Hihi, I actually thought about posting something like this in the strategy forum, but you were faster. Maybe your topic should be moved to strategy.
So, my very basic "strategy":
(1) Primary districts
Since there are policies & city states that benefit a certain type of district, I feel it is advantageous to have at least one type of district that is build *everywhere*. For example campuses, commercial districts etc. In this way, you get the largest effects from allying city states & running certain policies.
In general, those districts benefit most from their sheer numbers & policies/city states. I often feel it is *not* necessary to build every building in them, especially not high end buildings & instead focus on other stuff.
(2) Secondary/Support districts
Those are a mixture of all other districts & usually the second one I build in a city, although I sometimes swap them if I'm running low on gold, need defense on a choke point etc. For example some commercial districts for gold & trade routes, some central industrial zones for later factory coverage, some campuses/theatres to boost science/culture, some encampments for defense.
Since these districts are fewer in number & often do not benefit from policies or city states, I feel it is generally worthwhile to build "high end" buildings in them.
(3) Tertiary districts
Those are all other districts that get build later on.
It matters more the higher you go. I did post asking if people considered putting a CD everywhere was going over the top. Well you can still do it but at high level science is becoming more of a requirement.
2 science districts adjacent to mountains will get a few extra eureka's so I tend to get a couple fairly early and that does also net a GS fairly early which is also a couple of extra eureka's on average... thats a fair jump in playing catch up and worth doing. The earlier you do these the more fruitful
Without many commercial districts and trade routes you are going to struggle.... Production is king but gold is god. Just being able to buy stuff is magic. Whether that be builders, great people or tiles.The +1 to internal trade routes just cements this as the key district.
Production is king and plains hills are just great, put together with a rush to apprenticeship you are well on your way... and there we find our IZ. So having a couple of these is just great... The +1 to internal trade routes helps in a few cities.
If you want to grow your cities large or war a lot then you will need ED also but these are a fixit and built just before required... as long as you have the pop to build them.
If you do not want to be stuck with Meritocracy clogging your card deck or is just not enough then you do need theaters but they only work well with great people in them or good CS support.
By the sea then a harbor nowadays is a no brainer, especially hills by the sea. The lighthouse giving +1 food to sea tiles if great. The +1 prod to internal trade routes helps in a few cities. The CD CC Harbor Triangle is a powerful gold maker too at a river mouth.
Holy sites are a personal choice, some do, some do not. Some civs like Russia it is hard not to. The interesting thing is the cheapness makes people build them first... but I am quite happy with getting cheap ones later, they are half price whenever.
The CS you meet should have an impact also. I like to play before I decide on a victory condition as you are much stronger with the right CS found in the first 100 turns.
Obviously there are lots of factors that go into this and will vary greatly between games but as a very general plan I have been following something like this...
Capital - focus on special districts that you may not need a lot of (encampment, entertainment, industrial, campus, maybe aero or spaceport). This works well because the capital is often centrally located making it good for districts with a range. Also the capital tends to have the most districts and best production allowing for more options in wonders like Colosseum or Terracotta. Also most domestic trade routes will go to the capital so districts like encampment and industrial will give production to all your cities sending traders here.
Other - always start with Commercial or Harbor to get a new trader. Then go for whichever district fits your victory (campus, theater, holy site) since you will want those in every city. From there any district that has a good adjacency location or industrial & entertainment if out of range of the capital.
I get two campuses pretty much every game. If I'm going for an SV, I'll go for more. These are always the first districts I build unless I'm trying some weird new strategy.
I will make sure each city is being affected by one Industrial Zone at all times. If amenities become an issue, I apply the same rule to Entertainment Complexes.
I only get Theatre Districts from capturing an enemy city or if going for a CV.
Unique districts should pretty much always be spammed. I only get Holy Sites if my civ gets some sort of boost from them (Russia, Arabia).
[Edit]: The Hansa and the Acropolis are exceptions to this. The Acropolis is horrible (arguably worse than the generic version and the Hansa still can't stack production boosts with nearby cities).
Harbors I'll put on pretty much every coastal city. Even some that aren't right on the coast deserve a harbor.
I sometimes put one encampment in my highest production city. This really depends on whether strategic resources are a problem or not.
Commercial districts I will put anywhere that has district space. I usually make them the second district for each city. There's no reason to avoid building them, unless you have a very profitable Harbor option or already have more gold than you can use.
I never bother with Aerodromes or Aqueducts. The way the game is right now, they're a complete waste.
Neighbourhoods I build as I require housing. Usually 1 per city is enough. Sometimes I don't even bother.
I wish I had a district strategy, still struggling with it. I understand what they do, and some are obvious like harbors, but I always find myself wanting more than I have pop for. ED are huge for military and defense, and all my games seem to end up the same, taking out the runaways with my leveled up army. I never seem to get around to building Theater Districts even though I want them. Commercials always find there way in early unless it's a coastal city. I seem to build a lot of Industrial Zones as my production never seems good enough. I always seem to get jammed up somewhere between 9-12 pop, with Neighborhoods a long way off. Lately my civs have all been religious so Holy Sites are taking up to many spots. I fear building Campuses as it just seems to drive production costs, but I don't want to miss out on late game GSs. Entertainment districts start getting built as the wars drag on.
Also, one city (or two if you can get Suzy-status with Carthage) will have harbor+industrial zone+commercial hub+encampment. All cities run their internal trade routes to it for +5 hammers per city. Sometimes you have to wait until trading posts are created, though.
The one and only wonder that I build ever game is the colosseum. The AI often overlooks it (at least up to immortal) which I suspect is because the AI has so many bonuses and humans sell their redundant luxes to them, it doesn't need the extra amenities so it doesn't build the entertainment complexes which prevent them from building it (except Rome and China). I can usually find a spot where it covers 5 cities, always at least 4. If it covers 5 cities, that means 5 cities are each getting 3 extra amenities, and since each amenity supports 2 population points, the colosseum provides enough amenities to cover 30 population points, with a healthy amount of culture to boot. As such and in conjunction with luxuries and cards if needed, I often don't need more than the one entertainment complex, unless I go crazy wide.
Another factor that determines which districts I build (and consequently which victory condition I pursue) is which city states are in the game and where they are located. I'm a little crazy over the type bonuses, often moreso than the suzerein bonus. If there's lots of trade CS's in the game, it means it's going to be a great game but doesn't lend itself to any particular victory condition. Trade CS's provide double the 3/6 envoy level bonuses, +4 gold instead of +2 beakers/faith/etc. SInce commercial hubs also give trade routes, they are often the highest priority in all of your cities; all of your initial cities at least, and having the envoy level bonuses is the foundation of a great economy. The number and location of culture or scientific or religious city states is usually the primary reason of why I'm picking whichever victory condition I'm going after. I mentioned the location because city states that are out of reach (behind other civilizations) are to be disregarded as you cannot defend them - you're getting these great bonuses in every city and then it's gone when the AI captures it. If you can encapsulate the CS's that you are using, you're golden. If you can at least border them, you can liberate them with little warmonger penalty. I don't care so much for the militaristic or industrial city states (except for the ones with awesome suzerein bonuses, namely Carthage and Buenos Aires with honorable mention to Hong Kong) because their hammer bonuses only apply when you're building the items that qualify for the bonus, as opposed to trade, religious, scientific and cultural city states whose bonuses apply every single turn. I'll often capture a militaristic or industrial city state if the territory is really good, or as the Aztecs have a long term war in the beginning of the game and farm workers.
Sorry my response to your district-question had a predominantly citystate-answer, but there is a strong link to exploit between the two.
No, it makes sense... CS's can play a significant role in strategy.
I'm a bit surprised by the poster who doesn't like the hansa. Their adjacency bonuses are considerable. Next to 4 resources and a CZ they are the real deal. If you have good spacing, you can cram 3 CZ and 3 Hansa in a tight group. Pretty easy to get a +6 or better on them even without a workshop. Then you save for GP and get +4 from factories, +8 with the new wonder (I believe), and possibly +2 amenities.
Btw, Stockholm does not boost the Lavra. Maybe a bug.
No, it makes sense... CS's can play a significant role in strategy.
I'm a bit surprised by the poster who doesn't like the hansa. Their adjacency bonuses are considerable. Next to 4 resources and a CZ they are the real deal. If you have good spacing, you can cram 3 CZ and 3 Hansa in a tight group. Pretty easy to get a +6 or better on them even without a workshop. Then you save for GP and get +4 from factories, +8 with the new wonder (I believe), and possibly +2 amenities.
Btw, Stockholm does not boost the Lavra. Maybe a bug.
1.)I understand the blaze' attitude towards the hanza and have myself become a little disenfranchised with it, or rather Germany. I felt that Germany was one of the 3 best civs at the game's release and far-and-away the best civ for builder-type games, but lost sooooo much of its attraction when they nerfed unique districts (no longer not counting towards district limits) and AoE buildings not overlapping. Both of these things hit Germany the hardest. For me, the defining characteristic of Germany was that it could build 3 districts at size 1 and 5 districts at size 7. The way to play Germany was to have 20 cities crammed into a tiny spot of land, all 4 tiles apart, and have uncountable overlapping AoE bonuses, particularly when you could get Toronto's bonus. Having those cities so tight also helped create situations of multiple hanzas being boosted by multiple CH's. The CH+resource boost instead of mines always seemed like a lateral move for me, mines are rather plentiful and localized and the top priority build for the terrain.Now what do they have? A free card but of the worst type, Genghis's CIv5 CS bonus (which I don't utilize because of reasons in my above post), ONE extra district vs, pop cap instead of TWO, a half-priced industrial zone with an alternate but not necessarily better adjacency (which is nice, but nowhere near when it was when it didn't count as a district and its buildings overlapped), and a sub that's too-little/too-late. I'm not saying they are bad, but they dropped from one of the best if not THE best to middle of the pack.
2.) Do you mean that Lavras don't get an extra great prophet point or they don't get extra artist-class GPP? If it's the former, it's probably a glitch but rather moot since Russia will often found a religion before becoming suzerein of a city-state. If it's the latter, it was probably intended since the default great person point for a holy site and lavra is a great prophet point and the 3 artist-class great people points are more of a bonus.
@ShakaKhan I never played Germany up until last month because everyone else did and claimed how OP they were. I have now played them 4 times and like them but feel they are still quite strong. That extra military card I find quite handy, especially when you like playing governments that do not have any/many red cards slots.
The Hansa is OK, I woukd not write home about it but the extra district is very very handy. Districts is what the AI lacks so is a major differentiator, the more you have, the better your chances and with an industrial nation thats fine.
But yeah its not OP anymore, with they would sort out the others a bit.
No, it makes sense... CS's can play a significant role in strategy.
I'm a bit surprised by the poster who doesn't like the hansa. Their adjacency bonuses are considerable. Next to 4 resources and a CZ they are the real deal. If you have good spacing, you can cram 3 CZ and 3 Hansa in a tight group. Pretty easy to get a +6 or better on them even without a workshop. Then you save for GP and get +4 from factories, +8 with the new wonder (I believe), and possibly +2 amenities.
Btw, Stockholm does not boost the Lavra. Maybe a bug.
I didn't say the Hansa was bad, I just said it isn't worth spamming in every city. There's very little point to having one if that city is already under the influence of another Hansa.
By the time you're considering Hansas in non-obvious spots, district costs are too high to make a few hammers worth it. The workshop is good, but nowhere near a high district cost on its own.
I didn't say the Hansa was bad, I just said it isn't worth spamming in every city. There's very little point to having one if that city is already under the influence of another Hansa.
By the time you're considering Hansas in non-obvious spots, district costs are too high to make a few hammers worth it. The workshop is good, but nowhere near a high district cost on its own.
But you can easily get a +5 hansa in most cities - and there is the the double adjacency cost card and even the campus/IZ combo card.
+ GEs are one of the best GPs. More points don't hurt here.
I think that's the thing a lot of people are forgetting about the shared bonus from Industrial Zones (and their replacements): They only share the bonus from the Factory and Power Plant. But if you build an IZ in a city that's already under the blanket of another city's IZ, you can still benefit from the new district's Adjacency and Workshop bonuses.
I don't let the fact that a city already has shared bonuses prevent me from building 'duplicate' Industrial Zones. The extra +1 to trade routes plus workshop plus adjacency bonuses seems worth it to me in most cases. Building a Commercial district when you already have a Harbor is kind of the same thing, it's good but not the 'perfect' use of a district. I guess that's my main problem, so many mushy choices leaves me decision locked.
Seeing a cluster of mines or a river/harbor opportunity is to hard to pass up and therefore I end up Theater challenged and the AIs run away with culture.
Mostly concur here. It does seem as if there is a mentality of, "since industrial zone (and hanza) buildings don't overlap anymore, it's ill-advised to have a city build an industrial zone if it is covered by another city's AoE buildings." I disagree with this; if you have two cities, even adjacent cities, that each have a perfect ring of hills that will be mined around a single tile, the adjacency bonus and workshop are reason enough to build it there, especially (but not exclusively) if it's still early game. I will often forego it later in the game, particularly if the city is covered by another city's buildings, even if it has a perfect hill-ring around a tile, because no matter what your victory condition is, the IZ (or hanza) is not your victory condition district, also the build options at that point in the game are intended to wrap things up in the game.
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