Tile yields and their implications

[King Jason]

So desert hills given only 1 production now instead of 2. Interesting direction to go in.

Hills themselves add only 1 production to the terrain their own. So Grassland hills are only 1 production now too.

I fail to see how a dessert city with flood plains and a good amount of hills is any less useless in civ6 than civ5. A grassland and a Grassland hill, both improved, should offer a total of 5 food and 2 production. By comparison a flood plain and desert hill is 4 food and 2 production.

That's hardly a huge handicap considering in terms of a desert Vs a Grassland.

Also, It's very important to note that Districts remove the yield off of the tile when constructed and are unworkable apart from being specialist tiles at some point. So cities along desert rivers with hills are actually better than they've ever been because blank desert tiles are no longer absolutely worthless since you can place your districts there.

 

[joncnunn]

A shameless copy of a thread from Reddit, as I thought it well worth it -- here are the tile yields of the various terrain types, as gleaned from the recently released videos:

Tile Yield
Plains 1F1P
Plains Forest 1F2P
Plains Hill Forest 1F3P
Desert -
Desert Hill 1P
Snow -
Snow Hill 1P
Tundra 1F
Tundra Woods 1F1P
Tundra Hill 1F1P
Tundra Wooded Hills 1F2P

The implications of the new yield system, if kept until release, are pretty huge imo. Tundra and desert areas are pretty much worthless without wonders and/or religion, including hilly areas, which in Civ V were as useful as any other hill. Add to this the effect of lowered appeal (desert tiles have been stated to have low appeal values), and a tundra or desert start could be an instant re-roll.

While I agree with this on desert & snow without and without hills, to me it looks like Tundra Woods & Tundra Hill have exactly the same base yield as flat Plains; and Tundra Wooded Hills has exactly the same yield as Plains Forest, and so these still look useful.

(I don't know enough about districts to judge weather they would be good or not; (can you allocate a worker to the tile that has a district, and if so do you get the underlying terrain yields? Also in case of Egypt that gets to keep the flood plains when building a district or wonder there; can they allocate a worker to say a Desert-Flood Plains tile in which they've built Pyramids?)

 

[Lucius_]

As far as I can tell, you cannot work districts, also you cannot work wonders.

 

[stealth_nsk]

As far as I can tell, you cannot work districts, also you cannot work wonders.

Correction - districts are automatically worked. They have a unit of population assigned and it can't be removed (plus it seems more could be added as specialists with later buildings). But district doesn't produce it's original tile yeld.

 

[King Jason]

Correction - districts are automatically worked. They have a unit of population assigned and it can't be removed

I haven't seen anything to support this.

Spoiler :

This District tile appears as an unworkable, yield-less tile, and all 4 population remain available to assign to the rest of the tiles.

The specialist mechanic is in - but we don't really know the functionality of it; If you're allowed to assign specialists as soon as you construct buildings or if they're unlocked later through the tech or civics tree. Personally I'd b willing to bet that the specialist mechanic is unlocked in the civics tree in the mid-game. Either a Medieval or Renaissance civic.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I haven't seen anything to support this.

Spoiler :

This District tile appears as an unworkable, yield-less tile, and all 4 population remain available to assign to the rest of the tiles.

Is the district already complete?

I remember tooltip from one of the early videos which claimed a pop is used by the district, but can't find it right now. Anyway, this could be changing multiple times.

 

[King Jason]

Yes, I confirmed that the district was complete before posting the shot.

Also, without looking at the citizen assignment screen I was able to confirm this across multiple playthroughs because if the district forced a citizen to work the tile, then the yield outputs on the city tab would change. In two other playthroughs I was able to confirm that the yield outputs of a city remained the same upon completion of districts. Apart from, of course, the yield the districts were granting themselves. Those obviously went up. But one of the other ones, specifically food or production (or gold in the case of luxuries) would have to go down if a citizen was changing tiles.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yes, I confirmed that the district was complete before posting the shot.

Also, without looking at the citizen assignment screen I was able to confirm this across multiple playthroughs because if the district forced a citizen to work the tile, then the tile yields for a city would change. In two other playthroughs I was able to confirm that the yield outputs of a city remained the same upon completion of districts. Apart from, of course, the yield the districts were granting themselves. Those obviously went up. But one of the other ones, specifically food or production (or gold in the case of luxuries) would have to go down if a citizen was changing tiles.

Ok. It may be the main reason why developers dropped the usage of population per district - the yeld drop from building district would be quite unexpected

 

[King Jason]

I remember tooltip from one of the early videos which claimed a pop is used by the district, but can't find it right now. Anyway, this could be changing multiple times.

I don't remember any tooltip representation anywhere, but In the e3 promo video I found that the food yields would drop in cities that built districts. This happened even when the encampment was built. So sure, it's entirely possible that District construction once forced a citizen swap. That doesn't seem to be the case or at the very least doesn't appear to be represented properly in the newest build.

Either way it appears that they've always removed tile yields. So In regards to the original discussion about desert tiles being useless - Again, all district tiles become "blank" tiles apart from the bonuses they themselves provide. So it doesn't matter if they're placed on a desert or a grassland - they're not going to generate the terrain yields.

Apart from hunting for adjacency bonuses - I actually think this favors desert and tundra since you're not "deleting" otherwise productive tiles. That is to say, if you had in your city a grassland next to two mountains and a desert next to two mountains - you'd want to place your campus on the desert tile instead of the grassland because you can still farm the grassland. All other factors notwithstanding.

 

[spfun]

The implications are non heavy forest/hill/river starts aren't ideal and will mean a slower start.

Brazil seem like a good civ, with bias to rainforest already. I do like faster starts In Civ 6.

 

[nukehumvee]

I saw in one video that a mountain within a city's range has a citizen assignment icon on it. This brings to mind: What yields would mountains have in CVI if citizens can be assigned to work on mountains?

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It may be a very good idea to haverest your food resources to quickly get your pop up to the amount needed for districts because post feudalism food will likely be produced in huge quantities anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f92o34LEGw
At 12:40

Specialist are alternative assigment for citizens, which involve working a district tile. As a general rule, specialists are a good way to get yields otherwise hard to find on normal tiles, but the city needs a solid support base of food to support them in the long term. Specialists are also particularly useful when a city grows large later in the game, and has more population then there is normal tiles to work. There are different types of specialists, each with different effects. All specialist types expect the generic citizen have a limit on how many assigments there can be in a city. This limit is determinated by how many buildings in the district associated with that specialist type.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Either way it appears that they've always removed tile yields. So In regards to the original discussion about desert tiles being useless - Again, all district tiles become "blank" tiles apart from the bonuses they themselves provide. So it doesn't matter if they're placed on a desert or a grassland - they're not going to generate the terrain yields.

I didn't know this; it changes things quite a bit. I think I like this mechanic, because it gives marginal terrain some extra value and adds a further 'puzzle factor' to the placing of cities on the map.

It may be a very good idea to haverest your food resources to quickly get your pop up to the amount needed for districts because post feudalism food will likely be produced in huge quantities anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f92o34LEGw
At 12:40

I'm kinda torn on 'harvesting' our own resources. On one hand, it's something new and it's a decision to make (unless it's always optimal to either harvest or not to -- a very real danger). But otoh, tearing your landscape barren of food resources seems rather counter-intuitive and non-immersive.

The bonuses to farms from Feudalism (was it?) seem pretty huge imo; iirc it's +1 food to each farm for every adjacent farm. Wouldn't that mean +6 food to a tile that's surrounded by other farm tiles? I think 'breadbasket' may quickly become a new Civ term -- meaning a fertile valley that allows a lot of farms to be placed together. In 'regular' cities, I suspect it's 3 adjacent farm tiles that we'll be searching for, if only because districts and wonders will likely break up the 'ideal' farm pattern. Or you may just not need that much food in any city, given that housing acts as a hard(ish) limit on population.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Yes feudalism could mean a +6 bonus but the point is that food should not be as limited as it was in previous civ games to make room for the other resources. Housing will limit your growth after feudalism.

 

[Grumpbeard]

I'm kinda torn on 'harvesting' our own resources. On one hand, it's something new and it's a decision to make (unless it's always optimal to either harvest or not to -- a very real danger). But otoh, tearing your landscape barren of food resources seems rather counter-intuitive and non-immersive.

I'm pretty sure its a purely gameplay decision - if you want to place a district somewhere there's a resource, this is the way you still get a benefit from it.

 

[VCrakeV]

Not sure if this warrants a new thread, and it kind of fits... I don't think we have heard anything on observatories... I doubt they would drop them, but how would they fit? Can you build a district for an observatory on a mountain? Can a builder go on a mountain, if it's a tile improvement? We have seen a mountain being worked.

 

[Acken]

Im not sure there is a problem.

They could drop the mountain constraint, drop the building, or make it go either in the district or the city with a mountain adjacent requirement. Districts cant be built on mountains and workers cant move on mountain.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

Districts cant be built on mountains and workers cant move on mountain.

Are you saying this is how it should be, or this is how it actually is (atm)? It seems pretty weird to me to restrict movement on mountains, and yet make them workable by citizens.

EDIT: To me, the best solution would seem to be to allow the building of Observatories in districts adjacent to mountains only. Then have the graphic for the building appear on the mountain. I'd rather mountains not be workable if they're impassable; although perhaps Builders could be able to enter them and build a road that makes traversing them possible by other units as well. Maybe make it take 2 Builder charges, to ensure the mountains won't be covered in roads before the Modern era.

@Grumpbeard: That seems plausible, but also blander than a Finnish soap commercial. If it's not in the base game, I will dl a mod that makes harvesting an actual mechanic, rather than a no-brainer, ho-hum routine action.

 

[Acken]

Making mountains workable is possible through mod in civ5 if you add buildings etc that give a boost to mountains.

Impassable mountains and mountains giving a yield are not exclusive.

 

[Haggbart]

@Grumpbeard: That seems plausible, but also blander than a Finnish soap commercial. If it's not in the base game, I will dl a mod that makes harvesting an actual mechanic, rather than a no-brainer, ho-hum routine action.

It's not blander than chopping a forrest, also it adds some interesting decisions.

- Do I burn a builder charge on harvesting a resource
- In case I do not have a builder ready at all, do I delay the district until I have one, or do I put the district on top of the resource and thus remove it without getting any yields for the sake of timing.
- Or do I chose a different tile for my district.