On the topic of City Package and Unpackage

[stealth_nsk]

That's my issue with it, when they unpacked cities the maps should really have grown by 2 or 3 times.

Gameplay could be adjusted for various settlement radiuses. For example in Civ7 with specialists for cities and growth stop for town, current settlement radius works just fine. Sure, it's possible to design game where cities will combine their urban sprawl with a lot of rural tiles and that would require bigger settlements. Probably it would even look better on the map, but there will be many consequences. Will the map also grow bigger? If not, smaller maps will have too few settlements. If yes, a lot of problems will sprawl from larger maps - longer wars, longer games at all, technical limitations and so on, so forth.

 

[kaspergm]

3. Adjacency bonuses, after years of Civ VI and now Civ VII, I am increasingly convinced need major re-thinking. Buildings of the same type (Production, Military, Gold, Religious, etc) may benefit from being grouped into a Specialized District, but many of the terrain adjacencies are purest game design drivel, and cities would be much more playable and customizable without them. IF the game must have adjacencies, make them among the buildings/districts, not because the game designer thinks a great university has to be next to a mountain.

I think adjacency bonuses are a very two-edged sword. On one hand, they offer for great gameplay. I will not lie about the fact that (ab)using the various game mechanics to get those super-production Holy Sites is one of the things I find most fun about Civ6. On the other hand, I'm also very aware that it completely kills the strategic meta and severely limits the room of viable strategic options.

To return to OT, here are a few thoughts I have about (un)packing cities:

• I like the ideas of specialized districts that add specialization and flavor to the town.
• I dislike the open sprawl of Civ6. I think districts should go adjacent to or connected to city centre and be limited to first ring for early game, while third ring should only be available for late eras. Things like Harbor and perhaps Encampment could be exempted from this rule.
• I think some sort of adjacency feature is good, but massive amounts of flat yields is very bad for balance. Certain buildings being unlocked by adjacency would be good: Observatory only available in Campus if it's build next to mountain, Wildlife Institute if it's build next to rainforest, Ocean Conservatory if build next to reef, etc. Similar could be done for many/all other districts, for instance Windmill/Watermill in Industrial Zone.
• I haven't played enough Civ7 to really grasp the idea of warehouse buildings. I'm not a fan of these buildings sort of blocking district tiles - not considering what good or bad it does for gameplay, it makes cities occupy way too many tiles. Either these buildings need to be associated with certain districts, go in city center, or have a district of their own?
• Number of urban/speciality districts should be limited, the population-limit in Civ6 was both logical and functional.
• Specialists should have bigger impact on yields, flat yields from adjacencies and buildings should have less impact (I think Civ7 got that part right?).
• On a more radical note: I dislike how resources are tied to specific tiles in all the Civ games. I want a more regional approach: This region has potential for wine, this region holds iron ore, this region can support horses, etc. Then you decide yourself where you want to place the mine/farm/plantation. The way that we are stuck with having a Gold Mine or an Incense Plantation in the middle of the urban area in both Civ6 and Civ7 is both nonsensical and annoying.
• I was super excited about the idea or urban cities vs. rural towns. I really don't think Civ7 pulled this off at all. Again, I think a more regional approach would be better, where each region can hold an urban center and then rural towns that feed food/production as well as strategic/luxury resources into the urban center.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think one of the issues with the game is the requirement to keep pushing your buildings out further from your capital to get good spots. This leads to ungainly sprawl, and placing down something like a granary just to reach a better spot at the edge of your city feels like it's not really how you'd want the game to work

The solution there maybe to restrict range, probably of buildings. 1 seems a bit too severe, but I could see “no 3rd ring buildings until Urban Planning”

 

[stealth_nsk]

I haven't played enough Civ7 to really grasp the idea of warehouse buildings. I'm not a fan of these buildings sort of blocking district tiles - not considering what good or bad it does for gameplay, it makes cities occupy way too many tiles. Either these buildings need to be associated with certain districts, go in city center, or have a district of their own?

From city sprawl point of view, they aren't blocking district tiles, they are unlocking them. You build warehouse buildings to reach spots with good adjacencies or just to cross 1-tile sea, for example.

EDIT: although from other points of view, I'm not sure the idea of warehouse buildings is that great.

EDIT 2: One of the pretty common situations I found is that settlement sprawl is blocked by a resource (I think there should be specific urban districts buildable on them to prevent blocking, but that's different story), but I can use sea-based warehouse district to reach land past the resource.

 

[McSpank01]

On a more radical note: I dislike how resources are tied to specific tiles in all the Civ games. I want a more regional approach: This region has potential for wine, this region holds iron ore, this region can support horses, etc. Then you decide yourself where you want to place the mine/farm/plantation. The way that we are stuck with having a Gold Mine or an Incense Plantation in the middle of the urban area in both Civ6 and Civ7 is both nonsensical and annoying.

I just want to say I also really hate this. It looks completely silly and spoils the visual appeal of cities completely to have a huge mine in the middle of a city. I'd be ok with having the ability to just build on top of resources and keep their benefits.

The solution there maybe to restrict range, probably of buildings. 1 seems a bit too severe, but I could see “no 3rd ring buildings until Urban Planning”

That is one solution. Another solution is to rework how adjacencies work and promote them more from other urban tiles rather than resources. Does it really make sense that research buildings should be built next to a resource? I don't see the connection there. It all feels a bit gamey and arbitrary. There should be more encouragement to keep your urban tiles together, and not build so many.

 

[Krikkit1]

I just want to say I also really hate this. It looks completely silly and spoils the visual appeal of cities completely to have a huge mine in the middle of a city. I'd be ok with having the ability to just build on top of resources and keep their benefits.

That is one solution. Another solution is to rework how adjacencies work and promote them more from other urban tiles rather than resources. Does it really make sense that research buildings should be built next to a resource? I don't see the connection there. It all feels a bit gamey and arbitrary. There should be more encouragement to keep your urban tiles together, and not build so many.

I think more “Quarter bonuses” could help with that. Say instead of buildings being 3 or 4 base yield per age they are 2 or 3 per age..+1 per age if in a Quarter

 

[stealth_nsk]

On a more radical note: I dislike how resources are tied to specific tiles in all the Civ games. I want a more regional approach: This region has potential for wine, this region holds iron ore, this region can support horses, etc. Then you decide yourself where you want to place the mine/farm/plantation. The way that we are stuck with having a Gold Mine or an Incense Plantation in the middle of the urban area in both Civ6 and Civ7 is both nonsensical and annoying.

Again, tiles in civilization games are very abstract, they could be seen as regions. I, honestly don't see any problems from immersion standpoint, though.

Visual element is clearly a problem and plantation in the middle of a city is not great. That's why I think there should be a way to turn resources into urban industrial districts - plants, factories, etc. to process those resources. I'm not sure it's possible in Civ7 with its resource regeneration on ages and factories already integrated deeply in, but as a potential idea for future games it should fix the visuals.

 

[pjotroos]

I just want to say I also really hate this. It looks completely silly and spoils the visual appeal of cities completely to have a huge mine in the middle of a city. I'd be ok with having the ability to just build on top of resources and keep their benefits.

Since we're all spitballing - what could be really interesting is making it so land-based warehouse buildings can only be built on a resource, letting you retain that resource and converting the tile to urban; and science / production buildings were getting their adjacency bonuses from warehouse buildings instead.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Since we're all spitballing - what could be really interesting is making it so land-based warehouse buildings can only be built on a resource, letting you retain that resource and converting the tile to urban; and science / production buildings were getting their adjacency bonuses from warehouse buildings instead.

That's interesting idea. Not sure about "only" on resources, that would be too limiting providing primary warehouse building function of extending your city sprawl to desired tiles. But the ability to build them on top of resources could be an interesting concept. Also, in that variant it's compatible with Civ7 resource reset - warehouse buildings built on top of resources just become normal warehouse buildings.

 

[pjotroos]

That's interesting idea. Not sure about "only" on resources, that would be too limiting providing primary warehouse building function of extending your city sprawl to desired tiles.

I don't like them being that, hence my brainwave. I think it makes settling towns too predictable in mid- and late-game - in the middle of the biggest cluster of resources, buying warehouse buildings to quickly reach them.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I don't like them being that, hence my brainwave. I think it makes settling towns too predictable in mid- and late-game - in the middle of the biggest cluster of resources, buying warehouse buildings to quickly reach them.

On the other hand, the same function is a must for cities as spots with good adjacencies are often not on the nearby tile.

 

[McSpank01]

Just looking at the game a bit more, I do think the designers really just messed up with the visual style. Urban sprawl and the murky, hard to read maps, are partly due to the way cities unpack too much and spread out (which could be fixed a little with differently scaled maps I guess), but mainly I just think a lot of this is visual design 101 problems.

The designers have just gotten carried away with the little diorama view, the pretty little models, and not considered how these things look at scale. The key here is contrast. The human eye is attuned to contrast and there just isn't enough of it on the maps. Cities blend into rocky environments, colour, scale and shape all just merge into a murky brown sludge. It's not even about going back to the cartoony style of 6, I just feel like basic design decisions early on have set them up for failure. At the highest level I should still be able to make out what kind of tile I'm looking at, where my buildings are roughly what they are. I think designers really only considered what things look like at the closest zoom level.

So I think the the problems are pretty deep in the way the game is designed. I'm not even sure how fixable it is.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Just looking at the game a bit more, I do think the designers really just messed up with the visual style. Urban sprawl and the murky, hard to read maps, are partly due to the way cities unpack too much and spread out (which could be fixed a little with differently scaled maps I guess), but mainly I just think a lot of this is visual design 101 problems.

The designers have just gotten carried away with the little diorama view, the pretty little models, and not considered how these things look at scale. The key here is contrast. The human eye is attuned to contrast and there just isn't enough of it on the maps. Cities blend into rocky environments, colour, scale and shape all just merge into a murky brown sludge. It's not even about going back to the cartoony style of 6, I just feel like basic design decisions early on have set them up for failure. At the highest level I should still be able to make out what kind of tile I'm looking at, where my buildings are roughly what they are. I think designers really only considered what things look like at the closest zoom level.

So I think the the problems are pretty deep in the way the game is designed. I'm not even sure how fixable it is.

Expecting the map to look great at both closeup and far away, while at the same time being readable for gameplay information; contain regional diversity and buildings from different ages; combined with building mixing in quarters, plus walls... I'm not sure it's doable at all, especially if you don't have unlimited resources.

 

[Head_North]

I don't mind the fact that the buildings are hard to read in the default view. It's not great for quick decision-making, but it makes for a stunning view, especially once zoomed in, and I don't need that at-a-glance information all the time. However, once you go into the city lens, there should be clear colour indicators, in the style of Civ VII (so science buildings go bright blue, and so does the whole district if it's a science quarter).

I think the same regarding readability. And I want to test that thought. Do we really need readability on the main map? And if so, why?

I mean in earlier civ games (up to civ v) We couldn’t tell from the map which buildings a city contained. Why do I need that now?

I really agree that readability in city screen needs to be improved. For instance when I choose a warehouse building to build, the all improvements of that warehouse should be highlighted. And all possible future hexes that could be affected by that warehouse should be highlighted (preferably in another color).

All of my major issues are with how the city-sprawl works. More specifically:
- there are no restrictions on how many districts you can place, so long as they are connected together
- there are no restrictions on how far from the center you can place the buildings at any point
- there is no incentive to cluster buildings in quarters together for towns
- you can only claim rural tile if it's connected to another claimed tile
- your rural districts can go up to third ring, your urban districts can go up to third ring, and your borders will only ever grow three tiles out
Combine all of the above with the fact that there's almost as many buildings available in antiquity as there is in exploration, or modern, and we end up with megacities in the year 2000 BCE. I'm someone that quite likes the mega-city look in the late game, as a result of development over the course of game. It absolutely shouldn't be something that starts happening 20% into the campaign.

Agree with your identification of the problem of city sprawl. Although to me the cities shouldn’t be able to cover such large swaths of land even in modern age.

There's few changes I'd love to see to address that. Values are placeholders:
- Each settlement can initally create two districts, in addition to the town centre. Every two rural population allows you to create another district. Specialists count as 0.5 rural population.
- Each settlement can initially create buildings only on the first ring. You need rural population of 6 to build on the second ring, and rural population of 15 to build on third ring.
- Wonders can be build at any time, and on any ring. However, each wonder "consumes" one rural population - pushing the requirement further for the next district to unlock.

May I add another rule:
-Districts can only be placed in such a way that I has contact with at least two districts (apart from the first obviously). That way we get rid of towns that get to “snakey”.

I haven’t calculated how many districts your rules would yield in the end. But I really think there should be a hard or soft limit to the amount of districts. Perhaps max 6 districts per city?
I also think districts should be limited to the inner two rings.

But all in all. I really like the direction districts and city unpacking has taken in VII. Man does it loook gorgeous! I can often just stop and look at my cities taking in the view. I really disliked the districts in VI. They felt artificial. I mean they where often placed without connection to one another. Often placed far from the city center. And some districts didn’t make any sense to me, like the water park district!
In VII I like how the districts all helps to make up the city and not loosely connected.

 

[McSpank01]

Expecting the map to look great at both closeup and far away, while at the same time being readable for gameplay information; contain regional diversity and buildings from different ages; combined with building mixing in quarters, plus walls... I'm not sure it's doable at all, especially if you don't have unlimited resources.

A map has to work at different levels of zoom and resolution, and give the player appropriate levels of information depending on how they look at the map. Paradox games do a very good job of this, although I wouldn't want the map to convert to some bland block colour outline at high zoom levels, I do think I should be able to make out the outline of my cities and what the landscape is made from. I don't think this is a matter of resources either, these are early decisions that have been made and not corrected along the way. I don't think there could have ever been anyone asking the question of what the user should see at the highest zoom level.

 

[Head_North]

The designers have just gotten carried away with the little diorama view, the pretty little models, and not considered how these things look at scale. The key here is contrast. The human eye is attuned to contrast and there just isn't enough of it on the maps. Cities blend into rocky environments, colour, scale and shape all just merge into a murky brown sludge. It's not even about going back to the cartoony style of 6, I just feel like basic design decisions early on have set them up for failure. At the highest level I should still be able to make out what kind of tile I'm looking at, where my buildings are roughly what they are. I think designers really only considered what things look like at the closest zoom level.

Oh I really hope they don’t increase readability with the vibrant colors of Civ VI. I think it looks amazing as it is now. And as I wrote above. Why do you have to be able tell witch building is in witch district from the main map?

 

[stealth_nsk]

A map has to work at different levels of zoom and resolution, and give the player appropriate levels of information depending on how they look at the map. Paradox games do a very good job of this, although I wouldn't want the map to convert to some bland block colour outline at high zoom levels, I do think I should be able to make out the outline of my cities and what the landscape is made from. I don't think this is a matter of resources either, these are early decisions that have been made and not corrected along the way. I don't think there could have ever been anyone asking the question of what the user should see at the highest zoom level.

Information could be added with lenses, highlights, overlays and icons. That's UI work separate from core graphics and I expect Civ7 to further improve in this regard. How much information needs to be communicated without those things is a tough questions.

 

[UWHabs]

I do think being able to glance from a medium zoom level what buildings are on which tile, to know where your warehouse buildings are, where your current buildings are, which buildings are over-buildable, etc... Being able to know if I have built a university in a town easily without clicking into the menu and seeing it on the build queue, etc..

But yeah, maybe you can just have a regular clean view, and then add in like a semi-strategic layer which can apply a shading to the tile or buildings? Something that doesn't distract too much, that can stay on, but doesn't completely hide the buildings, would be great.

 

[pjotroos]

I do think being able to glance from a medium zoom level what buildings are on which tile, to know where your warehouse buildings are, where your current buildings are, which buildings are over-buildable, etc... Being able to know if I have built a university in a town easily without clicking into the menu and seeing it on the build queue, etc..

But yeah, maybe you can just have a regular clean view, and then add in like a semi-strategic layer which can apply a shading to the tile or buildings? Something that doesn't distract too much, that can stay on, but doesn't completely hide the buildings, would be great.

Yep, that's what I meant by city lens - a colour overlay that automatically opens when you go into build/buy queue in the settlement, but which you can also just click whenever from a lens menu.

 

[McSpank01]

Oh I really hope they don’t increase readability with the vibrant colors of Civ VI. I think it looks amazing as it is now. And as I wrote above. Why do you have to be able tell witch building is in witch district from the main map?

You probably don't need that level of detail. I do think I would like to be able to see at a glance which settlements are cities and which are towns, and get a sense of what they might be good at etc. Civ 6 was very good at that, I could run over a map and tell exactly where all the science districts were, what these civs were like etc. You don't really get that sense in 7, I can barely see where my cities begin and end.

Yep, that's what I meant by city lens - a colour overlay that automatically opens when you go into build/buy queue in the settlement, but which you can also just click whenever from a lens menu.

I think what Paradox games are very good at is giving you a different lens view depending on your zoom level, and it's incredibly smooth. There could be a lens view that works when you zoom all the way out that gives you more of a macro view. The difficulty I think the current game has is that it wants to show the same fidelity at all zoom levels.