Island cities and maps versus district system

[GhostSalsa]

It's not just islands… its anywhere on a continent that doesn't have workable tiles near it, like a mountain-surrounded coastal tile, or a tiny penninsula 4 hexes away from an enemy city that has already hogged up all the nearby tiles, etc: even on a continents map there must be a very high percentage of unclaimed city spots that would not support districts. So it's certainly a question how the game will limit settling options in any sort of smart way, at least for the AI, while human players ought to be fine planning this stuff on their own.

But as said above there's probably plenty of utility for a city with just a few used tiles, specialized on one district. Of course, it will be totally indefensible without an encampment: or at the same time, impenetrable if the only accessible tile is the encampment.

 

[CivScientist]

It's darn hard to guarantee that a generated map doesn't have viable city tiles with no adjacent viable district tiles. It's a lot easier to just forbit cities from being built on otherwise viable city tiles with no adjacent viable district tiles. That might be the way the end up going.

That said, it might be interesting to just have cities that can't build districts (except maybe harbors and the like). So, no science district, no entertainment district, ect. The city might never do much but it still may be worth building.

 

[shaglio]

Where? I just looked through all the screenshots and all six videos, and the smallest land mass you can see directly was the ~23 tile island north of Xi'an in the E3 presentation.

[edit] There are a few smaller smaller groups and single tiles in the minimaps, but we don't see them directly, and can't be sure whether they're islands or something like natural wonders.

I don't recall which thread I posted in (it was probably Off Topic anyway), but I'm pretty sure it was the third SS you posted. There's a 1-tile island to the NE of the Western continent. Somebody also mentioned there were more shown in the England preview. So they ARE generated in map scripts.

Edit: disregard the angry smiley. I accidentally hit the radio button when I was scrolling up on my iPhone

 

[AriochIV]

Somebody also mentioned there were more shown in the England preview.

These were from the England and Builder preview videos. You can see single-tile islands in the minimap, but the game camera is no where near, so we don't know whether they're settle-able land tiles, or perhaps natural wonder tiles like Krakatoa.

 

[shaglio]

These were from the England and Builder preview videos. You can see single-tile islands in the minimap, but the game camera is no where near, so we don't know whether they're settle-able land tiles, or perhaps natural wonder tiles like Krakatoa.

Don't be absurd! If it was Krakatoa, it would be in the middle of the ocean, miles away from being workable

 

[AriochIV]

Don't be absurd! If it was Krakatoa, it would be in the middle of the ocean, miles away from being workable

Maybe it's just my irony meter not registering, but isn't the real Krakatoa very close to land?

 

[Socrates99]

Maybe it's just my irony meter not registering, but isn't the real Krakatoa very close to land?

Yeah, it was a joke. In CiV that damn thing never seemed to spawn in a workable spot. Always drove me crazy when I was playing Spain.

 

[King William I]

Yeah, it was a joke. In CiV that damn thing never seemed to spawn in a workable spot. Always drove me crazy when I was playing Spain.

It would've bothered me a lot less if it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was always 4 tiles away from land.

 

[AriochIV]

(Whacks irony meter) "Micro-changes in air density, my ass."

I always viewed Krakatoa as motivation to explore every last bit of that ocean fog.

 

[Tantor]

It would be Nice to have an option to build a colony/outpost rather than a city on small islands or Close to Remote located Resources. CIV 3 had colonies and I`ve always missed those in later Civ games.

Gamewise they would provide a base for units, planes and ships. Have a cap for pop Growth and a smaller "Fat cross" compared to a regular city. In the center there should be room for a few improvements for defense and Connection to the rest of the world.

I real life I think this should be comparable to Gibraltar, Malta, Hawaii, Guam, Aden etc.

 

[JtW]

It would've bothered me a lot less if it was in the middle of nowhere, but it was always 4 tiles away from land.

I seem to remember it was a bug they never fixed. Instead of saying "generate Krakatoa 3 or less tiles from the coast", the map generating script said "generate Krakatoa more than 3 tiles from the coast." There is/was a mod that fixed that.

 

[qadams]

Maybe it's just my irony meter not registering, but isn't the real Krakatoa very close to land?

The real Krakatoa nearly blew itself away in 1883 but has since regrown to a decent size, though nothing like it was before that eruption. And to answer your question, yes, it is close to a larger land mass. In Civ terms, it would be only 1-2 tiles away.

 

[King Jason]

The bottom picture provides an example of what I've suggested a couple of times in this thread and elsewhere. In the middle of the top of that map there is what could be a single tile island. 1 hex to it's right is a 2 tile island. 2 hexes to it's left is the coast of the mainland.

Now, I can't quite count the total amount of accessible mainland tiles from that single-tile island, but with the 2 tile island to the right I'm coming up with something close to about 6 hexes in your 36 tiles circumference.

With ample sea resources in that 36 tile area with the single-tile island as it's center, that would give you the potential to construct 7 districts total provided all of the growth came from the sea, and no resources/specific terrain hindered the production of your districts. Considering with land requirements that hit's the "about half" mark, you wouldn't really need to fill all 6 tiles with districts. That leaves room for resource improvements, or even a wonder. The city could still support as much as 4 districts including a harbor.

Now, I think it's a rare find to get any coastal cit that's better than an fully expanded 36 tile land city simply because the sea is capped at a certain output (a mere 2 food without resources) and can't really be improved upon. That said, I think people are blowing the "uselessness" of islands in civ6 out of proportion nonetheless. Using the little information we know, that 1 tile island with a 2 tile island and continental coast nearby could, in theory, totally become a viable city.

I currently see no evidence that suggest island cities are inherently less useful than they've ever been, really. You only need 1 to tile to build a district. The rest is all growth. So a 2 tile island that only has a fully developed campus that somehow reaches say, 16 pop (sea resources) is going to generate as much science as a 36 tile city that has a fully developed campus (with no mountains) and whatever else it's done with the excess tiles, provided both cities are 16 pop.

The difference is that the 36 tile, 16 pop city will likely be adding other yields (gold, campus, wonder bonuses, etc) to your empire and your tiny island city would be hyper-specialized to producing only the yield of the one district.

 

[Hail]

I currently see no evidence that suggest island cities are inherently less useful than they've ever been, really. You only need 1 to tile to build a district. The rest is all growth. So a 2 tile island that only has a fully developed campus that somehow reaches say, 16 pop (sea resources) is going to generate as much science as a 36 tile city that has a fully developed campus (with no mountains) and whatever else it's done with the excess tiles, provided both cities are 16 pop.

you do not mention housing capacity and it's impact on the food box size.
is the omission intentional?

so far, there has been no mention of a generic water tile imporement alike a farm/mine, so any cities with a land tile deficit will have less housing capacity (bigger food boxes).

 

[chaosprophet]

Wasn't housing said to be related with access to fresh water? In which case a costal city may already have a higher base housing.

 

[skyclad]

As long as each island has 5-8 land tiles workable when it has expande borders it should be ok - AS LONG AS SEA GIVES GOOD YIELDS!

Otherwise I will be safely staying 2-3 tiles from the coast whenever possible thank you

 

[Felis Renidens]

Wasn't housing said to be related with access to fresh water? In which case a costal city may already have a higher base housing.

I think it was mentioned in the Dev Talk on the E3 video that seawater are not fresh water - which is quite reasonable. There might be a tech to desalinize water but I suspect not very early in the game, more towards the end (if at all).

 

[theis81]

Given that there is adjacency bonusses to districts, they could make harbor districts adjacent to island cities (defined by x tiles land mass) have bonusses to perhaps trade and food.

 

[Loaf Warden]

Honestly, I'm more worried* about how one-tile islands will be affected by cliffs. Since we know that cliffs exist where a hill tile meets the coast, and that they prevent the landing of units, are we going to get one-tile islands that happen to be hill tiles, so that there are cliffs all the way around them and our units can't set foot on them? Functionally that would be no different from simply having a mountain sticking out of the sea, unless the hill has a resource on it that is therefore inaccessible.

*For certain values of "worried". I mean, it's not keeping me awake at night or anything.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Honestly, I'm more worried* about how one-tile islands will be affected by cliffs. Since we know that cliffs exist where a hill tile meets the coast, and that they prevent the landing of units, are we going to get one-tile islands that happen to be hill tiles, so that there are cliffs all the way around them and our units can't set foot on them? Functionally that would be no different from simply having a mountain sticking out of the sea, unless the hill has a resource on it that is therefore inaccessible.

*For certain values of "worried". I mean, it's not keeping me awake at night or anything.

Well how else would you have a "Lost Island" where all the dinosaurs live?