One city civ in Civ6?

[Backero]

I have a feeling that if we will receive new expansion for Civilization VI, among all new civs there will be one working similar to Venice from Civ5. A Civ, that will have only one city whole game, but stronger, and will provide very unique gameplay experience. But how it could be done and which civ it could be?

So far playing tall isn't such profitable as having wide empire almost doesn't have any cons. Also having access to limited resources is pretty harmful. It means that the civ need to have plenty of unique traits to be playable. Lets start with something abvious.

Can't train or gain Settlers. Conquered cities can't be captured.

At first: SoloCity Civ should be trade focused and the trade should be the basic way to get access to luxury and strategic resources, like:

Trade Routes to another city gives you a copy of its luxury and strategic resources.

And may give the target player additional gold. But what with the resources which are not used by any player? Like for example we have no neighbours around to trade with for any reason. Maybe something like this?

Pioneer: Unique civilian unit which may build tile improvements outside your borders if they would give you luxury or stretagic resource. The founded tile belongs to your capital city. You can't build anything there that wouldn't give you the resource.

Okay, now about some general empire building. For sure the capital city should have potencial to be the strongest city at all. It requires more housing, increased maximum border radius and defensive potencial.

+2 Housing in Capital City. Each district provides +1 Housing, 1 food and [after midgame reasearch] additional Specialist slot. Each culture and temple buidling provides additional slot for Great Work. Each commercial and harbor building provides new trade route capacity. Gaining new tiles is 15% faster and maximum range of city border radius is increased by 1 and additional 1 [somewhere in lategame]. Capital city have +50% additional defence.

Also also:

You may turn conquered cities into Free Cities. Free Cities are not hostile to you and you may trade with them. Your loyality is always full. Your loyality can't give you control over free cities, but it may prevent another civilization from gaining it.

And the last, but not the least important: a nation itself. In Civ5 we had Venice and this time it would also fits fine. I made some research for many popular "City State Empires", so the candidates are also: Singapour, Malta and Babylon.

What do you think about it? Which other changes should be made to create such a civ working and balanced? Whould you like to have such a civ inserted in the possible new Civ6 expansion?

 

[Pure24]

First of all, I'd like to give the opinion that I don't mind a one-city Civ that is difficult to win with. It would be like a 'hardcore mode' civ, similar to how certain fighting games will have a seriously nerfed 'for experts' character on the roster.

That said, you're asking about making a viable balanced one-city Civ. I like a lot of your ideas so I'll steal some. Also note that I feel we have no option, but to give Victoria-esque bonuses (i.e., a lot of them). Forgive me on butchering any historical accuracies or spellings. Anyways, here we go:

Civilization - Singapore
Leader - Parameswara

Civ Ability - Entrepôt
Cannot trainer settlers nor settle cities. Cannot capture capitals [thus cannot win Domination Victory]. Captured cities have the option to be converted into Free Cities. Free Cities are not hostile to Singapore.
Receive two trade routes for building a Market or Lighthouse, and an additional trade route capacity for each city converted into a Free City, and for each City State you are suzerain of. Can send trade routes to Free Cities - double yields for trade routes sent to Free Cities and City States, and +2 production and +2 food if suzerain of a City State.
Receive a random Eureka or Inspiration for every Civilization and City State you have a trade route to at the beginning of an Era. Eurekas and Inspirations received by maintaining these trade routes grant Era Score.

Leader Ability - Last King of Singapura
City starts with +2 housing, +2 culture, and +4 Faith. Campus district, Commercial Hub and Harbour do not consume a district slot. +100% production to Campus, Commercial Hub, and Habour districts, and double adjacency for those districts. Culture-bomb tiles improved adjacent to coast.

Unique Building - Changi International Airport
Replaces Airport. City gains +2 appeal to all its tiles. +50% tourism to all Civilizations

Unique Building - Sri Veeramakaliamman
Replaces Temple. +5 Faith. Missionaries start with +3 charges. Apostles are 50% cheaper to purchase

Unique Improvement - Parliament House
Two more governors can be established in the Capital City. +3 production for every tile cleared or improvement worked. +2 production at Mercantilism. Further +3 production after Capitalism is researched. Yields from all Great Works in the city are tripled.
Must be built adjacent to Government Plaza. Cannot be built if the city has the Art House

Unique Improvement - Art House
Can send two governors [aside from Amani] to City States, where they act as two envoys and provide +1 Diplomatic Favor per turn (+1 additional Diplomatic Favor for every Era entered). +100% yield to all feature removals. +4 slots that can hold Great Works of any type.
Must be built adjacent to Government Plaza. Cannot be built if the city has the Parliament House

Unique Unit - Matador
Atomic Era Anti-Cavalry Unit. Replaces the AT Crew and is cheaper to produce/purchase. +10 Combat Strength. Additional +5 Combat Strength Vs. Melee Units.

 

[Pure24]

I have a feeling that if we will receive new expansion for Civilization VI, among all new civs there will be one working similar to Venice from Civ5. A Civ, that will have only one city whole game, but stronger, and will provide very unique gameplay experience. But how it could be done and which civ it could be?

So far playing tall isn't such profitable as having wide empire almost doesn't have any cons. Also having access to limited resources is pretty harmful. It means that the civ need to have plenty of unique traits to be playable. Lets start with something abvious.

Can't train or gain Settlers. Conquered cities can't be captured.

At first: SoloCity Civ should be trade focused and the trade should be the basic way to get access to luxury and strategic resources, like:

Trade Routes to another city gives you a copy of its luxury and strategic resources.

And may give the target player additional gold. But what with the resources which are not used by any player? Like for example we have no neighbours around to trade with for any reason. Maybe something like this?

Pioneer: Unique civilian unit which may build tile improvements outside your borders if they would give you luxury or stretagic resource. The founded tile belongs to your capital city. You can't build anything there that wouldn't give you the resource.

Okay, now about some general empire building. For sure the capital city should have potencial to be the strongest city at all. It requires more housing, increased maximum border radius and defensive potencial.

+2 Housing in Capital City. Each district provides +1 Housing, 1 food and [after midgame reasearch] additional Specialist slot. Each culture and temple buidling provides additional slot for Great Work. Each commercial and harbor building provides new trade route capacity. Gaining new tiles is 15% faster and maximum range of city border radius is increased by 1 and additional 1 [somewhere in lategame]. Capital city have +50% additional defence.

Also also:

You may turn conquered cities into Free Cities. Free Cities are not hostile to you and you may trade with them. Your loyality is always full. Your loyality can't give you control over free cities, but it may prevent another civilization from gaining it.

And the last, but not the least important: a nation itself. In Civ5 we had Venice and this time it would also fits fine. I made some research for many popular "City State Empires", so the candidates are also: Singapour, Malta and Babylon.

What do you think about it? Which other changes should be made to create such a civ working and balanced? Whould you like to have such a civ inserted in the possible new Civ6 expansion?

So I decided to comment by making my own Civ. The way I see it, a one-city Civ depends on one thing - a fast start. So it must have bonuses for it. That's why I went with early culture bonus and an almost guaranteed first Pantheon pick.

On top of that, it must be able to account for the loss of production (other Civs can built ten things at once). So I decided to essentially gift our one-City civ three free districts, but still require some work to go into it. I wanted to discount unit production as well, but I think it is too much.

One more thing; flavour. The Civ must still feel 'unique' and have specific playstyles you're able to do. Gold is king so I agree with the idea of boosting the trade capability, and it fits most Civ ideas you mentioned, and that's why I picked Singapore. But I thought I add that touch which makes it truly come alive and become its own Civilization

 

[The googles do nothing]

I don't think in SP you really need anything beyond three things to make a single city empire:

Trade Routes to another city gives you a copy of its luxury and strategic resources.

- This^

- Any boost that requires 'have x of y' should include the resources you have trade routes too. So if I build a harbor and have a trade route to a city with a harbor I get the Buttress boost.

- Allow one trade route for lighthouse and market. This means single city should start by the coast.

 

[679x]

Trade routes bringing you copies of foreign resources sounds like a great idea. You otherwise only have access to resources within 5 tiles of your capital, which probably doesn't include a wide variety of luxury or strategic resources in most non-legendary-start maps.

- Any boost that requires 'have x of y' should include the resources you have trade routes too. So if I build a harbor and have a trade route to a city with a harbor I get the Buttress boost.

Combined with the sharing of resources, I think that's the best way to unlock 'regular' gameplay with just a single city. There are plenty of eurekas and inspirations that require multiple cities, and getting much of the rest is considerably easier if you have more than one moderately-productive city. With this suggestion, you aren't restricted by the eurekas and inspirations you can achieve, which is better because A: it's a bit more balanced, and B: you don't have any sort of weird, rather arbitrary debuffs, where you're unable to boost random developments normally like Cartography, Printing, Economics, etc.

Of course, with both of those ideas implemented together, the development of your own civilization starts to depend more on the success of the civilizations around you. It's interesting to me because these two bonuses inadvertently help balance the playing field - if you fall behind, it helps you catch up as you can piggyback on the success of your neighbours as they earn eurekas/inspirations or occupy resource-rich territories, and if you pull ahead of your neighbours, you don't receive as much benefit from these bonuses (consider that, for example, even though you may have revealed certain strategic resources, you can't gain them from a trade route to a foreign city that contains them until that city has revealed AND improved them themselves).

There has already been a ton of discussion on these forums about how a single-city civ could function, but I always have fun reading about them because everyone has so many ideas, many of which sound intriguing. Though it would hurt the novelty/uniqueness of the concept, I wouldn't be opposed to having multiple civs in the game that have some sort of penalty to the number of cities they can settle or own, if the bonuses they each receive to accommodate are drastically different and lead to a different style of gameplay despite both civs having a restricted city count.