Great Wall of China

[isau]

The one kinda nice thing about it is you can build it on desert and tundra, transforming a totally useless tile into a just mostly useless one

I am gonna look at the xml and see if it is possible to have an improvement cost just half a charge.

 

[Big J Money]

Claims a tile, WAY too powerful, heh. You would be able to have every tile you want without needing any culture.

 

[sonicmyst]

I think the best that we can suggest to the devs about the Great Wall problem is make it not as a tile improvement, but a unique building that can be made in the city center (like a replacement to a sewer). Once built, it automatically builds a wall that runs along the borders of the city where it is built.

 

[Big J Money]

That's not a bad idea, as long as you mean the wall exists around hexes (rather than inside them) so it doesn't prevent districts, improvements, etc from being built there. Otherwise this wouldn't be implementable anyway, as the Great Wall cannot be built on districts or tiles with any resources (ergo it you would almost never have a situation where the game would let you build it).

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I think the Great Wall, Sphinxes, Chateaus, and Missions are all grossly underpowered. I'd much rather work a farm, lumber mill, or a mine.

 

[dexters]

Solution seems to be to make the wall like a road in that it layers on top of existing tile improvements.

friendly units gain certain bonuses but hostile units won't

As suggested it should also function like a road for Chinese units to move quickly up and down its stretch with visibility and maybe range attack bonus?

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

It wasn't a bad idea in theory but in practice I do think it's quite poor. A big let down for what should have been really cool.

Sadly I feel the same about Egyptian sphinxes. I had hoped to have a landscape dotted with them. But I do not find them worth building.

I wish, following the lead of half-cost districts, that these special tile improvements cost only 1/2 or 1/4 a builder charge.

It's a great idea poorly implemented, like half of this game.

 

[Dracul JOSHI]

Solution seems to be to make the wall like a road in that it layers on top of existing tile improvements.

friendly units gain certain bonuses but hostile units won't

As suggested it should also function like a road for Chinese units to move quickly up and down its stretch with visibility and maybe range attack bonus?

Oh, please god YES!

Particularly the 'layers over/under tile-type and improvement'-part

 

[isau]

I think the best that we can suggest to the devs about the Great Wall problem is make it not as a tile improvement, but a unique building that can be made in the city center (like a replacement to a sewer). Once built, it automatically builds a wall that runs along the borders of the city where it is built.

That's actually how it worked in previous games.

What might be a better idea would be to change it from a unique tile improvement to a non-exclusive district similar to the Neighborhood. If it were a District, the number of Builder charges wouldn't matter and you could just place the sections as you see fit. Make it cost about 20 production per wall section.

 

[heinous_hat]

I'd like to see it implemented as a continuous project. Much more manageable that way for both player and AI.

Each city contributes hammers whenever you queue the build. At certain threshold levels, you get an improved defense value on border tiles. That value decays over time, requiring regular attention. The defense benefit should go obsolete at a certain tech or era, replaced thereafter by culture, tourism or whatever. Graphics need only be representative... preferably at the edge of border tiles and not directly through them. Maybe over time you get a crappier looking wall if you don't look after it .

Of course, this still relies on the game being able to tell the difference between an outside border and an inside border (i.e. a pocket of unclaimed space surrounded by your territory). That's something it currently has trouble with.

 

[skyclad]

I think the Great Wall, Sphinxes, Chateaus, and Missions are all grossly underpowered. I'd much rather work a farm, lumber mill, or a mine.

Agreed! Its not just the wall thats weak, these mentioned, and kurgans Id add too. Ziggurats and stepwells seem better but still...

District > building > improvement seems basically right to me at the moment.

 

[criZp]

I think the guy who said they should be like roads in that they go on top of other improvements had it right, but that's not gonna happen now unfortunatey. Making it possible to build it on the tiles right outside the border and over removable features like woods, seems like a second best to me.

 

[kaspergm]

Solution seems to be to make the wall like a road in that it layers on top of existing tile improvements.

friendly units gain certain bonuses but hostile units won't

As suggested it should also function like a road for Chinese units to move quickly up and down its stretch with visibility and maybe range attack bonus?

Actually, a solution that to me is so obvious that I can't understand that the developers didn't go for it, is to make it work like rivers. I.e. it's build on the border between tiles rather than in the actual tile. Furthermore, it should restrict movement so that you need to start adjacent to it to cross it, and crossing it needs all your movement.

The above would make it both meaningful and worthwhile to invest builder charges in building it. As it is now, the improvement is utterly crap. In early game, where the puny defense bonus it provides might be somewhat useful, you don't want to invest worker charges into it. You can put it on tiles like desert to gain some yields from it, but generally it seems more worthwhile to place a district or wonder on those tiles.

 

[heinous_hat]

Actually, a solution that to me is so obvious that I can't understand that the developers didn't go for it, is to make it work like rivers. I.e. it's build on the border between tiles rather than in the actual tile. Furthermore, it should restrict movement so that you need to start adjacent to it to cross it, and crossing it needs all your movement.

The above would make it both meaningful and worthwhile to invest builder charges in building it. As it is now, the improvement is utterly crap. In early game, where the puny defense bonus it provides might be somewhat useful, you don't want to invest worker charges into it. You can put it on tiles like desert to gain some yields from it, but generally it seems more worthwhile to place a district or wonder on those tiles.

This still has AI builders "designing" their own wall though. That's bad.

Firaxis seem to have come around to the idea that certain tile improvement tasks should be performed "at once" instead of piecemeal. That has a lot of advantages where the AI is concerned as far as competency and performance. The new road system is a good example of such a change. For whatever reason, though, they introduced a new bugbear for the AI to handle with this Great Wall implementation. I think it would go much better with a more "hands off" approach, which is why I suggest it should be treated as a project instead of an improvement task.

Agreed though, that the wall should display and function along the tile border, not honk up the tile itself.

 

[Big J Money]

Actually, a solution that to me is so obvious that I can't understand that the developers didn't go for it, is to make it work like rivers.

I did say this several posts up

 

[dexters]

Actually, a solution that to me is so obvious that I can't understand that the developers didn't go for it, is to make it work like rivers. I.e. it's build on the border between tiles rather than in the actual tile. Furthermore, it should restrict movement so that you need to start adjacent to it to cross it, and crossing it needs all your movement.

The above would make it both meaningful and worthwhile to invest builder charges in building it. As it is now, the improvement is utterly crap. In early game, where the puny defense bonus it provides might be somewhat useful, you don't want to invest worker charges into it. You can put it on tiles like desert to gain some yields from it, but generally it seems more worthwhile to place a district or wonder on those tiles.

Since nothing is placed in-between tiles outside map generation IIRC, it could cause UI issues to design the wall like that. Possible in an expansion or feature patch when that goes in with say, a canal system where players can dig their own rivers/canals to an inland city.

Not saying I don't agree, but I think that complicates the design significantly.
The most straightforward design change, at least from my POV, is to just treat it like roads. The biggest problem right now is the opportunity cost of a wall vs. a tile improvement/district.

 

[jekke]

Actually, great wall is one of the things I like about Civ VI, but surely the implementation could be better. Just like a few people here I also think it would be better off in between of the tiles, not on top of them, and enemy units should be slowed down when crossing it. Maybe you should also be able to demolish the wall with artillery, but that's several steps down the road. As for AI using the wall to build ugly stuff all across the map, well, I believe some more efforts should be put into coding its behaviour rather than limiting the damage by introducing extra requirements for the great wall improvement.

 

[Big J Money]

It's probably more effort than it's worth, but it would be interesting if it behaved like ancient walls, where it had hitpoints that protect the units inside that must be destroyed first (and then the wall would need to be repaired).

But that's more cool factor than balancing.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

That's actually how it worked in previous games.

What might be a better idea would be to change it from a unique tile improvement to a non-exclusive district similar to the Neighborhood. If it were a District, the number of Builder charges wouldn't matter and you could just place the sections as you see fit. Make it cost about 20 production per wall section.

Well that would mean it would go up in cost as time went on

It would have the disadvantage of not being removable (like Improvements are)