Prioritize new urban tiles or quarters?

[oaks2ninja]

If you place a new building and there is the same bonus for an existing urban tile and a new urban tile, do you prefer to make quarters or new urban tiles?

I know certain situations some things give bonuses for complete quarters, but as a general rule, which do you prefer? Outside of unique civ quarters, do districts have an intrinsic bonus?

At first I would fill in existing urban districts first, but now I'm thinking perhaps it's better in a general sense to make some new urban areas, simply for ease of planning so I don't need to build over farms later down the road because I didn't plan well.

 

[theadder]

Adding a new urban district over a rural district allows reassigning the rural population unit after placing the building. Sometimes, it can be good to move things around to claim additional tiles, etc.

 

[gdr_willter]

Case by case.

A new urban tile grants you an opportunity to claim new territory tiles or relocate a rural population. And you only can build buildings on the tile next to existing urban tile, so more urban tiles allow you to access more buildable locations.

A quarter grants you various benefits. The buildings within a quarter can share the same adjacency bonuses. After you unlock specialists, they gain bonuses from the buildings in the tile they're located, so quarters are more powerful than urban tiles with the same amount of specialists. These factors allow you to plan bonuses efficiently.

 

[Tanel]

It really depends on whats your overall plan for building your city. Generally you want to complete quarters around your Palace as they give 1 Science and 1 Culture adjacency bonus to the Palace. Other than that completed quarters have no innate bonuses beyond specialists there now affecting 2 buildings but if you have something that gives bonuses for quarters then there is more incentive to finish them.

But sometimes you want to reach a spot with better adjacency bonuses, some resource or a spot for Unique building/Wonder so it makes sense to build out more in those cases.

 

[oaks2ninja]

Excellent info, thanks.

 

[evonannoredars]

I prefer to fill out urban tiles rather than expand a lot to keep my cities more compact, but sometimes I end up expanding more to reach a great adjacency (eg in my prev game where I had a 3 resource adjacency 3 tiles away from the capital centre).