Population micromanagement

[Krikkit1]

Seeing the stream and the new Improved Tile=Population=Rural District seemed to invite some micro managements

1. If you place a Urban district (new building) on it, you apparently get to choose a new tile
…but what if you cancel the building? do you get the old rural tile back, or is the new spot irreversibly urban. Can you “juggle” pops by starting and canceling a building?

2. They showed pillaging tiles for extra unit health….if they pillage the tile does the population attached to the tile die, does the improvement go back, does it take X turns for a pillaged improvement to go back to normal?

3. What if population drops??

4…do we need to place every single population unit? because it seemed like we got some high pops, that could get really annoying later in the game every turn place 1 extra new pop in 6 different settlements.

 

[Trengilly]

The only time you 'get back' a population to place somewhere else is if you Build an Urban district over a Rural District.

For urban districts I strongly suspect that as soon as you start the building the urban district is locked and can't be removed. If you cancel the building (or if it gets pillaged) you would just be left with an Urban District with empty building slots.

We haven't seen any evidence of population dropping? Not sure if its possible or how it would work.

I don't think placing each population unit will be too much work. The biggest city was Roma with 32 production. But that was grown over 160-200 turns. So one population to place every 5 or 6 turns for that city. And overall their empire appears to have less total population than elapsed turns.

Placing one or two population each turn isn't a big deal . . . especially when you consider it key to your city border expansion and is basically replacing having to move and use Builders.

 

[AriochIV]

You're assuming you can cancel a building. You can't cancel a building or district in Civ6... it's only paused until you finish it.

 

[JNR13]

4. is my concern, too. Placing improvements directly in the early game is nice. So far, you did this in multiple steps. You manually assigned the citizen to the tile you want to be worked. Then you make a builder. Then you make the improvement. Now that's all just one step.

But later in the game, my civ experiences a handful of growth events every turn and I just let those citizens end up wherever the game thinks it's best, I'm not manually assigning them. Would like an option to automate it with yield priorities (like, if you prioritize food, it will look for farm spots). The refund ensures that no wrong tile can be chosen because you wanted to build a district there.

I actually quite like the refund because now your city can grow outwards and rural land can urbanize. In Civ VI, it was a waste of builder charges to improve a tile you were planning to put a district on.

 

[greenOak]

Given the size of the cities in the playthrough it looks like you'll be assigning pops a lot.

 

[Krikkit1]

We haven't seen any evidence of population dropping? Not sure if its possible or how it would work.

As for not losing population, your food supply can go down in a city by losing towns / reassigning resources / ?switching policies cards? and specialists do have a maintenance of 2 food.

It could be that specialists are the only one to die off if pop drops and rural populations autofeed themselves…. but there are also “infected” settlements in a crisis… I would hope that the infections would actually reduce the population.

You're assuming you can cancel a building. You can't cancel a building or district in Civ6... it's only paused until you finish it.

Good point, I could see that working (with the overbuild). And I guess it would be possible for a new pop to “pave it over” into a new Rural District if they wanted (ie if buildings get sold off for Maintenance)

Really hoping the placement can be automated (food/production toggle would probably be enough)

 

[stealth_nsk]

Seeing the stream and the new Improved Tile=Population=Rural District seemed to invite some micro managements

1. If you place a Urban district (new building) on it, you apparently get to choose a new tile
…but what if you cancel the building? do you get the old rural tile back, or is the new spot irreversibly urban. Can you “juggle” pops by starting and canceling a building?

Urban district is still there. I don't know if you could actually could cancel building (to move to another district) or not, but urban district without building is surely a sad thing as it doesn't expand your city while eating a tile.

2. They showed pillaging tiles for extra unit health….if they pillage the tile does the population attached to the tile die, does the improvement go back, does it take X turns for a pillaged improvement to go back to normal?

We don't know. I see different options here. Most likely you just need to complete city projects to restore them.

3. What if population drops??

We haven't seen any population dropping mechanics yet, we can't tell if they are in the game.

4…do we need to place every single population unit? because it seemed like we got some high pops, that could get really annoying later in the game every turn place 1 extra new pop in 6 different settlements.

What we've seen is actually it - in late Rome play there were several tile placements per turn. But I don't think it's that bad, because high-level settlements can't grow fast, so you'll not be overwhelmed. Either way, most likely there will be some city automations.


5. But what interests me is the possibility to move citizens at all. We've seen specialists, so it would be a bit weird if some population placed in library stays there forever (or at least until you build something on top of the building, which, presumably, works like building urban district on top of rural one, freeing the population). So, the question is - are you able to move specialists? If yes, what are the limits and why it's for specialists only?

 

[valerislysander]

So the new pop system essentially replaces builders which I think is great. Have to micro manage 10 builders across the map in the mid-late game in Civ6 is not fun. Essenitally you are doing the builder and pop management at the same time right at the moment of growth. So its more efficent and with the building slots it will be fun to do I think.

 

[Krikkit1]

So the new pop system essentially replaces builders which I think is great. Have to micro manage 10 builders across the map in the mid-late game in Civ6 is not fun. Essenitally you are doing the builder and pop management at the same time right at the moment of growth. So its more efficent and with the building slots it will be fun to do I think.

Except builders in previous civs could be automated, hopefully pop placements can as well. (optimizing for a particular yield or balanced)

 

[JNR13]

Yes with choice about what improvement goes on a specific tile gone, automation should definitely come back. A good auto-placement algorithm is needed anyway for the AI cities.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I hope automation isn't a thing for this, or at least there shouldn't be a need for it. Civ 6's citizen management system requires automation because it's a bad system. Once your city reaches a certain size, each new citizen has such a small impact that optimizing its placement just doesn't seem worth the mental effort it requires. Ways to fix this (and specific approaches that Civ 7, I believe, is taking) would be:

- Reduce micromanagement "expense" incurred elsewhere, thereby conserving player's mental energy for assigning citizens. (This is done by removing builders, removing production queues from towns, etc.)
- Make citizen placement more important. (Make newer citizens stronger than older ones. Maybe this is where specialists come in?)
- Make citizen placement a rare event. (As Trengilly pointed out, it doesn't appear to happen very often, and it's also semi-permanent.)

 

[Krikkit1]

I hope automation isn't a thing for this, or at least there shouldn't be a need for it. Civ 6's citizen management system requires automation because it's a bad system. Once your city reaches a certain size, each new citizen has such a small impact that optimizing its placement just doesn't seem worth the mental effort it requires. Ways to fix this (and specific approaches that Civ 7, I believe, is taking) would be:

- Reduce micromanagement "expense" incurred elsewhere, thereby conserving player's mental energy for assigning citizens. (This is done by removing builders, removing production queues from towns, etc.)
- Make citizen placement more important. (Make newer citizens stronger than older ones. Maybe this is where specialists come in?)
- Make citizen placement a rare event. (As Trengilly pointed out, it doesn't appear to happen very often, and it's also semi-permanent.)

I think it needs to be. Part of the reason we need automation is because a you have to make a lot of those decisions, and many of them don't matter That much..
AND you can't make those decisions ahead of time.
For production I assume we have a build queue, I'd not sure there will be a "Pop placement queue"

For placing the initial pops in a Town, having them automated is probably quite reasonable because most of the options are roughly equivalent... If I have a town in a nice farming area, I just want it to get the food quickly.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I think it needs to be. Part of the reason we need automation is because a you have to make a lot of those decisions, and many of them don't matter That much..
AND you can't make those decisions ahead of time.
For production I assume we have a build queue, I'd not sure there will be a "Pop placement queue"

For placing the initial pops in a Town, having them automated is probably quite reasonable because most of the options are roughly equivalent... If I have a town in a nice farming area, I just want it to get the food quickly.

How are you sure about that? I explained why I believe that isn't going to be the case, but you're not giving me any reason to agree with you.

 

[borad]

For placing the initial pops in a Town, having them automated is probably quite reasonable because most of the options are roughly equivalent... If I have a town in a nice farming area, I just want it to get the food quickly.

Sometimes you will be interested in claiming or blocking off specific land, especially with all your border towns being, well, Towns.

 

[Krikkit1]

Sometimes you will be interested in claiming or blocking off specific land, especially with all your border towns being, well, Towns.

The issue there is I probably know what tiles I want to claim the second I place the town. So having a “population preplacement queue” is going to be important (same as a production queue)