[GS] The Campus is still OP. And also boring.

[Uberfrog]

Compare to a theater square. So sad

It seems to me the adjacency of a Theatre Square is always lower because the main source of culture comes from Great Works. A full Amphitheatre is +10 culture by itself. That's equal to a Campus + Library with a doubled +4 adjacency bonus from Natural Philosophy.

I agree that Campuses aren't well-balanced though.

 

[EgonSpengler]

In any tech progression game, science is always going to be the best long-term path. There really isn't any way around it that's not laughably unrealistic.

They should expire as they age, forcing you to renew or rebuild them. The Ancient and Classical sources of knowledge have mostly turned to dust. There's a lot we don't know about where and how Pythagoras taught, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the Library of Alexandria, but they all have one thing in common: They don't exist anymore. If you look at the list of oldest universities today, you would think that Italy should be settling Mars by now. Making Campuses deteriorate over time would both be realistic and would force the player to consider when to build them. Once you're in the Medieval or Renaissance Eras, some of your Ancient and Classical centers of philosophy and mathematics could be converted into centers of Culture and Tourism, or just left to rot in favor of new ones. Cambridge and Oxford are still going strong, so the English have clearly decided to reinvest in those Campuses and maintain them, but Harvard, Stanford and MIT are relatively brand-new. I think the best universities in Asia are not much more than 100 years old. There are people on this forum who are older than KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), which was established in 1971.

 

[IvoryPavane]

They should expire as they age, forcing you to renew or rebuild them. The Ancient and Classical sources of knowledge have mostly turned to dust. There's a lot we don't know about where and how Pythagoras taught, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the Library of Alexandria, but they all have one thing in common: They don't exist anymore. If you look at the list of oldest universities today, you would think that Italy should be settling Mars by now. Making Campuses deteriorate over time would both be realistic and would force the player to consider when to build them. Once you're in the Medieval or Renaissance Eras, some of your Ancient and Classical centers of philosophy and mathematics could be converted into centers of Culture and Tourism, or just left to rot in favor of new ones. Cambridge and Oxford are still going strong, so the English have clearly decided to reinvest in those Campuses and maintain them, but Harvard, Stanford and MIT are relatively brand-new. I think the best universities in Asia are not much more than 100 years old. There are people on this forum who are older than KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), which was established in 1971.

I actually love this idea. You could do something similar with Theatrw squares where the older they are the more culture they bring, but require more maintenance to keep up.

Then you have to make some choices!

 

[Uberfrog]

They should expire as they age, forcing you to renew or rebuild them. The Ancient and Classical sources of knowledge have mostly turned to dust. There's a lot we don't know about where and how Pythagoras taught, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the Library of Alexandria, but they all have one thing in common: They don't exist anymore. If you look at the list of oldest universities today, you would think that Italy should be settling Mars by now. Making Campuses deteriorate over time would both be realistic and would force the player to consider when to build them. Once you're in the Medieval or Renaissance Eras, some of your Ancient and Classical centers of philosophy and mathematics could be converted into centers of Culture and Tourism, or just left to rot in favor of new ones. Cambridge and Oxford are still going strong, so the English have clearly decided to reinvest in those Campuses and maintain them, but Harvard, Stanford and MIT are relatively brand-new. I think the best universities in Asia are not much more than 100 years old. There are people on this forum who are older than KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), which was established in 1971.

I like your idea of needing to renew and replace infrastructure. I think a future Civ game could do very interesting things with the idea of how institutions and their functions change over time. Civ 6 already does this to an extent by adding Tourism to city walls and various improvements with the discovery of flight. This seems especially the case with Wonders: all of which were built for purposes other than "Culture" and "Tourism", but have become important attractions and national icons in later times. If I walk around a historic city in the real world, I sometimes see ancient buildings juxtaposed with modern ones. Other times there is little left of the old city. It's strange that in Civ, the old buildings are instantly replace by skyscrapers once you hit the modern age

 

[UWHabs]

The biggest problem to me is that there really and truly is only 1 way to reliably get science: Campuses.
Culture you have a chance with Nan Madol or Kumasi as suzerains, grabbing Choral Music, and you still have some variety through that path - you can get base culture by just spamming for monuments in cities, or build up theatres and get writers, or go for archaelogists vs artists, try theming things, etc... And the fact that an amphitheatre can host works of writing for extra culture too means you only need about half as many theatres as you do campuses to get equal yields.

But science is really just campuses. Sure, you get a couple points if you have Wats, or if you can suzerain Babylon or Fez and use their bonuses for great works or religion, but they're still going to give you more science just by their suzerain bonuses. There's not even any building choices in a campus to choose what to build, or any regional effects which make you not simply want to build a campus in every city. And because military essentially entirely comes from science, it's just too powerful to not go and dominate. Even going for a culture or religious victory, you still need to push science to avoid being a pushover.

 

[Sostratus]

The biggest problem to me is that there really and truly is only 1 way to reliably get science: Campuses.

I strongly suspect that the devs originally had this idea that the average civs will roughly have an average distribution of districts in their empire. Consider how they added the mechanism for less your common districts to be cheaper.

This works really nice with districts being a balanced affair. Roughly every 3 pops you get a new district slot in your empire = 1 more unit of empire power. But we have to deal with districts not being balanced.
Campuses are very strong, but they also come super early.
Ancient- HS, Encampment, Campus
Classical - CH, TS, EC, Harbor
Medieval - IZ
Further, every district gets its adjacency card roughly the era after it unlocks (point to campus) and get their t2 building 2 eras after they unlock in most cases (Another campus advantage.) Just delaying the non holy site adj cards to only start coming in medieval would be big.

I would much rather see the campus in classical, so the only real ancient district is the holy site. The other thing you could then do is tweak the cost of tier1 buildings to be more level. I've mentioned it before but they vary from 65 (shrine) to 80 (library) to 175 (workshop.) So they could definitely use some touching up there as well. The early unlock gives a pseudo discount to campuses as well since the can be placed earlier (and are thus cheaper.)

Now if you want to break the back of science spam that is a different discussion, but campuses themselves are definitely really really strong at every stage of the game. (Science spam is effective regardless of how good the campus is; it just happens to be the perfect source.)

Even going for a culture or religious victory, you still need to push science to avoid being a pushover.

I understand the demands of needing to keep up - you can't totally neglect stuff- but whats most frustrating about this is usually you do better at any victory if you campus spam. Similar to how any victory is easier if you take over your neighbor, except you can always choose to campus spam. And when you campus spam you can totally neglect everything else and still come out ahead (this grinds my gears the most.)

Sure, you get a couple points if you have Wats,

Side comment: I really wish they would touch up the religious buildings/beliefs a bit to round them out. Swap cathedrals to +2 culture. Add in a "monasticism" belief to give science a la choral music. We'd have to balance science first but I think it would be fun.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I would much rather see the campus in classical, so the only real ancient district is the holy site. The other thing you could then do is tweak the cost of tier1 buildings to be more level. I've mentioned it before but they vary from 65 (shrine) to 80 (library) to 175 (workshop.) So they could definitely use some touching up there as well. The early unlock gives a pseudo discount to campuses as well since the can be placed earlier (and are thus cheaper.)

I like this. If Campus were later and in an inconvenient spot (think Harbor) then I think it might be better. Of course people would probably just then beeline the new tech but it might help.

 

[Sostratus]

Of course people would probably just then beeline the new tech but it might help.

Especially on harder difficulties, there's no real question that a size 7 city should definitely either a campus or theater square. Its just how you have to play to survive.
(This is true vs humans too ofc.) But what I dislike is that a size 1 city needs the campus too. There's no flexibility in the opening. At least pushing it back and possibly even on a leaf tech, it would mean that you could juggle things a little - oh, I grabbed iron working first to give me an edge in a war, I went for mathematics first to get a head start on petra, etc.

 

[Equilin]

My take: Push every building back to City Center at the start, then have specialty districts (which, to me, is a very modern view) that is not encampment/harbor unlocks later and you can move buildings (number in City Center capped by population and/or technology) out to those 0-yield districts later.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Especially on harder difficulties, there's no real question that a size 7 city should definitely either a campus or theater square. Its just how you have to play to survive.
(This is true vs humans too ofc.) But what I dislike is that a size 1 city needs the campus too. There's no flexibility in the opening. At least pushing it back and possibly even on a leaf tech, it would mean that you could juggle things a little - oh, I grabbed iron working first to give me an edge in a war, I went for mathematics first to get a head start on petra, etc.

Hmm, Education would make thematic sense but that might be too late. Maybe to Math or something like that.

Thematically (and to not totally grind the tech game too much) it would also make a little sense to give Holy Site (now the only early district) like 1-2 beakers per turn.

To a previous point, I don't think anything would break if IZs got moved to Engineering or Machinery.or construction. With that out of the way perhaps campus could go to Apprenticeship too.

 

[Brutus2]

I wouldn’t mind the campus being moved back to Classical. How about we replace great scientists with Librarians, Professors and Researchers which get assigned to work each building the way great works do in theatres? You would have to put more effort into getting full science output from your campus instead of just “build and forget.”

 

[PhoenicianGold]

I agree that there is no flexibility because of how early you get the science district. It should be about as far on the science tech tree as the theatre square is on the culture tech tree, so that players can choose which they want to ramp up early game, rather than settling for science every time because they have another 20 turns till theatre square.

It actually feels counterintuitive to me that the campus is available before the commercial hub. Historically speaking, I believe markets and trade existed long before libraries and writing. And it would make more sense for players to get boosts to gold around the same time they can get boosts to faith, since both are competing currencies.

So i would do one of two things. Either I would move drama and poetry to ancient era, since performative arts are just as old as warfare and religion. Or I would move campuses to unlock with mathematics and move the economic hub to unlock in the ancient era. I suspect the latter would accomplish more balance mechanically.

Regardless, I would also move astrology and the Holy Site and its buildings to the civic tree. This would create more value and options in early civic teching, as well as more evenly distribute districts between the two tech trees. Really, religion, a hybrid of entertainment and drama/poetry, whose primary utility is as a unifying cultural fiction and social activity, in the science tree? Like it doesn't matter whether it's true or not, it has practically always been a social institution and virtually never been based in reason and experimentation. It screams "civic."

With these proposed changes, we could have this setup:

Ancient
* Civic - Holy Site
* Civic - Government Plaza
* Science - Encampment
* Science - Commercial Hub

Classical
* Civic - Theatre Square
* Civic - Entertainment Complex
* Science - Campus
* Science - Harbor

Perfect, even spread. Both currency districts available in ancient era. Both tech districts available in classical era. No early game pigeonholing.

 

[Sostratus]

Perfect, even spread.

Balanced, as all things should be

To a previous point, I don't think anything would break if IZs got moved to Engineering or Machinery.or construction.

I know its one of the weakest districts, but don't mind the IZ being at apprenticeship. I mean, they give the early district a sort of "guilds" flavor, so that kind of fits the middle ages. Plus earlier IZs wouldn't be as useful - you haven't fully improved the land yet (ie mines on hills,) and city growth/working more tiles is providing a lot more oomph than getting +3 from a district. Although the workshop could definitely stand for a cost reduction. It would mostly just make Germany even scarier as they plonk down +5, +8, +10 Hansas left and right in classical while everyone else cries salty, low production tears.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I agree that there is no flexibility because of how early you get the science district. It should be about as far on the science tech tree as the theatre square is on the culture tech tree, so that players can choose which they want to ramp up early game, rather than settling for science every time because they have another 20 turns till theatre square.

It actually feels counterintuitive to me that the campus is available before the commercial hub. Historically speaking, I believe markets and trade existed long before libraries and writing. And it would make more sense for players to get boosts to gold around the same time they can get boosts to faith, since both are competing currencies.

So i would do one of two things. Either I would move drama and poetry to ancient era, since performative arts are just as old as warfare and religion. Or I would move campuses to unlock with mathematics and move the economic hub to unlock in the ancient era. I suspect the latter would accomplish more balance mechanically.

Regardless, I would also move astrology and the Holy Site and its buildings to the civic tree. This would create more value and options in early civic teching, as well as more evenly distribute districts between the two tech trees. Really, religion, a hybrid of entertainment and drama/poetry, whose primary utility is as a unifying cultural fiction and social activity, in the science tree? Like it doesn't matter whether it's true or not, it has practically always been a social institution and virtually never been based in reason and experimentation. It screams "civic."

With these proposed changes, we could have this setup:

Ancient
* Civic - Holy Site
* Civic - Government Plaza
* Science - Encampment
* Science - Commercial Hub

Classical
* Civic - Theatre Square
* Civic - Entertainment Complex
* Science - Campus
* Science - Harbor

Perfect, even spread. Both currency districts available in ancient era. Both tech districts available in classical era. No early game pigeonholing.

Now if you do want TS and campus at the approximate same level, you'll probably also want to add a city center building "Science Monument" to balance out--otherwise culture would be faster.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

Now if you do want TS and campus at the approximate same level, you'll probably also want to add a city center building "Science Monument" to balance out--otherwise culture would be faster.

I could support this. I'm not sure how necessary it is because culture doesn't impact other key systems like military units and production as much. But you could manage it. A "school" unlocked at writing. I have always been of the opinion that every city center should have a "schoolhouse" and a "courthouse" option as basic science and civic buildings that form the infrastructure of nearly every township. It would allow the option of a minor investment into the two major victory techs without requiring dedicating an entire district.

Another alternative would be merely to remove the culture bonus of monuments and make them purely a loyalty building. Or give it a faith bonus instead of culture.

 

[The googles do nothing]

The Campus is still just totally and completely OP.

It sounds like your talking about SP. SP is never going to be balanced based on the playing the most efficient way. If you want to have to use other methods of producing science your going to need to mod your game. I also think that science buildings have always been the core piece of wining at civ. That makes it tough to have a version that works differently.

I agree with some of the suggestions here. I would go so far as to exchange the positions in the tech tree of the CD and the IZ. Push back the Campus to Education and make the University the first building. Give HS science and have a city center Library.

 

[BTSeven7]

It should be noted that in terms of humanity and it’s overall advancement, science has been the most OP thing we have come up with

 

[PhoenicianGold]

It should be noted that in terms of humanity and it’s overall advancement, science has been the most OP thing we have come up with

Yes and no. The OP thing we actually came up with is writing. It allows us to fix ideas on physical media and communicate them across time, effectively overcoming the generational reset button on collective knowledge (as well as better communicate across large distances).

I mean, writing is still only as good and useful as the data it contains, so writing without science would have limited utility. But since recording history and art also have some informational value I would not limit writing's utility solely to scientific discovery and innovation. Even if rationalism in general is fundamentally scientific.

I do admit that some basic "scientific" advancement happened before or concurrently with writing which were very impactful on civilization. And oral tradition did accomplish the same thing in a lesser capacity. But particularly in recent centuries it is fixed media that has brought us as far as it has, and that we can observe in retrospect that valleys and setbacks in human progress were often a consequence of a lack of literature and literacy.

 

[acluewithout]

So. I guess this thread came to the ideas and suggestions forum to die... so sad.

Anyway. I wonder if Civ would have been more interesting if there was no campus district at all?

The current design, where every yield has its own district, is kinda conservative. Making science - the most important yield - the only one that doesn’t have its own district would have been very bold.

FXS could have played with that idea too. Science could have been much more dependent on trade, or using specialists, or government / policies. Or science city states would have been more important.

Just a thought.

 

[PhoenicianGold]

So. I guess this thread came to the ideas and suggestions forum to die... so sad.

Anyway. I wonder if Civ would have been more interesting if there was no campus district at all?

The current design, where every yield has its own district, is kinda conservative. Making science - the most important yield - the only one that doesn’t have its own district would have been very bold.

FXS could have played with that idea too. Science could have been much more dependent on trade, or using specialists, or government / policies. Or science city states would have been more important.

Just a thought.

Mmmmmm...other systems would need to change to accommodate this. Because one of the main innovations of VI was to split the tech tree into two parallel trees. Culture is, by design, supposed to be equally important to science. So it would be odd to have two trees only to have one be explicitly subordinate to the other (even if on a more complex level they already are).

I also think it would just feel really weird to have a specialized culture district but no science district. Or, put purely in terms of flavor, an entertainment complex, and eventually a space port, but nothing that doesn't have a library or university.

I think the idea would be a hard sell. Civ VI is for gamer nerds. Nerds associate with and like feeling smart. Hence why campuses are going to be one of the most resonant districts, alongside the vicarious machismo and wealth of the encampment and commercial hub. It may even explain why Civ in general has always been focused around science, war, and money. So i get why science is pushed, but I wouldn't want it pushed any more or less so much as better balanced with other interests. I think setting it apart could just amplify the problem.