How do you feel about civs / leaders that modify district placement?

[Big J Money]

Coming back to VI after a couple year hiatus, I am definitely enjoying it much more than before. Partly this is exapnsions, patches, rebalances, and partly it's because by now I've realized that VI isn't going to be my favorite in the series, so I'm playing more to just mess around and have fun, and thinking less about the game mechanics themselves.

This time around I'm able to notice one specific thing that bugs me about some of the leaders on the roster, after now playing Nubia and Egypt.

It turns out that I'm really not a fan of Civ / Leader abilities that interact with district placement. My discomfort is in these facts put together:

A) For any given city's set of terrain, there is generally a "best" (or slight variations) on the most efficient ways to place districts, for a given set of districts. You can't level mountains, nor can you grow rivers, forests, etc (at least not in the early game), and the district system is heavily based on terrain and connectedness to neighboring districts. Even so, figuring out this placement is a pretty fun little puzzle and is enjoyable.

B) Some Civs give you alternative bonuses if you place your districts according to additional (potentially conflicting) criteria.

C) Most of the civ bonuses (all of them?) from fact B are minor, usually no better than what you get from placing districts according to fact A (but different bonuses).

The result of these facts leads to the problem that when I play one of these civs: district placement becomes twice as complex of a puzzle than it already is. Mental fatigue sets in quickly around planning districts for a city. It would be one thing if these Civ bonuses were ever major enough to be outright better than not having them. But that's the rub with me: these bonuses seem to be about equal, and it's always a situational choice as to whether they're good or not.

Yes, I know, strategy games are about making meaningful choices, and it's typically assumed that "more choices" = "better". But for me, I think that these civs create a situation where there is too little substantial reward (bang) for the mental effort required (buck). The way I'm trying to deal with this is just forget about leader /civ bonuses sometimes and just play to have fun, and if I can utilize them from time to time, then it's a nice little bonus.

I'm kind of curious if anyone has this issue with these civ bonuses or I'm just becoming an old codger (why not both)

Edit: I should be clear that there are plenty of civs that modify districts in minor ways, like India and Germany, and I think these are fun. It's the civs that have abilities that modify placement for all districts. Persia is kind of in the middle, but leaning towards too complicated.

 

[Zaarin]

Personally I love them. It keeps the game fresh and interesting.

 

[JesseS]

To me, it's a pretty mixed bag. I think Nubia and Egypt's district abilities are marginal enough to not worry about maximizing them when placing districts, and basically just play close to normally. I don't find the Nubian Pyramid to give particularly good yields, though I will try to settle so that I can build one next to the city center for the district production bonus. I really don't care for the Khmer's district abilities.

On the other hand, Hungary's ability (+50% production towards districts and buildings built across a river from the city center) is useful enough to alter how I play. I'll definitely settle a slightly worse location or sacrifice +1 or +2 adjacency for most districts to save that amount of production. I find playing Mali and maximizing suguba+holy site adjacency to be rewarding, especially with the desert folklore pantheon. Greece's acropolis is good enough to try to settle next to a hill, and I found planning out the Maya's observatories to be the only fun part of playing them. Japan's district ability is also great, but rarely requires you to change district placement.

 

[Starwars]

I quite like Civ VI's focus on districts, it does add some fun planning aspects to the game as well as a feeling of joy when you see the potential of a particularly nice district.

That being said, I'm not into planning them enough that I'll sit down and pin the districts to maximize their effectiveness. And, for some reason, civs with a focus on district planning or bonuses just aren't that exciting to me. For example, Japan's adjacency stuff is good but I *never* play them. Whereas I will gladly play Rome, which also has a pretty "vanilla" design but doesn't have any district stuff (well, except for the Bath I guess.)

It depends slightly on the div of course but yeah, I don't tend to get very excited about that stuff for some reason. Again, even though I kinda like the district system overall.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I find Brazil too much of a headache for sure but in general I like these civs because they encourage you to play the game differently.

 

[Zaarin]

I find Brazil too much of a headache for sure but in general I like these civs because they encourage you to play the game differently.

If nothing else, Brazil's theme causes headaches.

 

[The Civs 6]

When the flavor is good (Hansas and Commercial Centers), I feel like it presents an interesting challenge. I'm less interested in things like the Australian bonus based on appeal, where it basically just tells me where I'm going to put districts to maximize the bonus -and it just doesn't make sense to me from a flavor perspective.

 

[Sostratus]

I like it a lot since districts are so integral to the civ6 economy that it gives nice variety. I like unique improvements that compete with the standard farm/mine spam for the same reason, it mixes things up.

What I'd really like is a unique aqueduct that could be placed anywhere. I think one of the sukritact mods has that for khmer. But that would be neat.

 

[kryndude]

I don't like them too much. It's refreshing from time to time but mostly I can't help but think "man, that's a killer campus spot right there if I weren't playing Korea."

 

[Kibikus]

I love it, it really spices up the game imo. Give me civs with interesting abilities that change the way I'm incentivized to play the game over civs with really strong bonuses every day of the week.

 

[Hans Castorp]

Fine, keeps it interesting.

 

[Josephias]

As some other comented, It is not that is more complicated as you commented, it's the fact it is optional to choose that civ instead of other, and provides a different type of game. These should be the kind of choices you should mentalize before start of the game ("forget everything you know and try to restart"), which is a welcome addition for replayability, even if an additional layer of difficulty if you have become too used to a specific meta.

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

Definitly I like it.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I usually just put districts in the highest position currently available. Seldom "plan" for them. It will be very late for cities to complete 3 or even more districts, and the yield when the city has only 1 or 2 districts is the most vital.

 

[Myomoto]

Probably my favourites. They shouldn't make up the majority of Civs in the game, but I really enjoy playing as Civs with a strong territorial niche.

 

[Buktu]

I like it. Civs with different district placement feel special and unique which is a good thing imo.

 

[Big J Money]

Probably my favourites. They shouldn't make up the majority of Civs in the game, but I really enjoy playing as Civs with a strong territorial niche.

Civs with territorial niches have been some of my favorites over the years also. It's only when a civ has an ability that directly conflicts with all (or most) of the vanilla district placement bonuses.

In general, it's possible that as I play the game more and avoid these civs that lead to more ambiguous district placement analysis, as I get better at the game I may find that I get bored with other civs and will want to give them a try. I'm glad the Civ VI roster is so large that there is a lot of choice, and the designers have done very well to not use one cookie-cutter design template on all the civs.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Mental fatigue sets in quickly around planning districts for a city.

This sound like how i feel sometimes about combat. Having to think steps ahead to make sure a unit is killed instead of left with 1 hp and can get a promotion.

There's enough civs that if I don't enjoy playing with there bonus I don't play them.