Do You Place Districts ASAP To Lock The Costs?

[Victoria]

I said yes because I have done it a few times but tend not to... mostly because the land is not already there and its just grief and I forget.

as we are asking about cheating... is chop overflow a cheat?
Is abundant resources a cheat?
is restart or reload a cheat?

its thin end of the wedge time and the answer is just do what you are happy with, its single player... just do not cheat in GOTM.... is supect some do.

Mixing trust with humans is a messy business

 

[TomKQT]

I do not see it as an exploit at all. If I restricted myself to what folks here thought were exploits there would be no bombers, no city attacks and no win by conquest (since the ai cannot wage wars). Silly. We are here to enjoy and play a game. How I play is mine and how you play is yours. If I can learn from how you do so I will.
Cheers.

Other examples:
- I often try to complete as many quests from city states as possible before advancing to the next era (to get more new quests). That gives me some benefits and the AI doesn't do it. So it must be an exploit or even a cheat.
- I often stop researching a tech at 50 % when I know I'm about to get the eureka soon. That gives me some benefits and the AI doesn't do it. So it must be an exploit or even a cheat.
- I make almost exclusively internal trade routes, because they are better that international ones. That gives me some benefits and the AI doesn't do it. So it must be an exploit or even a cheat.
- ... insert any tip and trick that this forum is full of. I think that everything will qualify as cheat for some guys in this thread, unless the AI clearly does it too and the developers explicitly talk about it as a valid and publicly known strategy.

 

[Cymsdale]

I'm perfectly fine thinking that district locking is an exploit and the stuff you are listing is not.

 

[Barathor]

I choose not to; to each his own.

 

[UWHabs]

Every way of addressing it has their own exploits.

• If you just remove the district lock (without changing how the cost escalates), the new exploit would be "Leave all techs and civics at 1 turn before completion whenever you can. Don't advance your civilization while you're wave-building districts in all your cities." More or less like a Feudalism wave strategy with districts (which no one complains as an exploit)
• If cost escalates with number of districts from that type, optimal strategies might revolve around not optimizing your empire (say, for faith or culture). Victory routes would be more dependent from civ bonuses than strategy, since every civ would build more or less the same districts. UDs would also be overpowered if they kept half production, or underpowered if not. Also, without district lock, micromanaging which city gets which district first becomes a pain.
• If cost escalates with number of turns, Science becomes again the "King of All Yields" (with Culture being the "Queen"). Beelining new districts becomes very powerful; better to unlock those new districts soon and build them ASAP, and never caring about the buildings unless you don't have anything better to build. Founding cities late game becomes worthless, since they won't be able to finish the necessary districts before the game ends (even more if combined with lack of district lock).
• If cost doesn't escalate at all, then we'd be exploiting trade routes even more. Spam coastal cities to produce Commercial Hubs and Harbours and use them to jump-start even more coastal cities. Then flood the map with traders to get whatever you need, be it producing things in 1 turn or buying it with gold from 60+ trade routes. Also, amenities are cheap because every city can get an Entertainment Complex in a couple of turns.

Well, you can always pick a few of the above, but just have them as a smaller factor. To me, I think something like:
cost = 60 + 10 * (number of that district type in your empire) + 5 * (total number of districts in your empire) + 15 * (number of other districts in the city) + (some modifier per era?) (all numbers can be tweaked to balance)
As long as you have 0 production in a district, cost gets recalculated. If > 0 production, then you lose a certain amount per turn (to prevent locking, putting 1 turn of production, and then building something else). But really, no matter what system you have there will be some way to "game" it and optimize, as long as it's not that powerful a tactic I don't mind too much.

This way, you get a penalty for going tall, a penalty for going wide, and a penalty for building too many of the same type of district (so that maybe you get to a point where it's not actually worth it to build yet another commercial hub). Yeah, it would penalize you for building a holy site in every city if you want the religious win, but then again, I don't really see that as a problem - maybe it costs 25% more than another district, but that's not really any different than the current penalty/bonus that they have.
Combined with other changes (maybe take the trader spots away from districts and have them scale by another mechanism, or at least have the internal trade route bonus not be as strong), this would make more sense, and at least would seem to be a more consistent system with us already used to other things like settlers and builders increasing cost based on the number produced. And it at least wouldn't "penalize" you for building a campus early.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It's not an exploit? Sure, keep tell yourself that if that makes you sleep better at night.

You do something that the AI can't.

It's probably an oversight from the devs.

So I assume you don't actually use military units to attack either

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Well, you can always pick a few of the above, but just have them as a smaller factor. To me, I think something like:
cost = 60 + 10 * (number of that district type in your empire) + 5 * (total number of districts in your empire) + 15 * (number of other districts in the city) + (some modifier per era?) (all numbers can be tweaked to balance)
As long as you have 0 production in a district, cost gets recalculated. If > 0 production, then you lose a certain amount per turn (to prevent locking, putting 1 turn of production, and then building something else). But really, no matter what system you have there will be some way to "game" it and optimize, as long as it's not that powerful a tactic I don't mind too much.

This way, you get a penalty for going tall, a penalty for going wide, and a penalty for building too many of the same type of district (so that maybe you get to a point where it's not actually worth it to build yet another commercial hub). Yeah, it would penalize you for building a holy site in every city if you want the religious win, but then again, I don't really see that as a problem - maybe it costs 25% more than another district, but that's not really any different than the current penalty/bonus that they have.
Combined with other changes (maybe take the trader spots away from districts and have them scale by another mechanism, or at least have the internal trade route bonus not be as strong), this would make more sense, and at least would seem to be a more consistent system with us already used to other things like settlers and builders increasing cost based on the number produced. And it at least wouldn't "penalize" you for building a campus early.

I really don't think district locking is that exploitative. Not as much as overlapping Factories were, at least. You're giving up benefits while they aren't built, which is an opportunity cost.

Also, with recalculating costs, comes an issue with production: what if you have a city in a good location (maybe besides a good natural wonder), but production-starved place, where production mostly balances out the cost increases? I wouldn't be able to tell if such city will actually build something without working out the maths (which eventually becomes really boring for a game).

You need a way to ensure that districts will actually be built, not deceptively needing 1 more turn for 50 turns because costs rise.

 

[RealAntithesis]

If cost doesn't escalate at all, then we'd be exploiting trade routes even more. Spam coastal cities to produce Commercial Hubs and Harbours and use them to jump-start even more coastal cities.

Perhaps just remove the inherent output of a district in favour of buffing the buildings instead. Districts should just be places to construct buildings of a certain type.

There's nothing wrong with earlier era buildings being able to be constructed more quickly if you have a larger empire with the economic and industrial power to do this - I mean, it makes sense doesn't it?

Where an empire may reach a brick wall though is when constructing later era buildings if you don't have the economy sufficient to the task. Again, this makes sense - without resorting to some gamified balancing mechanic in an effort to, well, balance things out.

There's been a fair amount of debate on this, but I feel that, in general, there is a lot of debate around purely gamey concepts and mechanics which don't really make a great deal of sense in the first place. We can probably blame Firaxis for coming up with these mechanics in the first place, but I really think some systems in Civ 6 are too gamified and they need to be overhauled and thought through from scratch.

 

[joncnunn]

How does this go? Is it:

Select to build a district i.e. Campus
Stop building after 1 turn
Build other stuff
Come back and continue the build of the district stopped after one turn.

One small correction on the mechanic of this "exploit" : You don't actually have to spend a turn building it to get the price locked down (e.g You can select a district, place the tile and immediately build other stuff and then later switch back to it and build 100% of it at the earlier game price. (Which makes it even better since that's no hammers early)
The tile is also immediately locked down to that district; you can't even in the same turn change your mind is you misclick the tile you wanted the district / actually meant a different district in the same tile without reloading a save from before you selected the district.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Here is a solution to your boring problem. How about districts cost NOT being tied to science and culture? How about it being tied to the number of the same districts you have. And whatever to the cost being locked down thingy, because it's not that there would be much sense in this "exploit" or whatever to begin with when cost depending on the number of districts you have.

 

[RealAntithesis]

How about it being tied to the number of the same districts you have.

And the rationale for this is...? Why would each subsequent city settled suddenly and inexplicably find it harder and harder to build a district that's been built many times before?

This needs to be for a reason other than for a desire to balance some part of the game, otherwise it won't make sense (and will just give the feeling that any old mechanic is being thrown into the game randomly just because).

This is also fairly counter intuitive. If anything, subsequent units of something should be cheaper to build because the civilization would have more experience and better developed manufacturing processes in place to produce that thing, not the other way around.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

And the rationale for this is...? Why would each subsequent city settled suddenly and inexplicably find it harder and harder to build a district that's been built many times before?

This needs to be for a reason other than for a desire to balance some part of the game, otherwise it won't make sense (and will just give the feeling that any old mechanic is being thrown into the game randomly just because).

This is also fairly counter intuitive. If anything, subsequent units of something should be cheaper to build because the civilization would have more experience and better developed manufacturing processes in place to produce that thing, not the other way around.

because the existing districts are sucking up the empire wide resources (people with specialized knowledge, skills) that allow the district to get built.
(I'd make it any district increases the cost of any other one... but possibly with some same type bonus cost as well)

 

[Mustakrakish]

And the rationale for this is...? Why would each subsequent city settled suddenly and inexplicably find it harder and harder to build a district that's been built many times before?

This needs to be for a reason other than for a desire to balance some part of the game, otherwise it won't make sense (and will just give the feeling that any old mechanic is being thrown into the game randomly just because).

This is also fairly counter intuitive. If anything, subsequent units of something should be cheaper to build because the civilization would have more experience and better developed manufacturing processes in place to produce that thing, not the other way around.

And there is such a perfect rationale for how it's right now...?

Anyway... anti-ICS, which there is none right now IMO. The way I see it, it would be a perfect soft ICS limit. Also would encourage to specialize cities, which again I see no reason to do now, just spam 2-4 same districts that I need in every single city. Oh, the joy, oh the strategy...

 

[RealAntithesis]

And there is such a perfect rationale for how it's right now...?

Well no, which is why I was arguing to get rid of the cost escalation entirely. The concept of escalating costs may have come from some desire to limit city expansion (which I don't really understand since the city has obviously already been placed when it comes time to build some districts...), but this results in a ridiculous situation where cities being built later in the game are finding it inexplicably harder to build something that a city hundreds of years earlier could build with ease with the same production capacity.

Further, structures that come from earlier eras (such as monuments, libraries, marketplaces etc) should be able to be built much faster than earlier eras if the empire has the economy to do this (eg using caravans). There shouldn't be artificial limiting mechanics put in place to stop the civ from building these things (which the artificially increasing district cost supposedly represents).

That's why I was proposing to just get rid of this mechanic and instead rely on the increasing production costs of more modern structures to limit the player from building super megapolises overnight (but they should still be able to build the more basic structures quickly if they have the economy or production capacity to do it).

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

The thing is: how to balance district cost with increased production as the turns pass? You can't have cities founded in turn 250 to be able to build a Campus in 1 turn because it's way back in the Ancient Era. If there's no cost escalation at all, then either you won't be able to build anything in the early game, or everything might take only 1 turn late game.

Also, probably no mechanic that balances this issue will be realistic, and frankly, in this case I don't care. If I have to choose between balance and realism in a game, I'll always prefer balance. An unfair game gets boring regardless of its historical accuracy.

And there is such a perfect rationale for how it's right now...?

Anyway... anti-ICS, which there is none right now IMO. The way I see it, it would be a perfect soft ICS limit. Also would encourage to specialize cities, which again I see no reason to do now, just spam 2-4 same districts that I need in every single city. Oh, the joy, oh the strategy...

Last time people wanted less ICS in Civ, we ended up building only 4 cities and called that an "Empire".

The concept of escalating costs may have come from some desire to limit city expansion (which I don't really understand since the city has obviously already been placed when it comes time to build some districts...)

I always plan out districts before I settle a city. It's part of the strategy to predict (to some varying degree of accuracy) if a new city will contribute or not.

 

[DWilson]

results in a ridiculous situation where cities being built later in the game are finding it inexplicably harder to build something that a city hundreds of years earlier could build with ease with the same production capacity

I would note one possible reason for this being the change in amount of time passing. Sure, it's not technically reflected in the production values, but I do believe that the city could accomplish more in a thousand years than in 50 years, even an ancient city versus a relatively newly founded modern one.

 

[c4c6]

The fix is really simple. If you stop construction of something, you save all production put toward it, but the cost will change to the new cost the next time you switch back to it. Costs don't go up while you are building something, but if you pause constriction to build something else, you are losing your locked in price.

I'd like to suggest a small clarification to the fix above:
When production of a paused district is resumed, the restored amount of saved cogs shouldn't be the absolute value when pausing, but a higher amount relative to the new cost / old cost.

 

[Cymsdale]

I'd like to suggest a small clarification to the fix above:
When production of a paused district is resumed, the restored amount of saved cogs shouldn't be the absolute value when pausing, but a higher amount relative to the new cost / old cost.

No. that would be creating cogs out of thin air.

 

[c4c6]

No. that would be creating cogs out of thin air.

That's the last I want! And for the most important case (cogs=0) there is no difference anyway ...

It appears fair to me, if the district is paused at e.g. 50% completion, it would resume also at 50%.

With numbers out of a hat (old cost 100 / new cost 120):
If paused at 50/100 and resumed (with absolute number saved amount) at 50/120, one looses because of the break. I want no penalty for pausing.
If paused at 50/100 and resumed (with saved amount relative to completion) at 60/120, one keeps proportion, just gains no advantage.

 

[PendragonWRB]

I voted no, because the only time I 'pre-build' a district is to make a mental note of where I want it. I do not like the ridiculously growing costs of districts which makes settling cities later in the game a big drag. It also makes no sense that more science knowledge makes things more expensive. Of course if later game districts got more bonuses due to better science, then maybe I could see a reason for the cost increase. It's just stupid that by the time you can get a settler off your continent and settle some remote island for a resource that it takes an eternity to build that city up to be viable. It already has a really late start, why does it need this huge production penalty?