Slow expanding borders

[Disgustipated]

One of my major complaints with the game, even though I enjoy the game. It's just too slow to expand borders.

Is it worth it to build a cultural district just to improve border expansion? Does a cultural district increase expansion in all cities or only the city you build the district?

I find myself often choosing the 15% faster border expansion pantheon but it seems to make no difference. I figured this pantheon would be worth it it could save me buying at least a few tiles (should save me 1000 gold in theory which seems good), but it's still so slow.

Any tips? I know optimally I should switch out policies for the 20% discount, buy a whole bunch of tiles and then switch back. But I'm bad at saving that much money. I find myself spending most of my gold on buying tiles and don't have much left over for rush buying buildings or units.

I find myself approaching the 1800's and still can't expand to the 3rd ring naturally.

 

[Leyrann]

I sometimes build a Theater Square in important or border cities to make sure I get as many tiles as possible. For the rest I just build a monument everywhere and am patient, plus I buy important tiles.

 

[Photi]

i agree with you, border expansion is way too slow, i spend so much on tiles. wondering though if they sped up tile expansion if they would have to nerf gold outputs. one way to counter it is to pack your cities in close, but i'm usually settling for resources so my cities can be anywhere from 3-8 tiles apart. if i didn't have to buy so many tiles, i would probably be able to gold rush more great people.

i think the amount of bought tiles might also be victory condition dependent. culture games have me buying up tons of coastline for the resorts.

 

[cazaderonus]

Yeah border growth is kinda slow in the first stages of the game. But if you go for a cultural victory, at some point it goes crazy fast once you fill in the slots of your amphitheater or museums.

Theater district will indeed fasten border growth but it's not like you can build one in any of your cities unless you go for a culture victory. So beside the monument, you could use international trade routes that provide some culture. Even a +2 makes a big difference in a city without a ThD.

The pantheon can be usefull but i will most definitely always pick something else, be it divine spark (default choice) or whatever situational pantheon looks good. Border growth can be frustrating but pas a certain point you should swim in gold and using the cost reduction for tile acquisition policy a few times to mass buy some land proves to be effective to save a few bucks.

 

[myclan]

I think one of the major useage of gold is to buy tiles, it is intentional by design

 

[king of nowhere]

I think the system encourages you to settle as close as possible, to go "wide" instead of "tall". I would like to have more incentives to making a few large cities with a lot of land to control rather than splitting your land between many different cities.

 

[Victoria]

I used to buy a lot of tiles with gold, then I stopped and coped and my game got better because gold has better uses. Sure I still buybtiles but I avoid it where I can now. Normally it's to take a hill to stop another civ taking the hill, or to block a passageway.

Meritocracy will help all cities border growth based on districts so is a good all round card.

A theatre in a 10 city is great because any GW you capture will seriously pump your border growth.

 

[cazaderonus]

I think the system encourages you to settle as close as possible, to go "wide" instead of "tall". I would like to have more incentives to making a few large cities with a lot of land to control rather than splitting your land between many different cities.

Thing is, sharing land between cities isnt bad in CiVI for the sole reason that growing your cities enough so that you can work all the tiles available is both difficult due to housing and really not necessary to win even on deity. If you have 10 cities with 12 pop and your capital at 16 it's already more than you need. So that means you'll need 11 tiles to work in your satelite cities and 15 in your capital.

With such numbers, you're far from using all the tiles of a city without any overlap (36 if my quick maths are correct). Even if you add 4 tiles for districts, and say a wonder, you're still at 16 tiles you will be needing for a 12 pop city, and 20 for your capital at 16 pop.

So yeah, no need to bother with a little overlap in CiVI. And knowing that it should help with border growth considering the tiles under overlap will be grabbed over time by 2 cities and not just one, making the entire thing faster especially reaching 3rd ring tiles.

I used to buy a lot of tiles with gold, then I stopped and coped and my game got better because gold has better uses. Sure I still buybtiles but I avoid it where I can now. Normally it's to take a hill to stop another civ taking the hill, or to block a passageway.

Meritocracy will help all cities border growth based on districts so is a good all round card.

A theatre in a 10 city is great because any GW you capture will seriously pump your border growth.

I agree that buying tile should only be done either when it provides something you need immediatly, like say a niter tile, or to avoid losing one to another civ. That or do it in bulk with the policy to reduce the cost.

Can you develop on meritocracy ? I got to admit i never considered it added culture to all districts and thus to all cities. I always thought it was a flat boost to overall culture equal to the amount of district you own.

 

[Victoria]

Shared tiles is in fact a clever way to play because you can swap tiles between them as need be

 

[myclan]

I think the system encourages you to settle as close as possible, to go "wide" instead of "tall". I would like to have more incentives to making a few large cities with a lot of land to control rather than splitting your land between many different cities.

I think which prevent you from going wide and tall are housing. You don't want to build a city where there is no water early and it prevent you from getting a high pop city early

Meritocracy is actully a great policy if there are few cultural city states or you have more important city states to assgin your envoys. They provide great amount of culture for your cities without building a theater district. And theater districts actully can't provide much before you can dig an artifact

 

[steveg700]

Shared tiles is in fact a clever way to play because you can swap tiles between them as need be

Wish you could swap districts out, but at least you can cluster them together for adjacency bonuses.

Would be nice if you got a big adjacency bonus for building districts of the same type next to each other. Build two industrial zones next to each other, you get a nice boost to both.

 

[rschissler]

I agree with you. I will only buy tiles for a particular resource. I think slow border growth is one reason why war is so easy. You can easily move your troops between cities to get to the capitol and take it out. Try doing that with Civ IV--you can't.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

Honestly, this doesn't bother me at all. Just buy the tiles you need with gold. Otherwise a monument plus culture pantheon seems to work just fine. Also there are multiple civs that provide faster border expansion.

 

[Rosty K]

I've also noticed that when you build a wonder, a city immediately expands by a few tiles. Not too useful, but something if you are more industrial than cultural.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

I've noticed that about wonders as well.

The growth is slow, but the choices the AI makes on where to expand are sometimes just silly.
Worst part is waiting for the second ring where I can drop an encampment.

 

[dagriggstar]

Kind of related - it irritates me how all of the 2nd ring tiles are acquired first before the 3rd ring tiles. Basically have to buy any 3rd ring tile if you want it anytime soon.

That said, the only way around that I suppose would be some kind of bias. Like, as soon as your city is founded it calculates the fastest way it can get the most number of resources as soon as possible (So then it would be possible for some 3rd ring tiles to be gained before the entire 2nd ring is complete). That would require the game calculate that as soon as the city is founded and recalculate if another civ took a tile first, I suppose that could slow the game down but I don't care tile acquisition is too generic as is. Wouldn't mind terrain/feature biases as well (eg you get rainforest tiles first if playing as Brazil or Kongo) but that is probably getting off topic.

 

[NegativeZero]

Kind of related - it irritates me how all of the 2nd ring tiles are acquired first before the 3rd ring tiles. Basically have to buy any 3rd ring tile if you want it anytime soon.

It does bug me cities will want that 1f/1p plains tile in the 2nd ring over a luxury/resource in the 3rd ring. However, I prefer quick updates after ending a turn than Firaxis re-coding city boarder growth but with longer end-turn delays.

I'm thinking the inherent +culture per citizen has increased the amount of culture needed to grow boarders. In civ5, boarders kinda shot out after the initial monument and more so after an amphitheater.

Civs that gain boarders faster like Russia, Australia, and Poland do save quite a bit of gold on land purchases. The growth also feels more fluid (to some degree) compared to other civs.

It would be fun to see a City-State that allows land purchases with faith. It could even be a cool leader ability but would need a suitable host.

 

[Ozisl]

Isn't this a bit like someone doing a cultural victory complaining about having to keep an army?

 

[historix69]

The same problems with unrealistic culture expansion already existed in Civ 5.
Civ 5/6 focus on Game Play and therefore ignores the Simulation aspect.

In a Game you are simply not supposed to have immediate access to all tiles in reach of your city, at least not for free. The tiles become available one by one while the game progresses. That's Game Design.

In a Simulation Culture would spread from a city (Culture Source) to the surrounding tiles e.g. with a speed based on travel speed (build a road from city to a tile to speed up culture accumulation in this tile) and attractivity of tiles (hostile terrain will not support a large population in the tile and therefore will lower culture spread to other tiles.) I never understood how culture spreads to water tiles, since water tiles are not populated and also have no infrastructure. In real life your empire can simply claim coastal water regions.

For Civ 5 there is a Culture Spread Mod by Gedemon.

I could think of a (civilian) Cartographer Unit which would allow to claim neutral tiles near your border (maybe in combination with a military unit), either with limited number of charges or over time. (In terms of real life, the Cartographer would draw a detailed map of the tile, list all assets like population, towns, cities in the tile (census) and would allow your government to tax it / use it. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book)

In Civ 1 you had immediate access to all tiles and you could use military units to claim a tile worked by a rival city.
In SMAC and CtP there were borderlines.

 

[WillowBrook]

Kind of related - it irritates me how all of the 2nd ring tiles are acquired first before the 3rd ring tiles. Basically have to buy any 3rd ring tile if you want it anytime soon.

I understand the irritation, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing; I often want a less productive tile for a district. And given that the earlier you lay down a district, the cheaper it is to build, I'm okay with (possibly) worse second ring tiles being prioritized.