Map Size and preferred Distance between cities in Civ6?

[JtW]

I agree that there should be a way to transfer districts from one city to another - possibly the same way you transfer ownership of tile improvements.

 

[AriochIV]

I agree that there should be a way to transfer districts from one city to another - possibly the same way you transfer ownership of tile improvements.

That would mean swapping buildings between cities... since they're unique per city, that just wouldn't work.

I'm guessing that there will be an option to bulldoze a district, but that's the only way I can see to transfer a district tile from one city to another.

 

[historix69]

That would mean swapping buildings between cities... since they're unique per city, that just wouldn't work.

I'm guessing that there will be an option to bulldoze a district, but that's the only way I can see to transfer a district tile from one city to another.

(Speculation
As far as I know, each city may build/own each district only once. So if that kind of district is not present in city#2, why not swap the tiles.

The alternative would be to bulldoze the tile, swap empty tile and rebuild the tile afterwards which would be absolutely nonsense.

Therefore I suppose that the min distance between cities may prevent such situations, so probably no overlap of city regions.

 

[AriochIV]

As far as I know, each city may build/own each district only once. So if that kind of district is not present in city#2, why not swap the tiles.

One of the main goals of districts is to make city specialization an interesting choice. If you can swap your maxed-out research Campus between cities at will, I think that works against this principle (in addition to being a bit weird).

 

[Eklabiaan]

But if a district is built at an equal distance from two cities, how do you solve which city gets to 'own' it? <SNAP> but I'd like to have the possibility of switching districts between cities.
<SNAP>
I'm curious as to how they've resolved this; as far as I can see, all potential solutions have some problems associated with them.

In CiV an overlapping tile can be switched from the Fat Hex of one city to the Fat Hex of the other city. I suspect that same mechanic will be used to solve this issue. Just switch a tile. IF the adjacency rules allow it... And if the district is as of yet empty.
As Arioch stated switching buildings by switching a district is weird and opens up a lot of exploits.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

A district tile is locked to the city that built the district. That seems pretty straightforward.

You mean the city where the builder came from? Or are districts built directly from the city and not by builders like improvements? I must've missed that.

Regardless, a problem arises when you have a few tightly placed cities and there are districts that are equally distanced from both of them. How do you remember which city owns which district? Even if you can remember it, it's an extra 'tax on the brain' that shouldn't exist, imo. Have there been any icons in the screenshots we've seen so far that would indicate which district(s) belong to which city?

EDIT: No overlap between cities seems a bit of a drastic solution, to say the least... With a three-ring 'fat cross' (I'm kind of sad to see the end of that age-old Civ term with the hexes ) and no overlap allowed, there will be a lot of peninsulas and such that cannot be claimed by otherwise optimally placed cities. There must be some better solution. No districts possible in the outer ring would be too limiting, because iirc at least the military district cannot be built in the first ring, leaving only the 2nd ring available for it if this were to be the case.

EDIT2: I forgot that the City View no longer exists, and all the info can be seen directly on the map screen by clicking the city's central tile. This may well shrink the problem down to manageable levels, unless you go out of your way to cram many districts from many cities in the same small area. (As a side note, I think this change -- getting rid of the constant flip-flopping between map and city screen -- will be a true Eureka moment for many fans when they'll play their first game. You don't really realize how unnecessary and disorienting it is until you get rid of it, I suspect.)

 

[AriochIV]

You mean the city where the builder came from? Or are districts built directly from the city and not by builders like improvements? I must've missed that.

Districts are built by the city just like buildings, not by builder units. There's never any question of which city owns each district.

The mouse-over tooltip on a district tells you which city it belongs to. Though the city view is gone, there is probably some UI element which shows you which buildings and districts have been constructed in a particular city (though we haven't see it yet).

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Districts are built by the city just like buildings, not by builder units. There's never any question of which city owns each district.

The mouse-over tooltip on a district tells you which city it belongs to. Though the city view is gone, there is probably some UI element which shows you which buildings and districts have been constructed in a particular city (though we haven't see it yet).

Spoiler :

Thanks for that screenshot. So at least you can tell the owner by a simple mouse-over; and probably also when you click on the city tile, all the districts that are 'owned' by that city will be highlighted.

If the areas of two cities can overlap, this will mean that a district can be closer to another city than to its 'owning' city. I wonder if you can also tell who owns the districts near enemy cities, because otherwise there might be some surprises... When you think that you've shut down London's military district, turns out that it was York's instead, and London's keeps spamming units!

Anyway, I'm sure most such kinks of the interface will be ironed out before release. And if not, there's always mods to the rescue. I wouldn't play Civ V without the Info Addict mod, for example.

 

[Felis Renidens]

I still don't see why not get a bonus from putting York's campus next to London's holy site. Won't the learned man of York talk to the clerics from London just because those are two different cities?

And I think it should be same with a triangle of farms. The triangle should be more effective even if only one of the tiles get actually worked, or two worked by two cities.

 

[JtW]

I still don't see why not get a bonus from putting York's campus next to London's holy site. Won't the learned man of York talk to the clerics from London just because those are two different cities?

And I think it should be same with a triangle of farms. The triangle should be more effective even if only one of the tiles get actually worked, or two worked by two cities.

Agreed on both accounts.

Also: I don't see why you guys see moving a district to another city as weird. It is not unheard of to artificially change city borders in real life, and you could simply have a rule that a duplicated building is ignored (so if you have two libraries in a city after a swap, you only get the bonus for one.) That is assuming that you really can only have one building per city. Have they confirmed it anywhere? Maybe you can have one building per district now?

 

[Felis Renidens]

Because I don't see it from "real life" perspective but from a game perspective. Districts are basically buildings that are grouped together on a map tile.

So no two districts of the same type in one city in any way (a district is a building, so no duplicated buildings means no duplicated districts). But if there is no such district in the city I don't think transferring buildings from city to city is good. If I want one city to help other cities build their districts I'll send production via trade route.

 

[Jimdigriz]

Hope we get even huger maps for my Marathon games.

No other way to play it for me.

 

[ftl]

Yeah, it seems weird to move districts between cities because they have buildings on them. The Library is actually going to be in the campus district. So it would be a huge change if you could build a building in one city, and then give it to another city by changing its ownership!

 

[historix69]

I recently started a new game of Civ5 on a giant world map marathon (with mods) with lots of free space to settle in africa ... and I noticed once again that from the look and feel of the Civ5 map I would naturally place cities in a small range of maybe 4 tiles :
city - 3 tiles empty - city - 3 tiles empty - city
For small cities below size 10 in ancient and classic era, this would look fine, would give fast access to all resource tiles and would effectively block AI from settling inside your claim. However cities placed so close have a huge overlap of about 50% territory, have all the penaltes, double upkeep, low pop, etc. and therefore in the end are less profitable. So I went with the wider spacing with 5-7 free tiles inbetween depending on geography and resources. Since small cities in Civ5BNW usually have small culture production compared to the capital with palace, wonders, etc. it takes forever for the cities to claim their 36 tiles (especially on marathon) ... the map now looks like an archipelago, most tiles between cities are not claimed. It looks unnatural. (Cities without overlap at the north african coast are Tunis (Karthago) - Tripolis - Bengasi - Port Said (Suez-canal))

I think one of the problems with tile-acquisition in Civ5 is that a city starts with one ring (6 tiles of 36 tiles) and the other 30 tiles have to be acquired one-by-one with increasing costs. (culture/cash) Civ3 and Civ4 instead used a culture range around the city, so usually already after around 10 turns(?) of culture production, a city had control of the 2nd ring / the full fat cross. Civ3 and Civ4 allowed spacing in 4-5 tiles distance without overlap.

The interesting questions for Civ6 are :
Minimum City Distance?
What happens when I place cities in 4 tiles distance with lots of overlap?
How fast will cities aquire new tiles (via culture?)?
Will there be a lot of unclaimed land between cities for a long time?
Can other players settle inbetween my citys if claim of tiles via culture is too slow?
Will cities in optimal spacing with 6-8 tiles distance look natural/good?