The district system

[Dale]

I will say one phrase, and that is all:

Battle of Stalingrad!

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Also, one question about harbours. Since harbours are now built on coast tiles does that mean that a city doesn't have to be on the coast to build a harbour? For instance if a city is one or two tiles away form the coast, but a coastal tile is within their borders, can that city build a harbour there?

Also, is it known how far away we can build things/districts? Will we be able to build buildings and districts in tile-rings 4 and 5?

I believe one of the harbors in one of the screenshots was on the coast but the city center wasn't.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

it looks like units will be created from military districts instead of city centers. I got this from the new IGN article:

To that end, there’s also a Military Encampment District that you can build to house military buildings, but it also can be fortified with walls and gain a ranged strike – doubling your city’s defensive power. Being outside the city walls gives it other tactical advantages as well, adds Shirk. “An enemy can’t just come in and siege your city, because you’ll be cranking out units at their back. It’s a nice side effect.”

Also, districts will be dependent on population:

Instead, Firaxis has created the concept of 12 different types of color-coded Districts (five or six of which will be available from the beginning) that exist on their own tiles on the map, outside the city center and will house specific building types. “A science district, which we’ve called a campus, once constructed will allow you to put a library and a university and a research lab out on that tile. And now your city is sort of specialized toward being a really good science city,” says Beach.
Of course, the number of Districts a city can support is limited by its population, which will force you to choose which areas each city should specialize in early on, and provide yet another strong incentive to expand your empire early. And those choices will be heavily influenced by the terrain you start on, says Lead Producer Dennis Shirk. “Right out of the gate you’re going to get adjacency bonuses of science by putting a Campus next to mountains or jungle. If you put down a holy site you’re going to want it next to woods to get the bonus there. If you’re on the coast, obviously you’re going to want to build a harbor. But these take up tiles, so eventually you also have to think about feeding your people. You have to make sure you can still build farms and mines, and wonders take up whole tiles as well. You can’t have everything everywhere.”

 

[m15a]

it looks like units will be created from military districts instead of city

Good find. Maybe this means that ships can be built from the harbors of non-coastal cities, too.

 

[dexters]

So wonder cities will be much more limited if wonders take up an entire district.

 

[UncivilizedGuy]

I believe one of the harbors in one of the screenshots was on the coast but the city center wasn't.

In one of the articles I read, (interesting that each article seems to reveal something a little different than the next), Harbors are actually one of the 12 districts.

 

[kingchris20]

What worries me is the "largeness" of each individual city, now with up to 12 districts (each taking up a tile, and Tile Improvements taking up a tile, and wonders taking up a tile - and resources, what happens to those if you build a district or wonder or something on them?), you are going to run out of real estate really fast (or starve your people out of the game)..............It sounds like I like this idea, but I need to hold judgement until we see more. Specialized cities are going to be a necessity, tall empires are going to be very difficult, which is okay (better even)........but with all the wide empires, the map seems like it would have to be drastically bigger.

Of course the districts idea is going all kinds of crazy in my mind right now.......the tactics man, the TACTICS. The military district having its own "bombard" ability along with the primary city hex. With the majority of your hammers coming from one district, if that gets hit and reduced to rubble, it will cripple your ability to function in a war, same with your military district (Unless I'm thinking about this all wrong). You can have very targeted attacks to weaken your enemy, and I think human vs AI is going to be a problem.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Is there any reason to think Unique Traits/Abilities will exist in this game? That was an invention for Civ V; they didn't have it in previous games in the series. Maybe they are moving on to a different system.

Unique Civ traits exist from Civ 3. I'm pretty sure they'll stay.

To me the system look like it was inspired by a game called Warlocks Master of Arcane.
In such case districts will likely replace citizen and each time your city grow you can build a new district.

Workers were mentioned, so districts don't replace regular improvements like farms, mines, quarries or roads.

Some of the Articles state that districts don't completely replace Tile Improvements, I assume the Standard Ones (Farm, etc.) still work like they did before.

Looks like usual misunderstanding. That's quite common for early reviews.

Well maybe not completely destroy, but at least disable/pillage them.

Pillaging was mentioned, but it was mentioned as serious cripple to the science/industry, etc. so rebuilding is likely to be quite difficult.

 

[dexters]

What worries me is the "largeness" of each individual city, now with up to 12 districts (each taking up a tile, and Tile Improvements taking up a tile, and wonders taking up a tile - and resources, what happens to those if you build a district or wonder or something on them?), you are going to run out of real estate really fast (or starve your people out of the game)..............It sounds like I like this idea, but I need to hold judgement until we see more. Specialized cities are going to be a necessity, tall empires are going to be very difficult, which is okay (better even)........but with all the wide empires, the map seems like it would have to be drastically bigger.

Of course the districts idea is going all kinds of crazy in my mind right now.......the tactics man, the TACTICS. The military district having its own "bombard" ability along with the primary city hex. With the majority of your hammers coming from one district, if that gets hit and reduced to rubble, it will cripple your ability to function in a war, same with your military district (Unless I'm thinking about this all wrong). You can have very targeted attacks to weaken your enemy, and I think human vs AI is going to be a problem.

I see districts are replacements for citizens and the 'sprawl' as showing graphically what the game has been handling for quite some time. Civ 5 cities can already work 3 tiles out from the city centre in every direction so I don't see how this is any different.

It reduces the repetitive spammage of certain improvements and that's something the game's been moving away from for some time. Remember the road spam in the old days?

 

[stealth_nsk]

Speaking about the size of the city. It was confirmed the city will have the same 36 tiles as in Civ5. In the previous Civ games we had "cross" of 20 tiles outside the city, so even if we use 12 tiles for districts, we'll still have more "regular" tiles than cities in Civ 1-4. Considering the districts require population (probably in form of 1 required specialist and several optional ones), this doesn't look like a problem at all.

 

[DefiantMars]

From the IGN Article:

To that end, there’s also a Military Encampment District that you can build to house military buildings, but it also can be fortified with walls and gain a ranged strike – doubling your city’s defensive power. Being outside the city walls gives it other tactical advantages as well, adds Shirk. “An enemy can’t just come in and siege your city, because you’ll be cranking out units at their back. It’s a nice side effect.”

That has quite a number of interesting implications.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

This is just speculation, but could it be that with the addition of districts and wonders on a tile, that great person improvements are gone?

 

[stealth_nsk]

This is just speculation, but could it be that with the addition of districts and wonders on a tile, that great person improvements are gone?

Too early to speculate. Regular improvements are still here, so it's possible GP improvements are here too. But we don't know whether we'll have Great Persons in the initial game at all.

 

[DefiantMars]

Too early to speculate. Regular improvements are still here, so it's possible GP improvements are here too. But we don't know whether we'll have Great Persons in the initial game at all.

Agreed. However I'm trying to figure out what on earth the big structure by the mountains is in the first screenshot.

Spoiler Screenshot 1 :

Is it a Holy Site improvement like the ones Great Prophets make? Is it a Wonder? Is it a later game religion or political district? I have no idea.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Too early to speculate. Regular improvements are still here, so it's possible GP improvements are here too. But we don't know whether we'll have Great Persons in the initial game at all.

As archeology is in, (read on a reddit overview of verified features,) I think that great persons and great works are possibly also in the game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Is it a Holy Site improvement like the ones Great Prophets make? Is it a Wonder? Is it a later game religion or political district? I have no idea.

It's religious district. They were mentioned in reviews and we could clearly see separate buildings here.

 

[DefiantMars]

It's religious district. They were mentioned in reviews and we could clearly see separate buildings here.

The big one with the orange rooftops is a religious district? I thought that the ones with the water pools were the religious district? Unless there's an upgraded version.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The big one with the orange rooftops is a religious district? I thought that the ones with the water pools were the religious district? Unless there's an upgraded version.

The big one with orange rooftops should be a wonder. Near it is a religious district with only 1 building (Shrine?). Across the mountain we see religious district for another city, with 3 buildings. There was a mention of bonuses for religious district to be near mountain or forest.

 

[Edish]

I like the idea, but I must say also that I don't get a graphical sense of a city spanning multiple tiles from these screenshots. The improvements on each tile looks distinct and unique and doesn't really "connect" to the tiles next to them. I'm hoping that when they say cities span multiple tiles, it will actually look like a single coherent city spanning multiple tiles, not a bunch of atomistic, unconnected tiles which are "part of the same city" in text description only.

This, exactly! This is very worrying.

 

[DefiantMars]

The big one with orange rooftops should be a wonder.

Then what wonder is it? Despite its Roman style (the orange tiled roofs, layout and statuary), it does not resemble any wonder that I am familiar with. The closest thing I can think of would be the temple of Fortuna Primigenia, but even that looks nothing like this. Most wonders are identifiable at a glace. Enlighten me, what wonder is this?