Entertainment Complex

UWHabs

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To me, the most "useless" district has to be the entertainment complex. I've basically never run out of amenities until I start putting up neighbourhoods in cities, so I don't think I've ever built an EC until that point. Which defeats the purpose of them being available starting in the classic era.

I think they're also hurt by the fact that since they provide "local" luxuries, often all that really does is just give you more amenities that can be spread to other cities. So building an entertainment complex in one city is probably more likely going to help out a completely different city in the empire.

Now, I'm not sure what's best done with this. I almost feel that the best way to handle it would be to combine the theatre square district with the entertainment complex (probably still keep the same EC name, give it a base of +1 amenity plus the regular theatre square bonuses), and simply give you a fully free choice of buildings. Basically, you can build any 3 of the 6 or 7 buildings possible, in any order. So you would essentially be able to get culture and/or amenities from the district, and you either have the choice to build the cheaper earlier buildings to get a smaller bonus, or you can hold out for the more expensive later buildings to get a bigger benefit. To me, that would almost make this a must-build district in most of my cities, as you can then customize it to the needs of your empire.
 
I agree. The Entertainment Complex is a problem. I almost never build them. I was also thinking about merging the Theater Square with the EC, and I think your solution is a good one. Rather than setting specific mutually-exclusive buildings, a simple building cap on the district might be a good alternative.
 
It's the most boring district by far. It's non-interactive. It only does the one thing, so it basically exists solely to solve the amenities mechanic. I disagree that it's useless though. Amenities are as big a block to growth as housing. If you want big cities (and it's optimal to have at least one big city for trade routes), then amenities are very important. Note that the colosseum can trivialise the mechanic so you may have different results if you've been building it.

I agree the entertainment complex should be removed, but I think the available amenities should be spread across other districts. You can put two in the theatre square since that's a struggling district that could use the buff, but they shouldn't all be in one place.

It'd be nice if some of the bonuses were less direct or required more to activate. For instance a museum may only grant an amenity if it actually has some great works in it. Markets could extend the range of luxuries in the city (like the Aztec ability) and Encampments could reduce war weariness.

Edit: alternatively say an encampment (or one of the buildings within) provides an amenity if there is a unit garrisoned there.
 
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It's the most boring district by far. It's non-interactive. It only does the one thing, so it basically exists solely to solve the amenities mechanic. I disagree that it's useless though. Amenities are as big a block to growth as housing. If you want big cities (and it's optimal to have at least one big city for trade routes), then amenities are very important. Note that the colosseum can trivialise the mechanic so you may have different results if you've been building it.

I agree the entertainment complex should be removed, but I think the available amenities should be spread across other districts. You can put two in the theatre square since that's a struggling district that could use the buff, but they shouldn't all be in one place.

It'd be nice if some of the bonuses were less direct or required more to activate. For instance a museum may only grant an amenity if it actually has some great works in it. Markets could extend the range of luxuries in the city (like the Aztec ability) and Encampments could reduce war weariness.

Maybe a Themed Museum could provide +1 Amenities.

Zoos should be a bit sexier than they are... A good zoo is highly dependent on the kind of animals you can put in it. There's not really any interesting animal resources except "Ivory" (i.e. elephants), but maybe the zoo could give +1 Amenities for every 2 continents you have a city on in order to represent access to exotic plants and animals.
 
In my "Combined Tweaks" mod I added a building called an Ambassador's Suite that replaces the Zoo. Adds +1 Diplomatic Token upon being built. The idea being in some cities you can place Zoos and in EDs that dont have them you can add Suites for the diplomats. (I did also buff Zoos from +1 amen to +3).
 
I agree that the Entertainment District and the Theater Square should be merged, but that is 100% because I believe the Theater Square to be useless, and 0% because I believe the Entertainment District to be useless.

While the Entertainment District is very bland, I have noticed in my last game it is also very important for a large empire. Case in point: I am going for a domination game (map is even bigger than huge, by the way, which might also play a role), which means that (having been at war permanently since the medieval era), I have a lot of cities. I have the Colosseum covering seven cities and nearly 20 different luxery resources, I have Zanzibar and I have whatever city state it was that granted amenities from bonus resources, and still I have amenity districts in at least half my cities, with two buildings in them right now (I have a mod that adds more buildings to districts, and am about to unlock zoos). At this point, I have just discovered the tech for neighborhoods, but I am honestly not considering building them, because my cities are constantly on the edge of unhappy (I even have a screenshot from when I had some 25 or 30 cities that were all content, and tbf it's gone downhill from there). From the medieval era on, I've constantly had to build new entertainment districts to keep my empire happy, and I feel like it's not close to over yet. And before you ask, no it's not due to rampaging war weariness. I have a larger amenity shortage than I have war weariness, so even with 0 war weariness I'd still have a few displeased cities.

If you're playing Civ5 style, then I could see the possibility of needing maybe one or two entertainment districts - or just one plus colosseum - and be fine with that, but if you want to have both a lot of cities and large cities (and really, all those farm-spammed AI cities can't help but grow large), you need a carpet of entertainment districts before even thinking about possibly building a Neighborhood or two. By now, it's probably rivalling Commercial Hubs for most-built district. If it's not past them (and I got some 26 maximum trade routes).
 
Maybe a Themed Museum could provide +1 Amenities.

Zoos should be a bit sexier than they are... A good zoo is highly dependent on the kind of animals you can put in it. There's not really any interesting animal resources except "Ivory" (i.e. elephants), but maybe the zoo could give +1 Amenities for every 2 continents you have a city on in order to represent access to exotic plants and animals.

I'm just a bit wary on the museum theming because you've got England for instance with extra museum slots. But yes, that's one option. That's the kind of fine tuning that could be ironed out with testing.

As for the zoo, well you could go super complex with it and have like a zoologist unit that goes around claiming wildlife like the archaeologist does with artifacts. But it could also be nice and simple. Say it's a stand alone minor district (no need for extra buildings) that simply grants +1 amenity (non-stacking) to every city centre in 6 tiles. The trouble with the multi-city bonuses at present is that they're lumped in with other bonuses that only affect the base city. So even if a city gets +3 amenities from a nearby zoo and stadium, they don't get the +2 from district and arena, and since amenities are so essential the city may grow large enough that it still needs its own entertainment complex. Keeping the multi-city aspect but putting it in a stand alone district avoids this.

Something to think about. You want to keep the number of available amenities in a city to be around the same. Otherwise you need to tweak the amenity per population formula. So if we're removing the entertainment complex, that's 5 amenities that want redistributing among other buildings and districts.

On the same grounds the removal of the entertainment complex should probably be accompanied by a tweak to the district population requirements. For instance you could change the requirements from 1, 4, 7, 10, 13 to 1, 5, 9, 13 etc.
 
Add more bonuses to the entertainment complex. What is entertainment anyway? Is it a colloseum or arena? A movie theatre? A shopping mall? Give the option to build either a shopping mall or cinema late game in order to generate a boost of gold or culture.

Also, the entertainment complex should get a boost from tourism. If I visit another country, you can bet I'll be going to the entertainment district.
 
The Entertainment district, and the Industrial zone to an extent, is in a weird place now. The more overlap you have the less efficient they become. It's wasted production, wasted amenities, and wasted gold. Though it does provide redundancy, say your entertainment city gets captured. Another thing of note is that the nerfs also hurts tall play, in a game where wide is already preferable.

They either need to add additional buildings into the ED that only provide local amenities, or tweak the current buildings to make them more useful.
 
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I think the EC would be more useful if amenities would be harder to come by. If you play on sparse resource settings, it is needed early (although it hurts to spend a district slot on it). Also if you run out of cash (which you never do in civ VI), the EC is incredibly handy. They could increase losing amenities through war weariness and thus increase the need for ECs. They could reduce resources on standard settings. They could increase the bonus from having ecstatic cities. Although this bonus is already very large in large cities (+10% production, science, culture and gold, +20% growth).
 
As for the zoo, well you could go super complex with it and have like a zoologist unit that goes around claiming wildlife like the archaeologist does with artifacts.
You don't even need a new unit. Give it to the Naturalist. It's kind of a sad unit right now. Finding new species could boost the zoo and be used as the Inspiration for Narural History. Then push back the Arch. Museum to Natural History rather than Humanism.

Of course, you'd need to make the Naturalist an earlier unit. You could keep its National Park founding ability unlockable with Conservation though.
 
The Entertainment district, and the Industrial zone to an extent, is in a weird place now. The more overlap you have the less efficient they become. It's wasted production, wasted amenities, and wasted gold. Though it does provide redundancy, say your entertainment city gets captured. Another thing of note is that the nerfs also hurts tall play, in a game where wide is already preferable.

They either need to add additional buildings into the ED that only provide local amenities, or tweak the current buildings to make them more useful.

What is it with everyone wanting tall vs wide? Shouldn't empires be measured by their total population, instead of the population they manage to cram into 4 cities? Bigger is better. That's just how empires work. And of course, there's too big, but by the time you reach that you'll come across the limits that exist in real life too - not enough amenities to keep everyone happy (seriously, it's unbelievable how many entertainment districts you need if you have 40 cities) and everyone hating you for being a warmonger (because there's no other way to get that large).
 
What is it with everyone wanting tall vs wide? Shouldn't empires be measured by their total population, instead of the population they manage to cram into 4 cities? Bigger is better. That's just how empires work. And of course, there's too big, but by the time you reach that you'll come across the limits that exist in real life too - not enough amenities to keep everyone happy (seriously, it's unbelievable how many entertainment districts you need if you have 40 cities) and everyone hating you for being a warmonger (because there's no other way to get that large).
I don't agree. I believe a single city with a population of 400 000 would be superior to 40 towns of 10 000 each. Having a concentrated population base is very efficient: it allows for businesses that are not possible otherwise, such as offices and factories that require a lot of employees. As someone that lives in the suburb of a big city and who has visited many small towns in my country, I can definitely tell you that economy scales much quicker than linearly in a city. Having hundreds of thousands of people ready to spend their money or get jobs is incredibly vital for industrial advancement.
 
You don't even need a new unit. Give it to the Naturalist. It's kind of a sad unit right now. Finding new species could boost the zoo and be used as the Inspiration for Narural History. Then push back the Arch. Museum to Natural History rather than Humanism.

Of course, you'd need to make the Naturalist an earlier unit. You could keep its National Park founding ability unlockable with Conservation though.

Good call! It'd be great to give the naturalist more uses, and it certainly works thematically.

I'm stuck for ideas on what to do with the arena and sports stadium. For one thing, why are they even different buildings? Surely the stadium is just the modern iteration of the arena. Only thing I can think to make sports more interactive is via international tournaments, which could possibly come about from a World Congress system.
 
I don't agree. I believe a single city with a population of 400 000 would be superior to 40 towns of 10 000 each. Having a concentrated population base is very efficient: it allows for businesses that are not possible otherwise, such as offices and factories that require a lot of employees. As someone that lives in the suburb of a big city and who has visited many small towns in my country, I can definitely tell you that economy scales much quicker than linearly in a city. Having hundreds of thousands of people ready to spend their money or get jobs is incredibly vital for industrial advancement.

You're most certainly right - that's why a 40 population city can build 14 districts and work them too, while a 1 population city can build 1 district and only gets the innate bonuses. But I do heavily disagree with 4 40-size cities being able to do better than 20 10-size cities, which is what tall vs wide is actually about in gameplay terms. If you go wide, you don't have 1 population cities, you have more like 10 population cities, maybe even bigger.

Heck, I don't see any good reason whatshowever why a city in an empire with 20 other cities should not be able to grow as large as a city in an empire with 4 other cities. What does it matter what else there is in the empire? It should only be about food you can gather for the city (and, of course, the required hygiene and stuff). And neither of them is dependant on how many other cities there are, except if you have a set size for your land to put cities in (but in civilization more cities = more land and you can only gather food from the 3 tiles around your city anyways). This is something that civ 6, in my opinion, does many times better than civ 5. More land = more resources = more population = more everything.
 
The idea that a feature of the game which functions properly and has already been developed should be removed simply because its boring is completely ludicrous to me. Maybe developers should have focused their energy on another aspect of the game, but since its too late now, having ED as an option is way better than simply not having them.

And they are far from useless. Campus/CD are better of course, and the first industrial zone district is better, but after that ED is about the same level as the other districts. Even if your citizens aren't displeased, +2 amenities will almost certainly move you from normal to happy or happy to ecstatic. That 5-10% boost is huge. Almost like building monument, library, workshop, market, etc. all at once.
 
Indeed it serves its purpose, and this thread is also entertaining which is a bonus.
I always try to have positive amenities and notice when it drops, probably because I am always checking. The difference between +1 and -1 is 10% despite what my maths teacher taught me.
I quite like the fairground, it cheers me up when I zoom in on it... I hate zoos, glad they are nerfed, maybe you can replace a zoo with a shopping centre, that would please at least half the population and they get visited by teenagers more than zoos.
 
I agree that the Entertainment District and the Theater Square should be merged, but that is 100% because I believe the Theater Square to be useless, and 0% because I believe the Entertainment District to be useless.

Well it's certainly not useless if you are going for a cultural victory but otherwise you can probably safely ignore it. Holy districts are the same - very marginal usefulness unless you are going for a religious victory. EC has broader utility but somewhat marginal usefulness across all victory conditions. Maybe they should add some production to the benefits like they do for the encampment and harbor buildings. It makes sense that a happier population would be more productive.
 
Well it's certainly not useless if you are going for a cultural victory but otherwise you can probably safely ignore it. Holy districts are the same - very marginal usefulness unless you are going for a religious victory. EC has broader utility but somewhat marginal usefulness across all victory conditions. Maybe they should add some production to the benefits like they do for the encampment and harbor buildings. It makes sense that a happier population would be more productive.

My problem with the Theater Square is that it barely has any culture generation. It's adjacency bonus is the least common object on the map (excluding natural wonders, but holy sites have other adjacency bonuses too) and it's not even two culture which you get from it. The Amphiteather then also gives a meager 2 culture, and the same for the building you build after it. The only way you get more that that is if you get great people, and that's always a race you might lose (you probably wont with this AI, but that's another topic). It just takes far too long to get anything out of building one. You first put the district down, then build an Amphitheater, then wait until you get a Great Person, and only then does it give you a meaningful amount of culture. Compare that to the average other district: You place a Campus next to some mountains, don't even need to build a Library because you already get science, but you can boost it more if you want. Somewhat later on you can build a University and get an additional four science. Or you place a Commercial Hub next to a river. 2 gold, a trade route, and you can build a market for another 3 gold. Or you build an Entertainment District. You now get a free amenity in this city, meaning your city can grow 2 population larger and has more yields until that happens. You can also build an Arena and have the same thing again. Alternatively, because it's that versatile, this city doesn't get the amenity, but a luxery resource is moved to the other side of the empire, so this city that is capped by housing builds an Entertainment District, and that city far away can now grow two more with ease. The longest another district takes to come "online", so to say, is placing + one building, while Theater Square wants you to wait until you get a Great Person and even then it's equal at best.
 
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