Let's discuss encampments and harbors

[Gehennas]

I think I am not the only one thinking that these two districts are actually the worst at this moment and usually being built only for the eurekas/inspirations (if ever built at all). While the idea behind these districts is straightforward they are usually don't worth the investment:

- Harbor is always worse than commercial district now. With the recent nerfs commercial district is always preferable, mostly because of the Great Merchant points - they are more valuable.
- Great Generals/Admirals are not really fine. Their aura is a good buff, but while you'll mostly fight with 5-6 units, simply having two more is more cost-effective than competing for a great person.
- While getting generals/admirals through districts looks consistent with other GP from game design point of view, it is somehow counter-intuitive. It is actually very strange that you can get a Great General and retire it afterwards without any war.
- Building at least one encampment or harbor actually looks good enough just for the experience buff. However, the unit production cost grows much faster than production capabilities. As consequence, it is unlikely that you will build lots of units past the medieval era to get the full benefit from experience bonus. Probably, your invasion force will consist of these 3 slingers/3 warriors built in the very beginning and 2 catapults built to be upgraded for the eureka.

What can be done to make these districts more valuable:
- Harbor should provide Great Merchant points.
- Encampment buildings should provide the Great Engineer points, as they are a part of a military-industrial complex. Additionally, there should be classical Great Engineers.
- Great Generals/Admiral points should be earned for military victories as it was in Civ 5. Maybe it will be reasonable to have more GG/GA for each era, so they won't be depleted too fast in the early warmongering.
- Harbor/Encampment (and aerodrome) buildings should provide a percentage-based military unit production bonus. The later your are in game, the more units there should be on the field. It's the opposite now.
- Experience bonus should be moved to culture cards. This way there'll be military cards actually useful during the war aside from pillage buffs and war weariness reduction.

 

[Cliomancer]

Perhaps the harbour could instead provide a small bonus to Food/Production/Gold. Either all three at once or a pool of points which are distributed to make up for any missing districts in your city.

For the latter, priorities could run like:
-If the city is starving, allocate harbour resource to food.
-If the city is not starving but has room to grow, balance harbour resource between Food/Production/Gold in that order of importance.
-If the city is not starving but cannot grow, balance harbour resources between Production/Gold in that order of importance.
--If the city does not have an industrial district but does have a commercial district, allocate harbour resources to Production.
--If the city does not have a commercial district but does have an industrial district, allocate harbour resources to Gold.
--If the city has neither or both a commercial and industrial district, split the harbour resources evenly.

Also I think there should be some synergy between Commercial and Harbour districts. Perhaps trade routes from cities with both should gain 1 bonus gold for every two buildings in each district.

 

[Max H]

Huh.

I guess I agree about the GA's. Really they don't come into play too often except on Island Plates (But CAN be useful on Continents, Fractal, and Shuffle). I've got to disagree with almost everything else though.
- Harbor and Encampment Buildings are amazing sources of housing before Neighborhoods.
-Harbor is very multi-use, and one of the best districts: Easy adjacency bonus, extends trade route cap, lets you set up trade routes if no good land access, bonus Food, Production, Housing, AND Gold. This makes it good in so many situations.
-Encampment buildings also give housing and Production WAY before Neighborhoods and well before Industrial District.
-If there is any early game threat, you're going to need an Encampment if you want to stand a chance, though you don't always need multiple cities with them, unless you are bent on invasion, which means you'll never use their defensive aspect.
-Generals are good and their buffs stack. If you're fighting someone with equal military tech, you need them in order to gain advantage.
-The suggested change for having Harbors produce Great Merchants would be op considering all the other benefits of harbors, but I think the % boost to military production is a more fitting advantage than flat Production yield.
-Encampments could use a minor buff that allows them to attack before having a wall (it already does low damage and you can likely build archers before or soon after you take Encampment tech).

Aerodrome and Theater District are the most useless. Theater Districts give only Culture and GPP. They don't even aid wonder production or produce enough tourism for early culture win, and the buildings give hardly any flat culture so you're barely going to charge ahead on the Civic tree. A policy will do the job of two Amphitheaters. Also Greek special Theater District can only be built on hills, making it even worse. Aerodrome is good on large maps or very late game combat. Planes are expensive and do little damage.

I think there should be some synergy between Commercial and Harbour districts

There is. Bonus Gold for adjacency to each other. No other districts have synergy except some Civilization-unique bonuses. The fact that they ++ your trade route cap means you're almost definitely going to build more than one Harbor or Commercial District over the duration of your game. Gold is like a player's adaptability, it can be used to boost whatever you lack or need in a hurry.

The Harbor is not exclusively worse than a Commercial District. The Housing, Food, Production, and Naval capabilities are a traded for the usefulness of Great Merchants.

 

[isau]

What the Harbor needs is a +2 or +3 adjacency bonus for adjacency to a City Center. That would provide some (not amazing, but partial) incentive to settle on the coast. It's in my mod, and I've seen it in some other "balance" mods as well as a fairly popular and simple concept.

The Harbor problem is basically related to the overall naval problem. Very few incentives to settle coasts, which in turn makes naval invasions largely impossible, which in turn makes the naval game unfulfilling. There should be stronger reasons to settle the coast and open up the risk of navies.

The fact that sea resources are pretty much trash across the board does not help things.

 

[Gehennas]

Harbor and Encampment Buildings are amazing sources of housing before Neighborhoods

But other districts provide the same amount of housing, I think.

-Harbor is very multi-use, and one of the best districts: Easy adjacency bonus, extends trade route cap, lets you set up trade routes if no good land access, bonus Food, Production, Housing, AND Gold. This makes it good in so many situations.

Usually you will have about +3 adjacency bonus for harbor (2 districts and 2 sea resources). Fully developed harbor will yield +3 food, +3 production, +6 gold in this case. Commercial district will usually provide +1 adjacency bonus too (2 districts and no river), so it will provide +16 gold when fully developed. I think they are quite close if we consider yield only. Setting naval trade routes requires only one harbor.

-If there is any early game threat, you're going to need an Encampment if you want to stand a chance, though you don't always need multiple cities with them, unless you are bent on invasion, which means you'll never use their defensive aspect.

Encampments are not reliable in this case I think. They are taken down too easily if enemy has some siege units.

-Generals are good and their buffs stack. If you're fighting someone with equal military tech, you need them in order to gain advantage.

Their buff is good but competing for them means missing other districts in early game, and it also costs a lot of production. With such low-scale wars that usually happen in CivVI, few more units may provide more advantage.

The suggested change for having Harbors produce Great Merchants would be op considering all the other benefits of harbors

Looking at yields, they are mostly equal. While harbors are more dependent on city placement than comm hubs, I think that would be fair.

Aerodrome and Theater District are the most useless. Theater Districts give only Culture and GPP. They don't even aid wonder production or produce enough tourism for early culture win, and the buildings give hardly any flat culture so you're barely going to charge ahead on the Civic tree. A policy will do the job of two Amphitheaters. Also Greek special Theater District can only be built on hills, making it even worse. Aerodrome is good on large maps or very late game combat. Planes are expensive and do little damage.

I agree on aerodromes. I see a lot of potential value in bombers: while they can pillage districts, they can be useful in long war. However such thing doesn't exist in CivVI. Theatre district is quite strange. It is useful (and even neccessary), but for cultural victory only.

What the Harbor needs is a +2 or +3 adjacency bonus for adjacency to a City Center. That would provide some (not amazing, but partial) incentive to settle on the coast. It's in my mod, and I've seen it in some other "balance" mods as well as a fairly popular and simple concept.

The Harbor problem is basically related to the overall naval problem. Very few incentives to settle coasts, which in turn makes naval invasions largely impossible, which in turn makes the naval game unfulfilling. There should be stronger reasons to settle the coast and open up the risk of navies.

I am not sure why settling on a coast is required for fleet usefulness. The fleet already does what it should do: protects embarked units and carriers, helps land units with coastal invasion and bombards cities that are close to water. I am mostly concerned by the toghness of embarked units (they are still too hard to kill) and AI unable to deal with fleet.

Btw, your modpack looks very interesting. Going to try it soon.

 

[Jarms48]

I'd do three things:
- give coastal city-centres an alternate building to the water mill, a fish market, which provides +1 food / +1 gold from the building itself, and +1 food from Fish and Crab resources.
- give the harbour district a +2 gold adjacency bonus when adjacent to a city-centre.
- give lighthouses an additional +1 gold from Pearl and Whale resources.

This would (hopefully) make coastal cities more appealing, and would make harbours more attractive.