Much more powerful large cities

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

In reality economy is not based around having massive amount of small cities with a campus to drive science, like who would have access to a campus tied to a small populated village anyway?

Many large cities tend to have much higher gdp per capita than national average which indicated that each pop in a large city should be more productive than in a small city (which is generally the case in 4x games but civilization VI is an exception).

Large cities require much more investment than a small city in civilization VI but the return on investment is simply too small and in order to be good in stuff like science and Culture you need to have alot of cities due to how districts and buildings work.

So Changes I suggest:

Population yield: +0.5 production and +1 gold. Population have often been forced to work on Projects so they giving a Little production make sense and would help large cities without good production tiles being more useful. The gold would represent taxes, people pay taxes. Overall this make raw population more useful.

Specialists: Inspired by old World they would no longer be free, but cost gold to educate but on other hand they would be much more powerful. Specalist would also have a large maintaince cost, that increase the more specialist a city have, so spreading them out have some advantages.

A specialist would not have a base yield but instead give:

• Scientist: +1 research per pop in the city
• Engineer: +1 production per pop in the city
• Merchant: +2 gold per pop in the city
• Artist: +1 culture per pop in the city
• Captain: +1 food, +2 commerce per worked sea/lake tile
• General: +2 production per pop towards units
• Priest: +1 faith per pop in the city
  
• Entertainer: New specialist based on entertainment district/water park, they would give +1 tourism per pop in the city and +1 amenity

I think this would best represent urbanization, by basing it on pops the large cities don't need good tiles which make alot of sense because resources can be transported to the city and I deal with trade routes later.

Changes to district:

A city would be able to have multiple of the same district, but can only build Another copy for each 4 districts built. So if you build 1 campus, you need to build 3 other districts Before building a second campus. This allow more city specalization.

Neighbourhoods would give a major adjacency bonus to all other district to represent close living space of workers to their workplace.

Change to buildings:

Instead of flat yields buildings would be more based around population and maybe terrain:
For example library could give +0.5 science per population, +1 science from marsh and rainforest tiles (which encourage keeping these around).

Change to trade route:
Their yield would no longer be so fixed but would be based on actual yield of the city, trading with a city that produce alot of food would make the trade route give alot of food. Trading with a city that produce alot of science would mean your traders would bring alot of knowledge back and thus increase your science (however they must be ahead in Techs for that to make sense).

 

[Sostratus]

Large cities require much more investment than a small city in civilization VI

This is not actually true on a per capita basis

but the return on investment is simply too small and in order to be good in stuff like science and Culture you need to have alot of cities due to how districts and buildings work.

Population yield: +0.5 production and +1 gold.

You want to avoid these kinds of things. Covering the map in small cities yield loosely the same total population capacity as fewer large cities. The large city needs to be more efficient per pop which is something you tried to target with your other changes. However, more smaller cities hits that cap faster than a big one does, so per pop bonuses are much better for them.

 

[Alucard648]

This is not actually true on a per capita basis



You want to avoid these kinds of things. Covering the map in small cities yield loosely the same total population capacity as fewer large cities. The large city needs to be more efficient per pop which is something you tried to target with your other changes. However, more smaller cities hits that cap faster than a big one does, so per pop bonuses are much better for them.

What about +(pop)^2/sqrt(pop) gpt yield?

 

[Aurelesk]

Since most yield come from district, some districts are better than others, and limited to 1 of the same district per city, if you want to focus on one victory: you have to spread out.

Bigger cities are harder to take (more Loyalty pressure, more CS per district...), but it is not great. One way to deal with this is have some kind of Administration cost. You know, when you double your staff you cannot double the work you will do. The reason is simple: you need a management to make sure that people are not doing twice the same work, or forgot to do some, because you also double the time about essential non productive activities like relayins important info.

You can see this in hospital that grow quickly. First a small staff of versatile people: doing the healthcare, secretary, planning the shift, monitoring the stocks... But the activities is growing and you hired more and more people. But you cannot work the same as before: relaying the infos take more time, the staff is spread, everyone is doing all the same side tasks but no body feel responsible about it, so it is starting to show more and more dysfunctionnement. Not that the new staff is worse: they still have the same "error" rate as before, but since you do twice as more work, then you also double the error. So it is where you start to hire people for specific task: secretary about all the paperwork, a manager for work information and stock... and if done not too poorly, it will be smoother.

You can have that kind of system: cities can face some penalties when you focus on certain things. The Capital can have 100% of his Science and Culture, but the more spread you are, the additionnal Science/Culture could face some lost cost, like a -20%, more or less if the cities is far from the Capital city, if the city have low population... and that percentage can be reduced by some civics, policies or technologies, like Guilds and Internet, or you can nullifies those loss by a Gold cost.

 

[The googles do nothing]

In reality economy is not based around having massive amount of small cities with a campus to drive science, like who would have access to a campus tied to a small populated village anyway?

Part of the problem is the bonus multiples to science you get are per campus specifically Natural Philosophy, part of Rationalism, and City Status bonus. You also are not paying any maintenance on that science.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

This is not actually true on a per capita basis
You want to avoid these kinds of things. Covering the map in small cities yield loosely the same total population capacity as fewer large cities. The large city needs to be more efficient per pop which is something you tried to target with your other changes. However, more smaller cities hits that cap faster than a big one does, so per pop bonuses are much better for them.

Which is why I added cost to specialists. Civilization VI encourage ICS to maximize the amount of cities you have instead of quality of each city, which was the goal of city placement in past civ games. Large cities in my change would become alot more efficient since you only need to build 1 set of infrastructure to reach the same productivity per pop and also specialist would become much more effective, since their effects would be based on population of the city.

 

[Sirsquier]

This is a really cool idea and I'd love it in the game