I've been waiting a long time for this news to come ! finally my favorite 4x team is doing a historical accurate 4x game. Great news !!! I'm very exited about this ^^

So I want to suggest here something I already suggest 5 years ago : district specialization

I don't know if you're going to keep the FIDSI system (without dust obviously) , but i guess the traditional science/ money/ industry/ food/ influence is something we can count on. 

It would be very interesting to be able to build different kind of of districts, with dynamic interaction between them, wich leeds to differents kind of upgrades (tiers). For example :

• Industrial district (bonus to industry on tile)

• College district (bonus to science on tile)

• Market district (bonus to money on tile)

• Entertainment district (bonus to influence on tile)

• Farm district (bonus to food)

We could imagine that a farm distict close to an industrial one could leed to a malus on farming tile, but a bonus on the industry district. Whereas adding another indstrial district adjacent to the farm leeds to no bonus at all or even decrease the food production of the said tile. 

Here is another interesting mechanic : one industrial district adacent to three other ones could be leveled up giving bonuses to the 3 other. Add also a market and a farm it allow you to upgrade into something else, like a small city center for example. Add two college districts instead, and you can upgrade it into an advanced research/industry center. Etc. etc.. 

That type of mechanics could be imho something amazing !

SuperMarloWorld wrote:

I suggest you to look closely at the screenshots on steam because you will be highly satisfied about what you can deduct here ^^

YOu are right, it seems as some districts are more industrial focused for example. Since they are close together I guess they will give a benefit or contribute to a disctrict level system like in EL.

I'd actually be a bit worried about this just resulting in some formulaic spamming, since the alternative is making it an optimization problem that you'll have to manage over long periods of time for each city. I suppose it's workable with sufficiently good UI (and the ability to pre-plan many districts somehow, maybe?)

Piggybacking off of this topic, I suggest districts get some UI love to make placing them easier. Beautiful as the models in EL are, actually trying to scan the setup and figure out what your plan was 10 turns ago gets tedious because exploitations, districts, and tier 2 districts all look like an undifferentiated mess until you spend a good 30 seconds squinting and figuring out the underlying structure. An optional UI mask that appears when you're placing districts, showing the layout in an abstract and color-coded way, would be great. ie:

-District: solid blue hex

-Exploitation: transparent, lighter blue hex

-T2 District: solid dark blue hex

-District that will be upgraded to T2 as a result of the expansion you're considering: solid purple hex

-Tile that will be exploited as a result of the expansion you're considering: transparent yellow hex

Heights of the tile masks can be leveraged as well. All this modified for however districts work on HK. Immersion-breaking? Sure, so make it optional, but a good clear UI is important when buildind in this sort of long-term optimization problem.

Tied to that, the ability to queue up a few districts would be great, or even place flags that don't do anything except remind you of your long-term plan each time you return to build a new district.

Valid points, SpacesuitSpiff. From the screenshots I get the impression that the differences in districts are more clear now.  They are not as cluttered as in EL.

I still hope the anomalies are in the game but they could tone the visuals a little back for more readability of the map. Screenshots looking good and clear.

MezzoMax wrote:

Valid points, SpacesuitSpiff. From the screenshots I get the impression that the differences in districts are more clear now.  They are not as cluttered as in EL.

I still hope the anomalies are in the game but they could tone the visuals a little back for more readability of the map. Screenshots looking good and clear.

Curious what screenshots give you this impression, they still look like a bit of a clusterfuck from a hex-management perspective. Though I can't tell if the roads correspond to the edges of the hexes or not (seems not, unless it's explicitly not a hex grid). I see a dashed line in one screenshot that presumably marks the edge of the city (Kerma), and without it I probably couldn't tell you where that line should be.

There's an anomaly mountain in one of the screenshots, appears to be impassable though that may just be mountains and not whatever Tree Of Life wonder types get added.

SpacesuitSpiff wrote:

Curious what screenshots give you this impression, they still look like a bit of a clusterfuck from a hex-management perspective. Though I can't tell if the roads correspond to the edges of the hexes or not (seems not, unless it's explicitly not a hex grid). I see a dashed line in one screenshot that presumably marks the edge of the city (Kerma), and without it I probably couldn't tell you where that line should be.

There's an anomaly mountain in one of the screenshots, appears to be impassable though that may just be mountains and not whatever Tree Of Life wonder types get added.

Ah we got a bit of a misunderstanding. I was reffering to the tiles as such. In EL some visual aspects merged into one another. Especially districts and anomalies like the tree of life. You had the district, then the terrain it was built on (for example forest) and perhaps some anomaly. Sometimes it just felt a bit overburden with visuals.

Here I can clearly see the different district types and can tell them apart more easily.

I get what you mean from telling apart the borders of the tiles. In the twitch life stream they said, that the system was updated and the visuals of the individual tyles blend better together to get a more natural feel. I think they succeded...

Looking at the trailer and seeing this in motion and for trailer purpose chainging tile visuals (from one era to the next to show of the progression) I think the borders from one tile to the next can easily be told apart. Also screenshot 5 on the steam page with Memphis is a better example of an early city where we can see different districts/city tiles. In this screenshot I was able to tell apart the tiles. I just had to remember that lakes are ON a tile in El and not BETWEEN two tiles like in CIV. This got me confused at first.

MezzoMax wrote:

Ah we got a bit of a misunderstanding. I was reffering to the tiles as such. In EL some visual aspects merged into one another. Especially districts and anomalies like the tree of life. You had the district, then the terrain it was built on (for example forest) and perhaps some anomaly. Sometimes it just felt a bit overburden with visuals.

Here I can clearly see the different district types and can tell them apart more easily.

I get what you mean from telling apart the borders of the tiles. In the twitch life stream they said, that the system was updated and the visuals of the individual tyles blend better together to get a more natural feel. I think they succeded...

Looking at the trailer and seeing this in motion and for trailer purpose chainging tile visuals (from one era to the next to show of the progression) I think the borders from one tile to the next can easily be told apart. Also screenshot 5 on the steam page with Memphis is a better example of an early city where we can see different districts/city tiles. In this screenshot I was able to tell apart the tiles. I just had to remember that lakes are ON a tile in El and not BETWEEN two tiles like in CIV. This got me confused at first.

Looking at it more closely, the city walls seem adequate (I'd want more in a planning UI, but the walls shown would stop it from being unplayable), but it seems like the walls have to be constructed because they aren't always there. Lower emphasis on tiles certainly does make it look beautiful, but of course the game doesn't need to be beautiful while you're doing intense planning so I hope we get a good UI mask for that.