Production, the only yield that matters

[Zenstrive]

the younger cities suffer from much bigger district costs.
The industrial cost need to be nerfed or we need to add ability to redirect trade routes whenever we want.

 

[Chaleb]

If you're going for the science victory, getting Carl Sagan as a great scientist helps an immense amount, as his ability is to give you a free Spaceship module. But, I think he might be random like the rest of the great people, so if you're unlucky you won't get him and have to spend the extra 30 turns or so.

And yeah, factories are immensely important. I've found that I like Japan a lot for peaceful games because they have a unique improvement to factories and better districts.

 

[Esperr]

A better solution I think would have a few late game techs or civics or something flatten out of reduce district costs. Like how feudalism starts your farms up, something like just researching it cuts costs. This way we can maintain the pace of the early game, but still have a mistake boom and a late game boom.

 

[Big J Money]

If Greece gets a hill start bias, then it's strong for guaranteeing a solid production start in the early game. Which of course affects everything: settles, districts you want to specialize in, builders, etc.

 

[Stalker0]

I think part of the issue is that lack of percentage bonuses. Production tends to ramp up quickly as your city is growing and you set builders to get your industrial complex and mines/lumbermills operational. But then, production mostly plateaus....with only industrial districts from other cities adding anything. Even in Civ 5 you had windmills and factories to give a +35% bonus to your existing hammers. The end game hammer costs I think assume your production gets scaling, but it doesn't scale that much after the midgame.

 

[lamaros]

I think part of the issue is that lack of percentage bonuses. Production tends to ramp up quickly as your city is growing and you set builders to get your industrial complex and mines/lumbermills operational. But then, production mostly plateaus....with only industrial districts from other cities adding anything. Even in Civ 5 you had windmills and factories to give a +35% bonus to your existing hammers. The end game hammer costs I think assume your production gets scaling, but it doesn't scale that much after the midgame.

I think this is probably the main thing - there are no ways for a city or civ light on hammers to compensate through other tech or buildings (outside some religious benefits in isolated situations). Meanwhile those with hammers only get stronger with the tech available.

Maybe an addition of a building or two (like Windmill: adds one hammer to this industrial district for each adjacent plain) will help.

In general I think there is a LOT of scope in the game for more interesting options to be added to districts through building opportunity costs, etc.

 

[Brianstorm]

Some easy fixes:

1. Districts only scale per city, however what even is the logic for scaling districts other than they're too powerful?

2. No scaling but there's an economic penalty for building them. This makes sense, just have an upkeep for districts based on how many you have plus buildings in them

3. Keep scaling the way it is but allow builders to hurry them up

 

[lamaros]

Some easy fixes:

1. Districts only scale per city, however what even is the logic for scaling districts other than they're too powerful?

2. No scaling but there's an economic penalty for building them. This makes sense, just have an upkeep for districts based on how many you have plus buildings in them

3. Keep scaling the way it is but allow builders to hurry them up

1/2. Much less reason to go tall, though.
3. Nah, keep it just for one leader.

 

[Acken]

If you're going for the science victory, getting Carl Sagan as a great scientist helps an immense amount, as his ability is to give you a free Spaceship module. But, I think he might be random like the rest of the great people, so if you're unlucky you won't get him and have to spend the extra 30 turns or so.

And yeah, factories are immensely important. I've found that I like Japan a lot for peaceful games because they have a unique improvement to factories and better districts.

There are a few others that help science victory. One guy engineer give free +1500 production and one scientist gives +100% production.

 

[Alkaid]

I was getting frustrated just how long of an eternity districts took in most of my cities, even when they had decent to good production. It just makes the game feel like a slog as you sit and wait for all the high cost stuff to finish building. Lots of times it feels like a standard game is set to epic with these build times. And it feels badly thought out that your district cost goes up as you get more of them, which means newer cities without much infrastructure and production get nailed with higher cost districts, making what was already really slow to build even worse.

I feel like a cost reduction sweep across districts, some of their buildings and some wonders could be really beneficial. And I know wonders are always big projects, but when it's 35 turns for the Oracle or 45 for Big Ben, despite having relatively decent production, I just groan.

I think they were so afraid of infinite city spam getting being too dominant that they overcompensated with the scaling district cost, and just magnified the production issue even more. It may be how things are right now, but I really don't think the devs meant for stuff to build like molasses as it is. Having something like a coastal city with a industrial district in it and some rain forest/farms as its land take 25 turns to build a harbor(and everything else) is just painful.

And yes, if you do the science victory without getting Carl Sagan and hopefully more of the science victory-boosting great people, you're gonna be clicking through turns for a good while. Even the victory conditions in Beyond Earth weren't that tediously long to finish, I have to say.

 

[Stalker0]

Another consequence of this is that I go internal trade routes all the time. I never do international except to pick up some envoys. This is the only way I have found to make new cities remotely competitive once the district costs spike. Basically, time your new city to when your TRs expire, and then move them all into the new city to let it develop. Rinse and Repeat.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I don't agree with the thread title

I don't find it hard to build districts and districts are one of the few things that only can be built with production. Buildings can be purchased with gold at pretty good ratio (gold is considered to be about half as valuable as other resources). Units can also be purchased with gold but given that you can pick cards that give production boost towards units that is not as efficient as building purchase.

Wonders and project are other stuff that can only be built with production. Projects seems to be the most effective way to turn a resource into great people points while wonders can be useful but are very expensive. Naturally space race is a production heavy victory due to the very expensive projects.

Try to build the stuff that can not be purchased, let new cities build districts while old cities can build workers and military units. Buildings can be purchased saving production.

Gold have advantages over production such as being global, can be stored and have some other important use such as tile purchases.

PS: Remove all bonus resources that give production in the late game (their harvest value increase as time passes), old woods should also be chopped as their only advantage is if you plan to make national parks.

 

[dexters]

This is offset somewhat by gold, which is no longer used for city states. As gold has limited use now, the price for gold has gone down, which means inflation on things you could buy with gold. This explains the higher costs.

I've bought almost all my builders, all my trade caravans and lots of units and buildings with gold.

Merchant Republic and its legacy bonus (discounts on purchasing with gold) going into Democracy & lots of trade routes and the right social policies will make for a powerful commerce dimension that is not reliant on hammers as much as you can always rush builders to immediately improve your hammer starved cities (lumber mills/mines/chopping trees etc) ; rush buildings, rush units.

I sort of stumbled into this combo in my first game, but paired with Classical Republic's legacy bonus of Great person point buff, the combination is insanely powerful .Lots and lots of great leaders.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The first thing a new city should build is likely to be a district, the second thing a new city may build may be its second district and the third thing may be the third district depending how quick population growth is.

 

[BenSisko]

I've won a game with Arabia today, Science victory in King, and came across this issue. But i don't think it's really "too" bad. I ended up setting my capital with 4 industrial regional bonuses from nearby cities, at least 6 trade routes producing hammers and every policy bonus available to the production of space projects.

I did manage to get Nicola Tesla and added another factory/power plant that was 9 tiles away. And in the end i was building mars project parts in 8-9 turns. Not bad. I could have accelerated the process building more spaceports, but when i realized that there was no point.

And all that taking into consideration that i missed a lot of other ways to improve my space-race projects. Like Sergei Kolarov, Werner Von Braun, Karl Sagan or Toronto (it was conquered by that pesky Moctezuma). The game has the right tools for this strategy and it was a pretty fun game.

Also, the AI targeted my spaceport and industrial districts with their spies. It was the most clever thing i saw from the AI in Civ VI so far.

 

[Stalker0]

And in the end i was building mars project parts in 8-9 turns. Not bad.

Do we know if the Mars projects scales with number of cities at all?

Effectively if this is true, you had a city that had ~2.5 times more hammers than my capital had in my last science game. I honestly cannot fathom it. 50%...okay. 100%.....um, somehow. But 250% more hammers....I cannot imagine it. That is 333.33 hammers in the city as a note (mars projects are 3000 hammers each....at least in my last game).

 

[Brianstorm]

The first thing a new city should build is likely to be a district, the second thing a new city may build may be its second district and the third thing may be the third district depending how quick population growth is.

Is this the case? I have a feeling they want maybe one or two pre-Industrial districts per city and lots and lots of farms.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Commerce hub and harbours are pretty decent simply because of the trade routes so they could be amongst your first districts to build. They don't need buildings or so and the traders can be built by the old cities.

 

[MagicCuboid]

I honestly think a lot of Civ's hammer unit/building balancing act could be solved by just making units cost food instead of hammers. In the old days this would have had catastrophic consequences, but now that a Civ needs production to raise housing, population (and therefore science/culture) of high-food cities is kept in check.

 

[DaDokisinX]

OP summed up my play experience, although I went for domination, and just upgraded my army once I got the tech.
I personally reached the end era by 1800 (lol wut?), other civs were constantly behind in science, and I wasn't even focused on science. Science needs to be slowed down to make the science/hammer ratio more appropriate instead of flying through the tech trees with ease.