Leapfrogging Technique?

[Cymsdale]

??? Do I control the citizen or not?

Yes

 

[stealth_nsk]

??? Do I control the citizen or not?

You control citizen placement on grow event. You can't freely redistribute them at any moment.

 

[depner72]

Still confused, but I am just going to take a shot in the Civ 7 dark here -- citizens only work rural tiles, but not urban tiles, whose buildings then destroy any prior improvements, such as mines, quarries, etc, which citizens could work in previous games, correct? So what is the point of building improvements only to destroy them later, only to destroy the buildings later and so on. Yes, I know some buildings are ageless, but why not improvements? I would like to keep my gold mines....

 

[StargazingDog]

??? Do I control the citizen or not?

Please don't take this personally, but have you actually played the game?

 

[depner72]

Please don't take this personally, but have you actually played the game?

Yes, but I was not aware of the alleged importance of this leap-frogging technique and based on other comments here and elsewhere I was not the only one unaware of the new citizen mechanic, which I loathe...

 

[Cymsdale]

Yes, but I was not aware of the alleged importance of this leap-frogging technique and based on other comments here and elsewhere I was not the only one unaware of the new citizen mechanic, which I loathe...

The importance is overblown. Overbuilding a rural tile with an urban tile lets you get a new rural tile to replace the old one. That's it, that's the 'technique'.

 

[StargazingDog]

Yes, but I was not aware of the alleged importance of this leap-frogging technique and based on other comments here and elsewhere I was not the only one unaware of the new citizen mechanic, which I loathe...

It isn't important at all. It is just something that will naturally happen as you play. Urban districts must be adjacent, so your rural improvements adjacent to the city center will eventually be replaced, unless you snake around them (or don't develop your town).

This is just a technique that people can use to reach strong tiles quickly. You can sacrifice optimal placement and gold for a resource that you want to reach immediately.

 

[Atlas627]

Still confused, but I am just going to take a shot in the Civ 7 dark here -- citizens only work rural tiles, but not urban tiles, whose buildings then destroy any prior improvements, such as mines, quarries, etc, which citizens could work in previous games, correct? So what is the point of building improvements only to destroy them later, only to destroy the buildings later and so on. Yes, I know some buildings are ageless, but why not improvements? I would like to keep my gold mines....

Tiles are just spaces to put things. You may build Buildings on tiles that have a single building or are adjacent to any buildings, which will give you the yield of the building and will now be an Urban tile. When you get a Population Growth event, you can place the new Population on any tile that is adjacent to any buildings or Improvements to place a new Improvement (Improvements are worked tiles), which is also referred to as a Rural tile. Instead, you can place the new Population into a tile with Building(s) as a Specialist, stacking specialists in a single tile up to your Specialist Limit.

Each Building, Specialist, and Improvement is a "Population". That's the only part that is really strange, because sometimes you get to place these because your Population went up, and sometimes placing these causes your Population to go up.

Ageless means they cannot be replaced (though I think Ageless Improvements can still be replaced with Buildings/Wonders) and that their bonuses carry over through the Ages. You keep your gold mines.

new citizen mechanic, which I loathe...

You're spending so much time loathing the mechanic you aren't bothering to figure out how it works. Do that first, then decide if you loathe it. I certainly don't know how you can loathe it if you don't have the slightest idea how it works, besides hating change in general.

 

[depner72]

Tiles are just spaces to put things. You may build Buildings on tiles that have a single building or are adjacent to any buildings, which will give you the yield of the building and will now be an Urban tile. When you get a Population Growth event, you can place the new Population on any tile that is adjacent to any buildings or Improvements to place a new Improvement (Improvements are worked tiles), which is also referred to as a Rural tile. Instead, you can place the new Population into a tile with Building(s) as a Specialist, stacking specialists in a single tile up to your Specialist Limit.

Each Building, Specialist, and Improvement is a "Population". That's the only part that is really strange, because sometimes you get to place these because your Population went up, and sometimes placing these causes your Population to go up.

Ageless means they cannot be replaced (though I think Ageless Improvements can still be replaced with Buildings/Wonders) and that their bonuses carry over through the Ages. You keep your gold mines.


You're spending so much time loathing the mechanic you aren't bothering to figure out how it works. Do that first, then decide if you loathe it. I certainly don't know how you can loathe it if you don't have the slightest idea how it works, besides hating change in general.

You are right - I have a limited knowledge because the game explains nothing -- if a product with this price tag introduces mechanics almost entirely alien to the game, I expect reasonable guidance and the rural / urban tile issue is just the tip of the Eisberg.

 

[Cymsdale]

You are right - I have a limited knowledge because the game explains nothing -- if a product with this price tag introduces mechanics almost entirely alien to the game, I expect reasonable guidance and the rural / urban tile issue is just the tip of the Eisberg.

The game certainly has issues with how it explains some mechanics but it explains the tile system very well. Did you disable the tutorial?

 

[UWHabs]

The importance is overblown. Overbuilding a rural tile with an urban tile lets you get a new rural tile to replace the old one. That's it, that's the 'technique'.

It's a useful tool to remember, that when you build over a worked rural district, you get to move that citizen. It's very useful in towns, to be able to quickly bomb out to get a specific resource. It's also very useful when you unlock specialists, since it's one of the best ways to Urbanize your town. If you put a district over a rural tile, you can move it around.

 

[Taefin]

I’d seen this in a streamer video before playing the first time, so I’m not sure if I would have immediately discovered it myself. The in-game tutorial posted earlier does not state that this is how it works using my understanding of the word “replace”. It should say “will replace the improvement, and trigger a growth event to relocate that tile’s rural population.”

Doesn’t deserve an 11 minute YouTube video though.

Understandable that someone wouldn’t notice, the growth event usually pops up as the next action, but not always, and there are 10 other little-explained things going on while learning.

 

[Atlas627]

You are right - I have a limited knowledge because the game explains nothing -- if a product with this price tag introduces mechanics almost entirely alien to the game, I expect reasonable guidance and the rural / urban tile issue is just the tip of the Eisberg.

Yes, the game is terrible at explaining things, but this particular thing was explained by the tutorial.

I'm going to hope you actually read the thorough explanation I gave you, since you didn't respond to it at all. The system is very intuitive and you just have to be willing to start from scratch.

 

[depner72]

Yes, the game is terrible at explaining things, but this particular thing was explained by the tutorial.

I'm going to hope you actually read the thorough explanation I gave you, since you didn't respond to it at all. The system is very intuitive and you just have to be willing to start from scratch.

Thank you. I do appreciate your answer and this is not your fault, but why mess with something that worked so well for so many versions of the game? This is my fundamental philosophical complaint with this game: why change things which did not need be changed? Why not preserve things that worked for an entire generation of Civ players? Where is the upside?

 

[StargazingDog]

Thank you. I do appreciate your answer and this is not your fault, but why mess with something that worked so well for so many versions of the game? This is my fundamental philosophical complaint with this game: why change things which did not need be changed? Why not preserve things that worked for an entire generation of Civ players? Where is the upside?

A primary goal of this iteration was to remove the impetus to manually assign citizens.

What is the point of creating a new game if we are just going to use the same mechanics for 30 years? Imagine where gaming would be if people followed your philosophy.

Civ 6 is still there for you, my friend.

PS: how the heck did you get "Eisberg" in your auto-correct?

 

[depner72]

A primary goal of this iteration was to remove the impetus to manually assign citizens.

What is the point of creating a new game if we are just going to use the same mechanics for 30 years? Imagine where gaming would be if people followed your philosophy.

Civ 6 is still there for you, my friend.

PS: how the heck did you get "Eisberg" in your auto-correct?

I get the idea that people want something 'new' and yes, Civ 6 is always there. But why not take the best features including the ability to assign citizens in a way that maximizes their use; specialized, distinguishable districts; (valuable) workers and combine them with more civs, more leaders and better graphics (as Civ 7offers)? Decades of different versions of Civ could have, should have given developers a better sense of what works and what does not. I wanted a synthesis of the best features with cutting edge graphics, not a complete revolution. But if you give me a revolution, explain it to me! Do not overwhelm me with choices, then leave me guessing! Give me examples of when I do x, then y and z happens. Give me guidance, show me the best way of playing.

 

[teakbois2112]

This is my fundamental philosophical complaint with this game: why change things which did not need be changed? Why not preserve things that worked for an entire generation of Civ players? Where is the upside?

I suspect there is a large amount of people that really like this mechanic. I am one of them. I really like the approach to urban quarters vs rural tiles. Unique improvements become much more interesting with this system as well.

 

[Atlas627]

Thank you. I do appreciate your answer and this is not your fault, but why mess with something that worked so well for so many versions of the game? This is my fundamental philosophical complaint with this game: why change things which did not need be changed? Why not preserve things that worked for an entire generation of Civ players? Where is the upside?

The upside is that they can attach Border Expansion to Population Growth, which forces an interesting decision point. It also allows them to fold the Improvement system into the same system as Working Tiles, removing Workers/Builders and thus micromanagement. It seems that the feedback they received was that city planning was fun, but being forced to preplan the entire game was too much. With the Overbuilding mechanic, they have neatly found a compromise. This is another upside of this system, as it forces Buildings/Improvements to be 'semi-permanent', encouraging planning ahead.

As most players did not bother assigning population manually (let alone reassigning population, which was a micromanagement task), and most players did not want to do the micromanagement of Workers/Builders, there is no downside (besides the normal 'change is confusing' downside).

I've been playing Civ since 3 and I have always found the ability to reassign population to be rather underutilized. In such a long game, it is an annoying turn-to-turn decision that I could easily do without. I love the new mechanic and I'm very glad they tried a change. If you liked previous Civ games more and wanted more Civs, more Leaders, etc., you might enjoy looking into mods.

 

[pmarc]

Thank you. I do appreciate your answer and this is not your fault, but why mess with something that worked so well for so many versions of the game? This is my fundamental philosophical complaint with this game: why change things which did not need be changed? Why not preserve things that worked for an entire generation of Civ players? Where is the upside?

A bit late to the discussion, but I like this explanation by Soren Johnson (Civ4 and Old World designer) about why they did something similar in Old World, which may or may not have inspired Civ7 (OW is slightly different in that they still have workers to build improvements and wonders, but citizen assignment is also permanent like in Civ7):

My Elephant in the Room, Part 2

I gave an Old World postmortem at GDC 2022, which is available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online…

www.designer-notes.com

​

There’s a pattern to these systems which suck the player into boring micromanagement – they lack any real tradeoffs, either because they have no costs or because they are temporary. Interesting decisions come from giving something up and from making decisions that you’ll have to live with for the rest of the game. Decisions where you have to think holistically past the information horizon. You aren’t just doing math to figure out what gives you a single extra food this turn; instead, you are making an intuitive decision about what might get you more food farther down the road AND whether food will be more or less valuable to you latter on than it is right now.​

​

 

[marius_kaparius]

I've been using this from the start. If I recall correctly, Potato McWhiskey was doing this in a preview video.