The district system

[nyyfootball]

I'm afraid I'm in the same boat as you guys, and have no clue. Just speculating along with everyone else!

- Jon

That's the fun of it. Sorry for my maybe, confusing and many, questions.

I love Civilization and I would like to see it be as good as it has the potential to be and I am glad that Civilization and an active and engaged community that actually cares about quality.

 

[Jon Shafer]

That's the fun of it. Sorry for my maybe, confusing and many, questions.

No worries! Wish I had more answers for you sir.

I love Civilization and I would like to see it be as good as it has the potential to be and I am glad that Civilization and an active and engaged community that actually cares about quality.

Absolutely. The Civ community is the best there is, and why I'm still hanging around here a decade and a half later.

- Jon

 

[Heinage]

Hey man, I'm just a Civ nerd like everyone else again.

- Jon

Very cool that you're here as a speculating civ geek like the rest of us!

Now that I've got the fanboy bit out of the way...
Regarding this thread's topic, I'm not too worried about "over urbanization" because of 2 reasons:

A) Building districts will come at the expense of tiles' other potential yields (typically: food, gold, production, luxuries). You still need all those things. You may not need all of them in each city, but - taking food as an example - for every city that doesn't produce enough for itself, you need another city to do the producing, thereby sacrificing its potential to build districts. i.e you can't go crazy plopping districts everywhere as there are basic needs that your Empire requires to function.

B) Although the - currently speculated - implementation of "districts" may not reflect reality exactly (cities don't tend to cluster buildings with similar functions neatly into their respective areas), we should be looking at it from an abstracted point of view.
I'm thinking of them as the cottages of Civ IV, but with specializations. e.g. an upgradeable "science" cottage, "military" cottage, "market" cottage, etc. That's looking at it purely from a game-play point of view. It's there to give players more tactical decisions to make, and justified by the need to "decentralise cities". That justification, as far as I can tell, comes from 2 things:
1) understanding that there are differences between heavily urbanised "tall" places in the world, as opposed to largely rural "wide" places in the world. This difference can be made graphically clearer through districts.
2) understanding that urban warfare is more than just marching into a city and taking the whole thing in one go.

I'm very interested in understanding more about this mechanic and how it will look in various play-throughs of Civ VI


Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

[Kostyarik]

You still need Workers. Workers make tile improvements.

Aren't cities supposed to build them now?

 

[Haig]

Yeah it's an abstract thing, remember that archers can shoot over large metropolises in Civ V and it takes hundred years for cavalry to ride across a country..

I think with distcricts:
1) when laying a siege, making raids or bombing campaigns, you can choose which areas you want to damage the most, what's the best way to cripple your enemy

2) when defending, you need to prioritize: should I put my precious AA to protect trade or science etc.

3) in Civ V city specializition wasnt as big a deal in my opinioin, maybe it's back now with the districts

P.S. Hi Jon, thank's for my fave game of all time

 

[AriochIV]

Aren't cities supposed to build them now?

It's not clear how districts are built, but improvements appear to be different from districts, and still built using a worker-like unit.

 

[Kostyarik]

It's not clear how districts are built, but improvements appear to be different from districts, and still built using a worker-like unit.

Heh, ok, hope so =)

 

[stealth_nsk]

It's not clear how districts are built, but improvements appear to be different from districts, and still built using a worker-like unit.

I assume districts are built from inside the city interface, without Workers. Otherwise Harbor would be quite a mess. It should be possible to build it before seafaring tech (since it's quest is to build harbor) and it shouldn't be built with sea units (as they are built in harbor). Of course it's possible Workers could embark right away or could build Harbor from nearby coast tile, but I found these possibilities less likely.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Given that wonders are likely built by cities I think the same applies to districts,

 

[Nixalo]

Yeah. You probably have to select the tile for a district in the city screen. Otherwise you can't build anything until you hammer out a worker.

UNLESS the six tiles around a city can have districts made by cities. Districts not directed touching the core city tile would be built by workers same way as tile improvements.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yeah. You probably have to select the tile for a district in the city screen. Otherwise you can't build anything until you hammer out a worker.

UNLESS the six tiles around a city can have districts made by cities. Districts not directed touching the core city tile would be built by workers same way as tile improvements.

Same problem with Harbors. They clearly can built 2 tiles from city. And that would be too complex to have 2 systems for district building.

 

[bite]

I would suggest that you need to build the district first either by the interface or by a worker unit, and then that unlocks the ability to build buildings in your city that then appear on the districts, of course I could be wrong

 

[Jon Shafer]

I assume districts are built from inside the city interface, without Workers.

Yeah, this is starting to sound more and more likely to me. It would allow the map to fill up with 'stuff' at about the same rate as the other Civ games, without having overlapping strangeness between multiple layers of structures. There are probably still workers to fill in the gaps, but that might be about all they do...

Which would be a bit of a shame, IMO. I know not everyone is a huge fan of workers, but their strongest trait is how they connect you with the geography of the land. Other 4X games with a public works system or lacking a tile improvement system completely always feel like they're missing something as a result.

- Jon

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Which would be a bit of a shame, IMO. I know not everyone is a huge fan of workers, but their strongest trait is how they connect you with the geography of the land. Other 4X games with a public works system or lacking a tile improvement system completely always feel like they're missing something as a result.

Honestly, I always automated my workers after I got the first few tile improvements done. I would manually control my workers only to make sure that I improved tiles with basic or strategic resources on them as soon as possible. Workers could sometimes be a bit tedious to manage especially in the mid to late game when you have a lot of them. I really like the "only improve closest city" function because it would let me "assign" 1-2 workers for each city and then let them improve the tiles on their own for their designated city.

I also often keep 1-2 workers on manual control and automate the rest. That way I can use the manual workers for "special projects" (like a road I need to finish ASAP or some strategic resources that need a tile improvement) while the bulk of my workers do the tedious work of improving base tiles.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Honestly, I always automated my workers after I got the first few tile improvements done. I would manually control my workers only to make sure that I improved tiles with basic or strategic resources on them as soon as possible. Workers could sometimes be a bit tedious to manage especially in the mid to late game when you have a lot of them. I really like the "only improve closest city" function because it would let me "assign" 1-2 workers for each city and then let them improve the tiles on their own for their designated city.

I also often keep 1-2 workers on manual control and automate the rest. That way I can use the manual workers for "special projects" (like a road I need to finish ASAP or some strategic resources that need a tile improvement) while the bulk of my workers do the tedious work of improving base tiles.

Yep, I can totally understand that, and that's why I've gone with a bit of a different model for my next game. Keeps the best features of the old worker system without all the tedious micro. That's the idea anyway.

- Jon

 

[kaspergm]

Even if districts are build (laid out?) from the city interface without worker units, I think improvements (farms, lumber mills, mines, etc.) are something else. Unless a farm still counts as a district? But with 12 districts and 36 hexes per city, it would seem likely that improvements are counted separately, and thus could still have the worker unit.

A civ game completely without workers would just not be right.

 

[Sobric]

It is extremely weird to me that you can only build one district type once for each city (out of the 12 options) as it seems to go against the stated purpouse of this mechanism.

I agree, but I guess we're not going to know until some more information is released/leaked. Both could work, although I personally hope you can build multiple districts of the same type.

Airports could very well end up working like their own district indeed! As for park districts, perhaps a bonus for adjacence with natural wonders, mountains or coast could be in order?

Talking seriously, I do hope that you can also build districts "vertically" too when reaching the modern era, furthering specializing them and your cities with them too. For example: The generic industrial districts could evolve into either "car factory" district or "sillicon valley" type of district

Agreed. For example, once you discover Flight you unlock an "Airstrip" district, which allows you to build Bi-Planes/Zeppelins. After later requisite later tech, you could upgrade the Airfield into either an "Airport", which produces no unites but gives a Commerce/Trade bonus, an "Airfield" which produces advances military units but nothing else or an "Airdrome" which gives happiness/culture.

Judging by their real life effects, suburbs would need to inflict pollution, social and economical damage to your empire, in exchange of giving happiness to their higher classes

Thinking on this more, and picking up on the first point about multiple districts of the same type, a "Suburb" type could be the last one to unlock and simply produces 33% of the output of any connected districts.

Late game cities would then turn into modern city sprawls, with suburbs between the more specialized districts providing additional bonuses based on nearby districts.

 

[Nixalo]

Same problem with Harbors. They clearly can built 2 tiles from city. And that would be too complex to have 2 systems for district building.

That's why you buld coastal cities on the coast!

If your city isn't coastal then you need to wait until you can make fishing boats.

Mabye a worker could have 2 build buttons. "Build improvement" (farm, mine, plantation, camp, etc) and "Build district" (cultural, financial, military, etc)

Cities when hammering out a building would have you choose a district or factor in creating a district in the cost of the building.

Just a possibility.

 

[skyclad]

Im happy to see some people sharing my concerns about "city sprawl" and hopefully they will adress it like somebody suggested, that you can only build districts (certain districts?) right next to city center. Metropolitan areas spanning across continents would break whatever small level of immersion is left after archers can shoot and kill across the english channel or from italy to the Balkans. I know the city radius is the same but its different to have a city center surrounded by farms workshops watermills etc, its the "country side" but still part of the city's shpere of influence. But not one giant city...
Speaking of scale, i hope they remove ranged attacks completely except for airplanes and artillery...

Cool to see Jon here. Hi! Big fan
To the guy saying he is not concerned because we still have civ4 you are correct of course i still play it regularly. But Im still excited for nr 6 and hope it can be better than 5

 

[AriochIV]

Im happy to see some people sharing my concerns about "city sprawl" and hopefully they will adress it like somebody suggested, that you can only build districts (certain districts?) right next to city center.

Since your civilization's borders will presumably start small, and since presumably you will have to place districts within your borders, there will probably be an inherent soft limitation on placing districts far from the city center. The same three-tile city radius limit appears to be still in effect in Civ VI, so there's a limit to how far a city can sprawl.

While a harder limitation could make sense aesthetically, I think it would be harmful to gameplay. Imagine if in Civ V you could only assign population to work tiles that were contiguously connected to the city tile. It would really hamper early growth and present an additional puzzle to tile exploitation.