Poo Pooing Districts :(

[Ebrim]

Yeah, I think that thinking about CivVI cities as provinces is probably more helpful. The city center is the heart of that province. You could probably think of city districts adjacent as that core city growing but really it's all just an abstraction.

 

[Thormodr]

The scale is a bit off for districts, admittedly.

However, it looks like the mechanic will work well so I don't mind a certain level of abstraction.

I'm sure there will be some mods that alter the graphics and the names of the districts, anyway.

That way everyone can be happy.

 

[ferretbacon]

While I dislike the flavor of the mechanic, I think the gameplay aspect cancels it out. I like that they're forcing you as the player to defend your territory, not just your city centers.

Despite the districts not really looking like towns themselves, I just sort of rationalize it by thinking, "The Campus district is like a college town. The Harbor district is a port city. The Industrial district is a blue collar place."

I do wish that if you chose to make a district adjacent to a city center, the graphic would shift to cluster the little outlying buildings toward the city center to make it look more cohesive.

 

[skyclad]

While I dislike the flavor of the mechanic, I think the gameplay aspect cancels it out. I like that they're forcing you as the player to defend your territory, not just your city centers.

Despite the districts not really looking like towns themselves, I just sort of rationalize it by thinking, "The Campus district is like a college town. The Harbor district is a port city. The Industrial district is a blue collar place."

I do wish that if you chose to make a district adjacent to a city center, the graphic would shift to cluster the little outlying buildings toward the city center to make it look more cohesive.

I agree this district idea makes no sense at all (exactly as stupid as an Archer firing across the english channel or from Miami to Havanna.) just like you i had to use my imagination that each district is its own specialized town unless next to city centre. But thats just imagination. In the devs minds it really is a like totally ok for Paris to have its only library 100s of kms away. Or that the eiffel tower is as big as the city itself, having to be built next to it. And its a really strange decision! Anyway from a game play perspective its seems fine. But really stupid.

 

[Mercade]

I'm not sure in Toronto, but in many countries in Europe, you can easily find markets at the outskirts, specially when talking about the industrial markets and big shopping malls (a mall is after all a market with diff shops, my city's malls are in a range of 2-6km from the city).

The market case is specially curious as, usually they were found in the crossroads of the nearby cities, and some even became proper cities themselves.

Same happens with the main stadium / arenas (my city's hockey arena is at 4 km from the city itself).

And industrial zones in my city can be found in a range of 2-15km from the city itself (and all inside the city/municipality area).

And you can easily find far away ports in ancient times (Ostia - Rome, Piraeus - Athens).

In Sweden for instance you find the university/campus towns of Lund or Uppsala dozens of kms from the cities (Lund from Malmö and Uppsala from Stockholm).

I remember in Barcelona that one of the biggest theatres, the Musical one, is quite far from the city centre (also the Grec one).

To me the district representation is pretty much spot on. Of course it doesn't apply to all possible cities of all possible cultures, but pretty much...

This.

 

[marchueff]

I'm not sure in Toronto, but in many countries in Europe, you can easily find markets at the outskirts, specially when talking about the industrial markets and big shopping malls (a mall is after all a market with diff shops, my city's malls are in a range of 2-6km from the city).

The market case is specially curious as, usually they were found in the crossroads of the nearby cities, and some even became proper cities themselves.

Same happens with the main stadium / arenas (my city's hockey arena is at 4 km from the city itself).

And industrial zones in my city can be found in a range of 2-15km from the city itself (and all inside the city/municipality area).

And you can easily find far away ports in ancient times (Ostia - Rome, Piraeus - Athens).

In Sweden for instance you find the university/campus towns of Lund or Uppsala dozens of kms from the cities (Lund from Malmö and Uppsala from Stockholm).

I remember in Barcelona that one of the biggest theatres, the Musical one, is quite far from the city centre (also the Grec one).

To me the district representation is pretty much spot on. Of course it doesn't apply to all possible cities of all possible cultures, but pretty much...

I totally agree with that. I can give you an example that really works well with the district abstraction: Stuttgart - one of germanies biggest powerhouses.

Black: City Center
Yellow: Entertainment District - the district of Bad Cannstatt is home of one of worlds biggest carnivals: the Cannstatter Wasen. Also the football stadium of Stuttgart is located in in Bad Cannstatt.
Red: Industrial Zone - The district of Untertürkheim is well known for factories of the Daimler AG. So if you buy a Mercedes its likely that parts of it have been engineered or produced here and not in the center of Stuttgart.
Pink: Industrial Zone 2 - I know in Civ 6 there can be only one industrial zone. But in Fellbach and Waiblingen there are also a lot of engineering companies, especially car suppliers.
Purple: Campus - Stuttgart has one of the biggest and most influential universities of germany, especially in engineering/technology. Most of the university buildings are located in the district of Vaihingen. And of course there are many companies and research facilities around the university. Also a lot of students are living in Vaihingen.
Blue: Aerodrome - Like in most of the cities around the world, the airport isn't close to the city center.
Brown (bottom left corner): Encampment - In the 1930s a huge tank corp was located in the south of Stuttgart. After WW2 this became a base of the U.S. army
White: Neighburhoods.
Turquise: Unimproved woods - there are a lot of hills around the City Center
Orange: Improved tiles - mostly farms and agriculture.

 

[dturtle1]

Nice 1st Post Marchueff... proving that Districts are based on real world examples
Oh and welcome to the forums

 

[CivCube]

This mechanic is how you get the map crowded, which is important in a game like Civ.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

While I dislike the flavor of the mechanic, I think the gameplay aspect cancels it out. I like that they're forcing you as the player to defend your territory, not just your city centers.

Despite the districts not really looking like towns themselves, I just sort of rationalize it by thinking, "The Campus district is like a college town. The Harbor district is a port city. The Industrial district is a blue collar place."

I do wish that if you chose to make a district adjacent to a city center, the graphic would shift to cluster the little outlying buildings toward the city center to make it look more cohesive.

Yeah, I agree. I don't understand how people are arguing FOR it for flavor, though.

I mean, I have a tiny village that's starting to grow. People want a church. I know! instead of putting it where people live, let's plop it over there across the river and on the other side of a jungle!

 

[Ryika]

Nice 1st Post Marchueff... proving that Districts are based on real world examples
Oh and welcome to the forums

Of course they are - in the late-game. Early on the system as representation for City "districts" does not work at all, as even the example of Stuttgart shows pretty well - because most of its districts actually started as separate cities.

So the way I see it is that early on you have to think of districts as seperate cities within the area of control of a bigger city (the actual city in Civ), that then grow together during later parts of the game. Which is actually somewhat well represented by housing districts.

But in the early game it's certainly not a city with districts, it's multiple smaller cities, that fact just isn't represented and skipped in favor of using the district system immediately. Which is obviously beneficial gameplay-wise, but undoubtedly an abstraction that has some questionable effects on immersion at the early stages of the game.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

You know woot I think, I think districts could be extra interesting if they built up over time into anything, so that you could very well build a district up into something that has 3 housing, 1 temple and a library, or anything else, with limitations corresponding to each type of stuff you build in there (such as this building takes X space, this one benefits from adjacency to that, this gives a malus to that, etc). And, perhaps it would have to be built adjacent to another district or city center (or should I say, city-tile)

 

[Mustakrakish]

Immersion is a funny thing, it all depends on how you look at it. I for example am more immersed with VI district system, as now I see area capitals with lots of smaller "cities" around, nicely filling up the map. Instead of just 4 big cities in the whole country, with farms and mines in between.

I'll be waiting for mods adjusting the models of districts to look more like little towns. Though it's probably too much to ask from modders.

 

[demidyad]

Of course they are - in the late-game. Early on the system as representation for City "districts" does not work at all, as even the example of Stuttgart shows pretty well - because most of its districts actually started as separate cities.

So the way I see it is that early on you have to think of districts as seperate cities within the area of control of a bigger city (the actual city in Civ), that then grow together during later parts of the game. Which is actually somewhat well represented by housing districts.

But in the early game it's certainly not a city with districts, it's multiple smaller cities, that fact just isn't represented and skipped in favor of using the district system immediately. Which is obviously beneficial gameplay-wise, but undoubtedly an abstraction that has some questionable effects on immersion at the early stages of the game.

This is growing pains from the decision to implement districts as a way to gradually move away from Civ 1 - 5 's weird view of history where cities were this magical, discrete thing where everybody lived in a walled city, then it was all vacant unpopulated land until the next walled city hundreds of miles way. When in real history people lived everywhere and "cities" were not these concrete entities that either existed or didn't, they were just the name we gave to regions that had become more densely populated than others.

When I was thinking of my perfect historical 4X before Civ 6 was announced, a key feature was that every tile would have a population level. It wouldn't be this weird Civ thing where everybody exclusively lives in cities throughout history. The Civ 6 implementation of districts might have a few growing pains, as they try to fit it into the Civ system of settlers venturing off and founding cities in the wilderness, but it's absolutely a step in the right direction, and I was thrilled to see it announced.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This is growing pains from the decision to implement districts as a way to gradually move away from Civ 1 - 5 's weird view of history where cities were this magical, discrete thing where everybody lived in a walled city, then it was all vacant unpopulated land until the next walled city hundreds of miles way.

Who is out there in my Civ games running the farms and the trading posts and the quarries and the ranches?

 

[demidyad]

Well, according to the game, nobody.

Or you could argue 1 'citizen' of the nearby city, if worked, which maybe is 10,000 people, but then a quarry has the same population as a farm, and a hamlet, and a town.

I don't see how dedicating a hex to an industrial district is somehow less believable than dedicating a whole tile to a workshop or a windmill.

 

[gunnergoz]

I really like having the city center broken down as it is in Civ VI. It makes for a much more interesting challenge, as each city is an engineering puzzle to solve, to maximize its potential. It seems very attractively executed on the map as well.

Only thing I'd like to see is the ability to deliberately create satellite towns & villages to grab remote resources, occupy choke points & further trade routes. They could be built with specialist settlers and limited in expansion and district capacity but would fill the map out nicely. Perhaps a modder will pick up on this if Firaxis doesn't.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Well, according to the game, nobody.

Or you could argue 1 'citizen' of the nearby city, if worked, which maybe is 10,000 people, but then a quarry has the same population as a farm, and a hamlet, and a town.

I don't see how dedicating a hex to an industrial district is somehow less believable than dedicating a whole tile to a workshop or a windmill.

Because merchants don't typically set up their stores hundreds of miles from where most of the people live.

 

[demidyad]

Merchants set up their stores at the crossroads of intersecting trade routes. Over time, these small merchant stores may become villages, which given enough time may become cities. The Civ series has never simulated this.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

When I was thinking of my perfect historical 4X before Civ 6 was announced, a key feature was that every tile would have a population level. It wouldn't be this weird Civ thing where everybody exclusively lives in cities throughout history. The Civ 6 implementation of districts might have a few growing pains, as they try to fit it into the Civ system of settlers venturing off and founding cities in the wilderness, but it's absolutely a step in the right direction, and I was thrilled to see it announced.

Very agree!

 

[Nikae]

Merchants set up their stores at the crossroads of intersecting trade routes. Over time, these small merchant stores may become villages, which given enough time may become cities. The Civ series has never simulated this.

Civilization 4 did. It even used some of the same names. Yeah, you can start arguing letter-to-letter terms .