Improve Country Borders Suggestion

[JustMormegil]

I always found neutral territory 'gaps' inside civilizations borders so strange and ugly... Would like to suggest some methods how it can be fixed:
- if some small chunk of neutral tiles is fully surrounded with single civilization borders - automatically join those tiles to the nearest country cities. I'd set such chunk maximum size to 5.
- if mountain/impassable feature tile has 3+ neighbour tiles owned by one civilization - join this tile to the nearest city of this country.
- Feudalism, Colonization and Industrialization each reduces tile cost (both cutural and gold) by some meaningful % (lets say 25%) - speed up border growth.

This should make borders look more realistic, won't break balance at all in case of mountains/impassable features and add more strategy in placing new cities/buying new tiles, as you can grep more land faster if plan your city placement/tiles purchasing properly.

What do you think?

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I always found neutral territory 'gaps' inside civilizations borders so strange and ugly... Would like to suggest some methods how it can be fixed:
- if some small chunk of neutral tiles is fully surrounded with single civilization borders - automatically join those tiles to the nearest country cities. I'd set such chunk maximum size to 5.
- if mountain/impassable feature tile has 3+ neighbour tiles owned by one civilization - join this tile to the nearest city of this country.
- Feudalism, Colonization and Industrialization each reduces tile cost (both cutural and gold) by some meaningful % (lets say 25%) - speed up border growth.

This should make borders look more realistic, won't break balance at all in case of mountains/impassable features and add more strategy in placing new cities/buying new tiles, as you can grep more land faster if plan your city placement/tiles purchasing properly.

What do you think?

I like these suggestions. I also hate the way borders look in the early game of Civ V/Civ VI--I don't feel like I have a real empire when I look at the map. I want a nice block of territory, please, not a patchwork of disconnected cities. So I would make border growth faster from the very start. I might even be amenable to giving every Civ Russia's extra tiles ability. I love the way Russian empires look.

 

[RealAntithesis]

Also, the borders in Civ6 are too confusing to look at - they have sharp, angular lines. Which is fine when they are surrounding a continguous area, but it becomes a confusing patchwork of different multicoloured lines when borders from different civilizations combine with yours and neutral territory. I would like the borders to look more like Civ5 with smooth lines and some colour on the tiles inside the border to more easily distinguish my territory from other civs and unclaimed land.

 

[JustMormegil]

Also, the borders in Civ6 are too confusing to look at - they have sharp, angular lines.

yes, thats looks inaccurate too. Civ 5 borders were smoother and looked better.

Also it can be good idea to decrease tile culture/gold cost with number of neighbour owned tiles.
For example:
1 neighbor owned tile - 100% cost
2 - 90%
3 - 80%
4 - 70%
5 - 60%
6 - 50%

so borders can growth even more smoother.

 

[Victoria]

Smooth lines are good

The AI tends to grow your territory toward resources which is good.

Auto filling those gaps is bad in my view. I played around with housing which is a great limiter in the game dynamics in my view. If you auto fill those gaps then I would certainly get a few builders with 5 builds on them to farm them all and get the extra housing too soon.

I do like the idea of auto filling a mountain tile, its pointless cost of culture beyond its limited breathtaking park status as its value to my city is regardless of whether it in my borders or not.

I did see last night America having increased a single line of tiles 5 hexes to the sea which was very weird. However it does stop exploration and it would be a nice add to the game to have a choice of changing the next autogrow tile placement. After all its my Civ, not the AI's

 

[JustMormegil]

Auto filling those gaps is bad in my view. I played around with housing which is a great limiter in the game dynamics in my view. If you auto fill those gaps then I would certainly get a few builders with 5 builds on them to farm them all and get the extra housing too soon.

Yes, certainly! If you manage to place your cities/buy tiles/growth borders with culture in that way that you get little 'gap' of tiles available for farms (3/5 I would say on standart earth age settings with 1 having forest/jungles), than get builders to clean these tiles and put farmlands there - yes, you get 2.5 housing per gap. I don't think it is gamebreaking - you should put some efforts to get this bonus. We can just get another feature in expansion, which increases strategical decisions diversity.

 

[RealAntithesis]

Because of the other AI civs constantly trying to squeeze cities right up against my borders (which themselves haven't reached their full 3 tile distance, which is really close), I'm finding myself spending all my available gold to close off gaps in my borders and to extend 'tendrils' of borders into areas I don't want them to settle. It's really annoying. Especially since they immediately accuse you of having too many troops next to their borders as soon as they've placed their new city right up next to mine. It would be great if the minimum distance to settle from existing cities was increased somewhat. I don't want to have to shoehorn weird little cities into small gaps in my empire borders just to stop the AI from the doing the same.