What is a district, why is it so hard to repair?

[Victoria]

To look at the issue in another way, I declare a formal war on a civ which is not really enough by itself to cause significant grievance. I then send in the cav, pillage their districts and they are out of the game. Wait a few turns for grievances to go, then declare on the next civ. a civ just never recovers.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

To look at the issue in another way, I declare a formal war on a civ which is not really enough by itself to cause significant grievance. I then send in the cav, pillage their districts and they are out of the game. Wait a few turns for grievances to go, then declare on the next civ. a civ just never recovers.

In other words, another 'buff' to the Human Player versus the AI?

 

[Victoria]

In other words, another 'buff' to the Human Player versus the AI?

if you want to look it that way round for a refreshing change, then yes.
How about MP players, I guess if their districts get pillaged it is game over anyway?

 

[Gorbles]

To look at the issue in another way, I declare a formal war on a civ which is not really enough by itself to cause significant grievance. I then send in the cav, pillage their districts and they are out of the game. Wait a few turns for grievances to go, then declare on the next civ. a civ just never recovers.

I'm not being sarcastic here, but if that was all it took to win a game nobody would have a problem with Deity, given the early access and general strength of cavalry.

Are we just throwing out random exaggerated examples at this point? I can't see this as being an argument that in any way helps explore how to fix the issue.

 

[wilcoxchar]

The concept of the district likely stems from the Marshallian industrial districts, in terms of a highly concentrated and specialized area of industry, and then taking the concept and applying it to other areas of specialization in a way similar to that neatly outlined in Ed Glaeser's Triumph of the City.

So, in that sense, each district is far more than a building or a neighborhood. It's better to think of each district more as a full blown city in our sense, a specialized satellite city around the metropolitan center that is what Civ calls the city.

You can already see examples of the districts in early civilization, especially with the harbor. For example, Piraeus would be the harbor district of Athens, and Ostia for Rome. But it even extends to later eras and modern day, especially as cities become more spread out. Silicon Valley as the campus for San Francisco, Boulder for Denver, Oxford for London, Electronic City (Bangalore), Cyberabad (Hyderabad), and Pune (Mumbai) in India. For encampments you only need to look at military bases, and harbors, just as in ancient times, at navy yards (Brooklyn for New York, Alexandria for DC, etc.). Neighborhoods are basically just suburbs or exurbs. You can pretty easily find the same connections for other districts.

 

[Victoria]

Are we just throwing out random exaggerated examples at this point? I can't see this as being an argument that in any way helps explore how to fix the issue.

It is not exaggerated from my experience. I pillage civs on deity and 50 turns later they are still pillaged.
I have already made suggestions like for example why should a district be of value to pillage in the first place? The building sure, but how does the plumbing of a theatre district help me culturally if I pillage it. In fact maybe you cannot pillage a district at all? Just the buildings. Pillaging is worth way too much, was introduced in earnest in R&F probably for the plague scenario and quite a few of us said it was stupidly OP. Turning science and culture to gold and faith does not help with monumentality around.
Look, the bottom line for me is this. A coastal city takes a long time to recover , worse than other cities because it loses a large majority of its production, pretty much guaranteed by a hurricane. I just want to be able to turn off random events, The setting 0 should mean zero. I would prefer some other solution but they seem hell bent on keeping pillaging at stupidly high levels.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

In fact maybe you cannot pillage a district at all? Just the buildings

i like the idea

 

[Gorbles]

It is not exaggerated from my experience. I pillage civs on deity and 50 turns later they are still pillaged.
I have already made suggestions like for example why should a district be of value to pillage in the first place? The building sure, but how does the plumbing of a theatre district help me culturally if I pillage it. In fact maybe you cannot pillage a district at all? Just the buildings. Pillaging is worth way too much, was introduced in earnest in R&F probably for the plague scenario and quite a few of us said it was stupidly OP. Turning science and culture to gold and faith does not help with monumentality around.
Look, the bottom line for me is this. A coastal city takes a long time to recover , worse than other cities because it loses a large majority of its production, pretty much guaranteed by a hurricane. I just want to be able to turn off random events, The setting 0 should mean zero. I would prefer some other solution but they seem hell bent on keeping pillaging at stupidly high levels.

The AI not repairing Districts isn't a direct correlation with them taking 50 turns to repair. I also still have no idea if that's a surefire way to victory or not.

I definitely don't play at Deity, but my main issue is normally the amount of AI units they can send my way, which means I don't mess around with Districts, I take key Cities to prevent them from expanding as far into my territory (and have taken up razing them half of the time as well, because I'm not very nice like that).

I mean, there are tons of possible issues in here, the coastal vs. inland bias being another well-debated topic (which I agree with, but that's completely aside, right?). I also support a "completely off" setting for Disasters, but considering how integral they are to certain parts of the design (would render Dams pointless, etc), if it's possible by modding that might be something that is left for the modders (than than as an official inclusion).

It might not seem like it, but I'm 100% on board with fixing stuff that needs fixing. The problem is separating out the actual problems from the perceived problems, which is what I'm trying to get at. I understand where you're coming from with coastal cities and also Tornadoes (specifically, because yeah there's no way around them if they decide to hit you). For my part, I genuinely don't think the issue is with repair costs. That's just where they manifest, particularly with coastal cities (in general) and also considering the ubiquity of certain Districts (like the Industrial District. Harbours too, really).

 

[Victoria]

The problem is separating out the actual problems from the perceived problems

as @Tiger Genocide just said in another thread, if it affects him it must affect the AI so he plays on 1 as even 2 is too much.
I just think this is an area where it is not glaringly obvious at first but getting badly hit does change your view if you do not like random death of your cunning designs.

 

[Duuk]

One of the many, many reasons Civ6 is collecting (electronic) dust in my collection. Lots of game design flaws that don't work well together.

 

[Gorbles]

as @Tiger Genocide just said in another thread, if it affects him it must affect the AI so he plays on 1 as even 2 is too much.
I just think this is an area where it is not glaringly obvious at first but getting badly hit does change your view if you do not like random death of your cunning designs.

Which brings us back to "why is this not an automatic victory on any difficulty level?". We're two expansions in, right, and the rewards for pillaging (except for Norway) were (kinda) recently nerfed. Discussing this as a strategy to victory specifically with regards to Pillaging, leaving aside Disasters for now.

Which also leads onto "why are we talking about District repair costs instead of Pillaging", but that's dependent on the first question really.

 

[King Rad]

In fact maybe you cannot pillage a district at all? Just the buildings..

I had also thought about this. While there have been several positive suggestions about how to improve districts, reduce repair costs, etc. Those are probably something for CiVII, or at least the next [hopefully there will be one] expansion. However, district repair costs are too high relative to other costs of the game. I like the concept of districts being the infrastructure, and they can have an initial cost. Once in place, the repair cost if they can be pillaged, should be relatively small. Or simply not allow them to be pillaged. I think either works well within the current framework of civ. Similarly, having the buildings provide/receive the adjacency bonuses is a great idea; or simply not have the district provide anything if it's not worked. I don't know how simple the first alternative would be to program, but I'd think not providing anything if not worked would be relatively easy. Like in my current game I get 6 science from a district surrounded by six mountains [Inca, so I built a 'road' through the mountain to get to this ideal science district spot]. Having to put population there to work the district certainly makes a lot of sense - although the idea suggested earlier of districts themselves not providing anything but the infrastructure for the building built in them, with the buildings getting any bonuses makes even more sense.

 

[Scaramanga]

Everything is a district including the city centre and they support each other through adjacency and defensible district strength. They represent an investment in time in one particular field and their instant destruction shows the fragility of civilised settlements in the face of barbarism and nature's fury. It is probably why humans lived mostly outside of cities until recently.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why is the assumption that "someone in Firaxis didn't think through X".

Historical precedent.

Though to be fair, Firaxis isn't the first or second company that comes to mind regarding this.

 

[Gorbles]

Historical precedent.

Though to be fair, Firaxis isn't the first or second company that comes to mind regarding this.

That could be generalised to a vast amount of consumer feedback, too. I'm trying to be constructive in exploring this, because it's good to work through assumptions sometimes. Less so if that's not the point of interest, though.

 

[seanos08]

I would only pillage districts when I'm low on gold or they are providing 2 combat strength to the city centre, and then only if the right card is in.

I never pillage districts if I intend to capture their city but I will pillage farms to heal my troops. If I don't want to capture the city I pillage districts hard and especially like pillaging harbours with naval units.

 

[Scaramanga]

I never pillage districts if I intend to capture their city but I will pillage farms to heal my troops. If I don't want to capture the city I pillage districts hard and especially like pillaging harbours with naval units.

At higher levels the districts have to be pillaged because you can't wait for the defenses to be all the way down before attacking with melee, and districts strengthen the city centre. Your troops are just sitting there waiting for the defenses to drop far enough for an attack to not be suicidal. They might as well pillage what they can.

 

[steveg700]

Like I said in another thread regarding Aid Request emergencies, it seems a no-brainer that military engineer's should be able to expend charges to repair districts.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Which brings us back to "why is this not an automatic victory on any difficulty level?". We're two expansions in, right, and the rewards for pillaging (except for Norway) were (kinda) recently nerfed. Discussing this as a strategy to victory specifically with regards to Pillaging, leaving aside Disasters for now.

The yields are incredible, but there's a hidden implication too. If you can pillage the deity AI, it means the deity AI's units aren't in your way. That almost always implies something unfortunate happened to them, and yes having the AI's armies unfortunately (for it) vanish will get you W's consistently on deity.

Most people that struggle do so with that first part.

That could be generalised to a vast amount of consumer feedback, too. I'm trying to be constructive in exploring this, because it's good to work through assumptions sometimes. Less so if that's not the point of interest, though.

The assertion was "Firaxis didn't think through the mechanics in place prior to implementing GS". For some mechanics, that's debatable. For others, you have observed internal inconsistency.

Coherent decisions/preferences require consistency. District cost scaling/pillage repair costs are not internally consistent to the rest of Civ 6, and the arbitrary nature of this implementation is leading to weird scenarios such as demonstrated by OP.

Asserting that Firaxis didn't think it through is the charitable/nicer option. The alternative is that they instead utilized incoherent rationale, realized it didn't make sense, but decided to implement it arbitrarily anyway because reasons. I'm willing to make that assertion about certain developers at Paradox because I have evidence to support it. Firaxis hasn't done/said anything where that would be fairly pinned on them.

Besides, it's natural in a complex system with hundreds to thousands of things to consider that one particular thing isn't carefully thought through by human beings. It's not exactly an indictment on Firaxis to say that about them for any one mechanic.

 

[dshirk]

That's no good. Could we take a peek at your save? And if possible, the save before the city is taken as well? If not, no worries, we'll work to recreate the repro here as well.