Hills are overpowered

[thecrazyscot]

So we've found out all the tile yields by this point (although I've missed the flood plain yields, can someone provide that information?), and there seem to be two glaring areas of imbalance.

1. Coastal and ocean tiles
2. Hills

Coastal/ocean tiles are already the subject of several threads, so I want to focus more on hills.

Here is a list of known tile yields:

Hills are overpowered. Plain and simple. And it's because hills are really a category all in themselves. A hill, unlike any other tile, has 4 potential sources of yields (terrain + hill + feature + improvement) instead of 3 (terrain + feature + improvement). In addition to all this, hills also receive defensive bonuses. The only downside is movement cost, which is completely negated if a city is founded on a hill. Even farms can be built on hills later on.

This artificially limits optimal city placement and has the counterintuitive effect of encouraging players to settle ostensibly inhospitable locations because of the hill's unique behavior. You wouldn't think hills + grassland jungles would be a great location to found a city, but with base tile yields of 3f/1p, they will actually be the best food locations in the early game. Grassland + farm only has 3f...objectively worse (this particular example would be fixed if jungles can only be placed on plains...does anyone know if that's the case?).

This is compounded by the changes to Builders and instabuild (a change which I heartily approve of, btw). If you've moved beyond jungles or woods, there is now no time cost to removing those features.

TLDR; The way hills are now is both unrealistic (I know, I know, it's not actually a simulation) and imbalanced. What do you guys think?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I do think being able to put farms on hills is probably a mistake (as putting farms on non-floodplain desert/tundra is)

 

[Opera]

I wonder why they went that way instead of having hills lower food by 1 (or so).

 

[mzprox]

I think civ4 had the best tile balance/usage. There was so many options: windmill on hills if you needed food/gold, workshop on plains if you needed production instead of food. Ok we have districts, but I still miss options. As for the topic, I don't mind that hills are better than plains as long as it is taken into account when generating somewhat balanced start positions.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

yeah I think if the tradeback for hills is that they are unable to provide as much flexibility or value for improvements that should be good
however IRL farms can be built on hills afaik?_?
isn't building farms on hills limited by some tech?

in my opinion, a major positive aspect of having something like hills give a little base boost like this is that it opens up choice in your play for settling/working land without using builders (for a while at least), it means it's not automatically obvious that you will want a builder when you settle somewhere there are hills so there can be more depth in the choice there : you don't necessarily think in your plans, well i'll be working these tiles, so before I start working them I need a builder, therefore the correct production choice for me before it happens is definitely builder, heavily negating other choices since resource collection is obviously fundamental. Further, it means hills can be something attractive for positioning of your cities, as long as there is some kind of tradeback it can give more choice for where you may choose to place your cities too.

 

[Magil]

Yeah, I don't like the straight +1 production from hills either. +1 production -1 food would be better. No idea why they moved away from that.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I wonder why they went that way instead of having hills lower food by 1 (or so).

I personally think this would fix the whole issue (hills lower food by 1 to a minimum of 0).

yeah I think if the tradeback for hills is that they are unable to provide as much flexibility or value for improvements that should be good
however IRL farms can be built on hills afaik?_?

Yes, farms can be built on hills IRL, but the problem is that an improved hill tile will always be better than its corresponding improved flat tile (same with the unimproved versions).

 

[Seek]

Floodplains add 1 food.

It's almost like hills belong in their own category since they act somewhere between a base terrain and a feature - they can't be removed but are additive. Grassland hill forests are especially egregious since they can be chopped and replaced with a mine, which essentially creates free hammers, even counting the builder charges.

It's so frustrating watching the preview players not chop forests/jungles before placing a district or wonder, such a waste.

 

[gunnergoz]

Plenty of historical precedent for hill farming so I have no problem with hill farms in general. The base values for hexes have to be low to begin with since the game provides so many diverse multipliers in the form of civics buffs, buildings, improvements, etc. that by the end of the game you can have 2 or 3 times the productivity in a hex than at the begining.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Floodplains add 1 food.

It's almost like hills belong in their own category since they act somewhere between a base terrain and a feature - they can't be removed but are additive. Grassland hill forests are especially egregious since they can be chopped and replaced with a mine, which essentially creates free hammers, even counting the builder charges.

It's so frustrating watching the preview players not chop forests/jungles before placing a district or wonder, such a waste.

Thanks for the floodplains info!

It just feels like not enough thought went into hill design. They are definitely in their own category.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

so there is no tradeback for hills at all in terms of improvement, not even tech limit for farms on hills or something? they are basically only a bonus for yields from the start of the game, only tradeback is some districts can't go on it, and movement slowed ? (which is good for defense)

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I think civ4 had the best tile balance/usage. There was so many options: windmill on hills if you needed food/gold, workshop on plains if you needed production instead of food. Ok we have districts, but I still miss options. As for the topic, I don't mind that hills are better than plains as long as it is taken into account when generating somewhat balanced start positions.

I sometimes miss the windmills and workshops of Civ IV, but I feel as though they would run counter to the theme of Civ VI which places a lot of importance on the variations in the terrain. With those sorts of improvements you can basically make any city into what you want it to be regardless of the terrain.

I guess they could work it in with the new mechanics by having them lower the appeal of neighboring tiles or something like that.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

so there is no tradeback for hills at all in terms of improvement, not even tech limit for farms on hills or something?

Farming on hills requires Civil Service I believe.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I believe there is a tech requirement for farms on hills which comes in the second half of the tech tree.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

You need civil engineering before you can farm hills.

Jungle are pretty poor, 1 extra food is nothing compared to what farms can give and adjacency bonus can be earned just by placing districts next to each other.

Riverside hill is among the best tiles in the game, later on you can plant a forest on it and build a lumber mill which will give a super tile in terms for production.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

so it should be ok no?
I don't know what you guys think, but for me it's about the early game, choice of expansion/working with or without builders. it's still relevant after but builders aren't gonna be as rare a resource later on I think, it's more about these other things you can or cannot place on hills such as some districts or special improvements (some have to be placed on hills..)
if you remove 1 food from hills, they are not a value for playing without builders anymore (or with less builders)
so I think I like how it is currently

 

[Seek]

so it should be ok no?
I don't know what you guys think, but for me it's about the early game, choice of expansion/working with or without builders. it's still relevant after but builders aren't gonna be as rare a resource later on I think, it's more about these other things you can or cannot place on hills such as some districts or special improvements (some have to be placed on hills..)
if you remove 1 food from hills, they are not a value for playing without builders anymore
so I think I like how it is currently

From what we've seen regarding game scaling, production late-game is more important than ever. Having hills be -1 food would not detract from their utility and necessity, imo.

 

[leandrombraz]

Isn't this a measure to give cities more sources of food, considering that you have less space to build farms?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Farms are much better now.

 

[Furycrab]

I'm kinda reserving judgment till I can sit in a game and theorycraft districts and placement. I doubt that we will ever hate hills in a capital area. However I could see good reasons for wanting chunks of land that are flat and adjacent.