Should it be possible to switch improvements/districts between tiles?

[historix69]

Many newer games provide user comfort for casual players by allowing to switch buildings/improvements between tiles without costs, e.g. have a marketplace on one tile and a group of houses on another tile, the player can simply switch marketplace and houses if he wants. Some games allow to completely regroup whole cities or bases. This is similar to Civ games allowing to move population between city tiles and specialist slots without costs ... (actually switching pop from one side of a city to the other side in Civ games means that pop can move up to 6 tiles per turn ignoring terrain movement costs, mountains and water ...)

In Civ6, the switching/moving could apply to city center, districts and improvements and would remove the stress from player to plan a city ahead, which is not easy when resources are not yet discovered ... In times of War, the switching would allow an exploit to switch away improvements/districts before they can be pillaged, so maybe the switching/moving should be restricted to situations where no enemy units are close to the respective tiles.

For Deity difficulty the switching of districts would only be allowed for AI. (Casual Players usually do not choose deity ...)

 

[smartcanuck1988]

I'm not really sure. It makes sense to move people quickly, but to raise buildings and move it to another place in an instant doesn't make a lot of sense in my head. Maybe there could be an option to (instantly) destroy a district, but then you have to take the time/production again to build it again in the new tile.

Also to me if everything is comfortable knowing that I can switch it around later in the game, then those early decisions you make based on what you already see in the map become less important and the game loses its fun.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Imo, to remove the permanence from settling your cities could prove detrimental to the game. It's no longer a big and important decision if you can revise it willy-nilly after the fact. Maybe if there was a significant cost involved and the city wouldn't be very developed (under size 5?) I could see this happening; but a city of millions is hardly relocateable without astronomical effort, and I'm not sure if it has ever happened irl. Ofc Civ is a game etc, but it'd be a serious hit to immersion if I could just click a button and move New York 100 miles over to the west or something.

Now moving districts around is another thing, and that I do support (and it will be modded in if it's not in the base game). The way to do it, imo, is that you'll have to demolish the district and all the buildings in it; that way it's a real decision with a serious cost involved, so you'll have to think twice about it at the best of times, but you *can* do it if you want to.

 

[historix69]

the permanence from settling

is one reason why people raze cities, even if it costs millions of (virtual) lifes.

I think being able to switch districts/improvements will make it more comfortable to learn the game ... there will be 12 different districts ... how will people try out different layouts for a city if they have to rebuild everything? Alternative solution would be to add an ingame-planning-tool which allows to optimize the city before founding it, e.g. as a mod. (I know that e.g. for C&C TA the community developed such tools and C&C TA allows switching tiles.) Since locations of resources are not known in the beginning, the player has not enough information to make optimal decisions when founding a city and therefore later will be glad if he can switch things, e.g. discovering oil under the tile where the pyramids wonder is build and not being able to use it ...

The new district system means that city center is also only a kind of "district", so moving a city should become easier.

 

[Amrunril]

For Deity difficulty the switching of districts would only be allowed for AI. (Casual Players usually do not choose deity ...)

I think there are good reasons (both flavor and gameplay) not to allow moving districts and improvements, at least without significant investment in rebuilding. I wouldn't really have a problem with allowing it on low difficulty levels, but not on everything below deity. First of all plenty of dedicated, strategically orientated players play on emperor or immortal. Second, the way difficulty levels scale in Civ V, which I hope will continue in Civ VI, is that, beginning at Prince, the player is always bound by the same standard set of rules, and only the AI and its bonuses change. Bonuses like increased research and settlers/workers from ruins only occur at lower difficulty levels, and free movement of districts would be something that should fall into this category.

 

[Ryika]

I think there are good reasons (both flavor and gameplay) not to allow moving districts and improvements, at least without significant investment in rebuilding. I wouldn't really have a problem with allowing it on low difficulty levels, but not on everything below deity.

Yeah, I mostly agree with this.

My solution would be different though, allow relocating stuff on all difficulty levels but make the cost of "relocating" stuff simply scale with difficulty. The higher, the bigger the costs. Less than rebuilding, but enough to make it a serious investment that actually "feels" like you're rebuilding parts of your city, not like a cheesy mechanic that allows you to magically float your districts around. On Deity it should still be viable in some situations, but it should certainly not act as a tool that allows you to easily fix mistakes or bad planning. On lower levels the low cost would make the system a lot more forgiving. AND it wouldn't require the AI to play by different rules, as their bonuses would just make the opportunity cost of relocating stuff not as much of a barrier for them.

Overall I think I would like relocation to exist, but it should certainly not be free or easy - that would just mean that playing ideally adds a TON of new micromanagement - not just moving population around, but also districts now. Without really adding many important decisions. Having opportunity costs however add a lot of decisions - "Do I build X in an suboptimal spot first?"/"Do I wait until I have that perfect tile?"/"Is switching X with Y really worth it?"/etc.

But in the end I think we're a bit "arguing in a vacuum" here. We don't really know how much relocation would even make sense, how easy it really is to plan a sizable empire, etc.

Maybe it works out just fine without being able to easily shuffle things around.

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions

 

[m15a]

If moving districts is meant to make things easier for players that are just learning or casual players, why would the AI be able to do it at all? If the AI can move cities and districts (and actually do so), that can be a major problem for all levels of players. It'd be annoying to make a plan of attack and then realize the AI (or a human player in multiplayer) shuffled everything around so your plan doesn't work. Say you wanted to take out a couple science districts real quick but oops the AI moved the science districts to the opposite side of a mountain range and happen to put some military districts on the border facing you. The AI is pretty dumb (and in this case would probably be intentionally dumb) but it could still happen by chance.

A human player would totally find ways to exploit the ability. An attack can definitely be anticipated (by watching the map, denouncement, espionage, etc.), so the player could intentionally move military districts to the best defensive position for that particular civ and hide away all other districts. Or say you see a settler coming by, well, better move around my cities so there's nowhere to settle. Or maybe I'll settle my city on the coast to grab the Eureka and then move it inland the next turn.

That's not a system that would add just a little comfort - it'd completely change the game.

 

[Janskey]

A human player would totally find ways to exploit the ability. An attack can definitely be anticipated (by watching the map, denouncement, espionage, etc.), so the player could intentionally move military districts to the best defensive position for that particular civ and hide away all other districts.

Why are both you and the OP talking like AI is the only one who attacks?
Switch your own districts around and attack. If the case was as suggested earlier, "maybe the switching/moving should be restricted to situations where no enemy units are close to the respective tiles", then the AI can't do a thing when you declare war and move your troops in on the same turn.

Still, I don't care if the easiest difficulty is basically "press this button to win".

By the way, is there any word whether something like FireTuner will be included? In Civ V, you could modify the terrain with that (or IGE) quite easily.

 

[qwerty25]

I was going to support the idea of moving districts. But what about how wonders need districts next to them? The district shouldnt be allowed to move away from the wonder.

I guess you could place a check if the district already has obligations.

If the avg game takes 300 turns i guess a cost of 15 turns of production to move it could be alright?

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