What kinds of districts should I be building across the whole civilization?

[Azedenkae]

Industrial is basically a must imo. Followed by commercial. Then it depends. Holy site if you are a massive faith churner, campus for science, harbor if you can. I actually barely build entertainment districts, and neither do cultural districts.

Then encampments if you know you feel endangered, but in my current game not all have encampments.

 

[Deaga]

Rush commercial hubs asap everywhere. Having many trade routes is a gamechanger, you can then use the extra production from them to build your Industrial Zones a tad faster. IZs aren't all that great before you can build Factories too, so it's not such a rush to get them ASAP, while Commercial Hubs are useful from the second they're up. Of course, the same applies to Harbors when they can be built.

I like building the early Campus on my capital, as it's the first district available, so it helps a bit with early science, but I generally only build more of those after the Commercial Hubs and IZs are up everywhere else. I tend to skip on Theather Districts until later on, as I feel they only really shine when you can have Archeological Museums and Archeologists... But then again, that's also not really useful if not going for a Cultural Victory. I also have skipped on Holy Sites and Religion in all my games thus far. Maybe I'll play Russia next time just to see how it goes with Lavras.

 

[ShoGuL]

I try to get one big city with IZ + Commerce + Harbor + encampment for the +5 production from internal trade routes. But yeah, commerce and harbors #1 prio.

 

[LanguishViking]

Commerce Hub, Harbor, Encampment (Carthage Suzerain Bonus). 3 routs per city.

 

[varus]

Wow I build as many as I can lol. I try to build as many of the unique ones as possible. I also try to get harbors and commercial districts everywhere, preferably next to each other. I put down a couple early holy sites, but don't spam those. Same with campus. Industry, though, I put everywhere. Every city. And I try to put each one in the most centralized position it can reach so that the factory there hits as many cities as possible. So for me:

From most to fewest:
1. Unique District
2. Economic (trade/harbor)
3. Industrial

4. Culture
5. Campus
6. Holy Site

7. Encampment (only as needed and where needed).
8. Aqueduct (I only use these when the city is not supplied with fresh water, and then only on an otherwise dead tile)

Neighborhoods are kind of a special case, I put those wherever I can but they don't really count against the limit so there's no reason to count them.

 

[Jarms48]

I build commerce districts and industrial zones in every city. If my city is close to the coast I'll always build a harbor. If I'm allied with Carthage I'll always build an encampment, rather than just in some cities. Then after that I'll generally weigh the other districts like this campus > entertainment ≥ theater > holy site.