Do You Have Specialized Cities?

This I learned over the course of my game. I experimented with having commercial hubs and harbors in each of my cities, and my gold per turn skyrocketed to 100+ per turn, together with the Merchant Republic government and economic policies that increase your gold output. This gave me a surplus to which I can maintain (and purchase) units, considering that there's no build queue in the game.

 

There are 12 district options at the moment. It is impossible to build them all in a city and still have output tiles and space for wonders, and that's if you don't overlap. Most players overlap to maximize tile harvest within their borders, so space IS an issue. You always specialize.

Is an Industrial Zone vital to every city? It depends on what you're doing. If you're looking for a BORG-like way of building every single city in the exact same manner every time, then yes, you're going to find it and you're going to insist that it's the best. Confirmation bias is strong.

But looking at the rule of the game and actual Civs - well it's not uncommon for Peter of Russia to get tiles when they're getting +7 adjacency for a Lavra. It'd be weird not to build that first. If your city is on a river in the middle of a vast plain, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for it to prioritize a Campus district. If you have a city right up against a mountain range and you can get +4 adjacency on a Campus? Go for it. That's your science city.

A size 10 city in the mid game has options for 4 districts. A military city could have an Encampment, an Industrial Zone, a Commerical Hub and an Aqueduct. The same city later at size 16 has room for 2 more districts, but now it needs an Aerodome and an Entertainment Complex.

A city on a coast focusing on Maritime concerns could have a Commerical Hub, an Industrial Zone, and a Harbor.

A city on flood plains without hills and Quarries wouldn't make sense with an IZ. That's the sort of place you plan to project into once Factories hit. It could still grow quite large, though, so you could arrange it to "self adjacency." A triangular configuration with 6 Districts focuses +2 adjacency bonuses on each of the inner three districts. The three corner districts could be City Center, Entertainment, and Encampment - districts that don't benefit from adjacencies. If you're Japan, this formation gives you +4 adjacency bonus on each of the inner districts. Obviously, the Policies that boost adjacency bonuses spike that up even more.

 

theres not much specialization in civ6 except for the ruhr valley wonder - just build it in the most productive city
specialization emerges when there are buildings with big % modifiers which are virtually non existent in civ6
maybe the last game in the series which promoted specialization was civ3

 

... You may not use specialization, but I assure you it most certainly exists. Hint: several mid-sized cities running projects.

 

any city can build projects, and theres no reason for not to build industrial zone and commercial hub in a mid-sized city - you want these districts in every city

 

Our definition of mid sized may differ, but then. Might be because I haven't gotten further than the start of the modern age yet.

I have a fair number of cities smaller than 10 pop. They are close together, and not likely to grow into the double digits. They specialize.

My larger cities tend to produce troops, traders, builders, wonders, and more districts/infrastructure. I'd rather leave the projects to the smaller cities.

 

Look there certainly is less specialization than in Civ 4 but I always hated how some cities would be completely starved of production in previous titles.

 

with rushbuying and now trade routes this wouldnt be a problem
also if district cost was linked to # of such districts in your empire not civic/tech level it would contribute to specialization alot

 

True I suppose.

 

Like... nmot building at all a campus if you dont have +2 ?
Like delaying all the minor uselss stuff.
And so on.

 

Wait, what? LESS specialization than in 4? No. That's crazy. In Civ 4, your city did GPPs, Science, Money, or Production. 4 possible focuses, in varying amounts. a GPP pump generally was hammer-rich, so it was also usually a Production City as well. Not much specialization. At all.

In Civ 6, a city with a relevant Encampment, Aerodome, or Harbor are at significant advantage making Land, Air, and Sea units respectively, and that's for cities that are production centers. Even if you build an Industrial Zone in every city, your peripheral cities will have less, and that makes them prime candidates to house your best Holy Sites and Campuses. Wonder Cities are space-starved so trying to fit an IZ in them can be problematic - you're more likely to just have Wonders around a Theater district plus a Commercial Hub. Even Commercial Hubs aren't must-haves. Later cities need to catch up faster and be more focused. With 12 o 13 Routes already active, having one more isn't that much of a big deal. Of course, smaller cities are necessarily more focused. Even larger cities can be District starved, what with having to fit Aerodomes and Entertainment Districts in their lists.

If cities can't have specialized functions because every one needs some kind of power plant and commercial center, then most real cities have no specialization - being able to have electricity and buy at the supermarket is kind of basic for modern urban life.

 

Thats not really specialization.

 

But deciding if you're going to build a campus or a theater district is.

As I mentioned in my previous post; I can't really speak for anyone else but by the time most of my cities can even fit 5 districts, the game is over. Which means for most of the game I need to choose.

You don't need every district in every city so choosing which ones go into what cities is a form of specialization. Even if you stick a Commercial hub and Industrial District in every city, not every city is going to have a campus, theater, holy site, encampment, or harbor. I find most endgame cities have 4-5 districts in them out of 10 that count toward the cap.

 

Instead of arguing over whether it's specialization or not, why not discus about whether the level of specialization is really what we hoped for and what was intended?

Spamming 2.5 default districts in every city isn't exactly what I was hoping for, that's for sure.

How would I fix it?
- Fewer districts per city
- Change all districts to synergize more with adjacency of different terrains, etc.
- Instead of scaling districts by technology, make districts become much more expensive for each district of the same type you already have
- Rebalance production so a normal city can construct stuff in a reasonable timeframe, while cities with production-focus can maintain infrastructure + have the capacity to produce armies/wonders in a reasonable timeframe

 

it is... since sometimes you have great place for harbor and you rush it, sometimes its great for something else, sometimes you need absolutely amenities, other times you want to try a wonder and so on.

 

I feel like although the specialisation is based on each city, the reality is that you are specialising the play through. You can get some minor gains by getting good adjacency, The bigger picture is:

"How many of my cities are building this district?"

and

"When am I building this district?"

When you add a city to your existing infrastructure, (let's just say you are adding your 7th and 8th cities to a peaceful game) if you chop out a Science, Faith or Culture district, it possible to push your civ in that particular direction. Because these are global outputs, not outputs the city benefits from itself.

The exceptions I've noticed are:

Border/frontier towns which want an encampment
Trade towns which can get commerce/river/harbour/resource adjacency.
Production powerhouses which have a lot of 1+4 tiles and a 4-6 adjacency industrial. (I often find myself wanting Theatre districts here after Ind+Com as I want them to have a lot of tiles and will often be building wonders)

You are really only specialising science/culture/faith if you build these districts in every city.

 

I almost always go for domination. As long as I have 2 extremely high production cities and 3-4 more with complete infrastructure, every other city i settle/capture is just there to increase my trade limit or connect strategic resources.

 

I strongly feel like there's really a current "production mismatch" because most of the players who think that they're godly at Civ just have no idea how to eke hammers out of the game. I've had no issues making new districts in new cities. The trade routes help a lot. It pays to have a great trade network, and that include both Commercial Hubs and Harbors - having lots of these helps in setting up new cities, or helping out cities that don't have much production in the tiles.

The mechanics inter-relate. Cities that can make both a Commercial Hub and a Harbor are invaluable for powering the trade network, because they give you two trade routes per city. That's important. But equally important is having a few cities that have Industrial Zones and Mines - things that appear to boost the trade output of internal networks. That way, a new city can have equal production and lots of growth to a central production hub while setting up its districts, and then you can redirect the routes elsewhere once the Districts are set up.

There is no "normal" in Civ. There have always been production poor sites - in Civ IV, we'd just buy the buildings of cities that produce gold and food, but we can't settle those early until we get the techs necessary to boost the purchase abilities. In Civ V, if a city is in a production rich area, all it needs is growth and Builders, and it can set out making its own Districts without any issue. If it's in a production poor area, it will probably do well on the food on its own, but need connections to your industry base to make its Districts.

The Districts already benefit from a LOT of adjacencies. Just in my last Sumeria game, I had two cities where both Industrial Zones had the maximum +6 adjacencies - both were smack-dab in the middle of mines and quarries all around. With Craftsmen Policy, they both had a base production of +12 just from the IZ adjacencies. Those cities made all the units. The more central and larger city also had an IZ, but that was purely because it was in the center and would project to something like 6 cities. That's a good site, but I built the District only shortly before Industrialization. There was just no point to building it before - no Adjacencies. In fact, the Entertainment Complex went up first because that projects Amenities before the Industrial Era.

So, here we have a situation in which two of my best producers had Industrial Zones and Encampments, and the central City had Entertainment Complex, Commerical Hub, and Theater District. That's kind of specialized, ain't it? Of course, my capital had Campus, Harbor, Commercial Hub, and my second city had Harbor, Commercial Hub, Holy Site. The Capital and Second powered the trade network early, and then the Industry Cities became targets for hammer-rich routes.

 

If you have fewer districts without a rebalance then this would just result in people only building these key districts.
If you scaled the district cost more harshly based on the number of each type of districts, this would likely result in civ homogenisation where you don't build a particular district in more than 50% of your cities, unless its essential.

I would prefer:

Later buildings scaling with the quality of adjacency bonuses ie the University provides 2 science and doubles adjacency.
More "special impacts" of particular districts, like the +trade route and extra city shot from the encampment. Science and Theatre districts need these most, since the Entertainment and Industrial already have the radial effects.
Perhaps the industrial zone 2nd or third building needs to have an alternative choice where one produces bonuses for Units and the other for building/wonders/districts.
The industrial adjacency might need a little tuning down, like 1/2 per mine/quarry, although I don't think that's going to stop it from being a must have building.

 

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.