How Civ6 Districts could be more historically accurate

[dunkleosteus]

Let me preface this by saying that I do not think this should necessarilly be implemented, only that I want to share my opinion of how the district system could more faithfully represent reality without significantly sacrificing aspects of the game.

To start, I really like the system of housing that limits population in civ 6. Having significant caps on growth in the early game are a much needed fix to the series, from a historical perspective. However, I believe that specifically there should be a cap on urban population, which should be distinct from a rural population.

Urban population should be limited by a housing cap, but this limit should be absolute- you cannot exceed it. However, the majority of your population would be rural- these are the citizens that work tiles for yields. The urban population are usually the only sources of culture or science yields, whereas rural population generates food and production. For the beginning of the game, your urban population cap will be relatively low. It is also important that growth is limited such that there is a maximum growth rate for population- any food above that will not speed up growth.

The urban population would be a lot like the specialists from civ V and could be used as civ6 specialists to work districts. There should also be specific bonuses thay apply to urban population, facilities within the city that improve the lives of only the urban citizens.

However, I believe that the above change should be used to serve the true ambition of this change: making districts historically logical.

Initially, the only tiles that are workable by your city are the 6 tiles imediately adjacent to the city, rather than all tiles within a radius of three. A new "district" (unaffected by the district limit) is added which is called a town. Towns cannot be built adjacent to your city centre or other towns. Towns enable you to work the 6 tiles adjacent to the town, in addition to the 6 around your city centre.

When districts do become available to you, you have two options when building them: districts must either be adjacent to an existing town or the city centre or, you can upgrade an existing town into a district, in essence specializing the town.

Throughout history, the greatest cities of the world often had a sprawling system of smaller towns and communities that functioned to support the town. In the modern world, these towns were often amalgamated into the larger metropolitan area but I think it's important to acknowledge their existence.

Towns themselves have a low production cost and so are not very difficult to build. Districts built on towns have a reduced construction cost associated with this.

Towns should also form roads after a few turns connecting them to their city centre.

I'm only interested in talking about this as a hypothetical, I am aware that something like this would probably make the AI explode.

 

[Victoria]

I think you would need a larger hex grid.
It would make the game longer and more build oriented but I have no issue with that
I see where you are coming from historically, I live in greater London amd my town is still distincly named as well as being part of London.
Would you ever see the towns becoming merged?

 

[dunkleosteus]

I think I'd like towns to be restricted from being adjacent to other towns, but if you build districts between two towns, that would be possible.

England is a very good model for why a system like this works (although also because I have data for England).

Before the industrial revolution, 90% of the population was directly or indirectly involved in food production- either growing, transporting or selling it. The amount of food that could be generated was barely enough to support the people that produced it.

After the industrial revolution (although more specifically, the agricultural revolution) food production became much more efficient. The percentage of the population working in food production dropped from 90% to 50%, opening a huge market for jobs in factories and production. This coincided with advances in sanitation to enable cities to explode as people moved into the urban centres from rural areas.

Sanitation was important- before advances in waste and sewage management, cities did not grow on their own. Disease and pestilence killed enough to prevent this. Until the industrial revolution, population increases were due to immigration from rural areas. With proper sewers being developed, cities could support larger populations.

 

[Victoria]

I think its sad how sewers are bypassed. I mean they are pretty important

 

[UWHabs]

I think the better way to handle this is essentially through specialists. If anyone has played Puerto Rico, essentially what you should have to do is put a citizen in a specialist spot to get the benefit of the building.

Essentially, each city would have its limited number of "colonists" which are either out working the fields, or they're in the city working buildings. Anyone working in a building would essentially be the "urban" population mentioned above, and would be subject to the housing cap. That way, cities could grow un-impeded through their entire rural area, but would be essentially limited in how many buildings they could support based on the city's housing cap.

This would have the cool effect where cities could essentially grow an unlimited amount just based on the food in the area, but would be limited in how many districts/buildings they could staff based on their housing allowances.

 

[Ryika]

I don't really see the need for "Towns", Districts already take that role, and Neighborhoods are what later symbolizes the merging of smaller towns into the big cities we have today.

That's of course very simplified, but I think that's fine - don't really see any gameplay benefits of "Towns", and it would certainly cause even more problems for the AI without really adding much to the game.

 

[Leyrann]

I really, really like this idea, though you would indeed need more tiles. I think it's too big a change for even an expansion, but maybe for Civ VII?

 

[cooldude1128]

It's quite an amazing idea, and a return of towns would be wonderful. I'd third the suggestion for a bigger map to go with it, too -- though such a thing would be nice for many more reasons as well.