diamond geezer
Warlord
Surely a CD becomes a priority when you get a trade route slot; it also becomes a priority when you need gold; at other times it's not a priority, but that still leaves it being a priority quite a large % of the time.
Must you build a Commercial District in every city? Are they really that OP?
- Thread starter Victoria
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I miss the meaning of your first bit with slots. CD gives you trade route 'slots'?
It does not become a priority when you need gold, you have short term cards like merchant federation.
Does anyone use 'The third alterative' policy?
Double CD adjacency for a short time ?
Thank you for entertaining me @WileyWilson , let me know how it goes plz.
Actually, every Commercial District (and Harbor) creates a new spot for trader units to run trade routes.
And most trade routes are internal to provide hammers & food.
In addition, unless it's end game you can always use more gold on something (cash building units or buildings if your army is already up to date)
rschissler
King
The ability to add more trade routes, and what they give, makes it a priority for me to build CH's in every city!
WackenOpenAir
Deity
"Do i really need that much money?"
Just use it !
You may need nothing at all, but would you want to have 500 extra production per turn ?
If you invest those 38k in purchasing stuff that gives production, you likely get 500 extra production. Or science or culture if you need that more. Or, if your cities have everything built already, units to capture more cities.....
Unused money in the bank is a sin in strategy games. (unless its part of a particular strategy where you are saving for something important and except for a small amount that gives you flexibility to rushbuy units in emergencies))
Just use it !
You may need nothing at all, but would you want to have 500 extra production per turn ?
If you invest those 38k in purchasing stuff that gives production, you likely get 500 extra production. Or science or culture if you need that more. Or, if your cities have everything built already, units to capture more cities.....
Unused money in the bank is a sin in strategy games. (unless its part of a particular strategy where you are saving for something important and except for a small amount that gives you flexibility to rushbuy units in emergencies))
WileyWilson
Chieftain
Yeah, if I "needed" to buy anything by this point in the game, I would. However I can win a DV at any point in 2 turns. So I question whether I went overboard on micro-managing and went OTT on CDs.
WackenOpenAir
Deity
Well, i guess we are talking about a different kind of universe then.
I would say if you are aiming for another victory condition, spend your money on achieving that.
I would say you may be playing too easy a difficulty level if there is no challenge at all.
I would say, if you play like that and dont really care about challanges or winning, why would you care that you built too many CDs ?
But ye, im sure it makes sense in your play style
I would say if you are aiming for another victory condition, spend your money on achieving that.
I would say you may be playing too easy a difficulty level if there is no challenge at all.
I would say, if you play like that and dont really care about challanges or winning, why would you care that you built too many CDs ?
But ye, im sure it makes sense in your play style
WileyWilson
Chieftain
As per my original post, Deity level here. Also playing with AI+V9.
WackenOpenAir
Deity
Ok well, then i guess you must be right and lots of gold income is good for nothing, it just sits there being useless so better not build too many CDs.
kaspergm
Deity
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There's a lot of discussion going on here, and that's always nice to follow, but I think some people here take things a bit too literally. I don't think there's any exact strategy that always works, so discussing whether the optimal is having 13, 14 or 15 commercial districts might be taking things a bit too far. But that's just my opinion. As I see it, the point about CDs is not so much whether you *must* have one in all cities, because in the current state of the game, there's nothing you *must* do to win. In fact, up to at least emperor, you can do pretty much anything and win, if you don't succumb to a very early rush. I regularly get by with quite few CDs, although that's clearly sub-optimal for a number of reasons. The problem with CDs is that it's so rarely a *bad* idea to build one - even if you don't exactly need one, you'll generally always find good use of the extra trade route. And that's not great from a game design point of view, because that takes out the strategic aspect. Fortunately, game is still quite early, and I will say it speaks to the developer's credit that they have actually managed to make many of the districts not universally needed, which is a good start. Hopefully they'll come up with some twist on the CD to make it less universal in its use.
Judging by what everyone is saying that they are experiencing, it seems they simply need to make the number of trade routes available a function of the total number of districts you have collectively, instead of the total number of commercial hubs + harbors.
But if we're talking about changing the rules to diversify strategy, they should probably just remove the link between number of districts and available trade routes. Make the number of trade routes available a function of something else, and preferably make it something that makes it possible for taller, narrower empires to have more (significantly more) trade routes than a wide empire. The tall vs. wide strategies are greatly unbalanced as it is, and I think if taller/narrower empires were able to support significantly more trade routes, that would be a good way to balance those two approaches. Yes, I know that there have been several videos posted by great players showing that narrow empires can be successful, but if played equally well a wider empire generally performs better, significantly better, than a narrow one. Granted, I do prefer this way over civ5 where the opposite was the case, but I think the goal of civ5 was to make it so that either approach was viable; neither was almost universally better, and they still haven't released that game yet, which I'd like to play.
My proposal for trade routes is that you start with 1 route, and then for specific amounts of trading posts that you have set around the world, you get more routes. So essentially the number of trade routes you can get becomes a function of the number of cities in the world. It would also encourage external routes, since you would need to complete routes to new cities to be able to get more routes.
As for my game that I tried with no commercial districts, I was last place in score on about turn 175, but in the end, I ended up winning by space on turn 325 (better play I'm sure I could have ended sooner). So it's certainly possible to win without them, but I definitely would have lost against competent AI.
-My 2 neighbours were Russia and Sumeria. Sumeria probably completed the tech tree like 50 turns before me, and was leading in score, and cities. If they had declared war on me when they were 2 tech eras ahead, I would have been wiped out. Similarly, Russia could have run roughshot over me with Cossacks, although in the end I was allied with them for the last 100+ turns of the game. And I do have to say, Feed the World + Meeting houses was pretty awesome - holy sites giving 6 food/2 cogs, plus all the faith? Not bad.
-I maxed out at about +80 to +100 gold per turn, at one point where I was a little friendly and had a bunch of luxury sales. Right at the end, I had a few turns getting negative gold, but I had enough banked and was running policies just to give me more to build my spaceship pieces.
-I also could have easily lost had either Russia or Sumeria gone all-out for culture. They were both well ahead of me, until fairly late when I started to get all my archaeology museums online. Although maybe since both were going strong at it, they just couldn't pull ahead enough to make it work.
-Sumeria came close in science victory too - they had all the techs and one of the Mars projects launched. Although I can't help but think that the fact that their capital was size 9, with about 15 ziggurats next to it, they weren't doing very well at optimising their tile improvements.
-Japan is pretty awesome. I never built a samurai, hardly used their coastal bonus, but district clustering just makes it insane. I had industrial zones in every city, and every one of them was at least a +4, with a couple of them being a full +6. Plus the fact that all my holy sites/campuses/theatres were all +4 or more each definitely helps. Even getting the extra 1-2 adjacency for harbors is a nice bonus too.
-I think the other thing with getting commerce districts everywhere is that policy cards really do benefit going all in. Doubling adjacency/building output means that you're wasting a policy card if you don't have a district in every city, so if my choice is building a double-power commerce hub or a regular encampment, there's really no question which one you choose, again, not even counting the trade route you get from it.
kaspergm
Deity
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I agree that the tight link between trade routes and commercial districts (and harbors) needs to be loosened, but I'm strongly against a mechanism that gives narrow empires more routes than wide empires. Not only will that be a step back towards the narrow >> wide nonsense of Civ5, it will also be catastrophical seen in the light of the role traders play in developing infrastructure (something which, imo., is not a good feature of the game, but until that is changed or fixed ...).
I was thinking in another direction. Another problem with trade routes now are that internal trade routes are incredibly much better than international trade routes. So my thought was to split trade routes into different types. For convenience, let's call them:
- Gold routes
- Food routes
- Production routes
The "gold routes" would work similarly to the Civ5 trade routes, i.e. provide gold and possibly bonus science, culture and faith depending on the districts at the target location. Gold yield would be significantly higher when going to foreign lands. The number of gold routes you can support will be limited by your number of commercial districts.
The "food routes" would transfer food from one city to another. It would no longer be the "mana from heaven" mechanism of Civ5/Civ6. Such a mechanism actually makes sense in Civ6 (imo.) because the farm adjacency mechanism means you can have hubs that produce huge surplus of food which could then be distributed to other cities to increase growth. The number of food routes you can support will be limited by your number of "food districts". The food district will be a rework of the aqueduct system, which currently is not well implemented imo. I'll try to provide some thoughts about that below.
The "production routes" would transfer production from one city to another. Again, it would no longer be a "mana from heaven" mechanism. The number of production routes you can support will be limited by your number of industrial districts. Because this change will be a big change in how production works, this would be linked to a general cut in production costs of items, something which is needed anyway, because production costs are horribly high in the game as it is.
About the "food district"/changed aqueduct district, here are some thoughts about it:
- The aqueduct will be a building that goes into the district and works as it is now, with same placement rules.
- The will be a later-game alternative to the aqueduct (waterwork? pumping station?) that will provide fresh water without the placement rules of the aqueduct. Comes with Sanitation tech.
- Other buildings could go into it. Not necessarily the granary (probably fine to leave that as a universal building in early game), but stuff like that.
- Gets bonus food from adjacent farms and plantations.
There's a WHOLE LOT of breathing room there. Again, my intention is to drive the game towards a point where wide=narrow, they are both viable and equally effective options (which seemed to be the whole point of civ5, they just overshot the mark by miles.) I agree completely that civ5 was WAY too far on one end of the wide/narrow spectrum, but civ 6 is almost as far in the opposite direction of that spectrum. Making it so that taller empires could have more trade routes than wider empires would certainly add weight to one side of the scale, but it's on the side that needs it... pretty desperately. Even if that change was incorporated, wider empires would still have more production centers, more total population (which means more science and culture from citizens, more production and gold from tiles), more total districts, more CS bonuses to those districts.... wider empires would still be more powerful, there is much more that would have to be done to make narrower empires equal to wider ones, let alone what you fear of them becoming better.
Also, I'm not talking about taking trade routes away from wide empires entirely. Rather, a narrow empire becomes capable of having more, which helps to compensate for ALL the other bonuses a wide empire has. Some formula where the end result would be something like:
-1 city empire (OCC) could have 25 trade routes
-4 city empire (narrow) could have 12 trade routes
-20 city empire (wide) could have 5 trade routes.
With the rest of the rules as they are, the 20 city empire would likely still outperform the 4 city empire if played with equal competency, and both would still outperform the 1 city empire.
But that was just an idea I was spit-balling. I think there needs to be more balance between taller vs. wider empires. There also needs to be more balance between peaceful and aggressive playstyles, so perhaps having a more peaceful playstyle could be rewarded with more trade routes.
I can't endorse the proposal of having three different types of trade routes. While this is a game where the players crave a great deal of depth, having three different types of routes seems to unnecessarily complicate things. Also, if we're going to have different types of TR linked to different districts, why not use that opportunity to increase the value of theater square districts as most consider them unnecessary outside of a certain victory condition? I also agree that the whole mana-from-heaven thing is a little silly from a role-playing perspective, but can be somewhat rationalized by pooling resources from different areas becoming more efficient; a "whole is more than the sum of its parts" thing. It also seems necessary, because investing hammers or gold into a product (trader) whose purpose is to increase effectiveness of hammers or gold, but having the end result be no net gain of hammers or gold seems like a poor investment. I can see situations where it may be useful, such as a city perfectly situated with nothing but plains/hills three tiles deep in every direction could use a food route, but having it so that trade routes don't add but rather redistribute makes all trade routes only situationally useful.
I'm not completely against the food district concept, but the idea would need quite a bit of polishing. It seems awkward that a district would have no placement restrictions (or different placement restrictions) than one of the buildings inside of it, and as you mention a later building could be created which removes that placement restriction? What are the placement restrictions of the later district?
Finally, subdividing trade routes so that you can fine-tune and send food here and production there would seem to have more benefit to empires that have more distinct cities with more specific local map-yield strengths and weaknesses, than it would an empire that has more generalized cities that can cover their own yields, which is to say that it would benefit wide empires more than it would tall empires, adding more strength to what is already the OP style of play.
Lanthar
SPQR
I would argue that Civilization VI already is on the verge of too much micromanagement - splitting trade routes into multiple sub types pushes the game into Paradox territory. We already have units sub-classed out more than before, including a completely new style of combat (religious). With the focus on wide empires, there's a greater number of cities to micromanage. In late game, I find trade route management to be a chore, there's just too many of them. If I then had to worry about 3 different kinds of trade routes...uff da!
I would also argue that there is very little that can be done with Civilization VI to make tall empires competitive very often. Unlike Civ V, and I am a fan of their attempt to make both tall and wide empires competitive, Civ VI is so tied into districts and population, that I don't see how it can ever make tall empires too competitive without a large overhaul. I did enjoy the strategic flexibility of the Civ V setup (Loved playing as Venice for a change of pace), and will miss that kind of thing in Civ VI.
I would also argue that there is very little that can be done with Civilization VI to make tall empires competitive very often. Unlike Civ V, and I am a fan of their attempt to make both tall and wide empires competitive, Civ VI is so tied into districts and population, that I don't see how it can ever make tall empires too competitive without a large overhaul. I did enjoy the strategic flexibility of the Civ V setup (Loved playing as Venice for a change of pace), and will miss that kind of thing in Civ VI.
WackenOpenAir
Deity
trade routes is only a part of the bigger whole. the game needs to be balanced, not just the trade routes.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rebalancing-suggestions.610285/#post-14654373
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/rebalancing-suggestions.610285/#post-14654373
Magil
Monarch
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Personally I'd rather we didn't start the "tall versus wide" thing in Civ VI again, or have another thread dedicated to discussing it. Just keep that nonsense out of Civ VI imo. The Civ games prior to V never concerned themselves with it and I don't see why VI should.
WackenOpenAir
Deity
The games prior did concern themselves with it although it didnt have the same label.
The core of the issue was at first what it has always been in every strategy game: Instead of having a game that is challenging from beginning to end, you grow from weak to stronger and at some point you grow over a tresshold and it is just a matter of mopping up the enemies. This is a nature of strategy games that is hard if not impossible to entirely eliminate. It is however something one can try to combat.
In earlier civs it was combatted with corruption. Coruption would prevent us to get too many cities (going too wide). Not only did people not like coruption, it also had the adverse effect of leading to ICS: the practice of building 100s of towns just to have a few scientists in each.
There was happiness. Happiness would make it harder to grow our cities endlessly tall.
Civ 5 did the best job so far at balancing these things, It did so well that we actually go to choose between tall and wide, hence this term was introduced.
Ignoring the gains of civ5 and going back to ICSing is not the right direction for civ6 to go imo. Right now its only the minimum city distance really that stops us from ICSing the way we did before. But the principle is very much the same as it was in civ3 where we would fill the map with towns 1 tile between them, running scientists in each.
The core of the issue was at first what it has always been in every strategy game: Instead of having a game that is challenging from beginning to end, you grow from weak to stronger and at some point you grow over a tresshold and it is just a matter of mopping up the enemies. This is a nature of strategy games that is hard if not impossible to entirely eliminate. It is however something one can try to combat.
In earlier civs it was combatted with corruption. Coruption would prevent us to get too many cities (going too wide). Not only did people not like coruption, it also had the adverse effect of leading to ICS: the practice of building 100s of towns just to have a few scientists in each.
There was happiness. Happiness would make it harder to grow our cities endlessly tall.
Civ 5 did the best job so far at balancing these things, It did so well that we actually go to choose between tall and wide, hence this term was introduced.
Ignoring the gains of civ5 and going back to ICSing is not the right direction for civ6 to go imo. Right now its only the minimum city distance really that stops us from ICSing the way we did before. But the principle is very much the same as it was in civ3 where we would fill the map with towns 1 tile between them, running scientists in each.
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So the way I am looking at it now.
You need some CD's at the start and the more the merrier. It just quick starts your game and the necessity is stronger as you go toward deity.
At lower levels the need becomes less faster but also there is not so much competition for other districts unless truing to be as efficient as possible.
As time moves on there is still need but from what I see some of the need is not always a sensible use.
The game is not challenging enough to really nail down its requirement and everyone has quite different views
You need some CD's at the start and the more the merrier. It just quick starts your game and the necessity is stronger as you go toward deity.
At lower levels the need becomes less faster but also there is not so much competition for other districts unless truing to be as efficient as possible.
As time moves on there is still need but from what I see some of the need is not always a sensible use.
The game is not challenging enough to really nail down its requirement and everyone has quite different views
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