Making cities feel unique

[Wolffleet]

Trying to brainstorm ways to make cities feel different. Would really like to know ideas. Working on a Mod to make city building feel more interesting discussion would be helpful. Split into things I know how to do and things i'm unsure of. So far I have.

Know how to do:

Just adding more districts. By default this creates variety.

Gating buildings behind high district adjacency. Like can only build x if adjacency is 3 or above.

Limiting number in empire

mutually exclusive buildings/districts

restricting districts to terrain

have districts buff resources, improvements or features in the city, like deer get +2 food.


Would like to know if it is possible to:

Wondering if it's possible to check if city has a resource. Like if city has deer for example.

 

[Wolffleet]

Also flavorwise what should cities look like? Like how should a forest city be different from 1 in farmland? What should a city in the mountains look like? What about desert cities or those near lakes?

 

[Naeshar]

The whole point of districts was to give the cities a feeling of uniqueness. However this is diminished by the general strategy (no Holy Sites if no religious focus) and usefulness of generic districts like aqueducts. The fact we are able to construct 4 (different) specialty districts in a city makes the cities not specialized.
Also there is such a dramatic difference in biomes within one city (like tundra, snow and plains) that the city doesnt feel that specific. And I am really not talking about looks .

Just adding more districts. By default this creates variety.

Gating buildings behind high district adjacency. Like can only build x if adjacency is 3 or above.

Limiting number in empire

mutually exclusive buildings/districts

restricting districts to terrain

have districts buff resources, improvements or features in the city, like deer get +2 food.

More districts might be a solution, but also a feature bloat. How is a plains campus different from desert campus? Or a difference between a royal and provincial Stadium?
I cant think of a way to gate buildings to any adjacency. This also changes throughout the game.
Limiting number is totally possible ("MaxWorldInstances", "MaxPlayerInstances").
Mutually exclusive districts and buildings could be cool. Totally possible.
Restricting districts to terrain totally possible, but why? If there were different types of Campus or Encampment (e.g. a water Castle, coastal Fortress, Citadel) with different effects and buildings, I am all in. This would add feature bloat and confusion, though, that is why FXS did not do it yet.
Buffing resources, improvements and features in the city is totally possible (DistrictModifiers) through regular modifier mechanism.

Would like to know if it is possible to:

Wondering if it's possible to check if city has a resource. Like if city has deer for example.

Cannot find this. Sure it was in Civ5 and CivBE, as there were buildings possible only if the city had a specific resource, but I dont think that was fun. Especially with the weight of buildings in Civ6 this would be huge. You would build dozens of buildings in those games but here you re happy if you build ten.
You can only limit to an adjacent resource (like everyones favorite Henge)


Not bad, but needs ideas
I would consider unique districts (once per civ) or variations of an Encampment a good way. But would it matter enough?