Do you want districts to come back in Civ 7?

[Psychotronics]

I think it's pretty clear districts are the defining feature of Civilization 6. With Civ 7 on its way, I'm curious as to how Civfanatics feel about them. Should they become a core feature of the cities or should the franchise return to how city planning worked previously?

 

[Leyrann]

Yes.

However, not in the same way as in Civ VI.

One change I definitely want to see independent of everything else is that districts are a specialization towards a specific area, not necessary to unlock that area at all. For example, a Campus would be required to build a University, Observatory or Research Lab, but it would not be required to build a Library. Similarly, a Market, Workshop, et cetera could also be available without district.

A second change I'd appreciate is that you have to build off of the city center or existing districts, rather than the often completely disconnected districts of Civ 6 (in particular Campuses and Holy Sites suffered from this). Perhaps you could even allow an exception for, say, a Harbor when it comes to this mechanic.

Something I would love to see but am not expecting is a kind of subdivision of hexagons, where districts (but also housing) take up less than a full hexagon. My pet design concept is to divide all hexagons into triangles and count things like urban sprawl per triangle instead (also a few other features, such as terrain), but even without this you could simply give a hexagon two or three (or six) 'slots' that you can fill up with urban sprawl of various kinds. This allows you to keep the unstacked cities, which I love conceptually, while also allowing them to take up less space.

Fourth, I want to see bigger maps (maps have the same number of tiles that they've always had, but various changes to game mechanics have led to them feeling much smaller, one of these mechanics being unstacked cities) as well as a reason to actually use the space provided by such a bigger map, e.g. by placing cities further apart. Even at Civ VI levels of urban sprawl, if the default was to put 5-6 tiles between cities instead of 3-4 (meaning they'd only overlap in the third ring, if at all), the map would already feel far less crowded.

As a bonus, I'd like for Firaxis to do away with Civ VI's overly symmetrical game design, e.g. with every district having exactly three buildings inside it, and every building (and wonder) having a production cost that depends exclusively on which column of the tech tree unlocks it, without regard for it's value, flavor, or anything else. I want there to be a sense of organic-ness and slight disorder to these things, as this greatly helps immersion.

 

[Xandinho]

Districts are very popular, so it's safe to say they are here to stay. I just want them to be more visually integrated into the city, and not like separate pieces, perhaps by restricting them to being only adjacent to the city center or to two other districts.

 

[xxhe]

I like districts. But I'd like to see some improvements of the concept to make districts more balanced.

 

[GMVORTEX1044]

I think it's pretty clear districts are the defining feature of Civilization 6. With Civ 7 on its way, I'm curious as to how Civfanatics feel about them. Should they become a core feature of the cities or should the franchise return to how city planning worked previously?

I'm torn on this one. On one hand, I loved the added layer of strategy and customization that districts brought to Civ 6. It was amazing to see my cities evolve into these sprawling metropolises with unique identities. On the other hand, I do miss the simplicity and flexibility of the old city planning system. It was easier to build and manage cities, and it felt more intuitive. If I had to choose, I'd say keep districts as an optional feature, but also offer a 'classic' city planning mode for those who prefer the old way. That way, everyone gets what they want.

 

[Leucarum]

I don't think the implementation is perfect, but I do like districts. They look good and add a nice level of strategic depth. I wonder if one evolution moght be to make some mutually exclusive, to really push city specialization?

 

[BackseatTyrant]

Districts were definitely a move in the right direction, though I feel the district placement should've happened on a sub-grid within each city, rather than around the city. Still, I'm very much in favour of giving each city their own profile, and perhaps the logical conclusion is to get rid of city distance requirements, and replace improvements with rural settlements

 

[Lord Lakely]

I'm neutral on them. I don't mind seeing them return, but with expanded building options.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I like the gameplay idea of districts but I doesn't exactly lend to organic looking cities.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I don't see any need for districts. They add a layer of complexity for no value. I'd rather see buildings placed directly on the map. The "puzzle game" of placing districts (which I didn't find worked at all during actual game play) could be better implemented by giving individual buildings bonuses for being placed on or beside geographic features and being placed near other symbiotic buildings.

 

[Patine]

Absolutely not. They were one of the five worst ideas endemic to Civ6.

 

[Morningcalm]

I really don't like districts. They added extra micromanagement centered around adjacency that seemed counterproductive to the larger strategic scope of Civilization as a whole.

 

[Quintillus]

I like districts. They were good in Endless Legend, they are good in Civ VI, and are good in Old World.

I largely agree with Leyrann, too. If I had to pick one thing that could be improved with VI districts, it would be to spread out the map a bit. Civ has always tended towards infinite city sprawl, but even today there's a lot of open forests, mountain, or farmland between cities in most areas, the northeast corridor of the U.S. where Firaxis is located being an exception. For most of Civ's history, that was even more true. VI has wider city spacing than its predecessors (and I tend to actually put cities 5-6 tiles apart, with only third-ring overlap and often trying to minimize that), but districts means the urban area is still rather spread out.

I'd love a Civ game that had a better rural development model, where land uses other than urban conglomerations felt like a substantial part of the world. VI still falls into the "most battles happen at a city, because you're almost always at a city" model, albeit less so than its predecessors. In Old World, most battles don't happen at cities but in the open land between them. Sure, every so often there is a battle to control a city at a key location, and those can be quite involved, but what's the exception and what's the rule is flipped from Civ.

(Actually, the first thing I change might be removing the "affects other cities in a 6/9 tile radius range" aspect of certain districts. It's too puzzle-y and I have spent too much time calculating distances. But that's more a complaint with current mechanics than the district concept itself)

 

[Mekkh]

I think in the direction Firaxis is taking the series, districts make sense, but I'm not a big fan of them or the adjacency system. As other people have said, I feel CIV VI had too many systems that took over from the main focus on the game. I recently played two huge earth map games, one in CIV IV and one in CIV VI, and the mid-to-late game turns in CIV VI feel like a slog, without feeling more stratetic.

It also did not help that, playing as Canada, the starting area is home to some of the best universities on the planet, but there is NO adjancecy bonus for campuses anywhere in that region. Instead my best cities were in the deep amazon ecosystem, Utah, and Alaska. While that's not necessarily a wrong thing, it made districts feel very gamey to me, and I'd rather not have them in the future.

 

[Krajzen]

I like how districts make city planning much more interesting in gameplay terms, but I don't like how they make cities feel less like... cities. In real life you don't build university and government building 50 kilometres away from the city center, in the middle of nowhere, because they are next to a pretty mountain or whatever. This is weird for the game's scale, where each "city" is spatially equivalent to the "province capital" with its tiles covering huge area of thousands of square kilometres, and where you are supposed to take care of empire building, not city building.

My favourite solution would be to redesign the system to be slightly more immersive, where appropriate buildings and districts are created in the city center (city itself), whereas off-city adjacency puzzle is designed around "minor settlements", so the scale would be more realistic. You develop "minor settlements" with their own pops, they can specialize in something, they slowly grow on their own (callback to cottage system of civ4) etc.

 

[UWHabs]

I like how districts make city planning much more interesting in gameplay terms, but I don't like how they make cities feel less like... cities. In real life you don't build university and government building 50 kilometres away from the city center, in the middle of nowhere, because they are next to a pretty mountain or whatever. This is weird for the game's scale, where each "city" is spatially equivalent to the "province capital" with its tiles covering huge area of thousands of square kilometres, and where you are supposed to take care of empire building, not city building.

My favourite solution would be to redesign the system to be slightly more immersive, where appropriate buildings and districts are created in the city center (city itself), whereas off-city adjacency puzzle is designed around "minor settlements", so the scale would be more realistic. You develop "minor settlements" with their own pops, they can specialize in something, they slowly grow on their own (callback to cottage system of civ4) etc.

Yeah, while I love districts as a whole, and the puzzle is fun, the fact that I can have this massive size-25 city without the ability to build a market is just... weird. Or that you are encouraged to build universities in secluded mountain resorts, neighbourhoods out on some random peninsula coastline, etc...

I do like having things spaced on the map, that gives you another planning aspect of your cities, and I think it would be hard to go back to the old way. But I definitely think they need to give bigger bonuses to build districts closer to each other. Even if it causes things to be a little less of a puzzle, like maybe the "campus" bonus for mountains just counts every mountain tile within the city's borders. Or perhaps you give more secondary building options - so once you build a campus, it opens up the option to build an Observatory next to a mountain somewhere in the city for a larger science bonus. Or maybe the "Research Lab" gets specialized into Oceanographic research vs Observatory vs etc...

 

[Glassmage]

I voted No, but Yes (also probably this concept is not going away anyway) if city had a hard limit on max 2 districts per city.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

Yes, but make them look pretty. Cities in Civ VI look ugly with districts not looking like real city districts, farms/plantations in the middle of the city and oversized wonders taking entire hexes.

 

[Leyrann]

even today there's a lot of open forests, mountain, or farmland between cities in most areas, the northeast corridor of the U.S. where Firaxis is located being an exception.

As is most of Europe, and to an even greater degree.

For reference, Maryland (the precise state where Firaxis is located, iirc) has a population density of 244 people per square kilometer. Here's the values for a bunch of European countries:

Netherlands: 520 (note: you may also find a number of about 420 per square kilometer, this number includes water in the "land" area - not a big deal for most countries, definitely a big deal for the Netherlands)
Belgium: 383
England: 434
Germany: 233
France: 121

That's a significantly larger geographic area than the northeast corridor of the US.

And that's before you start comparing to, say, Pennsylvania (still partially located in that corridor) or even California (the most populous state by absolute numbers), with population densities of 112 and 97 people per square kilometer respectively. Maryland, despite lagging well behind a number of European countries, is actually the fifth most densely populated US state.

US be empty.

Obviously, all of that is mostly a pedantic point, I agree with the rest of your post.

 

[Patine]

As is most of Europe, and to an even greater degree.

For reference, Maryland (the precise state where Firaxis is located, iirc) has a population density of 244 people per square kilometer. Here's the values for a bunch of European countries:

Netherlands: 520 (note: you may also find a number of about 420 per square kilometer, this number includes water in the "land" area - not a big deal for most countries, definitely a big deal for the Netherlands)
Belgium: 383
England: 434
Germany: 233
France: 121

That's a significantly larger geographic area than the northeast corridor of the US.

And that's before you start comparing to, say, Pennsylvania (still partially located in that corridor) or even California (the most populous state by absolute numbers), with population densities of 112 and 97 people per square kilometer respectively. Maryland, despite lagging well behind a number of European countries, is actually the fifth most densely populated US state.

US be empty.

Obviously, all of that is mostly a pedantic point, I agree with the rest of your post.

These statistics go back to the late-19th, early 20th Century, as a notion, at best. A Civilization game begins in 4000 BC.