Why civ 6 falls flat... districts.

[Levgre]

In theory these could be a neat idea However:

A. Your city has so many tiles that you never have to choose between building districts or working the land.

B. Districts were designed to make cities more specialized, however due to requiring a large amount of production the map placement for cities is even more restrictive than it was before. You can't rush a lighthouse/harbor on your low production coastal city for extra food and trade. Now you have to build a harbor district over 30 turns before you can leverage the ocean resources.

Districts should feel like a special bonus that make your cities stronger despite the terrain weakness. Instead they are just an extra production burden which exasperates poor map RNG.

Districts could've been a great way to balance out production, commerce, and food. Each of the 3 basic resources could build different districts. Instead they do the opposite, making commerce even weaker than it was, and food and production even more important.

 

[StrideColossus]

Can't disagree more I'm afraid. Districts add another layer of complexity when it comes to choosing how to develop your cities.
A. I'm not sure I understand this point - what has the number of tiles got to do with the question of whether to build or work?
B. This is true, but what's the problem? Balancing the 'restrictions' is part of the puzzle (for me at least). Can rush that lighthouse? don't build that crappy city then

Whilst there are many areas of ciVI that require urgent attention IMHO (poor AI, balancing, bi-polar leaders, etc) I'm not seeing districts as one of them. In any case what are you suggesting, the developers remove one of the flagship features from the game?

 

[Levgre]

I had one suggestion already in my post. Produce different districts with different resources... some with production, some with food, some with gold.

Another possibility is to make the first district free upon city founding, or make the first districts cheaper.

As far as A, the point is that it seems part of the purpose of having districts and wonders take up tiles is for them to be restrictive in some way. But they aren't really, because you have so many tiles to use. It wouldn't make much difference throughout the game if all your wonders were or weren't on the map. It just looks 'neat' i guess.

I find the planning of districts/wonders to be quite basic/formulaic once you have it down. It would be nice if they were more important in shaping your cities layout.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

I think the ditricts Are impemented really poorly right now. They'd work better on really Big maps with lots of cities with more district restrictions so you'd build special cities just for special districts. But i guess that is civ6:utopia.

 

[Roxlimn]

Wait, COMMERCE is even weaker than it was? Commercial Hubs are one of the two most important Districts past Industrial Era, and they're tops even before that. WTF? You build a Harbor over 30 turns? What are you doing? Letting it build the Harbor by itself?

 

[Levgre]

Wait, COMMERCE is even weaker than it was? Commercial Hubs are one of the two most important Districts past Industrial Era, and they're tops even before that. WTF? You build a Harbor over 30 turns? What are you doing? Letting it build the Harbor by itself?

Commerce as in gold income used to buy buildings/units. Commercial hubs tbh are pretty different, they are important because of trade routes not because of their gold income. It's rare you want to pick trade routes that give gold as opposed to faith, culture, science, food, or production.

Also early eras tend to be more important than late ones if you are playing seriously. AI is a bigger threat, especially with their bonuses, you have to expand pretty aggressively before you are cut off, etc. Has been like that in almost all civ games. Tbh most games are decided by Industrial era.

 

[Roxlimn]

In that case, your points make even less sense.

Early on, Harbor District don't take that long to build, and if you've been paying attention to your trade network, you can easily boost a coastal city's production through internal networks anyhow. It shouldn't be taking 30 turns. And you don't have to build Harbors to get ocean resources? You can do that even without a Harbor.

In fact, Districts DO make cities stronger by making otherwise bad terrain tiles better. Campuses turn Mountain tiles into science adjacencies. All the districts turn marginal tiles into good ones. I honestly don't know what the heck you're talking about. Are you managing your production game well?

In any case, I don't think the intent of Districts was to make you choose between making Districts and working tiles. You're obviously supposed to do both, though some really close-packed strategies with Germany do require you to sac tile output pretty heavily.

 

[Gorbles]

Early Harbours on coastal cities are pretty much impossible to pass up, yeah. Sometimes you might want a Holy Site? But that's very map-specific (Campuses are ubiquitous; you can stick them basically anywhere). The main decider on what gets you a Harbour or not should basically be:

1. Do I want a religious victory / strong religious presence? If yes, do I have Stone? If yes, rush Stonehenge, otherwise Holy Site.

2. If no, am I coastal? If yes, build a Harbour. If no, build a Settler, grab a coastal spot and get a Harbour

 

[Levgre]

Mountains don't make a city bad because you have so many tiles to use. A bad city is generally one with low special resources, lacking river, hills, etc. Mountains never make a city bad in my experience. Of course I don't build a city with 10 mountains in the radius. And I'd say districts help a better, larger city (usually the capital) more than they help a lower quality, smaller city.

You need harbors to make ocean resources worthwhile, otherwise you may as well just build farms inland. They'll be much stronger and you'll have more special resources, fresh water, hills for mines, etc.

Harbors scale with your advancement so they can indeed be very costly to build. Basically you are pigeonholed into a evenly spaced expansion early on to make sure you always have one of your few trade routes to get a small city going. Want to build up your capital a bit then expand outwards? Screw you then.

Keep in mind, none of this makes the game hard, because AI is still completely crappy. I think how districts was implemented just narrows gameplay/strategy options rather than expands them. I don't enjoy using districts nearly as much as I could. I really like the idea of them.

They are just another production obstacle to get past, and the adjacency design for district bonuses is basically a puzzle you just solve once then deal with the pretty much the same each game. I'd prefer the districts made cities more unique rather than being another min-max thing.

Of course, moddability of civ games does make all this more a passing concern.

 

[Roxlimn]

Yeah. Sometimes the game spawns you in a spot with 10 Mountain tiles in the radius. Don't really have much of a choice, then.

You need harbors to make ships so you can find other Continents. If you're always playing Pangaea, then the Harbors won't make sense and all your games will be same-ish. Because you're always choosing Pangaea. Duh.

I don't get where you're pigeonholed, though. Exactly what do you mean when you say "evenly-spaced?" MadDjinn prefers to space his at 4-6 tiles apart (he's said so here and I watch his lets plays). Some people prefer 3. That works for them. You could build your capital a bit and then expand outwards. Depends on the map. How is it that you're solving the district game the same for each Civ? Unique districts are different for each, and the pricing is different, so they're weighted differently and they have differing adjacency bonuses. Maybe you're just playing the same way because that how you want to play the game and prefer not to play differently.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Another Nice addition would be to make districts work in a similar way as cottages in civ4 eg they get better over time. This would make build order of districts more significant and also give player Nice military vs. Infrastructure choices in early game.

 

[Roxlimn]

The Civ4 worship is palpable. Districts DO get better over time, and with the choices you make. Granted, a new District of the same kind and situation would work just as well, but I gather that that's what the speeding the Cottage development thingie was all about - to make new cottages not completely pointless.

 

[Gorbles]

Districts already get better over time. You build on them.

EDIT

Ninja'd.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

Districts already get better over time. You build on them.

EDIT

Ninja'd.

Agreed. I think this would further the idea though. A passive bonus not related to production. Too much of this game is about hammers.

 

[Roxlimn]

You mean like adjacency bonuses, and maybe government slots to improve them over time? Like that?

 

[GKShaman]

As I see it the District "Inflation" and the heck of along time it takes to build then are the ONLY limits to Building Cities. Housing and Amenities kick in to block after 4 pop.

 

[Roald Amundsen]

You mean like adjacency bonuses, and maybe government slots to improve them over time? Like that?

What is your problem? Maybe you should take a break from civ already....

 

[Roxlimn]

I dunno. I just said an idea that would be along the lines you mentioned. Aside from building things, the adjacency bonuses of Campuses do grow in older cities from adjacent districts and you can boost that in addition with government policies for it. That's more or less along the lines we want, yeah? What's the problem?

The fact that it's already in the game is just icing, isn't it?

 

[Onii-chan]

Try the District Cost Mod which makes district costs scale based on how many districts of the same type you've built rather than having the cost globally go up with your tech/civic advancement. That way the production cost stays low for districts you haven't built as many of as of yet, as well as generally lowers how much production they need towards the mid/lategame. It resolves quite a lot of problems imo

 

[Haggbart]

Another Nice addition would be to make districts work in a similar way as cottages in civ4 eg they get better over time. This would make build order of districts more significant and also give player Nice military vs. Infrastructure choices in early game.

You get social policy cards that improve on districts in addition to buildings. Also the districts get more expensive later in the game, so there is that trade-off element to consider. The early game military vs infrastructure balance might need some work, but I'm not sure buffing districts is the right medicine.