Factories/Stadiums (etc) yields no longer stack across multiple cities - New Strategies?

[Warlord Sam]

From the 20th December Patch Notes:​

• Cities can no longer receive yields from more than one regional building per type; they take the highest (ex. production from multiple Factories)
• Cities can no longer receive amenities from more than one regional building per type; they take the highest (ex. amenities from multiple Stadiums)

How is this going to change city placement, district placement, etc. for you all? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but I'm thinking this opens up some possibilities. Not every city is gonna need an industrial district anymore, maybe?

(I'm not exactly a huge fan of the change, I found the overlapping system quite interesting and liked how big of a leap the industrial revolution was, but it is what it is.) Maybe we can do a bit more specialization with cities now, though. What are your thoughts?

 

[Machiavelli24]

This change wasn't exactly surprising. If the overriding factor for city placement was getting an industrial zone within 6 tiles of your capital rather than the local terrain and resources, it would undermine the strategy of the game.

Industrial zones still have the highest raw yield from adjacency. It isn't hard to get 4 or 5, which can quickly be doubled via the policy.

Space Victory already revolved more around Commerce districts. The Trade Routes are the main way to boost a single city's production and the Gold was necessary for purchasing Great People. Space Victory is all about the Great People since the right deck will solo the whole space ship for you.

Domination victories won't be overly impacted as they want to beeline the bottom of the tech tree for Cavalry. Religious victories don't care about anything past Theocracy.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I think Science Victory will feel the brunt of the impact. Though, as Machiavelli said, much of the production comes from Trade Routes, your Spaceport city might be losing ~40 production per turn if you placed your Iindustrial Zones in a moderately optimized way. Guess one must wait and see how the decreased cost for those projects will take place.

For the Domination and Religious route, Machiavelli summarized it the best. But now that Apostles are able to fortify until healed, faster Religious Victory might be achieved (especially in Continents or Island maps), since now you have an option besides either sacrificing them or taking them back home for healing. Cultural Victory will probably not be affected much; most of the tourism comes from other sources than Wonders anyway.

About general strategy, I feel that Harbours and Commercial Hubs were empowered, and, in a way, Encampments. Now that having internal Trade Routes matter more than ever, additional Trade Routes are a must-have. It seems with the new patch the game now either favours:

• A "flat-wide" strategy (ICS with population enough to support a Commercial Hub and your victory district, with a few a bit taller to support Harbours , Industrial Zones and Entertainment Complexes), with a mega-tall city that supports every district for trade route destination.
• A "hyper-tall" strategy (ICS with many cities having as much production districts as possible, in order to boost trade route production yield from a single city).

A question remains: does the Colosseum amenities still stack with Entertainment Complex? If not, Colosseum probably drops from "good" to "below average".

 

[Arent11]

From the 20th December Patch Notes:​

• Cities can no longer receive yields from more than one regional building per type; they take the highest (ex. production from multiple Factories)
• Cities can no longer receive amenities from more than one regional building per type; they take the highest (ex. amenities from multiple Stadiums)

How is this going to change city placement, district placement, etc. for you all? I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, but I'm thinking this opens up some possibilities. Not every city is gonna need an industrial district anymore, maybe?

(I'm not exactly a huge fan of the change, I found the overlapping system quite interesting and liked how big of a leap the industrial revolution was, but it is what it is.) Maybe we can do a bit more specialization with cities now, though. What are your thoughts?

To be honest, I like the changes. For me not much changes and I already wanted to write about city specialization, but I always shied away from it, since I don't have so much in game experience. Until now, I always had an "industrial core" & a "commercial periphery" & this strategy becomes even better now.

If you think about it, there are 2 types of districts: "Local" (Benefits the city) & "global" (benefits the civ) yield:

Local yield:

Industrial Zones (Production)
Entertainment Districts (Amenities)

Global yield:

Commercial Zones (Gold, Trade)
Campus (Science)
Theatre Districts (Culture)

Now, with Industrialization something interesting happens: The "local" districts become "area effect".

So, what I'm usually doing is to have some cities that are an "industrial core" that prioritize industrial zones & entertainment, production & food & a "commercial periphery" that has commercial zones, campus districts, theatre districts etc. With the onset of industrialization the "industrial core" projects its bonuses outward & benefit the periphery cities.

So, for me the changes basically only mean more city spacing.

 

[FurballRocker]

I don't think it will change much for me. I tend to build very few entertainment districts anyway and now i will need to build fewer as i don't need the extra pop in all those provincial cities to be able to build an IZ in them all so that sort of balances out and i already end up buying most things in the mid to late game due to commercial district spam which gives me a large number of trade routes which i can use to rush production of things i can't buy.
Also all wonder costs (including space race projects) got severely nerfed, most specifically late game with up to -40% cost which seems to compensate for the loss of production and space race wise the space port is now population free so you don't need extra pop for them and thus less need for amenities.

 

[Martin_K]

I think Science Victory will feel the brunt of the impact. Though, as Machiavelli said, much of the production comes from Trade Routes, your Spaceport city might be losing ~40 production per turn if you placed your Iindustrial Zones in a moderately optimized way. Guess one must wait and see how the decreased cost for those projects will take place.
...

the production cost of science victory projects was also reduced by 40% according to the patch notes, so the number of turns for those projects shouldn't change too dramatically.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

the production cost of science victory projects was also reduced by 40% according to the patch notes, so the number of turns for those projects shouldn't change too dramatically.

That's why one must wait and see if the decreased cost compensates the loss of multiple Factories, Thing is, it doesn't impact only your Spaceport city.

I think we will no longer see cities in crap locations (i.e. middle of flat desert or flat tundra), since their main benefit is gone. Now they tend to suck more resources than they contribute. Though sub-optimal cities still benefit a little, with some increased production and at least one more trade route.

What would happen if the trade routes were hard-nerfed (partial or full loss of production yield, or hard cap on number of trade routes available)? I ask because I can somewhat foresee it happening. If it does happen, I think we'd see the revival of only placing city in dream locations, something like the 4-city Tradition build.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I'd be very surprised to see a change in the number trade routes allowed, since the current maximum number of trade routes is equal the initial trade route plus one trade route for each commercial and harbor district plus two for using the mercantile government. Thus the maximum no. of trade routes is slightly more than two times the no. of cities (assuming all cities are close enough to the sea to build a harbor district).

I'm positive that the current maximum number of trade routes is precisely as the developers designed it to be. There is no reason for them to change it to improve game balance or for any other considerations.

 

[WillowBrook]

I am also curious to see how this change plays out. I don't have a good enough feel for the game to predict.

I'd be very surprised to see a change in the number trade routes allowed, since the current maximum number of trade routes is equal the initial trade route plus one trade route for each commercial and harbor district plus two for using the mercantile government. Thus the maximum no. of trade routes is slightly more than two times the no. of cities (assuming all cities are close enough to the sea to build a harbor district).

I'm positive that the current maximum number of trade routes is precisely as the developers designed it to be. There is no reason for them to change it to improve game balance or for any other considerations.

I think they'll do something, as I suspect commercial districts will now be considered the OP district by even more players, but I agree I don't think it will be to reduce trade routes. Perhaps something like limiting the number of trade routes from a city to half the population of the city (rounded up). This would limit how much production in one city could be increased by trade routes, making huge production cities more challenging to create, and limiting the usefulness of late-game city spam.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

I think they'll do something, as I suspect commercial districts will now be considered the OP district by even more players, but I agree I don't think it will be to reduce trade routes. Perhaps something like limiting the number of trade routes from a city to half the population of the city (rounded up). This would limit how much production in one city could be increased by trade routes, making huge production cities more challenging to create, and limiting the usefulness of late-game city spam.

I guess the optimal play in such case is a "spiky-wide" play (many cities at 4 pop with Commercial Hub and Harbour/Victory District, and a few size-20 pop cities with IZ, EC and Victory districts). That way you maximize trade routes, minimize overlaps and concentrate production where it really matters, with the flat cities still producing something useful (units or projects).

It might even be the current optimal, but it needs testing.

 

[mayhemster]

I think this means that the optimal way to play now will be to go even wider than before. There used to be a point where you had to pretty stop building settlers as you were getting your overlapping IZ zones up but this doesn't apply as much now, so I think you can carry on expanding till pretty much the end.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I agree with Mayhemster. The developers can't keep nerfing things in the game, otherwise there will no way to exploit the AI and the game will no longer be fun to play.

 

[Chibisuke]

I agree, I think commerce districts are definitely more powerful due to the nerf to IZ. I will still be building IZ in most cities because great engineers are so good, but I probably won't be able to neglect commercial districts for as long as I have in the past. I'm not quite certain how this will balance out, but something is going to have to get squeezed in my build queue. Maybe I'll have to make due with less military, or perhaps purchase units more rather than hard build.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

In my opinion, the Civ VI designers are trying to balance the districts out so optimal play is building a variety of districts, but only a few specific districts per city that maximize adjacency boni. So, no district will be built in every city, unless the terrain and the desired victory condition dictate it.

So, I envision an empire of pop 4 and pop 7 having a variety of 2 and 3 districts and core cities with pop 10 or more with 4 or more districts. Most likely every city will have either a commercial or harbor district. Depending on victory condition, most cities will have campuses to research technologies faster. There might be more Theatre Districts to help move through the Civics tree faster, though Monuments in every city might suffice.

It should also be more efficient to build the various districts in just those cities where they are more effective due to local terrain. So it will be rarely optimal to build the same districts in every city.

Optimal strategies will become more complicated and nuanced. Welcome to Civ VI (specifically patch 1.0.0.56), closer to the way it should have been when first released.

 

[joncnunn]

On how it changes strategies:
It doesn't appear that the IZ itself or Workshop was impacted, and hammers are more important than ever.
So with each city limited to only receiving one Factory & Power Plant anyway, we are back to placing each local IZ in a place to max it's adjacency bonuses.
What is really impacted is that later on, map out which IZ to upgrade to Factories. (Such as what is the fewest IZ's that will cause all your cities to be within range 6.)

On the stadium side; it's also amounted to a decrease in amenity sources in addition to limiting each city to only visiting one stadium. And so, it looks like more Entertainment Zones total are needed than before the patch. But instead of previously planning on upgrading every EZ that was constructed to Zoo and later Stadium, plot out which ones to upgrade that result in every city gets the benefit.

No impact to the pre patch standard of build a Commerce district in every city / Harbor in every city allowed just for the increased trade routes. As a side effect though, internal routes providing hammers become even more desirable than external routes.

 

[mayhemster]

On the stadium side; it's also amounted to a decrease in amenity sources in addition to limiting each city to only visiting one stadium. And so, it looks like more Entertainment Zones total are needed than before the patch. But instead of previously planning on upgrading every EZ that was constructed to Zoo and later Stadium, plot out which ones to upgrade that result in every city gets the benefit.

I don't think it affects Entertainment zones at all really, 1 well placed Colloseum deals with your ameneties for pretty much the entire game and the AI has never built it before me in any game. It might become important if they nerf that wonder

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Trade routes are definitely powerful now...they need to be made local (each City has X trade routes based on its districts, wonders, GPs...not your empire)

 

[elitetroops]

Space Victory already revolved more around Commerce districts. The Trade Routes are the main way to boost a single city's production and the Gold was necessary for purchasing Great People. Space Victory is all about the Great People since the right deck will solo the whole space ship for you.

Where did you get that idea? The fastest victories in the "Science victory strategy"-thread and in the current HoF beta gauntlet didn't use many commercial hubs at all and did not rely on buying GP with gold. The changes might make them more essential though. The increased tech costs might also contribute to this, as the main problem with Commerce Hubs and their buildings has been that the game is too short for them to pay off. But I'm afraid the tech cost increase is too small, it still shouldn't be too hard to complete the tech tree well before t200. Instead of +5% industrial and +20% information era tech cost, I would have liked to see +25% industrial era and +100% information era.

 

[Chibisuke]

I have never purchased great people with gold. Only purchased with faith. I'm playing on deity. For much of the game, you don't necessarily have 10,000 spare gold laying about to purchase a couple great people. I tend to spend gold purchasing important tiles and unit upgrades, since those things are key in making sure your empire is strong going into end game.

 

[gatorsurgeon]

I think the patch suggests that the best strategy now may be a combination of tall and wide, because the best way to make up for the lost cogs is going to be internal trade routes. So I'm envisioning building maybe 3 core cities that will be big and tall. Then lots of satellites around them, each with trade routes back to the big cities to soak up food/cogs. Such a strategy would obviously put a lot of premium on commercial districts and other trade route adders. And the loss of the factory stacking strategy means that Germany is no longer the most kick-ass civ.