Metagame - Tile improvement and housing focus actually better than rushing secondary districts?

[Bliss]

I'm sorry if this is a no-brainer for others here, or if I'm actually very mistaken in this regard, but this forum is called "General Discussion" so I want to bring a subject. I just had this game as Rome... and as it should be, I gave a lot of love to Baths, and not only, but also to granaries, regular watermills and lots of lots of builders which built a lot of improvements - specially the ones that provide housing. I did this until it got too much suboptimal and only then I started to worry about "secondary districts". And it turns out that I got very happy with the result: the cities got waaay taller than the usual size of 10 (for optimal policy card picking) and were producing lots of yields with the proper happiness management.

"What so?" you might ask. Well, until now, in all my games I actually postponed growth until more population was needed to unlock a new district. Since I had this view that districts are all very powerful and they should all be built asap, I didn't actually think much about the implications of all this. It seems that a LOT of the struggle I used to have with peaceful deity games is kind of gone now. The only district that I set as a rule for me to build ASAP is a Campus and then... all others can wait. I now focused much more on producing builders and get decent cities before anything else and the result was that I got much more of EVERYTHING in the midgame and endgame. I even got the science lead much more earlier than the usual.

If you really think about it, besides science, everything else is achievable without a district.
Campus - absolutely needed: science = better tiles, better defense and better versatility.
Holy District - only the first one is very important if you want to secure a religion.
Encampment - totally postponable (except vanilla)
Theater District - postponable - there are plenty of other sources to culture.
Commercial Hub/Harbor - postponable - you can sell luxuries and strategic resources for gold if you really need it (ok, exception for coastal cities).
Industrial Zone - postponable - unless your buildings start to need power
Entertainment Complex - postponable - unless you need amenities for yesterday - but should only happen when your cities are already very big.

All these postponable districts could all become production and population instead thanks to builders, and population equals even more production and also science, culture and gold - which are always useful and can be easily changed according to need.

My point is not that districts are bad and you should only build campuses. Don't get me wrong, please. It is just that... what is really mandatory in this game? Well, in the other versions, workers and population were always your main infrastructure and I kinda feel that I got it wrong in this game. Maybe builders and population are still the main infrastructure of your empire and districts are there only to help.

Oh, btw, maybe +2 housing aqueducts aren't bad too.

 

[enKage]

I would not call harbors/CH postponable. +1 trader is too strong to postpone. I would postpone campus if no good adj, but never CH/harbors, especially that they benefit from golden age only till medieval

 

[iammaxhailme]

Regardless of my victory type, harbor/commercial hub is usually the first or second district I build in most cities after the first handful (who usually start with a campus or holy site/theater)

 

[Sostratus]

As a tile, the speciality district doesn’t take pop to work and produces better yields than any improvement can.
And by district I mean literally any specialty district except the amenity ones if you don’t need them.
So you would want to tend to increase the output of your tiles worked; this means having enough improvements for your citizens and using districts since you get a better tile AND the citizen can go work a different tile.

This is all because of the flat yield of buildings. Would you rather have a flat grassland with a farm or an encampment with up to 8 production AND the citizen working a different grassland farm? Obviously you’d choose the district option until you run out of tiles to work. But it takes a long time for that to happen. And you’ll “hit the ceiling” way faster with districts.

 

[Bliss]

I would not call harbors/CH postponable. +1 trader is too strong to postpone. I would postpone campus if no good adj, but never CH/harbors, especially that they benefit from golden age only till medieval

Regardless of my victory type, harbor/commercial hub is usually the first or second district I build in most cities after the first handful (who usually start with a campus or holy site/theater)

As a tile, the speciality district doesn’t take pop to work and produces better yields than any improvement can.
And by district I mean literally any specialty district except the amenity ones if you don’t need them.
So you would want to tend to increase the output of your tiles worked; this means having enough improvements for your citizens and using districts since you get a better tile AND the citizen can go work a different tile.

This is all because of the flat yield of buildings. Would you rather have a flat grassland with a farm or an encampment with up to 8 production AND the citizen working a different grassland farm? Obviously you’d choose the district option until you run out of tiles to work. But it takes a long time for that to happen. And you’ll “hit the ceiling” way faster with districts.

Yeah but lets see the (not cheap) cost of the district (with no adjacency bonus) + market/lightouse + trader and the time for it to pay itself:
54 production (hub) + 120 production (market/lightouse) + 80 from trader : 254 total.
If we convert it to gold... we need 1,016 gold to pay for the district itself. Assuming a good trate route that produces 15 gold early on +3 from the market... we will pay the district and start profting after 56 turns (!).

Meanwhile, a builder could be built with 80 production and generate you 3 to 10 hammers, paying itself after 8 to 27 turns.

 

[Sostratus]

Yeah but lets see the (not cheap) cost of the district (with no adjacency bonus) + market/lightouse + trader and the time for it to pay itself:
54 production (hub) + 120 production (market/lightouse) + 80 from trader : 254 total.
If we convert it to gold... we need 1,016 gold to pay for the district itself. Assuming a good trate route that produces 15 gold early on +3 from the market... we will pay the district and start profting after 56 turns (!).

Meanwhile, a builder could be built with 80 production and generate you 3 to 10 hammers, paying itself after 8 to 27 turns.

You can’t bank production and you can’t build growth. If you could this would be totally different.
Because of that fact, you can’t keep reinvesting that quick builder ROI. So you end up with a huge lag where the best thing to build is those districts- better than pushing unneeded military units, or running projects with a 15% conversion rate.
At best you can argue that the first thing a new city should do is put out a builder, but you really almost always want those districts when you can get them.

 

[Bliss]

You can’t bank production and you can’t build growth. If you could this would be totally different.
Because of that fact, you can’t keep reinvesting that quick builder ROI. So you end up with a huge lag where the best thing to build is those districts- better than pushing unneeded military units, or running projects with a 15% conversion rate.
At best you can argue that the first thing a new city should do is put out a builder, but you really almost always want those districts when you can get them.

What about building even more builders for future (they don't have a maintenance cost) and Granaries/Watermills/Aqueducts/Sewers? That seems like stocked production/growth

 

[Sostratus]

What about building even more builders for future (they don't have a maintenance cost) and Granaries/Watermills/Aqueducts/Sewers? That seems like stocked production/growth

The problem is that the builders aren't doing anything until the city grows. You should ideally always be doing something productive/that contributes to your capacity to win. Now, that sounds very hard line, but we can also point out two key facts:
-Builders become much cheaper at Feudalism and Civil Engineering due to cards. So builder charges tend to be cheaper to make later int he game.
-Districts, conversely, get more expensive as time goes on (up to 10x more expensive!)
Thus, if we plan on needing a certain number of districts and improvements to win, we would hope to have the districts built asap when they are cheapo, and put up improvements only as the city needs them, so that we shift more of those charges towards the serfdom/public works part of the game away from the comparatively expensive early part.

 

[Akawashi]

Yeah but lets see the (not cheap) cost of the district (with no adjacency bonus) + market/lightouse + trader and the time for it to pay itself:
54 production (hub) + 120 production (market/lightouse) + 80 from trader : 254 total.
If we convert it to gold... we need 1,016 gold to pay for the district itself. Assuming a good trate route that produces 15 gold early on +3 from the market... we will pay the district and start profting after 56 turns (!).

Meanwhile, a builder could be built with 80 production and generate you 3 to 10 hammers, paying itself after 8 to 27 turns.

Usually you wanna districts. Doing math about turns to pay off is always dependant on situation in the game. Example: 1 production can sometimes get you 1 turn earlier crucial things like Ruhr Valley. It means you won't get 1, but maybe even 20+ production. Then you will get somehing else one or two turns earlier and so on.
There are few things you did not count anyway:
1. Adjacency (not only CH - possible adjacent districts too)
2. GPP
3. City state bonuses (+2 for 3rd envoy/and some suzerains)
4. Hub cost scale (and can be discounted)
5. Every built district counts towards possible discount for next.
6. Flexibility of trade routes - you can send food/production to cities lacking them (and building districts means you get more from them). International routes can be send from cities with best % bonuses (this can be stacked really hard)
7. Possible cards, Reyna, dedications

@Sostratus - You forgot districts can be placed down and cost is locked (still not building it breaks discounts).

 

[Tabarnak]

Modifiers from government cards are far more important than population modifiers. That's why districts cannot be ignored.

As mentionned, trade routes are great kick starters for new cities or with low production.

 

[Sostratus]

@Sostratus - You forgot districts can be placed down and cost is locked (still not building it breaks discounts).

I didn’t forget this- but the primary thrust of the OP (building districts later) doesn’t make much sense if you allow large swaths of your land to be a bunch of unfinished districts, because either
1) you have mostly good terrain that under the proposed strategy would be worked as improvements, and then later converted
2) you have enough marginal terrain that placing these districts isn’t a problem. In which case, you SHOULD pursue a district heavy approach because your terrain isn’t very good for this strategy in the first place. Thus you’d not want to leave those districts unfinished for too long.

I do take advantage of it as much as I can but I generally find they are at most 1-2 items back in the queue. The actual upside as a % cost savings is highest in the early game, when you have the fewest cities and thus the fewest opportunities to leverage this exploit.

 

[Disgustipated]

Another meta game question, do you immediately go into building tier 1 and 2 buildings after finishing your district? I do, but only because I'm OCD about districts that aren't "finished". I do on occasion make exceptions if something else is more important.

As for tile improvements, in my style of play, there is something inherently satisfying about large cities. I'm talking cities over size 20 and 25. But that's a personal preference. Even if it is more optimum to leave cities at size 10, I can never do it. There's more to this game than just a victory screen, or time to victory. As for secondary districts, they can be pretty important. Often my secondary district is a commercial hub or harbor, and often I find I need those quickly because gold income can be bad when you are supporting your army and primary district buildings. Usually what I do is intersperse my builders in between districts to try to avoid working unimproved tiles. Unfortunately this is a weakness in my game in that I tend to run serfdom/public works for much of the game even though it's more optimum to run it for short times. I find myself needing builders all throughout the game.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Commercial Hub/Harbor - postponable - you can sell luxuries and strategic resources for gold if you really need it (ok, exception for coastal cities).

This is the big difference in play styles. I don't sell my resources unless the AI asks for them and I want to accept their deal. I'm for every one playing the way they want... but without maxing out trade deals I don't think most terrain and improvement will yield enough gold.

 

[Bliss]

The problem is that the builders aren't doing anything until the city grows.

This is the key point here. I suggest getting builders and housing buildings exactly for this reason. They snowball themselves into growth and more production, which leads to future districts (and everything else) much faster to be produced.
I do not consider districts useless or "non-mandatory"... just "postponable". This is the key here, to build them when your city is already churning out everything with strong production due to insane growth.
You should really give thing a try. An army of builders and optimal tiles beforehand and precious care for housing.

Usually you wanna districts. Doing math about turns to pay off is always dependant on situation in the game. Example: 1 production can sometimes get you 1 turn earlier crucial things like Ruhr Valley. It means you won't get 1, but maybe even 20+ production. Then you will get somehing else one or two turns earlier and so on.
There are few things you did not count anyway:
1. Adjacency (not only CH - possible adjacent districts too)
2. GPP
3. City state bonuses (+2 for 3rd envoy/and some suzerains)
4. Hub cost scale (and can be discounted)
5. Every built district counts towards possible discount for next.
6. Flexibility of trade routes - you can send food/production to cities lacking them (and building districts means you get more from them). International routes can be send from cities with best % bonuses (this can be stacked really hard)
7. Possible cards, Reyna, dedications

@Sostratus - You forgot districts can be placed down and cost is locked (still not building it breaks discounts).

Yeah I just pointed a simple example to give a general idea. Check my answer above. I don't imply that districts are uneeded... just they could be delayed for a focus on growth and production first, that is much more efficient. Please I want you guys to give it a try. You will be building secondary districts, of course, just not in the first available time. I recommend to build only after you run out of thinkgs for your builders to do, like general improving but also housing management.

Another meta game question, do you immediately go into building tier 1 and 2 buildings after finishing your district? I do, but only because I'm OCD about districts that aren't "finished". I do on occasion make exceptions if something else is more important.

As for tile improvements, in my style of play, there is something inherently satisfying about large cities. I'm talking cities over size 20 and 25. But that's a personal preference. Even if it is more optimum to leave cities at size 10, I can never do it. There's more to this game than just a victory screen, or time to victory. As for secondary districts, they can be pretty important. Often my secondary district is a commercial hub or harbor, and often I find I need those quickly because gold income can be bad when you are supporting your army and primary district buildings. Usually what I do is intersperse my builders in between districts to try to avoid working unimproved tiles. Unfortunately this is a weakness in my game in that I tend to run serfdom/public works for much of the game even though it's more optimum to run it for short times. I find myself needing builders all throughout the game.

That's very difficult to answer. I usually build them because they tend to be more advanced, thus more powerful. However, my city/empire maybe could better benefit from a cheaper building that will come online faster. E.g. a market instead of a research lab, or a monument instead of a university, for a city that need border growth asap.

This is the big difference in play styles. I don't sell my resources unless the AI asks for them and I want to accept their deal. I'm for every one playing the way they want... but without maxing out trade deals I don't think most terrain and improvement will yield enough gold.

Sure man, I'm just theorycrafting if builders are more meta than districts.

 

[Sostratus]

This is the key point here. I suggest getting builders and housing buildings exactly for this reason. They snowball themselves into growth and more production, which leads to future districts (and everything else) much faster to be produced.
I do not consider districts useless or "non-mandatory"... just "postponable". This is the key here, to build them when your city is already churning out everything with strong production due to insane growth.
You should really give thing a try. An army of builders and optimal tiles beforehand and precious care for housing.

I'm not someone who particularly enjoys the hardcore science/domination meta, I prefer building. Believe me, I overvalue improvements intentionally. The only virtue is more production!! I have played Rome (and many others) similar to your OP more than once.
The tradeoff really isn't that strong because you can have both districts and growth. Like I said earlier, there's no "build growth" project like in Civ:BE (the joys of al falah in BERT...) Like, I can have farms and aqueducts etc and I can put down districts. The only reason that would be impaired is if i don't have enough land to work with to begin with, which again - if you lack land then the city should either not be terrain oriented or you should accept that it likely won't get very big (unless you're indonesia or something.) The only thing land gives you that districts don't is food - districts are better at making production, gold, science, culture, faith, even housing eventually.
Districts don't take pop to work so you can have all of the above. The number of times a city is too production limited to keep up with infrastructure are less common toward the earlier part of the game (where this kind of strat matters) and heavily skewed to coastal or flat cities which would not have good production with growth anyways and need districts to produce.
I get that there are those weirdos who insist on precisely minimizing each city to just barely get rationalism and then no more, etc, but I'm just assuming you keep growing cities up to their natural cap.
I 100% agree that it is almost always worth making sure a city isn't working unimproved tiles, the payoff from a builder charge is big.
This debate seems more relevant if you restrict to civs like inca, aussie, cree who have improvements that really synergize with what you are talking about.

 

[Bliss]

The tradeoff really isn't that strong because you can have both districts and growth. Like I said earlier, there's no "build growth" project like in Civ:BE (the joys of al falah in BERT...) Like, I can have farms and aqueducts etc and I can put down districts. The only reason that would be impaired is if i don't have enough land to work with to begin with, which again

Hm... interesting. I had a different experience, maybe cause I have been playing with Online Speed only? I don't feel like I have enough time for everything. Districts, city center buildings, enough builders... I'm always picking only one. The only times I feel like I'm having "enough time" to build everything is actually when I have small cities and they don't have enough population for new districts or don't need any new land improvement.

TBH the only reason why I created this thread is exactly because I always felt overwhelmed by the speed of the game and the "if I take this, I need to give up on that" mentality. But maybe I forgot how standard game is more timeful?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Your main district is going to be influenced what districts you are going to make. But yes, whatever district matches your win condition tends to be way more important than the others. (well domination and science are more or less the same route)

Although it has little to do with housing and growth; expansion and then getting districts tends to be stronger.