Theory crafting: new choice in Civ6

[Olleus]

We are all familiar with the tall vs wide and the (very similar) turtle vs warmongering dichotomies that characterised Civ5. In many ways, the main choice of the game was in this decision. It influenced everything from leader choice before the game begun to which victory condition you would eventually reach. In Civ4, the similar choice was specialist vs cottage economy.

What will be the equivalent in Civ6? What are the main decisions that shape the strategy? After following in details all the reveals about the game, here are my two guesses. Of course, a middle of the road option is possible for both, but then it is harder to maximise the effect of civ unique's/government/policies.



Rural vs Urban
The choice here is between having few districts and a focus on building lots of terrain improvements versus having cities with many districts and buildings but fewer improvements.

The rural choice prioritises food over production (so you can work all those improvements), cities are further apart so they have enough tiles to work, and will work resources rather than harvesting them. Civs with unique improvements are better suited to this (especially India/Scythia), and might be the preferred choice for warmongers as you will have high ability to pump out units, suffer less from the rise in district costs, and will give you the land to space your cities out more. Civs with unique improvements that give faith/tourism might find this is the best way route to a religious or cultural victory.

The Urban choice prioritises production over food (such that the pop limit to build a new district is unlocked just when the existing districts are full of buildings), cities are clustered to maximise adjacency bonuses, pop will work as citizens when possible, and resources are more likely to be harvested. Civs with unique districts are more adapt at this strategy (specially Germany/Japan), and victories which require specialist yields such as Science might perform better with this strategy.


Science vs Culture
With a fully fledged culture tree which unlocks wonders/governments/units/buildings, the primacy that science has had in all previous civ titles might be at an end. Being mediocre in science and focussing instead on culture might be a valid strategy.

The science path is the one we are used to from Civ6 and manifests itself as a focus on campus districts, technologies that unlock science buildings and great scientists. Jungles and mountains are highly desirable for their adjacency bonuses. As has been noted, there are no civs which seem particularly strong for science, but the science victory is clearly the best suited to this strategy.

The culture path would instead focus on theatre districts, great artists/writers/musicians, actively try and buy great works from other civs. Wonders are likely to be more attractive to this strategy, both for their direct effect and the adjacency bonus. Similarly for religion. A culture victory is naturally best suited to this approach, but a religious one also has some synergy. Civs that suit this approach are ones with unique infrastructure that gives bonus culture (great wall, sphinx, acropolis), but bonuses to wonders and faith could also help.

 

[dturtle1]

I think you nailed it with Rural VS Urban and this one in particular will be hard to go middle of the road. You will want to go one way or other. Science VS Culture i feel you have to go middle of the road to some extent but you will have a bias one way or other.

I still think a Decent Science output will still be required. It is the only way to get new buildings and new units. Culture does apply a lot of boni but the raw power still lives with science. How many Tech could you fall behind and still remain parity? I absolutely applaud the decision to split the trees though, at least now Strong science is not mandatory

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Sounds sound enough to me (sorry! ). So there might be things like Rural Science or Urban Culture, etc -- especially once new Civs with new kinds of unique improvements and districts are introduced to 'fill in the gaps', so to speak.

'Rural' and 'Urban' are longer to type and pronounce than 'Tall' and 'Wide', though. Perhaps people will end up using 'Dense' and 'Sparse' instead, or some other, third combo. The concept is sound though, and seems to play a prominent role unless they tone down the increasing district costs. One wrench that could be thrown into this scheme is conquering districts from rival civs: if an AI Japan has built their districts and cities in the Urban/Dense style, I don't see a non-gamey way to prevent the player from adding that highly focused production powerhouse into their otherwise sprawling, rural empire.

 

[StrideColossus]

'Rural' and 'Urban' are longer to type and pronounce than 'Tall' and 'Wide', though. Perhaps people will end up using 'Dense' and 'Sparse' instead, or some other, third combo.

Yokel vs Local?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Domination victory also seems to be a science over culture condition.
(Culture unlocks plenty of buildings, but few units)

 

[ProMeTheus112]

man I hope it's just not binary and there is a lot of space for actual strategy of adapting and creating something more complex than "all out on this style or this other opposite style" because that usually doesn't involve a lot of strategy rather management of pre-arranged knowledge (to just push most efficiently in the strategic direction of one of these poles, which is strategically binary)
so these relationships of opposites are ok if there is space for going anywhere in between
I would even want to see systems in the game not just be intertwined with everything else so that it makes sense to pick all kinds of different shades between opposites, but that these systems aren't necessarily designed with two opposites.

in my opinion a strategy game system fails if the only viable choices are to go all-in into one of its opposite poles ; because then the strategic decision making stops at picking one of these poles for that system, and then you're doing management and tactics instead (which are nice but main potential of Civ is for mixing all these while focusing on strategy?)

binary strategy isn't exactly the same as no strategy (where there would be only one most efficient strategic direction all the time) but it's the most simplistic form of strategy making, where you simply need to look at the situation and recognize which pole you are working towards ; does the game say you should play black or white. It's even worse if you should actually decide between black and white before the game begins and just push it all game.

so I'm hoping you'll want to make a decision of "rural or urban" for each town to varying degrees as well as culture or science, etc. Bunch of binaries only make so many possibilities and strategic decision making in the game.

that said so far it does look to me like the game has great potential for this unlike apparently civ5

 

[qadams]

Very nice analysis, OP!

I think you nailed it with Rural VS Urban and this one in particular will be hard to go middle of the road. You will want to go one way or other.

I hope you're wrong about this, or that there will be certain policy choices that will allow a hybrid strategy of Urban and Rural — because it seems to me that would produce the most realistic looking map, with both large dense cities and smaller, more spread out towns.

 

[app]

Hm...I'm not sure about the Rural vs Urban one. In the first place, can you even build so many districts that it requires you to harvest your resources? The number of districts you can own is 1/3 of the city's pop, and I really doubt you can run all of those citizens as specialists. Plus, even with significant overlaps in city placements and size 30+ cities, I doubt you have so much resources around the city that you can't place 10 districts without harvesting a bunch of resources, unless the city has been wonder spamming as well.

Then, there are the increasing district cost. Except for specific civs like Japan, I doubt it would be optimal to just build all districts in all cities. Even without percentage multipliers, districts without buildings in them would probably not be very good either in the long run. And I doubt we can build all the buildings in all the cities so easily. So I think we would still have to do city specializations, picking a particular district or two to focus on for each city, based on the geography/location/need/etc.

On the other hand, the districts are undeniably powerful. Even for pure warmongers who don't care much about culture or faith, they would obviously need encampment, and would probably also greatly benefit from districts like commercial hub to rush buy more units/deal with maintenance and entertainment district to combat war weariness.

So, for most civs I think all cities will have a mix of districts and improvements, not focusing strictly on one or the other.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

it's really important, because if the choice is already dictated by bigger systems, you can't apply smartly to the specifics of the localities. If there is no space for hybrid there is little space for strategy. Strategy IS creating adaptive hybrids that you switch around into a overall winning shape as the situation progresses. In the best game this winning shape would be always different (as well as the ways to get there), involving the most strategic skills of efficiently creating adapting and switching ; with room for many different styles.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Do we know if cities do actually increase district cost, as far as I know it is just a guess.

Anyway Im unsure about urban vs rural will actually be in the game. I rather think you will have a choice between tight and sparse which given the same amount of territory tight is about packing many cities so that you can build alot of districts for adjacency while sparse is about spacing cities out so everyone of them can become large.

 

[Magil]

Domination victory also seems to be a science over culture condition.
(Culture unlocks plenty of buildings, but few units)

On the other hand, culture unlocks casus belli, so a Civ that's neglected culture and declares plenty of midgame war may find itself facing a conflict with every other Civ at once.

Plausible on small maps with few civs, but could become a real problem on a larger map with lots of civs.

 

[Vaclac]

Why does it need to be either/or? I could imagine have a densely packed core of cities with districts, say your main 3 or 4 cities, fully developed, and then after that building a bunch of outlying cities for grabbing resources and some extra unit production. If district costs ramp up enough, it may not be worth developing these further at first, but extra cities shouldn't hurt like they do in CiV, so may as well go claim a bunch of extra land with these cities for the resources and unit production? I also think that, while you won't want to build any districts in your outlying cities at first if you still have districts you would really like to build in your core, once you've built all the districts you want in your core cities, you may as well start building districts in your outlying cities even if they are expensive.

 

[cazaderonus]

I think you nailed it with Rural VS Urban and this one in particular will be hard to go middle of the road. You will want to go one way or other. Science VS Culture i feel you have to go middle of the road to some extent but you will have a bias one way or other.

I'm not so sure. i think there's a natural evolution from one style to another over time. At first a city needs farms for quick growth and housing. Once it reaches a certain population, then you should obviously switch toward something more urban. But that's very natural even just for the fact that you have a district limit tied to your population.

Also, i wonder if internal trade routes will have fixed yields as in CiV or if they will scale with the actual city production. In that case it might be more efficient to settle some rural cities later down the road to act as food providers for the core cities when those switch toward a more urban direction.

So, i'd say those two considerations will more likely intertwine into each other than face each other.

 

[Olleus]

The choices aren't mean to be all-one-or-the other.

After all, the wide strategy in Civ5 didn't mean that all your cities stayed 1 pop, and the tall strategy doesn't mean you play OCC. It's about focus and emphasis. A hybrid approach is entirely possible and may be the best, but given the various bonuses that Civs and policies give, I think it is likely that focussing one way or another - to some extent - will be the best way to play.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

It seems like you could go either way for a Cultural Victory. Urban would focus on Great Works, Relics, and Archaeology while a Rural CV would go more for National Parks and Resort Improvements. Rural may also favor Wonders since there are more tiles available to build them on.

 

[Calouste]

There is a lot of crossover between the science and culture trees in that you get boosts for one tree by making progress in the other tree, either directly or indirectly. For example, the Eureka for the Stirrups tech is the Feudalism civic, and the boost for the Games and Recreation civic is the Construction tech. It seems that if you focus too much at either Science or Culture at the cost of the other, it will be self-limiting because you will be missing out on a lot of these boosts. It will probably be noticeable if your Science is more than 1/2 to 1 era ahead of your Culture or vice versa.

Regarding Urban vs. Rural, than seems more on a city by city basis, rather than civ-wide basis as tall vs wide and cottage vs specialist were in Civ5 and 4 respectively. I also don't see a reason why you can't have a hybrid with one or two large cities and a number of smaller ones.

I don't think Rural is going to be particularly effective for warmonger to pump out extra units, you can get policies that give 50% or 100% production to certain units that seem more effective, and building resource-dependent units in cities that don't have an encampment requires double the resources.

 

[dturtle1]

In regards to the Urban VS Rural, i am not saying that you cant morph from rural to Urban(you cant really go the other way ) I meant i.t was hard to go "middle of the road" in context of individual cities, sorry it wasn't that clear

Now you can have a High Pop/Low Pop urbanised/Rural City. There is no reason why you have keep up with your district cap. A city with lots of resources maybe better utilised with few, location specific districts. You could also have a Small Pop urbanised city whose role is to add s couple of extra specific districts to a larger city. A good example is small Port City that add an extra port and Commerce district to a larger City that has its own port and Commerce District set up for maximum adjacency boni and also fills out the map somewhat.

 

[Khalid]

Regarding the Rural vs Urban I do not see the reason, why Rural is less constrained by the increased district costs. Basically you would always want to build all your districts and the real choice would be how you distribute them among the cities and how much cities you will build. I would define the Rural vs Urban in the following way:

Urban - few large cities with many districts. This will require heavy optimization of the districts from all the cities to max adjacency bonuses. You will want to optimize the district adjecency mostly.

Rural - large number of cities, each with one district. Each city can specialize in one particular yield when a nice spot with adjacency bonuses is available (terrain adjacency optimization)

Mixed - Several cities with a larger number of districts and several with 1 or 2 districts.

In all cases you can complement the district cities with villages - cities with no districts, that might be tall when a lot of food is available or might be small just to grab a specific resource.

 

[Martinus]

I do hope the devs made sure that you can't optimally decide on the strategy for your game before seeing the map or choosing the leader.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

How you play will greatly depend on your civilization. Brazil for example wan't to control rain forest and thus may have to spread it cities to capture alot of rainforest.