What would make you build Neighborhoods?

[kaspergm]

I've been playing with the City Lights mod for a while, and that mod unfortunately kind of renders neighborhoods obsolete (or even less useful than vanilla games), but what that mod does, which I think points to what neighborhoods should be doing also, is it introduces some "urban" districts that grants housing and adjacency bonuses to districts, as well as improving specialists and offering some buildings that gives the city a specialization (gold, science, culture).

 

[racha]

A re-work of recruit partisans might make me build them, depending on how it was re-worked.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I do build neighborhoods only in cities that need more housing but usually never build more than one in a city.

I think I would build more if we had more building options other than the shopping mall and food market. I've never built a food market before.

A Public School that produces science or a Cinema that produces culture would be nice. Maybe a Hospital (if no health district), Police Station (for loyalty and stopping recruit partisans) or Fire Station (to limit natural disaster damage) would also be beneficial buildings to implement.

 

[Myomoto]

The district adjacency mechanic is one of the most loved systems in Civ 6. However, by late game you've placed most of your key districts and are engaging a little less with city planning.

I think Neighborhoods are a missed opportunity to get the player re-engaging again with some of those mechanics late game, and maybe mix them up in some way. Something like having neighbourhoods boost specialists in adjacent districts could be pretty cool.

I like the idea of growing monster tall cities too, it just doesn't feel very rewarding to do so in the game currently. I feel Audience Chamber could do with a buff (to cities with Governors) to help set up a tall game, then maybe Neighborhoods would find their place.

Audience Chamber totally needs to add some flat +2/+4 food to cities with governors installed. Potentially scale it as +1, and +1 per promotion of the governor.

Right now it let's you run bigger cities eventually, but it does nothing to actually get you there. The two alternatives actively help you with their strategies of either settling more cities, or making your production snowball when you start conquering.

 

[Tech Osen]

Buff specialists. Increase number of specialist sluts. Done.

How about the Neighborhood giving extra specialist slots to adjacent districts?

 

[IvoryPavane]

I think the suggestions made so far have been great.
I’d love to see more recognition to the fact that neighbourhoods would contain people who are going to react to their surroundings.

I’d love something like (either all or a combination of)

+gold adjacency based on appeal (lovely houses are more expensive)
+production when next to city centre (workers are commuting to city centre)
+specialists when next to a district
+food when adjacent to a couple of farms
- small/negligible contributions to climate change starting at Plastics

Would make it quite flexible while also recognising the impact of having a bunch of people nearby

 

[Galvatron]

How about the Neighborhood giving extra specialist slots to adjacent districts?

To put it plainly: that's adding another layer on top of the current design to fix an existing flaw.

Right now we have two problems, neigbourhoods suck, and specialists suck. The first problem is being caused by the fact that having more population is worthless, while the second is inherent. By making having a higher population worth it, we fix two problems. But if we simply increase the number of specialist slots with a nude mechanic we've fixed one problem without addressing the second, and to make matters worse, it took an additional layer of complexity.

Now I'm not saying adding that ability to neighbourhoods is a bad idea, in fact I'm fond of it, but the best solution 9/10 is the simplest one.

 

[greenOak]

Everything on the list could potentially make me want to build neighbourhoods depending on how strong the bonuses are. The exception being getting rid of the one building per city rule which I don't think is enough to warrant building them. If they granted a major adjacency to most districts I would probably build them but probably not if it was a standard adjacency. As for yields, they would have to be better than what is currently given by public transport. Even if public transport didn't use a policy slot up, I don't think the bonuses are enough to justify building them.

The biggest problem for neighbourhoods is that high population cities don't offer much benefit over smaller ones, and that its really difficult to grow high population cities before the game ends. This former is the result of yields mostly coming directly from districts and buildings. The latter is because of how quickly science output increases in comparison to tech cost.

 

[Timberdoodle]

A re-work of recruit partisans might make me build them, depending on how it was re-worked.

I've wondered how recruit partisans would feel if it was only possible in conquered cities. As it stands it feels a little odd that happy cities can have rebel units spawn. That would make a whole lot more sense if the city was under the control of a foreign civ.

 

[agonistes]

1) no rebels
2) looked nicer
3) smaller opportunity cost - maybe improvements could get 1 or 2 additional worker slots per neighborhood; or have a tech increase the slots so those pops can be put to use

 

[UWHabs]

To put it plainly: that's adding another layer on top of the current design to fix an existing flaw.

Right now we have two problems, neigbourhoods suck, and specialists suck. The first problem is being caused by the fact that having more population is worthless, while the second is inherent. By making having a higher population worth it, we fix two problems. But if we simply increase the number of specialist slots with a nude mechanic we've fixed one problem without addressing the second, and to make matters worse, it took an additional layer of complexity.

Now I'm not saying adding that ability to neighbourhoods is a bad idea, in fact I'm fond of it, but the best solution 9/10 is the simplest one.

Yeah, I think that neighbourhoods (and urbanization as a whole) are really one of the biggest lacking features in civ right now. There's not enough value in high pop, and it's compounded right now in that at a certain point, population is simply bad. Like, why would I ever want to grow my city from size 16 to size 17, when I lose an amenity in the city, and all that I get to work is a stupid specialist for like 2 science?

Really, I think what would fix neighbourhoods are multi-fold. They should be districts that you absolutely want to build in every city in the modern eras, so I would probably do the following:
1. Any district next to a neighbourhood has their specialist yields doubled. Thus, you want your neighbourhoods next to every district if possible.
2. Specialists in cities with neighbourhoods should consume less resources (food and amenities).

If you did that, even if that second boost came from the buildings, that would go a long way. So even if you keep the same buildings, make the shopping mall provide, say, 1 amenity per 3 or 4 specialists working in a city, and the food market provide 1 food per specialist, so that both food and amenity for specialists were cut in half. In that way, every city would essentially need to build 2 neighbourhoods to get the full boost there. It would also be a neat balancing mechanism - those mountain campuses give great adjacency yields earlier in the game, but they have less nearby tiles so maybe you can't put a neighbourhood next to them to gain the late game yields.

I mean, maybe even that's not enough. You still get diminishing returns once you run out of districts in a city. But if we make neighbourhoods/urbanization truly change up the late game calculations, that would be a good thing.

 

[Leah and Rachael]

What would make me build Neighborhoods? Playing as Kongo, basically

 

[Leah and Rachael]

I like the idea of Neighborhoods conferring a bonus for being adjacent to specific districts. I wouldn't say any district, though. Just entertainment complexes/water parks (+2 amenities for being adjacent per neighborhood).

I also like the flat +5 housing and +gold for appeal.
I'm not a fan of boosting every specialty district. However, I like the idea of each Neighborhood giving specialists in the city +2 to the respective yields when powered.

Recruit Partisans does need to be solved. Perhaps tie it back to loyalty; the mission only becomes available if the city is experiencing a net negative loyalty (or negative loyalty before modifiers); another idea could be to make it available only when a Civ isn't in a Golden Age. It would stop the district from being vulnerable at all times

 

[anonxanemone]

Maybe we should do away with the Neighborhood "district" altogether? Instead maybe a city can perform a project after reaching a certain population after researching Urbanization (call it "Urban Housing" or something) that increases Housing and specialist yields.

Edit: Maybe even tie the project to the district. Anything to make specialists relevant! Bustling population of a civilization allowed the development of specialists, right?

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

For tying neighbourhoods with specialist I propose either one of the following:

• Each/first neighbourhood in a city gives a free specialist

or:

• Specialists in districts adjacent to a neighbourhood produce 50% more yield

Something that restricts the recruit partisans spy operation I would support. As mentioned something related to loyalty, captured cities or maybe only in any city bordering other civ cities.

 

[Caprikel]

I like the idea of Housing not being tied to appeal, it makes no sense that having your surroundings being prettier would allow more space for housing. The appeal should instead be tied to amenities somehow, as suburbs in general are places people live in because they want to escape the crowded conditions of urban areas. Perhaps the actual mechanic could be that the higher the appeal of the tile, the less amenities are required for the citizens that inhabit those neighborhoods, which would be equivalent to it giving amenities.
I also like the idea of them giving standard adjacencies to districts, which would further encourage bunching districts together.
Population naturally needs to become more valuable as well. Personally I would like it if cities could work tiles in the 4th and 5th ring, but are unable to build districts passed the 3rd ring, along with tile purchasing being similarly limited to the 3rd ring. It only makes sense, given that districts and wonders hog up so many tiles.
Specialists should also be actually competitive with tiles, so that they aren't just the last resort for population to work. Current specialists are pathetically weak, which makes no sense considering that improvements and tiles in general have been buffed since civ 5, but yet the specialists have been made weaker in civ 6 instead of being made stronger to compete with the buffed improvements!
I would also rather see buildings actually need a specialist to work them to even produce yields, as it works with tiles. The only inherent yields to a district should be the adjacency yields, while the buildings act more like new tiles that need to be worked.

 

[Leah and Rachael]

Maybe we should do away with the Neighborhood "district" altogether? Instead maybe a city can perform a project after reaching a certain population after researching Urbanization (call it "Urban Housing" or something) that increases Housing and specialist yields.

Edit: Maybe even tie the project to the district. Anything to make specialists relevant! Bustling population of a civilization allowed the development of specialists, right?

Well, I don't think getting rid of them is a good idea. Not everyone is a min-maxer and not every district must be absolutely essential. I like having niche districts that only work in certain situations. Sometimes it is fun to build Neighborhoods - I think making them more interesting (not necessarily BETTER) is what we should be shooting for.

But nice idea. Didn't think of that perspective

 

[Victoria]

You can only build once campus per city, regardless of pop while in reality large cities have many.
Campus should have a bonus based on pop not just a simple +2/4. Adjacency rules the roost while pop should take over at some stage. Then we will see plenty of neighbourhoods and farms. Currently we see few.

 

[Myomoto]

I think adding a major adjacency bonus on neighborhoods would make them worthwhile to build in niche scenarios, but it would really be the most band-aid of band-aid fixes to the underlying issue: Large population is generally not rewarded enough, and thus a district with the explicit purpose to allow for bigger populations is generally not worthwhile to build (especially one that doesn't confer any yields but consumes a tile).

I'm all for the idea of removing most base yields from district buildings and instead move the yields to specialists working in the building (maybe compensate on the production needed to build these buildings then). Secondly change city state bonuses to boost specialist yields of the appropriate type by +1 per tier of envoys, change the three GS to give +1 to scientist specialists each, etc.

If specialists had the same kind of compounding bonuses that stack up over the game as the district buildings do now, population in cities would be extremely desirable. The problem right now is just simply that you get yields by spamming empty districts.

I think it's pretty clear that Firaxis is not interested to make this change to specialists - for whatever reason. I still kind of wish somebody at Firaxis would release it as an 'official' mod like how they released the Civ 5 graphics mod.

 

[Galvatron]

You can only build once campus per city, regardless of pop while in reality large cities have many.
Campus should have a bonus based on pop not just a simple +2/4. Adjacency rules the roost while pop should take over at some stage. Then we will see plenty of neighbourhoods and farms. Currently we see few.

That's another thing, why do adjacency bonuses come in one lump sum? Why is the adjacency of a campus at the beginning of the game with the same three points that it will be in 6000 years? Shouldn't the agency bonus increase over time?