The district system

[Eagle Pursuit]

Well you build the district from within the city, so if your city already has a campus, then they won't let you build another one. And I'm guessing that tile will be locked to the city that built it (so you won't be able to "share" a campus between 2 cities")

That seems likely.

 

[moysturfurmer]

That seems likely.

Yeah, they gotta save that for the first expansion, Civ VI: Pandering & Gerrymandering.

Tht being said I wouldn't be opposed to a redistributing system for swapping hexes between cities (at a cost). It'd be reflective of real life & such a system could potentially be used with a little tweaking to facilitate international land trade.

 

[nyyfootball]

There are 12 types, and it *seems* like you can only have one of each type per city.

So my large cities (of several million people) could potentially only have one university and one library both of which are located outside of the city (and potentially pretty far away from my city) in the rural countryside?

I don't understand the logic of these districts. They have no antecedent in the real world or in history and seem like something straight out of a Settlers of Catan expansion instead of a new Civilization game.


I strongly believe that there should be a penalty (happiness and economic) for building districts far away from your city. Districts adjacent to your city should receive more benefits than districts that are built several tiles away from your city.

 

[moysturfurmer]

So my large cities (of several million people) could potentially only have one university and one library both of which are located outside of the city (and potentially pretty far away from my city) in the rural countryside?

I don't understand the logic of these districts. They have no antecedent in the real world or in history and seem like something straight out of a Settlers of Catan expansion instead of a new Civilization game.


I strongly believe that there should be a penalty (happiness and economic) for building districts far away from your city. Districts adjacent to your city should receive more benefits than districts that are built several tiles away from your city.

Buildings in Civ have always been an abstraction. You telling me in Civ IV London only had ONE supermarket?

Think of it this way. Boston might have a ton of universities, but there's only one Cambridge (Harvard). Harvard isn't the only university in Boston but it's the most significant.

 

[nyyfootball]

Buildings in Civ have always been an abstraction. You telling me in Civ IV London only had ONE supermarket?

I guess my hope was always that Civ would expand and become more and more complex as the technology grew and allowed for such. It's never made sense to me to only have one of each building in each city, especially in big cities.

Think of it this way. Boston might have a ton of universities, but there's only one Cambridge (Harvard). Harvard isn't the only university in Boston but it's the most significant.

Boston University is by far the biggest with about 14,000 more enrolled students than Harvard.

Should universities be wonders if there is only to be one per city? Especially if the most notable one is not the biggest one.



Couldn't Civ do procedurally generated cities? You build the "supermarket" and then supermarkets begin to spring up all over your city, instead of there only being one of them. Walmart is big, but even in big cities there are a ton of Walmarts. Although Walmart has no stores in New York City due to political opposition, Walmart has estimated that it would need to build 159 Walmarts in the city to properly serve that population. There could even be different kinds of supermarkets which are connected with the corporations and each have differing performance benefits which ebb and flow with the city and the entire empire's economy.


I also would like to reiterate my support for two different modes: "realism" and "arcade". One would be for those who wish to see a more realistic portrayal of history and one for those who enjoy the board gamey aspects of the game. This seems to be the only way to make everyone happy and also to improve the game.

 

[moysturfurmer]

Right but when you build "one" supermarket in Civ, you're building a bunch of them. It's an abstraction that scales with population. A library in a 1 pop town might be one library, but a library in 20 pop town would be like 100 of em.

Re: seeing multiple on the map: yeah that'd be neat, but 1. That'd make every individual building too small for cities' contents to be easily readable at a glance (which is apparently Civ VI's MO) & 2. Doesn't really affect gameplay in any way.

All that said I see where you're coming from & maybe somewhere down the sequel line they'd come up with an appropriate solution. Maybe depreciating returns on additional buildings of the same type or something. It's a mechanic that you can't just tack on to existing systems, it'd have to be built from the ground up.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

After studing many screens and reading up on them I wanna add my two cents.

First I really love the idea of the of the districts, they should add alot more thought into planning, just not city building but into war.

But I have two concerns which I think may have been said all ready.

1. If I build a district and 3 eras later a resource pops up where that district is, I have to delete the district?, if so Not sure how I like that. I like choice and gave a take, but to remove something that has been there for many eras would be annoying.

2. This many be updated by release, but I don't like how they look in terms to the city. This may be hard to explain, but they don't look like they are naturally part of the city. I think that if you have a district next to each other and or the city they should be better blended in to give the appearance that they are extended from the city, instead of looking like there are a separate tile.

In Beyond Earth building a city or a non-linking improvement deleted it. It's possible building on a resource deletes it and if you didn't know it was there then you won't miss it.

 

[nyyfootball]

Right but when you build "one" supermarket in Civ, you're building a bunch of them. It's an abstraction that scales with population. A library in a 1 pop town might be one library, but a library in 20 pop town would be like 100 of em.

Re: seeing multiple on the map: yeah that'd be neat, but 1. That'd make every individual building too small for cities' contents to be easily readable at a glance (which is apparently Civ VI's MO) & 2. Doesn't really affect gameplay in any way.

All that said I see where you're coming from & maybe somewhere down the sequel line they'd come up with an appropriate solution. Maybe depreciating returns on additional buildings of the same type or something. It's a mechanic that you can't just tack on to existing systems, it'd have to be built from the ground up.

Even if it is not visually shown, there could be a counter next to each building in the city management screen telling you how much of each building there is.

 

[tat501]

One thing I too note - the districts seem very visually "separate" from the city. They should blend and merge with the central city tile to suggest a "sprawl" rather than a collection of cities or conurbations - at least later in the game. Early game until the modern era I don't have a problem with a city having a "hinterland" that serves it - but urban sprawl as a modern phenomenon should mean those spaces get filled up!

 

[nyyfootball]

One thing I too note - the districts seem very visually "separate" from the city. They should blend and merge with the central city tile to suggest a "sprawl" rather than a collection of cities or conurbations - at least later in the game. Early game until the modern era I don't have a problem with a city having a "hinterland" that serves it - but urban sprawl as a modern phenomenon should mean those spaces get filled up!

I could not agree more.

 

[Haggbart]

So my large cities (of several million people) could potentially only have one university and one library both of which are located outside of the city (and potentially pretty far away from my city) in the rural countryside?

I don't understand the logic of these districts. They have no antecedent in the real world or in history and seem like something straight out of a Settlers of Catan expansion instead of a new Civilization game.


I strongly believe that there should be a penalty (happiness and economic) for building districts far away from your city. Districts adjacent to your city should receive more benefits than districts that are built several tiles away from your city.

To be fair, that is always the case with Civ. If you want to micromanage a city to the extent that you plan the number of libraries and universities to the population in the city, I suggest you play Sim City instead.

 

[nyyfootball]

To be fair, that is always the case with Civ. If you want to micromanage a city to the extent that you plan the number of libraries and universities to the population in the city, I suggest you play Sim City instead.

Dwarf Fortress is actually my favorite city/empire simulator. The last Sim City was a major disappointment. Civ VI is headed down the Sim City path. I want less Sim City and more Cities: Skylines.

 

[poom3619]

I also would like to reiterate my support for two different modes: "realism" and "arcade". One would be for those who wish to see a more realistic portrayal of history and one for those who enjoy the board gamey aspects of the game. This seems to be the only way to make everyone happy and also to improve the game.

Dwarf Fortress is actually my favorite city/empire simulator. The last Sim City was a major disappointment. Civ VI is headed down the Sim City path. I want less Sim City and more Cities: Skylines.

I don't think Civilization is the game you can compare with Cities Skyline and city-building game. They're different genre of the game, and I doubt Firaxis will ever go toward that sort of "realism". They have enough work designing, implementing and balancing the "arcade" mode as it is.

 

[Haggbart]

Dwarf Fortress is actually my favorite city/empire simulator. The last Sim City was a major disappointment. Civ VI is headed down the Sim City path. I want less Sim City and more Cities: Skylines.

My point was that there are other games where micromanaging city building is the main focus. If you had to care about building multiple instances of the same buildings in each of your cities in Civ, does it really add anything beyond tedious micromanagment?

 

[nyyfootball]

My point was that there are other games where micromanaging city building is the main focus. If you had to care about building multiple instances of the same buildings in each of your cities in Civ, does it really add anything beyond tedious micromanagment?

It adds to the logicalness of the gameplay, especially considering the game's subject matter. It dumbs down the game by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even if this is not true of true of most players of Civilization (especially Civ Revolution), those who frequent this site like Civilization because of its rich, deep and complex gameplay. Keeping track of my cities' progress is the whole fun of the game.

Civilization should not be an easy or casual game.

Also it seems like Civ VI is introducing more needless micromanaging by eliminating automation. This just removes Civ further from reality and makes it even more of a God game.

I don't think Civilization is the game you can compare with Cities Skyline and city-building game. They're different genre of the game, and I doubt Firaxis will ever go toward that sort of "realism". They have enough work designing, implementing and balancing the "arcade" mode as it is.

It seems that Civilization's arcade mode is going backwards though. Civilization is becoming a casual game you play on the bus on the way to work and is no longer the deep thinking game it once was.

In lieu of realism, i would at least like the gameplay to be logical and self contestant. Having your only library be miles away from your city in the rural countryside should carry with it a penalty. You should get a bonus for making amenities more accessible to the whole population.

 

[poom3619]

It seems that Civilization's arcade mode is going backwards though. Civilization is becoming a casual game you play on the bus on the way to work and is no longer the deep thinking game it once was.

That may be. I think this is one of speculation that belong to this forum more than your suggestion, though.

In lieu of realism, i would at least like the gameplay to be logical and self contestant. Having your only library be miles away from your city in the rural countryside should carry with it a penalty. You should get a bonus for making amenities more accessible to the whole population.

We know that a city with 9 population didn't mean there's literally 9 person in the city, and that is the same with libraries and every sort of buildings in the game.

The solution of this problem should be a number that tell that a library building in this game is suppose to represent 1, 10 or any realistic number of it. Not forcing player to build more libraries or draining production to do it.

 

[historix69]

What do you think of this change with the current information?

Note : I did not read all the 400 posts in this thread ...

- The district system reminds me of the city districts in "Rise of Legends", the successor of the famous "Rise of Nations" by Civ2/Col/AC-Designer Brian Reynolds.

- I suppose that districts evolved from Great Persons Improvements.
In Civ 4 GPs could be added to a city as super specialists.
In Civ 5 GPs could be converted to special tile improvements with specific Yields like Science, Culture, Faith, Gold, Production.
In Civ 6 each city can build this kind of GP tile improvement without the specific GP, but in a limited way.

- It might be difficult to protect all these distant districts of a city with a city wall unless the city wall is designed like the Great Wall Wonder in Civ5.

- Cities with districts will cover many tiles which will dramatically change the scale of the map. Districts of real cities often have a size around maybe 1 square km or less. (European cities in Medieval Age often were smaller than 1 square km.)
This means that a standard map with 10.000 tiles will correlate with a region of about 10.000 square km (which is only the 50.000. part of Earth surface or the 1.000. part of Europe.) At that scale I fear you can only design historic scenarios with a small regional focus like Japanese Civil War, Rome conquering Italy, etc. Creating a Giant World Map which provides enough tiles for every player might become difficult.
(I usually only play Giant Earth scenarios.)

- Adjacency boni remind me of Command & Conquer : Tiberium Alliances, where most production buildings get a bonus from certain ressources or certain types of other buildings on the neighbouring tiles.

- According to the Gameplay movie the science district will receive extra science for adjacent mountain and rainforest tiles, e.g. +4 Science for 4 mountain tiles. If this is true, it is silly. Building an observatory on a mountain might give you a bonus to researching physics and astrophysics, but usually does not help with most other techs. Rainforest might be interesting for biology and medicin, but usually does not help with most other techs. In human history, most Rainforest civilizations had no need to develop modern techs at all due to a warm climate, hunting and primitive agriculture (Stone Age Civs). When european conquerors arrived, most of the Rainforest people "vanished". So implementing a Rainforest-Bonus for Science seems unhistorical to me. Mankind had to wait for electricity and airconditioning before it was possible to do western world office work in tropical climate. The same applies to the Mountain Bonus. Mountains usually provide a good defensive bonus allowing mountain people to avoid or repel enemy invasions, but on the other side they limit population growth due to fewer agricultural resources. Neither Brasil nor Tibet or Switzerland are leading in Tech in our world.

(On the other side I would not mind if Mountain Tiles would add a small bonus to Faith Production.)

- Implementing imaginary adjacency-boni for districts based on certain types of tiles might cause a huge balancing problem for scenario maps based on our real world. (You cannot add Mountains everywhere just to spread the mountain bonus equally to all players.)

- I do hope they will make a statement to supported map sizes and will release a 60-turns- or 100-turns-demo of the game. At first I found the districts interesting but now I fear that they change the game in a way that it will become less interesting than (modded) Civ 5 to me. (My focus is on replaying history in a modded Marathon Giant Earth scenario.)

 

[Sherlock]

Requiring that wonders actually be built on tiles - one of my biggest wishlist features. Let's hope that really is what's going to happen.

Wonder-spamming is a play style some people enjoy. Don't see why we should absolutely prevent it.

 

[nyyfootball]

We know that a city with 9 population didn't mean there's literally 9 person in the city, and that is the same with libraries and every sort of buildings in the game.

The solution of this problem should be a number that tell that a library building in this game is suppose to represent 1, 10 or any realistic number of it. Not forcing player to build more libraries or draining production to do it.

Civ IV gives the literal number of residents occupying your city.

The player should be forced to build whatever is necessary to serve their population. Libraries are one of the most basic elements of human civilization and can significantly boost the development, social, political and economic, of a city or a country. One huge library in Alexandria served approximately 300,000 people. After the libraries destruction, the population dwindled over the next 2 centuries to only 4000 people when Napoleon visited. Alexandria recovered during the 20th century, accompanied by the rebuilding of their great library in 1974 and now has over 4 million residents in 2016. Alexandria now has 5 libraries.

 

[dexters]

Wonder-spamming is a play style some people enjoy. Don't see why we should absolutely prevent it.

I think this just means you can spam it across multiple cities.
But you probably can't build them all like you could before.