Slow expanding borders

[shaglio]

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.

Civ 5 was originally like this, but they changed it in a patch so that a city would spread to a 3rd (and even 4th) ring Resource tile before all the 2nd rings were acquired. I wonder why they reverted back to the Civ 5 vanilla method?

 

[Disgustipated]

Meritocracy is actully a great policy if there are few cultural city states or you have more important city states to assgin your envoys

I used this my current game. I think it worked out fairly well. Although I was pretty far into the game when I made this post, so it didn't have a huge effect that late in the game. I admit I forgot about this policy and never used it. I think I'll use this as I don't like to build cultural districts, or at least not build them early. I tend to focus on commercial/harbors and industrial, those take a while to get up and running. And of course later on there is a civic for international trade routes to give culture and science, but that comes pretty late in the game.

Civ 5 was originally like this, but they changed it in a patch so that a city would spread to a 3rd (and even 4th) ring Resource tile before all the 2nd rings were acquired. I wonder why they reverted back to the Civ 5 vanilla method?

Maybe this is the problem I was running into. I was getting irritated it was picking up useless ocean squares over useful land squares, and also ignoring resources in the 3rd ring. This game has a bad habit of going after ocean and mountain squares.

edit: I should also mention there were no cultural city states in my game. There was one early, but Poland took them out. Perhaps that affected my slow expanding borders as well (although doesn't the bonus they give only affect the capital and cities with theater squares?- I'd have to double check).

 

[chazzycat]

seems pretty obvious that you're supposed to buy tiles with gold now. with no city states to dump gold on anymore, why not.

 

[Victoria]

Yes the slow growth is all part of the overall design and another decision mechanic, do I spend gold expanding to those lovely spices on that hill, buy a builder or upgrade my archers..... more gold please, that's why I sell my early lux...

 

[UWHabs]

I find with a monument plus the +1 culture per district policy card, my cities tile growth rate is pretty reasonable. Yeah, I have to buy tiles, but mostly it's just because the game doesn't know I want to go build an industrial district so it should expand to the plains tile next to 4 hills, instead of one of those hills, for example, or that I have a builder sitting on a forest tile waiting to chop it and it decides to choose the other forest tile instead.

 

[historix69]

It would be easier if building a district would culture-bomb the surrounding tiles (as long as they are neutral) like when founding a city. Or if you could plan the next tile to expand (or buy it with culture or faith).
I miss some of the traits from Civ5 like Culture from Fishing Boats, Culture from Plantations, ...

 

[topresch]

There must be a workable mod that allows you to choose every time an expansion happens? That makes sense as well, since you control where your civ is going and thus also channel the cultural expansion as part of the overall character of your civ that game.

 

[Securion]

One more reason to play as Persia. The pairidaeza helps with border growth as well as giving more money to buy tiles.

 

[Balkans]

A lot of stuff about civ vi drives me crazy but i can't say the rate of border expansion is one of them. Since there are different ways to acquire tiles and speed up the border expansion it's up to player how much he will invest and take care of it. At least you got the option to make it happen. If you have a city that desperately needs couple of tiles, get the discount card and buy whatever you need. If you can wait for natural border growth, get some culture going and let it develop itself. I really like the system, where it's up to me and only me if i'll grab a lot of tiles and in what fashion. I really complained about almost every single thing in this game, but border expansion is something i find decent. But i have no problem if community sees a potential improvements of the system.
For starters, i really don't see a reason why you can't manually chose what tile is popped next. Automatic system is fine, but it would be cool if you could take manual control over it.

 

[zyx]

For the player the border expansion feels slow, yet I find that my cities have way more land that the population would work almost until the end. Even as the Romans the rushing through the civic's tree is so obvious, yet the border expansion not so much.
At later era starts the newly founded cities take more land than at 4000 BC start. Anyone knows why? Could that mechanic be implemented for the 4000 BC start too?

 

[Victoria]

At later era starts the newly founded cities take more land than at 4000 BC start. Anyone knows why?

I imagine only Firaxis truly knows why but very likely because a later era start is trying to in a way mimic if you had started those cities earlier.

 

[stinkubus]

Border expansion is fine, imo. Passively getting tons land for no more than the cost of a monument seems cheap to me. If you really want that tile in the third ring, but don't want to spend the $, just settle a new city for tiles away

 

[historix69]

Settling cities as tight as possible (distance 3) should help. All tiles then are 1st or 2nd ring.

In my current game (marathon) I tried to be smart and settle widely spread (distance 5), but it now takes forever to get 3rd ring tiles (It is already ca. 50 turns for the 2nd or 3rd tile in 2nd ring with monument or so) and 3rd ring tiles are almost unaffordable when you have low cash income (In Classic they cost already around 300-400 Gold). I wanted to place some economy districts between the cities for synergy effects but cannot afford to buy those 3rd ring tiles and without economy districts I cannot increase income. So the AI strategy to settle as tight as possible is not so bad ...

Question :
Has buying tiles with gold a negative effect on culture costs for tiles?
I noticed that the culture cost for the current tile the city is working on is not increased, but I did not check the next tile ...

Update :
Ok, culture costs seem not to be affected by number of tiles purchased with gold.

 

[myclan]

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.

Only when the 2nd ring is desert/tundra, it make me feel desperate if there is mountain/coast

Civ5 is good that it will prefer a resource even if it is beyond the 3rd ring. Civ6 you just have to buy all the tile to force it to expand to a resource if there happens to be one. Though I know buying a settler maybe a better choice. What is bad in Civ5 is that they prefer flat land instead of forest/hill, but actually what we need urgently is the production

 

[Victoria]

A few games ago My warrior found a builder in an early hut and so I thought I would buy 4 x 50 gold tiles in my capital as thanks. It was very noticeable later that my capital was a lot larger because of this but its not something I would do often. That early gold has its uses in other ways... i was just flush at the time. Its an option though.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

If I get gold early, I'll usually use some of it for the cheap tiles if there's something good.
Although I tend to wait and see if I have iron anywheres about. (usually not)

 

[isau]

It wouldn't bother me much except the AI doesn't seem to buy tiles with Gold.

I also really miss tile competition from Civ 4. That (and the Civ 4 Domination Victory) are the only features I really miss. Fighting over tiles with Culture was great. I don't know why Civ 5 and 6 got rid of it.

 

[myclan]

It wouldn't bother me much except the AI doesn't seem to buy tiles with Gold.

I also really miss tile competition from Civ 4. That (and the Civ 4 Domination Victory) are the only features I really miss. Fighting over tiles with Culture was great. I don't know why Civ 5 and 6 got rid of it.

In fact I just hate it for ofen losing my village/town to AI. It angers me a lot and I just had to conquer them

 

[historix69]

Conquest via Cultural Influance started in Civ 3 ...

 

[Leyrann]

Doesn't mean it wasn't in 4.