I agree that Old World has many good parts, but I disagree strongly that Old World performs well in this particular area. I far from think Civ6 hit the balance perfectly with its heavy focus on flat district adjacency bonuses, but at least Civ6 gave me a feeling of planning the layout of my cities, which was fun and possible given the limited number of districts.
That is not at all the case with Old World. Sure, there are buildings that get adjacency bonuses - and I prefer the bonuses being tied to building yields rather than flat district yields - but with the huge number of buildings that will go into each city, often in a rather chaotic build order, I have the feeling of zero long term planning when I put down my cities. At most, I will try to place a hamlet so that I can put culture buildings around it, but otherwise, it’s mostly a question of putting down a building in whatever position is most favourable for it at the given time it unlocks. The limited freedom you have with regards to placing buildings (need to be adjacent to two urban tiles or a coast, needs certain culture level) means you can’t hold a great number of tiles reserved for late game buildings, and the adjacency bonuses often feel rather underwhelming anyway.
The lack of infrastructure planning is definitely one of my biggest issues with the game. Old World with districts would have been a much more amazing game imo.
