On the topic of City Package and Unpackage

[Head_North]

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.

Ohh, I really agree with the problem with telling where one city end and another begin. But that is more related to the number of districts (being to many), not to not being able to building location. But as I said, I don’t think you need to tell where each building are (as I said earlier, in unpacked cities you can’t do that).

 

[kaspergm]

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.

Ehm, but that's not really the point of the warehouse buildings, is it? I mean, they are supposed to serve a purpose in their own right by boosting certain yields, right? I get your point about using them as spacers to unlock far-away tiles, but that's not really their intrinsic purpose, and it does not change the fact that they, particularly if used as you describe, take up spaces and causes urban sprawl - in fact, I'd say that using them as you say is exactly what causes the problem with urban sprawl.

 

[Skojardu]

I definitely prefer the sprawling out and placement decisions instead of the old model. But I do agree too that sprawl is too bad. Tossing out some more ideas:

-Maybe base yields for buildings should be lower, but give more weight to adjacencies. Like a Dungeon being +6 production/+2 influence and the only cost is 3 gold and 3 happiness means it's very strong. If its base yield was brought down to maybe 4 production/2 influence, it would be strong. But then you have something else that causes that extra +2 to come back. Like maybe all the yields are dropped by that amount, but then they get that final +2 back by being in a quarter? Basically give you an extra reason to complete a quarter. Another option would be to give all buildings a generic +1 adjacency with neighbouring quarters.
-At the same time, I really think the warehouse buildings need to be moved away from the whole building/quarter model too. I really think they should act more like walls, where they don't take up regular building slots. I suggested it somewhere else, but you could even move them to be something you put on rural tiles too.
-If you do both of those, you lose a lot of buildings to sprawl out, but I don't think that's a problem. It means it's hard to sprawl to reach the further tiles in antiquity.
-I think what I'd consider adding on top is that any buildings that are 2 eras out should probably turn into ruins. So that old library built in 2000 BC should completely disappear from your settlement when you hit the modern era if you didn't overbuild it. Let us convert a tile back to nature
-At the same time, I think especially once you get towards the modern era, probably we should allow some level of "connector" buildings. I would greatly reduce the yields of the City Park, for example, but let you spam them as repeatable urban districts. Basically let me convert space to greenspace, give me like 2 happiness from them, but have them give a +1 adjacency to all neighbouring buildings.
-I do think the game could use a few other options on tiles. Not every hill IRL is something that can sustain a mining operation on there for 3000 years. Maybe each tile we get some sort of choice - either you can keep it natural, it gets a basic 1f/1g for like "normal rural activities", or you can choose to set up intense woodcutting/mining/farming operations. Those get bigger yields, but they can only sustain themselves for a number of turns before they expire, and the tile gets stuck as a less productive tile.

I think there's probably a few other things. But the game ends up looking too much like the Ruhr valley already in antiquity. It's okay to get there eventually, sort of, but it's definitely there too early.

100% agree on mines expiring. It should be the new "chop"

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Hard disagree with me, that would just make the map even less important which is a huige issue with Civ VII.

I would argue that Civ VII's map being (relatively) unimportant is due to the strait-jacketing of the map by the design:
Improvements locked in by terrain type
Resources also locked in by terrain type, and unmoveable
All terrain capable of supporting a city from start of game
Gamer/AI ability to modify the terrain virtually non-existent. Irrigation does not change the fertility of tiles, you cannot clear forest for farmland, you cannot extend navigable rivers with canalization (which was done in Egypt from approximately 2000 BCE).
You are presented with a static map which changes only in regard to which resource is where on Age change, and cannot be generally changed any other way. Even in the Modern Age you still cannot tunnel through mountains, build canals to connect larger bodies of water, or convert forest into farmland (that last would come as a great shock to historical Native North Americans, Germans, Russians, Chinese, and the Amazon rain forest dwellers, all of which would probably call the game unplayable as a result)

Adjacencies, if they were planned to compensate for all that, don't. And by having terrain adjacencies be one of the most important ways to jack up tile yields, they lead inevitably to the kind of sprawl of urban tiles people complain about.

 

[Skojardu]

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.

I agree that once you find a "cotton" tile, you should probably be able to convert adjacent tiles to "cotton" tiles. Same with animals; once you find horses, you should be able to get slightly more horses / production / gold by adding a tile to the budding ranch you are making

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Ehm, but that's not really the point of the warehouse buildings, is it? I mean, they are supposed to serve a purpose in their own right by boosting certain yields, right? I get your point about using them as spacers to unlock far-away tiles, but that's not really their intrinsic purpose, and it does not change the fact that they, particularly if used as you describe, take up spaces and causes urban sprawl - in fact, I'd say that using them as you say is exactly what causes the problem with urban sprawl.

I think it would be better if most warehouse buildings were maybe the upgrades of simple improvements. Why shouldn't a sawmill be the final upgrade of a woodcutter improvement? In addition, the brickyard could be an upgraded clay pit etc.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Ehm, but that's not really the point of the warehouse buildings, is it? I mean, they are supposed to serve a purpose in their own right by boosting certain yields, right? I get your point about using them as spacers to unlock far-away tiles, but that's not really their intrinsic purpose, and it does not change the fact that they, particularly if used as you describe, take up spaces and causes urban sprawl - in fact, I'd say that using them as you say is exactly what causes the problem with urban sprawl.

That's why specifically said that it's their function from city sprawl point of view. Surely, they have their main function too.

 

[kaspergm]

That's why specifically said that it's their function from city sprawl point of view. Surely, they have their main function too.

Ok, maybe there's a language barrier problem here, but I don't really understand what you mean with them having a "function from a city sprawl point of view". To me, it sounds like you're saying city sprawl is an end to itself?

 

[disjointaccount]

All terrain capable of supporting a city from start of game

This one is one of my favourite things 7 did that I don't see talked about that much. Not being randomly massively disadvantaged because you spawned in desert or tundra is such a welcome change. Whatever flavour came out of those starts was massively outweighed (for me at least) by how slow and frustrating those starts felt relative to better ones.

I think it's probably just a necessity of the civ/leader split - in previous civs, the full kit of leader + civ could be built around spawn bias, whereas in 7 you potentially only have half your kit to overcome would-be adverse spawn conditions - but I'm glad it happened regardless. It feels good to boot up a game without worrying about either having to reset or facing starvation instantly. Civ is a very snowball-y game and slow starts just never felt good to me. I'd rather the flavour of the lands my empire beings in comes from the terrain types (rough, coastal, etc.), than whether I lucked into arable land or had my game arbitrarily made much harder at random and had to fight tooth and nail to claw myself back into competition. I like a challenge, but varying terrain always felt ore like the sort of unfair RNG challenge, than the kind that's fun and engaging to overcome to me.

And I do think for the most part different starts in 7 still have flavour. Wonders like Petra and Mundo Perdido serve as cool bonuses rather than "bare necessities to make your build survive", rewarding you for leaning into your spawn. Same with leaning into the features and terrain around you. Rough, woodland, tropical, coast - especially coast, following the last update - all have different benefits that could be leveraged to snowball into a particular build.

TL;DR: I like "get one out of a number of roughly equally good starts that could take you in different directions" a lot better than "have whether you're playing on easy or hard mode determined by RNG before the game even begins".

 

[stealth_nsk]

Ok, maybe there's a language barrier problem here, but I don't really understand what you mean with them having a "function from a city sprawl point of view". To me, it sounds like you're saying city sprawl is an end to itself?

I mean each game element interacts with multiple game mechanics, so could have multiple purposes.

I'm not even sure which function is the original. Because the game could totally work without warehouse building bonuses, while some buildings without adjacency bonuses to sprawl city are pretty much needed.

P.S. And yes, it could totally be language barrier, English is not my native language.

 

[kaspergm]

This one is one of my favourite things 7 did that I don't see talked about that much. Not being randomly massively disadvantaged because you spawned in desert or tundra is such a welcome change. Whatever flavour came out of those starts was massively outweighed (for me at least) by how slow and frustrating those starts felt relative to better ones.

Funny, I view this as the exact opposite: I think, by making all terrains equal, the game basically removes the whole point of having different terrains. In previous civ games, when you had a large swath of desert and tundra, you'd really have to think twice before settling it, making sure you had means to bring food and production into this town. That was a great element, both from a realism and a gameplay point of view, because it made the choice of settling location actually meaningful and important. Plus, we had desert floodplains, which would easily give you food. Only thing I'd change would be to make floodplains more dynamic somehow - I know we had flooding, but sometimes it happened not at all.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I would argue that Civ VII's map being (relatively) unimportant is due to the strait-jacketing of the map by the design:
Improvements locked in by terrain type
Resources also locked in by terrain type, and unmoveable
All terrain capable of supporting a city from start of game
Gamer/AI ability to modify the terrain virtually non-existent. Irrigation does not change the fertility of tiles, you cannot clear forest for farmland, you cannot extend navigable rivers with canalization (which was done in Egypt from approximately 2000 BCE).
You are presented with a static map which changes only in regard to which resource is where on Age change, and cannot be generally changed any other way. Even in the Modern Age you still cannot tunnel through mountains, build canals to connect larger bodies of water, or convert forest into farmland (that last would come as a great shock to historical Native North Americans, Germans, Russians, Chinese, and the Amazon rain forest dwellers, all of which would probably call the game unplayable as a result)

Civ2 was the last game which had a really strong ability to change the terrain. The player had a lot of options to transform terrain types. Alas, only a few were carried over into later games.

Civ3 through Civ6 all allowed chopping of forests. Irrigating grasslands or plains increased their fertility under the control of the player, not by random events like floods or volcano eruptions in Civ3 and Civ4.

In Civ3, mountains were traversable, while they became impassable in Civ4 and most of Civ5. Civ6 introduced the ability to build both canals and mountain tunnels; Civ3 had faux canals using cities and forts.

Being unable to change the terrain is probably a consequence of removing the worker/builder unit. Sigh.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This one is one of my favourite things 7 did that I don't see talked about that much.

Totally disagree, this change really reduced the variety and replayability of the game. So many other ways they could have fixed the start location problem and they chose this one *sigh*.

 

[pjotroos]

It would require different approach to map generation, but tundra and desert should be large swathes of land that nobody spawns in, because they are largely unhospitable until modern - no farming the sand, certainly - but can spawn useful resources early and WILL spawn useful resources in modern.

It's a point I've posted before, but being able to have hyper-productive settlements in extreme climes from antiquity is one of the key reasons there's nowhere left to settle in modern.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

It would require different approach to map generation, but tundra and desert should be large swathes of land that nobody spawns in, because they are largely unhospitable until modern - no farming the sand, certainly - but can spawn useful resources early and WILL spawn useful resources in modern.

It's a point I've posted before, but being able to have hyper-productive settlements in extreme climes from antiquity is one of the key reasons there's nowhere left to settle in modern.

I would say that there should be exceptions, such as Egypt etc. which historically thrived and can be reflected in gameplay mechanics. Other exceptions would include things such as being near Oasis/rivers and Natural wonders. But I agree that for the most part there's no reason why a civ like Greece or Rome should have any sort of advantage if they spawn in regular Tundra or regular Desert.

 

[Evie]

The fundamental problem is that, at the scale of the game all those fertile desert valleys where civilization not only appeared but thrived and built major historical empires barrly occupy a few tiles in the game, a fraction of the radius of one city, let alone an empire, because a city requires a lot of workable tiles in order to be usable.

If desert is useless in the game, then you can't have a meaningful fertile crescent or Egypt, and even Mesoamerica is essentially not possible.

 

[UWHabs]

It might be more balanced if at least the desert tiles that are not rivers and not oasis tiles were either un-workable early, or the only improvement you could put there was like an expedition base. Even if you have a large desert, you'd still have some usable terrain between the rivers/oasis tiles, resource tiles, and maybe even the rough tiles you can still keep workable. But you might have to be a little more careful how you expand. I think similarly for tundra.

I do enjoy that you can actually settle in those areas, they're not nearly the barren wastelands they were before. But at the same time, I kind of feel it just ends up rendering terrain useless. Like when I settle, I barely ever look to see what type of land I'm settling. I care about resources and adjacency way more, because I know as long as it's flat I can farm it.

 

[Evie]

The problem would remain whole, which is that a city near or on that kind of terrain (ie, any cities in a flood plain,. in the fertile crescent, etc) would be, because of the absolutely absurd amount of space cities need in this game (and that's all the way back from Civ I), severely disadvantaged, when historically they were some of the best places to start a civilization in.

 

[Sagax]

Many good arguments in this thread. I will point out one more thing that is not as mentioned here, but what IMO aggravates the visual mess of Civ 7's city sprawl - the scale of rural improvements (or maybe of everything) relative to the terrain feels off.

This is your average Civ 6 neighboring settlements with a few farms in-between:

And this is Civ 7 with roughly the same setup (actually I’m being more generous here, with 6 farm times from district to district instead of 2-3):

What feels like acres of farmlands in Civ 6 feels like just a few households with large backyards in Civ 7. There is no sense of vastness, and the buildings being larger than the Civ 6 counterparts make each tile seem like within a walking distance. I think reducing the asset sizes by 20-30% and filling the freed up space would go a long way towards improving the sprawl perception (maybe a mod idea?). And I won’t be surprised if the current scale was driven by the desire to make players pay more attention to the level of detail that went into the assets - to the detriment of the large-scale, empire-wide view.

 

[Krikkit1]

I would say that there should be exceptions, such as Egypt etc. which historically thrived and can be reflected in gameplay mechanics. Other exceptions would include things such as being near Oasis/rivers and Natural wonders. But I agree that for the most part there's no reason why a civ like Greece or Rome should have any sort of advantage if they spawn in regular Tundra or regular Desert.

I think a option might be to have "Biome bonuses" that you choose sort of like Pantheons... except they last all game... Say get one at Agriculture, one at Irrigation, one at .. Feudalism?

Then Desert, Tundra, and Tropical can have some penalties, but it can be countered by having bigger bonuses for those that pick them (there would also be bonuses for Grassland +Plains, but they would be smaller bonuses because Grassland +Plains would be generally better.

That way if you randomly got placed in the Bad Terrain, you can make it a good Terrain for you... but bad for other civs.