Is anyone else tired of the city distance "minigame"?

[King Flevance]

I wish you could buy tiles and swap them. There's so many individual little conveniences missing from Civ 7, but this is one of my biggest icks so far. I'm not too critical of city distance, but Independent Powers can be super annoying to deal with. There are a lot of times where I wanted to settled a port city in the New World, only to have to clear out the natives next to me when I wouldn't have otherwise.

I agree, it is frustrating to not able to swap ownership of a tile between my cities. I now play a game where I avoid claiming a resource because I plan to place a city that needs to use the 2-3 tiles next to the resource, but if I claim it, those 3 tiles are permanently assign to the first city.

As for the main topic, the pockets in my empire are a concern mostly because the AI doesn't mind placing a city in a horrible cramped location for 1 crap resource. If you attack and burn it down, another AI settler will eventually show up as though it is juicy real estate. It would be nice if colonies from civ 3 came back so that merchants or some other unit could create a "trade outpost" to claim nearby tiles and expand your trade range as though it were a city.
I personally would have it claim the tile it is built on and you could spend gold to claim nearby tiles to your empire (up to 2 tiles away) at about 500 gold per tile. Additionally, you could spend gold or influence to upgrade it to a town.

 

[Shurdus]

It

Do I really need to read this? Anyway, I can count to three, that's what I just did before answering, but it's something that I don't particularly enjoy with the tiles, especially as the red tiles are not a good indicative of the other cities range with resources being red as well. Plus it was there in previous Civ iterations (like Civ 4). The Civ 6 lense mod has it and it's quite useful when moving the settling location around different spots.

If you enjoy the manual counting, good for you, but no need to be abrasive about it.

I thought it was understood it was just a tongue in cheek comment, I'm sorry if I offended you.

 

[Elhoim]

I thought it was understood it was just a tongue in cheek comment, I'm sorry if I offended you.

No problem, it's hard to tell these days with everyone trying to compete who's more aggressive online. No offense taken, I'm just probably a bit tired of the online vitriol due to my work and the last thing I needed is that kind of discourse here jajaja

 

[JNR13]

I think the mechanic as such is fine, but with cities taking up more than just their center tile, the radius needs to be 4. I've played a few games of Civ VI like that by now and it just flows so much better and creates very nicely balanced spacing between cities to give armies some room to move around but also strikes a good balance between urban and rural development.

The only thing I'm not sure about yet is whether minimum distance between cities should also be raised to 4 or kept at 3. While 3 seems the natural way to go if one wants to emphasize player choice ("if you want them 4 apart, just do so"), the AI's tendency to settle at minimum distance most of the time opens the question back up.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'd want it probably limited to the trade route range so you can't just claim anything. But if you could send, say, a merchant to a tile, place an Outpost on it that cost like 2 gold and 2 influence per turn, but it let you claim the resource, that would be a useful ability. You would still be liable for someone else founding a city and sniping it, definitely a lot of times I would love to get a resource but don't want to use a settlement on it.

Right now the game is 'balanced' (or 'Unbalanced') around the interaction between Cities and Towns 3 tiles or more apart.

Throwing 'Outposts', a new Settlement or Sub-Settlement choice in there, has to be done with a new placement mechanic to make it different from Settlements. Since Settlement Towns are obviously designed to take in Resources more than 3 - 4 tiles away from your City, Outposts have to have some kind of different parameters.

I suggest that they should be either Fill In or Far Away: that is, either 1 - 2 tiles outside of the 3-tile distance from City Center, or far away (and vulnerable), but in each case have two primary characteristics:
1. They don't require you to build a Settler - that would make them indistinguishable in cost from a Settlement.
2. They only access the tile they sit on: no adding Districts to them until/unless you can 'upgrade' them to a Settlement.

And if we make them buildable by Scouts, there has to be additional cost to avoid Outpost Spam: Influence, Gold, Production or some combination: add to that the impossibility of protecting them except by stationing troopsq, and that should keep them to the Absolutely Necessary situations.

IF we also want to add the possibility (made easier by some Civs' special attributes, like America) of Upgrading an Outpost to a Town Settlement, I suggest it should also be without a Settler - but again, with a cost in some other currency like Influence, Gold, Production, etc - and possibly also with a Time Requirement from its founding as an Outpost: again, to avoid Outpost Spam not included in the initial game design.

 

[Elhoim]

I think the mechanic as such is fine, but with cities taking up more than just their center tile, the radius needs to be 4. I've played a few games of Civ VI like that by now and it just flows so much better and creates very nicely balanced spacing between cities to give armies some room to move around but also strikes a good balance between urban and rural development.

Yes, this so much! That mod that made it 4 really felt so good, that I was sure Firaxis was going to make it that for this game.

As you said, I don't think the mechanics are bad per se, though I like OW one better. But 3 tends to leave a lot of weird spots that the new mechanics can't claim, and you need to get into the puzzle a bit more than usual.

 

[PatrickTheProgrammer]

I don't mind "stripes and holes" in my Empire. Have you ever driven through west Texas?

NB: this was not intended to be abrasive, but it was intended to be a mildly humorous way to say:
- it's not that important (to me);
- real empires can have chunks of unused or under utilized land;
- it doesn't seem to have a large effect on gameplay or results.

 

[Elhoim]

I don't mind "stripes and holes" in my Empire. Have you ever driven through west Texas?

NB: this was not intended to be abrasive, but it was intended to be a mildly humorous way to say:
- it's not that important (to me);
- real empires can have chunks of unused or under utilized land;
- it doesn't seem to have a large effect on gameplay or results.

Yeah, I didn't mind the empty one too much, but the resources, especially with AI placed settlements. In any case, I know it's not too much of a deal, but I was kinda expecting an evolution of the system which I feel it's a bit too clunky and taken directly from Civ VI (and still from Civ V in which it was used for 1 tile cities). Of course, it's through the lens of playing 2k hours of VI and 1.5k hours of V

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, the holes in the empire to me are more than fine as a way to space cities out more. But they're a problem because for one the AI settles in those gaps, and two, because your culture can't fill them in anymore, if you have a resource in there you have to build a city to settle them (or be America).

And yeah, if you're closer than 3 to make sure you fill the gaps, you have the mini-game of which city pops a tile first claims it. Really need to bring back the old way to swap completely un-improved tiles between cities.

 

[Elhoim]

I agree, tile switching and a way to grab tiles just outside your city range is needed, IMO. Before you could grab them with culture and use a worker to gather the resource.

 

[King Flevance]

It would even be beneficial to have your borders push out to 4 tiles but only be able to improve 3 tiles out. So the outer improvements push the borders as it usually does. However, being able to improve a tile in a city's radius can "steal" one of these 4th ring tiles.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

I’m still in the stage of enjoying figuring out placement of cities but I understand where you are coming from. I think some ‘Artificial’ limits in game can result in more fun by inforcing having to make a choice.

I could see City specialization with ‘megacity’ being a choice which allows you over the 3 tile limit with some tradeoff. Perhaps you no longer can have rural districts and must be feed entirely by towns.

 

[Cymsdale]

I could see City specialization with ‘megacity’ being a choice which allows you over the 3 tile limit with some tradeoff. Perhaps you no longer can have rural districts and must be feed entirely by towns.

Please no, I already kind of hate that town specializations are a thing.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Please no, I already kind of hate that town specializations are a thing.

Can I ask why? The pop up happen too often and it’s hard to tell what the effects will be but I think those’d can be fixed

 

[Cymsdale]

Can I ask why? The pop up happen too often and it’s hard to tell what the effects will be but I think those’d can be fixed

It feels like an uninteresting choice that kind of magically applies a bonus. It reminds me too much of planet designations in Stellaris and I really don't care much for those either. It also creates a weird effect where a town converted to a city suddenly has a drop in output for no reason.

 

[Siptah]

It feels like an uninteresting choice that kind of magically applies a bonus.

Agreed on the magic, but I don‘t find it that uninteresting, especially not finding the best moment to switch from growth to specialization. One possibility to make it less magic would be that a specialization has an opportunity cost aside from hindering growth, e.g., requiring an investment of gold/food/production to implement.

It also creates a weird effect where a town converted to a city suddenly has a drop in output for no reason.

The reason is the bureaucracy that comes with being a city, obviously. Much more paperwork to be filled, which reduces productivity. And all those kids that helped their dads in the mines now have to go to school instead. Where they get weird ideas, like wanting to become a specialist some day.

 

[Elhoim]

When you factor bonuses like the ones that give extra % to specialized towns the switch can indeed feel weird.

 

[valerislysander]

Isn't this the game of civ....

 

[MasterPaw]

Independant really limit city placements, you need to kill them to have some choices after 2/3 cities.

If you want to ally them or can't destroy them its quite limiting. And its an extra thing to consider about city placement: if i dont want to lose a resource, i need to settle 1 tile east but for that i need to destroy that settlement;

Is this anyone else experience? Should something be done about it?

 

[chazzycat]

Independant really limit city placements, you need to kill them to have some choices after 2/3 cities.

If you want to ally them or can't destroy them its quite limiting. And its an extra thing to consider about city placement: if i dont want to lose a resource, i need to settle 1 tile east but for that i need to destroy that settlement;

Is this anyone else experience? Should something be done about it?

What do you mean by "can't destroy them"? They are pretty easy to disperse. But yes, there is a decision to be made - keep the existing city and accept sub-optimal placement, or take the razing penalty (which is significant) and settle it yourself.