The Supposed Reason for Having City-Sites Doesn't Really Fly

[steveg700]

So I came back to OW after many months away. I heard on Explorminate that their was a dev diary concerning city-sites, and some of the intent to provide breathing space.

So today I create a game with the biggest map and the default of 6 rivals. And sure enough, no breathing room, no buffer zone. Rome and Carthage met in the first few trns, as they are sitting on nearby city-site spots. The starting units all fan out and starting camping city-site spots.

And once they're on them, that's that. There is no mechanism to deter grabbing a spot much closer to my capital than theirs, no way by which I can exert influence over them...other than DOW.

And everyone's seems okay with that....This camp rush is seen as a good thing. Nothing that needs fixing. They even took away the -1 order for camping. DOW simply to move a scout. SMH/.

Forward settling is not solved by having fixed city-sites as far as I can tell. Very much the opposite. There's an early land rush that's first-camped-first-served.

 

[Solver]

City sites aren't meant to provide breathing space as in a buffer zone. The map generator will give you a free city site. It will also create a couple easy city sites for you, like nearby Barbarians. The map generator takes care of that, but the goal of the system isn't to give you room to safely expand. One goal is just to provide an effective anti-ICS system, the other goal is to give the game a completely different kind of room - greater distance between cities so they can grow and so combat can work.

Among Civ veterans, there's general agreement that the combat in Civ5 and 6 doesn't work well. The reason for that is not the combat system itself but rather the maps - they're small, crowded with cities, which means you're trying to just move your units past obstacles as much as you're engaging in combat. Old World combat works thanks to city sites. You can lay siege to a city, and also have space between cities for an actual battle with multiple units.

Soren wrote a post explaining the logic behind city sites here: https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=1691

As a very experienced Civ player, I initially didn't like city sites. They felt like a restriction for no good reason, and I never liked the territory system some games have but I've come to appreciate city sites a lot once I realized the benefits Soren describes in that link.

 

[Dale]

Yeah like @Solver I needed convincing too. But in the end I love them now for how they change the game.

 

[steveg700]

City sites aren't meant to provide breathing space as in a buffer zone. The map generator will give you a free city site. It will also create a couple easy city sites for you, like nearby Barbarians. The map generator takes care of that, but the goal of the system isn't to give you room to safely expand. One goal is just to provide an effective anti-ICS system, the other goal is to give the game a completely different kind of room - greater distance between cities so they can grow and so combat can work.

Among Civ veterans, there's general agreement that the combat in Civ5 and 6 doesn't work well. The reason for that is not the combat system itself but rather the maps - they're small, crowded with cities, which means you're trying to just move your units past obstacles as much as you're engaging in combat. Old World combat works thanks to city sites. You can lay siege to a city, and also have space between cities for an actual battle with multiple units.

Soren wrote a post explaining the logic behind city sites here: https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=1691

As a very experienced Civ player, I initially didn't like city sites. They felt like a restriction for no good reason, and I never liked the territory system some games have but I've come to appreciate city sites a lot once I realized the benefits Soren describes in that link.

Fair enough. So these are other explanations for the reasons behind city-sites, but they all are undone by the same mechanism I mentioned. The AI sends units with the specific intent to camp any city-sites. First-come-first-serve, with no costs, penalties, or disincentives regardless of proximity or any other factors and they get to do it for as long as they want.

It blows my mind that they patched the -1 order cost for camping. That tells me this isn't something they think needs to be reined in. They're reining it oat. They thing scramble to camp spots is a good way for expansion to work.

 

[Heathcliff]

You can play the premade Old World Map, it is larger, giving you easily 6-15 cities.

If you clear a camp, definatly camp it until you get a settler there.

You can also abuse the AI and try to get the last hit on a camp they are clearing

 

[pholkhero]

I never liked the territory system

for sure.

they make the map feel small, imo. i like city states for keeping that idea, but iterating on it in this new way.

also, i like the idea that they are finite resources you're in competition for; having the actual sites make it a zero-sum game.

 

[steveg700]

I seem to find a lot of city-sites in my recent games where there are no resources, just blank terrain. Nothing special to farm, no animals, etc. Not the worst thing in the world, I know--ya need ore, ya need wood, so an empire needs plain terrain. But is that normal?

 

[KayAU]

I find myself liking the city site mechanic more than I thought I might. I may have prefered something more similar to Fallen Enchantress, where you have limited city sites in practice, but it is based on the fertility of the map a spacing requirement which is higher than in Civ. As it stands though, I feel that city sites in Old World works rather well.

My absolute least favourite approach is the reqions of Endless Legend/Humankind. Humankind has its strengths and weaknesses, but regions were the part I was most worried about before launch, and remains my biggest grievance after having played for around 140 hours. It does indeed makes the map feel small, by basically turning each region into one big tile. I also don't like how each and every one of these mega-tiles will fill up with urban districts, which I always end up placing willy-nilly. The last part may be my partly own fault, but I feel like there is some blame to be given to the design as well. It just doesn't seem to lend itself to careful planning and positioning. Civ 6 is the exact opposite, the adjacency rules and limited number of tiles available means you are always looking for optimal placement for everything. That game has many flaws, but the district placement mechanic is quite good IMO. Old World seems to fall somewhere in the middle, as you are not nearly as restrained as in Civ 6, but you are still encouraged too look for good solutions and opportunities for how to develop each city.

 

[Solver]

Fair enough. So these are other explanations for the reasons behind city-sites, but they all are undone by the same mechanism I mentioned. The AI sends units with the specific intent to camp any city-sites. First-come-first-serve, with no costs, penalties, or disincentives regardless of proximity or any other factors and they get to do it for as long as they want.

What do you mean the AI sends units to camp city sites?

There are almost no free city sites. The AI does the same thing as you do (or should be doing), it goes after nearby barbarian or tribal sites and takes them. The AI will specifically not take the one free city site that you have close to you before turn 30, to allow you to take it. It will even let you have a first go at other sites that are closer to you than to any AI. Otherwise, yes of course the AI expands and guards its claimed sites, same thing as you should be doing.

 

[Forster]

It would be nice if there was an option to have the different civs spread out a little more for their first city.

 

[stii]

What do you mean the AI sends units to camp city sites?

There are almost no free city sites. The AI does the same thing as you do (or should be doing), it goes after nearby barbarian or tribal sites and takes them. The AI will specifically not take the one free city site that you have close to you before turn 30, to allow you to take it. It will even let you have a first go at other sites that are closer to you than to any AI. Otherwise, yes of course the AI expands and guards its claimed sites, same thing as you should be doing.

Is this 30 turns really true or does it scale based on difficulty? I was pretty sure the AI has taken my revealed spot before that but maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Solver]

30 turns unless you're playing with the Ruthless AI option.

 

[Mesix]

With multiple "urban" tile spots which can be settled, it would be cool if there were a way to make it competitive and not just a race to camp a scout. Perhaps putting a stronger unit will switch the city affiliation to another player, or sending two units to camp on two urban tiles to his one. Some mechanic which allows for territorial claim settling without declaring war.

Another example is how Endless Space handles colonies. They take time to develop, and other players can try to settle the same system (on another planet or in this case a separate urban tile) with mechanics for accelerating the colony becoming a full fledged system or city.

 

[Quintillus]

City sites are one of my favorite aspects of Old World. I was skeptical of Old World still having 1 UPT, after my experiences with Civ5 and Civ6. As Solver said, combat doesn't work very well in those games, both the AI not being competent, and it easily becoming a traffic jam.

City sites, along with Old World's AI programming, makes 1 UPT work. In both of the two games I've completed, the AI has used the open space that city sites provide to display competent tactics. That led to my defeat in one war in the first game, and it was a near-run thing in the second game. That never happened when I played Civ5 or Civ6, even on higher difficulties, and in turn made me skeptical of 1UPT games in general.

I think Firaxis partially recognized this problem with Civ5, when they expanded city sizes in Civ6, but it wasn't enough, and somehow the combat AI wound up being worse. Old World's city sites allow enough space for combat to work. (And I suspect Mohawk has better AI programmers. Including some who had a role in making the Civ4 AI the best in the series )

I was surprised to find that it makes the map feel bigger for me, too. Cities expand, but there is almost always open land, forests, farms, undeveloped land, between cities as well. Plus, combat often happens between cities, which is less common in the Civ games.

Compared to Endless Legend, I like that the boundaries aren't as fixed as Endless Legend's regions. It feels more dynamic in Old World; you can expand your city heavily in one direction if you want.

Old World may not cover history through 2050 AD, but it's the sort of fresh-approach-yet-same-spirit that I'd been looking for in a Civ successor ever since I was ready for something new after Civ4 BTS.

I'm probably in the minority among Civ veterans in having already been keen on the idea of city sites before Old World. I don't know if their origin goes back to the Civ3 modding community, but there are multiple mods from the mid-2000s that feature city sites. While I discovered them past my Civ3-playing prime, they always made sense to me in terms of working around the AI tendency to settle everywhere, and thus creating a different style of gameplay, and reducing the AI turn time slowdown due to having a seemingly infinite number of mostly-not-very-good cities. If I ever get around to playing a Huge Earth map in Civ3 again, I plan to play it on a map with city sites.

I'd agree that some sort of softer-than-war competition could be nice. But I don't see it as a major problem. I've learned that if I don't want Carthage to steal a barbarian site, I probably shouldn't clear it with one Slinger and count on no one moving there the next turn. And in my most recent game, where I turned on the "ruthless human" setting for claiming city sites, it's the AI that's learning about missing out on them the hard way.

 

[Evolena]

I've learned that if I don't want Carthage to steal a barbarian site, I probably shouldn't clear it with one Slinger and count on no one moving there the next turn.

Your Slinger can move into the City site to claim it, but only if the killing blow is from an adjacent tile (which may not be possible if the Carthage mercenaries are between your Slinger and the City site).

 

[Quintillus]

Your Slinger can move into the City site to claim it, but only if the killing blow is from an adjacent tile (which may not be possible if the Carthage mercenaries are between your Slinger and the City site).

IIRC, it was 2 tiles away, and I think got put on cooldown after the attack? Either that or it was out of moves and I failed to force march it. But it played nicely into the storyline after Carthage pulled similar tricks two more times. They gradually went from "BFF" to "regular friend" to "frenemy" to "enemy". And eventually, Carthage became a Babylonian city.

Good to know that it can be claimed if the ranged unit is directly next to it though, I might have to try that in the future. In my current game, I simply went 100% melee units. Now it's turn 90-something and I'm pretty sure I still don't have any ranged units... might want to change that if I ever end up fighting someone other than barbarians and tribes.

 

[PiR]

IIRC, it was 2 tiles away, and I think got put on cooldown after the attack? Either that or it was out of moves and I failed to force march it.

You can't move it after attacking, but if you move it next to the city site, the killing action will automatically include the stepping onto the city site, even for a ranged unit.

 

[Forster]

Live and learn.

 

[kaspergm]

I find myself liking the city site mechanic more than I thought I might. I may have prefered something more similar to Fallen Enchantress, where you have limited city sites in practice, but it is based on the fertility of the map a spacing requirement which is higher than in Civ. As it stands though, I feel that city sites in Old World works rather well.

My absolute least favourite approach is the reqions of Endless Legend/Humankind. Humankind has its strengths and weaknesses, but regions were the part I was most worried about before launch, and remains my biggest grievance after having played for around 140 hours. It does indeed makes the map feel small, by basically turning each region into one big tile. I also don't like how each and every one of these mega-tiles will fill up with urban districts, which I always end up placing willy-nilly. The last part may be my partly own fault, but I feel like there is some blame to be given to the design as well. It just doesn't seem to lend itself to careful planning and positioning. Civ 6 is the exact opposite, the adjacency rules and limited number of tiles available means you are always looking for optimal placement for everything. That game has many flaws, but the district placement mechanic is quite good IMO. Old World seems to fall somewhere in the middle, as you are not nearly as restrained as in Civ 6, but you are still encouraged too look for good solutions and opportunities for how to develop each city.

Very new to Old World, but I agree what you and others have said, the city sites generally work well, and I like how it makes the cities divided into "urban" areas, where you have all your specialist buildings, and rural areas, where you have your resource improvements.

I do find it very difficult to make out what buildings are in the city, however. As such, I really miss the "districts" of Civ 6, and I would definitely love to see a hybrid between Old World and Civ 6 system in an upcoming Civ 7, so instead of plopping down the individual buildings randomly like in Old World, they are still constrained to districts like in Civ 6, but with the closed cluster of the districts rather than the scattered (imo. nonsensical) layout we often end up with in Civ 6.