district.

So yeah, encouraging players to build some of every district - particularly in new cities that would have an easier time constructing these than your "core" district type - while factoring in adjacency bonuses instead of just constructing the same districts everywhere was the core idea of my suggestions.

Districts will never be 100% balanced and if you can spam unlimited amounts of one particular district it will only mean that you want as many of them as you can. Having districts increase on a per-copy basis automatically regulates that. Higher investment costs will decrease the efficiency of a district for every district of that type you already have, so other districts become stronger in relation, and after you have constructed a few of them, pushing their prices up as well, your "main" district will gain in relative power again.

The one problem is of course that you'll arrive at a stage where all districts will be freaking expensive for every city, but I think that's easy to fix, for example by adding some unique effects that add some global production as you progress in Science/Culture.

Ok- but isn't there already some cost reduction for districts you haven't already built yet? I swear I've noticed that sometimes my less used districts like the Entertainment complex seem to have reduced costs?

I guess I should really look at this a bit more before I make any further suggestions.

Perhaps some additional scaling costs based on your most used districts, but I'm not sure we've got to a point where we have actually ascertained that building Ind+Com+Harb actually IS the optimum district strategy. Certainly good, but optimal?

It's the Industrial that I see as the most used right now. I suggested a specialisation which will at least cause some diversity of choice, how do you feel about that?

And what do you think of adding a more "Active" benefit of having Campuses and Theatre Districts?

 

[CivLuvah]

A question just appeared on my mind recently.

Do I have to keep my cities close together to reap overlap bonuses or is is better to let your cities spread out to allow room for districts/wonders? How does this help with my total output?

 

[King Jason]

You don't have to, but there's no real reason not to. Overlap is wonderful, but the real bonus is more cities in the same amount of space. I've found that putting 10 cities in an area of land where someone might instead put 6 or 7 is just plain better. If you're playing to win then your cities don't need space and won't reach pops much higher than the mid teens before the game is out. A full hex city radius literally becomes wasted space over the course of the game so you're better off going compact and using every tile you have access to, as quickly as you can.

I've only ever actually completely run out of space in one of my core cities a handful of times across close to 150 hours of play so far. Even then, it didn't amount to any detriment to the state of the game in any way.

 

[redeemed371240]

To add on to King Jason's point of "the more hexes, the better," I enjoy using a strategy where I eliminate every AI on my continent, if I'm playing on that type of map, as quickly as possible and regardless of my victory condition. This allows me to acquire as much land as possible for city centers and districts. The only downside to this strategy is that you don't have any AI to trade with until post-cartography. However, city states make up for this since essentially all Suzerain bonuses are yours.

To compare, I played two games: one with a 100 percent science-focused Arabia, which had three campuses with +3 adjacency bonuses and universities and three more with universities fueling science; the other game had an expansive Montezuma with 20 cities with 15 of them having commercial districts and three having undeveloped campuses with impressive +4-5 adjacency bonuses. There are a lot of external factors to take into consideration, but at 200 AD, Saladin generated 89 science, while Montezuma generated 157. Land and population play a huge factor in all types of resource acquisition and the ability to specialize and city maintenance costs seem to be significantly cheaper than Civ V.

This strategy could be compared to Civ IV's warrior rush, which was frowned upon in this forum, I think from the ancient threads I remember checking years ago, but due to the AIs complete lack of military strategy, it could be a viable strategy if you're going for an early finish date.

 

[Darac]

I think civ 6 feels less like specialisation than civ 4. In civ 4 specialisation began with a scout, looking for a perfect commerce, science, production or GPP spot. After you found it you had to invest to get the city and then make sure your play to specialise to something non production or science wouldn’t leave you open for military defeat. It was a gamble. Specialisation needs to feel like a risk reward gamble and I don’t often feel that in civ 6 or civ 5. City spots in civ 5 and 6 tend to be fairly balanced and could become any type of city fairly easily so I feel like my decision to specialise can wait.

Another thing that feels like no specialisation is that there is no option to continue to specialise. What would happen if we could build multiple districts of the same type in a single city and duplicate the building as well, specialisation would then be infinite, capped only by the risk of investment before reaping the rewards, capped by physical space and also time.

I’m not proposing this as a thing I really really want but I’m just putting the idea out there, what if you could build 5 science districts in a single city and then add on to that a great scientist or a wonder that boosts science by 50%, I think that would feel pretty awesome when you pull it off.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Yes, of course.
Most of my cities are Science-specialised, which means only building a campus and some buildings, then building builders or settlers or projects sth.
Except for those Spaceport-specialized or Wonder-specialized ones.

 

[Thibaulthc]

The main point in the lack of specialization opportunities is the absence of +x% buildings. I would like so much to have the tier 3 buildings having those bonus instead of a flat yield. You then would build broadcast towers in a city with lot of culture only for example.

For the moment we only have two world wonders playing that role (Ruhr and Oxford)
That's really sad.

AFAIK, you get ONE trade route for each city with a harbor OR a commercial hub. It does not stack.

I personally only place Industrial zones of I can have a high adjency bonus and a central position that covers many cities. An IZ with just 3 hammers from adjency and one from workshop is a waste of opportunity for other production. Same with the entertainment complex, I do prefer a well placed one than many local ones. (excepted if constantly at war and struggling with war weariness)

Having one or two cities with Harbor (+CH) +Encampment +IZ is a good idea in order to set high productions internal trade routes (+5 hammers)

An awesome addition to the specialization mechanics would be the choices between some exclusive buildings that increase yields / production of different things in each district.

Spoiler Examples :

For example, having to choose in the IZ between a concrete factory that accelerates the construction of buildings or a weapon factory that allows you to create units faster.
Or a fauna&flora in the campus that gives science to jungles or an expedition center that doubles adjency from mountains.
Barracks / stables should improve production of mounted or not Units instead of just a poor 25% more exp.
Aérodromes might have to choose either a civilian airport (for tourism) or a military one (to improve planes production)
Commercial hubs: a caravansery for better trade routes or a herbalist for science on plantations
Harbor : an aquarium for science or...
OK you got my point

Tldr : we need +x% buildings for further specialization IMHO

 

[Ciarson]

for me specialization should be tied to districts and their adjacencies.

district by themselves

- district as infrastructure.

district and their buildings are infrastructure that are available for the citizen so in my opinion they should give bonus based of the size of it.
like changing all value district, buildings and wonders give to 0,x /citizen.

for example, a city would start with 0,1 science/ citizen, a campus adjacent with three mountain would give + 0,3 science /citizen, the library would add 0,2 science to that and a specialist in the library would increase it by 0,2. which would give a total of 0.8 science /citizen. making that city specialized in science

- district as city extension.

availability of district is also a problem here, you are not awarded a district slot you recieve it directly after founding the city giving you no time to actually rethink the situation.

for me you should earn a district slot for every 3 citizen and not start with one at size 1. The German civ could still start with one district but i would balance it so that they earn their next district every 4 citizen (still making them get their districts earlier than other civs until they reach size 12 where it would more citizen to reach same number of district.

- wonders as special districts.

another thing that would make a "specialized city" would be that wonders count toward the district limit.
that would raise the possibility to make a choice, "a wonder or another district?" or in other word "do in specialize that city even more or do i need to standardize it"

- lack of range building in campus, holy site and theater square.

we have building that give bonus over a 6 tiles range, but i see three buildings that could have gotten it but didnt.

the university, as citizen could send their children to a university that is in the next city so that they could come back with more knowledge.

the temple, as citizen could go on a pilgrimage to go pray at these temple for various reason.

the broadcast tower, since it would be broadcasting not simply for the city it's in but for all cities around.


those three building could give you boost to their output but only in mid/ late game, making you specialize one city with a strategicaly place campus knowing that when you will get to the university it will boost multiple cities, reducing the need to build multiple campus next to each other. (but it then raise a "less great people point /turn" problem but that is what district project are for.)

district with each other.

- specialist working together.

having two district being next to each other could give a %age bonus or flat bonuses depending on the number of specialist in those district.

for example :
having and industrial zone adjacent to a harbor could give you a "naval industry" bonus.
if you got specialist in harbor and light house you would gain 1 production for coastal tile.
( a bonus you could get through Auckland city state and therefore would not stack with it. however it allow you to get access to that bonus in case you fail to get Auckland to your side but would be limited to that specialized city instead of being given to all your cities).

if you got specialist in shipyard and factory, you would then get 2 production for coastal tile.
if you get specialist in naval complex and power plant you would get 3 production for coastal cities. (at that point it would be better than Auckland bonus but the balancing factors would be that it is limited to a single city and pillaging one of the two districts would stop that bonus.)