What would Civ VI be like if cities were spaced further apart?

[Trigan Emperor]

In Civ VI, the minimum distance a city can be from another city is four hexes (less if they are on different landmasses).

The AI mostly settle cities at this distance. I generally do similar, to keep a consistency with the rest of the world.

I was wondering what the game would be like if the minimum distance was increased to, say, six tiles. With more space for each city, and only a certain number of Districts per city would one see a world with more farms?

 

[Sostratus]

A lot of district play would be ruined because cities couldn’t really use their districts to support other cities’ districts. So most districts would be terrain based and whatever you could make just in that city. That and regional effects would be much reduced in effectiveness unless the range was boosted.

Really the loss of choices in district play would make it a lot less fun without serious rebalancing.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I was wondering how the AI would settle on a flat map with all else being equal.

On the left in the following image is the current 4-hex distance rule. The brown is the average workable area for each city, which equals nine tiles. On the right is a six-hex rule. It provides 22.5 workable tiles per city. However, it also leads to unworked tiles in red, outside city radii.



This next image is 5-hex rule. On the right in brown is the average workable area, which is 21 workable tiles per city, with no unworked tiles.



[SMALL PRINT EDIT TO ADD: Calculations and results obtained may not be mathematically accurate.]

 

[lotrmith]

I was wondering how the AI would settle on a flat map with all else being equal.

On the left in the following image is the current 4-hex distance rule. The brown is the average workable area for each city, which equals nine tiles. On the right is a six-hex rule. It provides 22.5 workable tiles per city. However, it also leads to unworked tiles in red, outside city radii.



This next image is 5-hex rule. On the right in brown is the average workable area, which is 21 workable tiles per city, with no unworked tiles.



[SMALL PRINT EDIT TO ADD: Calculations and results obtained may not be mathematically accurate.]

A 6-tile rule can work all tiles if you zig zag out 6 tiles from center rather than go directly 6 tiles out in a straight line.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

A lot of district play would be ruined because cities couldn’t really use their districts to support other cities’ districts. So most districts would be terrain based and whatever you could make just in that city. That and regional effects would be much reduced in effectiveness unless the range was boosted.

Really the loss of choices in district play would make it a lot less fun without serious rebalancing.

Nine workable hexes is not a lot when one considers tiles for districts, resources, dams, aqueducts, canals, neighborhoods, Wonders and so on. I'm sure many human players play at 5-hex distances or more and it works okay.

It would mean having to build a few more Builders, probably.

I think in previous Civ games, one could run the game as AI-only and observe it. I'd be interested to see how the AI performed - would it build farms etc, or would it leave lots of empty unworked spaces?

 

[Trigan Emperor]

A 6-tile rule can work all tiles if you zig zag out 6 tiles from center rather than go directly 6 tiles out in a straight line.

Can't assume AI will think like that.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

Can't assume AI will think like that.

Cant assume AI thinks at all.

 

[Sostratus]

Nine workable hexes is not a lot when one considers tiles for districts, resources, dams, aqueducts, canals, neighborhoods, Wonders and so on. I'm sure many human players play at 5-hex distances or more and it works okay.

It would mean having to build a few more Builders, probably.

I think in previous Civ games, one could run the game as AI-only and observe it. I'd be interested to see how the AI performed - would it build farms etc, or would it leave lots of empty unworked spaces?

Isn’t there an auto play? Maybe it’s the AI benchmark. But you could definitely change the min settle distance parameter and watch for yourself. Warning: you’ll really want to sparsely populate the map with City states and Civs because you can end up with degenerate behavior when city state settlers can’t settle on turn 1 because the city state before them already did.

regardless- for human play I find that a pure 3 tile blanket is inferior to having clusters of a few cities at 3 tiles with a little more space between them. (4-6.) this alleviates pretty much all issues. However, the 3 tile carpet is the most effective general method for a defensible empire. Both in terms of combat and loyalty. It shouldn’t surprise anyone the devs chose to program them to follow that.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

You could.. just change it.. you can increase the minimum city distance and play a game out and see what happens.

 

[lotrmith]

Can't assume AI will think like that.

It's strange to assume the AI will go 6 tiles directly out rather than go for good settlement spots (fresh water, resources, etc... you know, like the settler lens would suggest)

 

[Elhoim]

There's a mod that increases the distance and re-balances the effects. It's called "Distance is a good thing".

I think distance should be larger, but also the working radius as well. Hell, I think that working radius is something that should be removed completely. The main issue I currently find with Civ is that you are managing a collection of cities, not an empire. I don't have much time to explain, but the main idea is that terrain should provide food and resources, distributed to your empire, while yields like production and commerce should be granted by infrastructure. And that science and culture should have a money investing cost.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

It's strange to assume the AI will go 6 tiles directly out rather than go for good settlement spots (fresh water, resources, etc... you know, like the settler lens would suggest)

The AI appears to settle further if there's a strategic resource, but, generally, the main criteria for a new city for the AI seems to be that it's the minimum allowed distance from another city.

So 5-hex rule would be safer. In any case, the workable area for a city provided by the 5-hex rule looks like it is large enough.

There's a mod that increases the distance and re-balances the effects. It's called "Distance is a good thing".

Here's the mod. Looks interesting.

According to this, it looks like it's possible to set up an AI-only game.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

One thing about the "Distance is a good thing" mod is that the distances stated are the number of hexes between cities, not number of hexes away. So the two versions of the mod are, using the system described in this thread, using 6-hex and 7-hex rules, which is larger than the 5-hex rule I am suggesting.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The AI settles them pretty much as closely as possible.

In any case, you'd just run out of space bigger and just be led to conquer more. The extra space is useless unless the restrictions on housing and amenities is lighter.

 

[kaspergm]

However, it also leads to unworked tiles in red, outside city radii.

Gasp, the horror, imagine an unused hex in Civ.

Not say you to mock you, btw., but just to point out something I think is a general flaw in the civilization design philosophy. The idea that in the modern era, every single piece of land is claimed and worked by a city just seems to mirror reality very badly. But of course, if one would have dramatically larger distance between cities, maps need to scale completely different.

 

[The googles do nothing]

Here's the mod. Looks interesting.

According to this, it looks like it's possible to set up an AI-only game.

I play a MP game a long time ago with that mod or a similar one. Settling changes quite a bit because the river spots vanish right away. If you could work tiles beyond 3 but keep the 3 space limit - or movie it to two -- that might get more farms because of the triangle possibilities.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I've been running an AI-only game using Autoplay and 5-hex rule (4 hexes of space between cities), which is one higher than vanilla.

I can see some issues.

For example, this screenshot.

Spoiler :

No cities can be built in the centre between these cities, which leads to an area of six tiles in the middle which is out of radius of any city.

Spoiler :

 

[lotrmith]

I've been running an AI-only game using Autoplay and 5-hex rule (4 hexes of space between cities), which is one higher than vanilla.

I can see some issues.

For example, this screenshot.

Spoiler :

No cities can be built in the centre between these cities, which leads to an area of six tiles in the middle which is out of radius of any city.

Spoiler :

That is the fault of the city state placement and your capital. Had your capital been two tiles to the right, there would be no issue.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

That is the fault of the city state placement and your capital. Had your capital been two tiles to the right, there would be no issue.

It's not my capital.

It's an example of something developing naturally from the game's programming, such as Civ/city-state starting placement and AI city-settling behaviour.

 

[kaspergm]

I tried that mod as well, and went away from using it sort of for the same reason: With maps already being as cramped as they are, there was too much space lost when the minimum distance was increased - I had cases, where what I wold call a perfectly good city spot was not valid because all spots within the area was exactly 4 hexes away from a city or city state from different civs.

What I would really like was the ability to tune the AI to favor a larger settling distance, instead of ALWAYS going the minimum 4 hexes away from nearest city. My preferred distance is generally 5-6 hexes between cities, but obviously sometimes one city or a city state or foreign city will be the minimum 4 hexes away. So what I'd like is for the AI to spread their cities out a bit more when there is room for it, but still to have the option to settle closer when a gap needs to be filled. However, there doesn't seem to be any such option.