Does anyone else think the map just looks really unpleasantly cluttered?

[CliffCo]

Arise!

Couldn't find other threads for this and I don't think my comment warrants a new one.

Sprawl is starting to get on my nerves. I have entire continents that are just one massive megalopolis in the 1800's. This will get even more ridiculous when they eventually add the age after modern.

How would people feel if they increased the number of buildings in a tile from 2 to 3 or 4? You could keep the 'quarter' bonus at 2 buildings but still use that tile for other buildings (eg. ageless). That would reduce sprawl quite a bit but might give the devs some trouble fitting all the art assets in to one tile.

Another suggestion could be to let you place an infinite amount of (appropriate) ageless buildings into the city center.

What are your thought on this and do you have better suggestions?

I think one solution would be to increase the potential radius of only cities to either 4 or 5 rings from the city center, i feel it would work well especially for those playing on the larger maps currently and those still to come.

 

[Skojardu]

I think one solution would be to increase the potential radius of only cities to either 4 or 5 rings from the city center, i feel it would work well especially for those playing on the larger maps currently and those still to come.

They copied the town/city dynamic of the Kuriotates in Fall From Heaven 2 (Civ 4 mod) but ignored their larger city size! Hurr durr

 

[evonannoredars]

I now deliberately don't build all buildings in a city and it's a lot more fun and prettier having smaller, specialised cities. I think it'd definitely be an improvement if there was an incentive not to just build every single building in a city. Exponential maintenance cost scaling perhaps? Or simply including buildings in the food growth requirement calculation?

 

[Siptah]

Exponential maintenance cost sounds like a horrible noob trap though. Especially as you cannot demolish buildings or unassigned specialists. How about simply having each new urban tile requiring a specific amount of pop, as civ VI or Endless Legend did it?

 

[evonannoredars]

I frankly feel all the visual candy is highly distracting, and I waste a lot of time trying to find out what I need to make decisions. I don't know what the towns/cities contain, I can't see units, don't see which tiles are passable or slow, and on and on.
I really miss the ability in older Civ's to switch to the tactical view without all that clutter and be able think about where things are and what I want to move where.

I'd love it if there was a military lens, especially for the combat within cities when there's urban tiles that still count as vegetated tiles and thus can't be shot over.

And one more thing: some of the rural improvements, in particular unique improvements, look not so rural.

And also agree with this. Most improvements are fine as they are, although they could be better scaled down (iirc some assets are bigger in scale than ones on urban tiles?). Mines though I really dislike, they're huge and make the space between cities look very cluttered.

 

[Gorbles]

I think as far as gamification holds (which is a very personal measure), the sprawl is fine. The sprawl has been "more" than the realistic bounds of a city since Civ VI. Prior to that, the sprawl was "less" than the realistic bounds of a city (and don't get me started on Wonder stacking, or anything else which relates to immersion that was problematic).

There's probably a lot that can be done to tweak the visuals that find more of a balance for those who find it cluttered, without changing mechanics that will end up having a lot of unintended consequences (expanding city rings -> resource game changes completely, for one). This is the kind of thing where the developers have to decide on a line for themselves, and ideally enable the modding of the assets so that modders can provide options for the rest.

 

[evonannoredars]

Exponential maintenance cost sounds like a horrible noob trap though. Especially as you cannot demolish buildings or unassigned specialists. How about simply having each new urban tile requiring a specific amount of pop, as civ VI or Endless Legend did it?

True, it'd need some functionality to disable buildings, allowing you to switch of their yields and maintenance if maintenance becomes unmanageable.

 

[bbbt]

I wonder if in a future game they might make the city tile game something you zoom into, instead of happening on the same level as the world map. It seems like it might work better.

I like this idea but I feel like it my get cumbersome at scale.

It could combine well with their ages approach though. Like ancient era, you are only building on on 'hex' that's your city center, and zoom into that. By modern era, you are no longer zooming in, and building entire hexes. Something like that.

 

[99-percent-sure]

I now deliberately don't build all buildings in a city and it's a lot more fun and prettier having smaller, specialised cities. I think it'd definitely be an improvement if there was an incentive not to just build every single building in a city. Exponential maintenance cost scaling perhaps? Or simply including buildings in the food growth requirement calculation?

There is already one incentive. When you move to the next age, losing all of the adjacency bonuses often results in some of the second- and third-tier cities falling into negative happiness baselines due to the lingering happiness maintenance cost. I've learned to hold off on a few late-era buildings that I don't need in order to avoid this obstacle, while making sure I add the villa, menagerie, etc. in order to boost my baseline happiness for the next age. Plus, it can be helpful to preserve some food and production tiles as long as possible, along with maintaining reserve space for late-game wonders or specialty districts.

 

[UWHabs]

There is already one incentive. When you move to the next age, losing all of the adjacency bonuses often results in some of the second- and third-tier cities falling into negative happiness baselines due to the lingering happiness maintenance cost. I've learned to hold off on a few late-era buildings that I don't need in order to avoid this obstacle, while making sure I add the villa, menagerie, etc. in order to boost my baseline happiness for the next age. Plus, it can be helpful to preserve some food and production tiles as long as possible, along with maintaining reserve space for late-game wonders or specialty districts.

Yeah, I am definitely a little careful about whether to build that late era garden or not, knowing that at the next age it will cut down my happiness.

The parts in my current game I'm currently not liking is being stuck with my initial granary placement and stuff like that. Like my 2nd city, I ended up placing my warehouse buildings in a spot, but in the end, I ended up building a couple wonders around them, and I would much rather replace them with something that had better use of the adjacencies. Maybe a sort of solution would be for every urban district to have one spot free for warehouse buildings, that didn't count towards being a quarter or not. That way you would also have a soft limit on warehouse buildings based on how many urban districts you have built too.

I dunno, something to keep the clutter down a little more would help, and not make that initial granary position still matter so much 3000 years later...

 

[protocol7]

Is there a “lore” reason why a garden or any other old building would create unhappiness in a following era? I moved to Europe to be surrounded by history so maybe I am biased in some weird way.

 

[Siptah]

I think, mechanically, it is interesting that old buildings lose some yields but still require maintenance. I‘m also not unhappy that this is the case. The weird thing is that (some) food buildings cost happiness instead of money: hospitals and the mentioned gardens, for example. Why do these make people unhappy? In contrast, I could understand if industrial buildings cost happiness maintenance - or gold buildings simply for the fact that gold maintenance on gold buildings feels a bit wrong.

The idea that old buildings provide happiness (or culture) is a rather modern one. In some cases, dating back to early modern times (e.g., with the discovery of Herculaneum) in others much later (preserving old towns in contrast to committing a Haussmann). Otherwise, old buildings were often just practical - either for reuse as buildings (apparently all large old Roman or Egyptian buildings made good churches) or building materials (many European and Middle Eastern old buildings and walls include carved stones from antiquity). As far as civ wonders go, the Mausoleum of Theoderich is a good example for the first, and the pyramids and the lighthouse for the second.

 

[itix]

I like this idea but I feel like it my get cumbersome at scale.

It could combine well with their ages approach though. Like ancient era, you are only building on on 'hex' that's your city center, and zoom into that. By modern era, you are no longer zooming in, and building entire hexes. Something like that.

Civ 1 had this. There was a city view, which allowed you to see all the buildings and wonders built in the city. It was not pretty even by 90s standards but it was there.

I don't remember if I ever used it to spy on enemy cities. I always felt it was not important to know what I had built, just build the next one, and still doing so.

 

[Sagax]

The idea that old buildings provide happiness (or culture) is a rather modern one. In some cases, dating back to early modern times (e.g., with the discovery of Herculaneum) in others much later (preserving old towns in contrast to committing a Haussmann). Otherwise, old buildings were often just practical - either for reuse as buildings (apparently all large old Roman or Egyptian buildings made good churches) or building materials (many European and Middle Eastern old buildings and walls include carved stones from antiquity). As far as civ wonders go, the Mausoleum of Theoderich is a good example for the first, and the pyramids and the lighthouse for the second.

And I’m pretty sure someone brought this up in the past, that Civ4 handled this dynamic much better than 7 - by allowing obsolete buildings to keep their culture output and GPP generation. Which makes sense, given how many old regular buildings IRL can become historical sights. If they ever reintroduce tourism, the potential for more nuanced decision-making around overbuilding is right there, by letting obsolete buildings generate tourism or a similar yield that is otherwise much less accessible with age-relevant buildings.

 

[Gorbles]

And I’m pretty sure someone brought this up in the past, that Civ4 handled this dynamic much better than 7 - by allowing obsolete buildings to keep their culture output and GPP generation. Which makes sense, given how many old regular buildings IRL can become historical sights. If they ever reintroduce tourism, the potential for more nuanced decision-making around overbuilding is right there, by letting obsolete buildings generate tourism or a similar yield that is otherwise much less accessible with age-relevant buildings.

"better" is a difficult argument, because the two games are designed differently, and reach for different endgame states. VII is explicitly trying to be anti-snowball. Retaining yields works against that.