Production Map

[kamarainen]

Long time lurker on civfanatics, but I finally decided to join recently due to the Civ VI release. This is my first post, so we'll see how bad I mess up.

I've noticed many people having big issues with production, so I wonder if everyone is leveraging the new way factories and power plants work. Both of these industrial zone buildings provide production to any city center within 6 tiles, not just their own city. I've attached the image illustrate how things can be laid out in an ideal situation. Of course, mountains, water, map type, etc., will require adjustments to be made, and lower it from the ideal. However, this image can be useful as reference material when you are laying out your plan.

In the template, City 1 and 2 each have access to 9 Industrial Zones. Cities 3-6 all have access to 7. Even if you can only structure it to fit 3, that's a huge increase over the 1 that is likely to be the result without planning.

TIP: Putting the industrial zone at the furthest point from your city center, and in the direction you want to expand, is a good place to start.

Later in the game, after you get some cities up and running, expanding can be easier since new cities can receive a huge jump start if they are able to leverage the industrial zones from even just 1 other city. This can be really useful to help expand cities into production starved areas, or even just to grab up additional territory for certain resources and to keep the AI from squeezing in spots where you don't want him.

I'm sure others have realized this benefit as well. But I thought a template might help leverage it better.

Cheers!

 

[Sogno di Volare]

That is super handy. Visually it is much easier to understand. Thank you very much.

 

[Esperr]

You are a gentlemen and a scholar, and that is extremely handy.

However the issue is that there is rarely enough space to do that, or if there is the city sites are trash. The other bigger issue is that even with cities getting hit by like 4 or five factory bonuses still have crawling production late game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Civ 6 production encourages ICS... build cities with only Industrial zone in all those empty spaces (the late game colonizing is filling in those gaps in your empire), a city should be founded on every legal tile in your territory in the industrial era

 

[Esperr]

I play continenents, and ive never had empty space in the industrial era, and early game cant afford to spam settlers just to ICS, youl just get run over by A.I for lack of troops/being spread to thin.

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

You should get run over, but the AI is too easy to beat, even with only a few units, if it attacks at all.

 

[King Jason]

You don't need to worry about overlapping cities radius. They don't need even close to all of their tiles to be useful all game. Take this shot for example;

Spoiler :

That's not even done efficiently, as Ulm, Aachen, and Cologne's districts could have been positioned better.

Nevertheless, two cities are touched by 7 industrial districts, 3 by 5, and 1 by only 4.

As you can see, I didn't need a lot of room and easily could have repositioned it so that most, if not all of the cities were hit by 6 or 7 districts. This led to a Deity science win, no exploits. Maximum city spacing seems pretty pointless apart from catering to an aesthetic bias.

Having said that, the OP does give a solid tip, which mostly isn't showcased in the above picture but sort of pops up in my first layout I posted somewhere; Put Factories farthest from the city center. You can notice the 7th factory that affects Aachen and Cologne is coming from off screen for that reason.

Edit: Important note - I do this whether I play Germany or not, the above just happens to be taken from a German game.

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

ICS like that is good for any victory type.

More great people points and slots for a culture victory, more holy sites, faith, and religious pressure for religious victory, more science and production for domination or Mars victory.

ICS seems to be the new meta.

(I'm not thrilled about that; ICS is so tedious.)

 

[Esperr]

So im curious in that shot when you jammed your citys was it just about positioning? As in who cares what the terrain is and stuff just put them so all of there facotrys can touch as many citys as possible later?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

ICS like that is good for any victory type.

More great people points and slots for a culture victory, more holy sites, faith, and religious pressure for religious victory, more science and production for domination or Mars victory.

ICS seems to be the new meta.

(I'm not thrilled about that; ICS is so tedious.)

first Its not always the best for any victory type. more cities is good, but ICS might not be the best
secondly it only really becomes needed in the mid late game as you get factories

 

[Qin Shi Hung]

Even before factories, ICS gives 1 free amenity and 2 free housing per city (first two pop don't require an amenity or housing) plus a free 2 food 1 production tile, and claims 7 tiles which would be expensive to buy.

 

[King Jason]

So im curious in that shot when you jammed your citys was it just about positioning? As in who cares what the terrain is and stuff just put them so all of there facotrys can touch as many citys as possible later?

Technically, yes. The biggest consideration when placing cities is it's urban sprawl, imo. If you're grabbing luxuries, that's cool - but I don't look at spots in terms of terrain really, apart from Water and reasonable adjacency bonuses. The thing about civ6 is that cities can function anywhere - In the middle of the desert; in the middle of the tundra. Districts delete tile yields and provide so much in return. Housing is the major growth limiter, not food - so you can do a lot with a scare amount of food. Internal trade routes can cover your shortcomings.

Plus, like I said - cities don't need their full radius to be effective. So really, there's virtually no reason not to bunch them up and stoke the fires of industry.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Technically, yes. The biggest consideration when placing cities is it's urban sprawl, imo. If you're grabbing luxuries, that's cool - but I don't look at spots in terms of terrain really, apart from Water and reasonable adjacency bonuses. The thing about civ6 is that cities can function anywhere - In the middle of the desert; in the middle of the tundra. Districts delete tile yields and provide so much in return. Housing is the major growth limiter, not food - so you can do a lot with a scare amount of food. Internal trade routes can cover your shortcomings.

Plus, like I said - cities don't need their full radius to be effective. So really, there's virtually no reason not to bunch them up and stoke the fires of industry.

Sort of annoyed about districts deleting yields....It would be nice if Tundra/Desert districts paid 2x maintenance or Grass/Plains districts paid less maintenance (-1 for all districts and buildings on Plains/Grass, +1 maintenance for all districts/buildings on Tundra/Desert/Snow, *none on snow premodern eras would work fine...or maybe +1 adjacency bonus if the District is on Grass/Plains)

 

[lamaros]

Sort of annoyed about districts deleting yields....It would be nice if Tundra/Desert districts paid 2x maintenance or Grass/Plains districts paid less maintenance (-1 for all districts and buildings on Plains/Grass, +1 maintenance for all districts/buildings on Tundra/Desert/Snow, *none on snow premodern eras would work fine...or maybe +1 adjacency bonus if the District is on Grass/Plains)

I agree it would be more interesting if districts also had a placement bonus as well as adjacency bonuses.

 

[King Jason]

Sort of annoyed about districts deleting yields....It would be nice if Tundra/Desert districts paid 2x maintenance or Grass/Plains districts paid less maintenance (-1 for all districts and buildings on Plains/Grass, +1 maintenance for all districts/buildings on Tundra/Desert/Snow, *none on snow premodern eras would work fine...or maybe +1 adjacency bonus if the District is on Grass/Plains)

...why? The fact that you can fill up a desert with districts so long as you have access to water is one of the best things about the district system. It let's you do this;

Spoiler :

The handicap is in the terrain itself. Sure, you can build a city literally anywhere but if the terrain is straight awful then you're going to need all of your trade routes going from that city to make it function. So Desert and Tundra/Snow cities are harder to maintain if they're literally in the middle of nowhere with access to no food or production.

 

[Nefelia]

...why? The fact that you can fill up a desert with districts so long as you have access to water is one of the best things about the district system. It let's you do this...

Nice.

Less extreme examples would be Phoenix and Las Vagas; two thriving American cities planted in the middle of a desert.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

...why? The fact that you can fill up a desert with districts so long as you have access to water is one of the best things about the district system. It let's you do this;

Spoiler :

The handicap is in the terrain itself. Sure, you can build a city literally anywhere but if the terrain is straight awful then you're going to need all of your trade routes going from that city to make it function. So Desert and Tundra/Snow cities are harder to maintain if they're literally in the middle of nowhere with access to no food or production.

Nice.

Less extreme examples would be Phoenix and Las Vagas; two thriving American cities planted in the middle of a desert.

both of those
1. have access to fresh water (maybe through Aqueducts but they do)
2. pay extra maintenance for living there (in water costs and AC)

It just seems like a bad idea that deserts are ("that would be good for a district") spots

I'd like to see either
-Tundra/Desert districts and buildings pay +1 maintenance, Grassland/Plains districts and buildings pay -1 maintenance
OR
-Districts get +1 "adjacency" bonus for being on Grassland/Plains (say +1 housing for neighborhoods, +1 amenity for Entertainment District)

 

[chazzycat]

Why even space the cities that far? (5-7 hexes). The minimum of 4 hexes will result in even further production gains with no significant drawbacks. What's the point of growing a super-tall city anyway? It's inefficient in every way. More cities = more industrial zones = more hammers in every city. More hammers = more districts. More districts = more great people and more culture slots. Basically more cities = more everything.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Why even space the cities that far? (5-7 hexes). The minimum of 4 hexes will result in even further production gains with no significant drawbacks. What's the point of growing a super-tall city anyway? It's inefficient in every way. More cities = more industrial zones = more hammers in every city. More hammers = more districts. More districts = more great people and more culture slots. Basically more cities = more everything.

Well there is a bit of diminishing returns 4 space cities only have 15 hexes each....assuming your farms are all ~triangle that's ~5 food per farm. so about 1 district per farm...you also need about 1 neighborhood per 2 farm-district pairs, and probably a couple production tiles.... so limit yourself to ~4 districts/city (~4 farms, 2 neighborhoods, ~5 production or wasted tiles)

Works well for production, entertainment, commerce, [then either harbor, culture, science, or encampment depending on city]

 

[joncnunn]

I agree with KrikkitTwo 15 hexes per city is too few for cities with fresh water access. 5 hexes works much better for cities with fresh water access, but it's more important to consider the terrain as a whole to avoid accidentally locking yourself out of permanently working a key resource tile.
This includes considering where the AI has founded it's cities.
The grid on top though is way too loose; it's both so loose that regional district buildings aren't benefiting as many cites as they could, but also cultural growth is so slow in Civ VI (due to not having something like Tradition opener's massive cultural tile expansion discount) that barb camps would form in between cities.