The recent interview with Ed in TheSixthAxis deals with the biggest changes to cities and districts in Civ7:
TSA: Finally, you’re keeping the unpacked city style from Civ 6, which was so visually arresting, but with the new transitions between civs, how are you evolving it for Civ 7?
Ed: There’s three big changes. The first one is that each urban tile is not assigned a specialty – it’s not a science district or a culture district – you get two building slots there and you can put whatever building you want there.
There second thing is cities have to grow out from the centre. It used to be that you had the centre of your city here, and your first district could be way out on the edge of the [city’s area], and players were like, “That doesn’t feel like the same city, that feels like little suburbs.” So now your city has to grow out from the centre.
The third thing is that as you go from one age to the next, the city buildings from the previous age lose their power. The new buildings from the new age are much, much better, and you want them to be in the choice spots where you put the earlier buildings for adjacency bonuses and things like that, so we have this system where you over-build. In the presentation we talked about how London was built in layers, and that’s very interesting because now the same part of the map you’ll get to figure out how you want to lay out your cities on it multiple times through a game, and that gives you all sorts of opportunities for this building gameplay to evolve and improve as you’re working on it.
Civilization VII is coming at a really interesting time for the historical 4X genre, with a bunch of rivals having sprung up in the last few years, and
This article also is the first I have seen where the Devs are highlighting the modding community and the ability of this community to add meaningful content. Some optimism here
From Ed -- We’re launching the game with more civs than we’ve ever had before, because the more civs we have, the more of these pathways we can have, but it’s going to benefit even more as the mod community and our DLC packs start pumping even more into the game. It’s going to be really interesting all the ways you can navigate your way through history.
The first one is that each urban tile is not assigned a specialty – it’s not a science district or a culture district – you get two building slots there and you can put whatever building you want there.
Hard hard disagree. Kind of hated districts. Just felt so limiting in terms of the general city building gameplay.
And I think it was mentioned putting two of the same building type in a hex makes their yields better. Certainly with UBs, but I thought I read with regular buildings too. A Blacksmith Shop and a Brickmaker for an industrial zone, for instance.
I like the idea that districts are now more flexible and individual buildings matter.
Also an interesting quote from the same article:
If you play as Egypt and you get the special necropolis mortuary complex built on a tile, that’s permanent, and so even if you move on from Egypt to another empire, that Egyptian quarter remains. Think about cities that have, you know, Latin quarters, Jewish quarters and that was an inspiration to have these old quarters that are vestiges of the empire that used to live there, and as you go through the ages, your whole lineage starts to reveal itself to you on the map.
This aspect feels like a genuine improvement. Districts felt so horribly gamey in 6. Like each city gets one district that is nothing but scientists, one district that is nothing but priests, it was anti-historical flavour.
The only ones that didn’t scream THIS IS A BOARD GAME were Harbours and Encampments
I don't think so. Most of the adjacency bonuses didn't make much sense, and they created unnecessary micromanagement about where to build things. Not to mention, the cities didn't feel like real cities at all.
I think a lot of buildings will be “overbuilt”…almost no one will have Libraries in the Exploration period, they will just straight build universities. So you probably won’t have much more than 2 buildings focused on a particular output.
Or I could see a fully developed Modern Age city only having 12 nonunique buildings
That was mentioned in an AMA from Potato and SpiffingBrit within the first few days.
I liked the district puzzle in Civ 6. I found it very compelling. But it looks like we will be getting a similar type of puzzle with buildings, so I'm not disappointed about losing specialty districts.
I wonder if there are regression paths for cities and districts/tiles. Can a city devolve into a town, and can an urban tile be turned back into a rural tile?
I wonder if there are regression paths for cities and districts/tiles. Can a city devolve into a town, and can an urban tile be turned back into a rural tile?
Interesting, I suspected that might be the case for City capture, but I wonder if there is some nuance to it. Could a City be developed enough to stay a City, or will they always be downgraded upon capture/transfer?
Interesting, I suspected that might be the case for City capture, but I wonder if there is some nuance to it. Could a City be developed enough to stay a City, or will they always be downgraded upon capture/transfer?
It's not really a "downgrade" though. It looks like the game's economy is structured around you having a certain number of Towns, since they provide bonus Food and other resources (when specialized) for the Cities. There doesn't appear to be any maximum population limit for Towns, so the naming may be misleading.
There second thing is cities have to grow out from the centre. It used to be that you had the centre of your city here, and your first district could be way out on the edge of the [city’s area], and players were like, “That doesn’t feel like the same city, that feels like little suburbs.” So now your city has to grow out from the centre.
This is the point I'm most dissapointed with. I know some others will love it, but I liked my sparse cities, with population hubs around specific areas, and not necesarily a "carpet-type" sprawl.
Let's see how it feels in civ VII. I fould the "next tile" sprawl in HK (and EL, actually) kind of frustrating. And I'm worried it will be frustrating in Civ as well, specially if it applies to rural districts along urban districts.
Overall I’m pleased with these changes. The adjacency game in Civ6 was fun but super gamey and nonsensical, the fact that you got most of your yields from passive adjacency bonuses in early game was extremely bad for game balance. I mean, there’s a whole meta around faith pantheons + work ethics + scripture (+ Hildegard from Bingen). The number of games I’ve cruised through on this combo frankly has become a bit boring. So I really hope the new system requires you to have people working the district to provide yields.
I also like that they fixed the incoherent cities, but I had hoped they would rethink the way resource tiles work. Instead of having to put a plantation in the middle of city because that’s where your Dades or whatever are, I had hoped for some of regional thinking where the resource was in the general area, and then you you place a plantation somewhere in the rural area outside the city.
I had also hoped for a stronger tie on cities have an inner “inner” Urban core and an “outer” Rural upland, but I reckon the new town/city model is better than nothing.
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