Currently when we begin to build a new district, the District Placement Recommendation (let's call it the "DPR Wizard") tool pops up to tell us the best place(s) for the district.  The problem is, the DPR Wizard prioritizes maximum FIMSI output and not necessarily the absolute best Food, Industry, Money, Science or Influence (or Stability or Faith) from the district we're trying to place.  For example, if we have an Achaemenid Persian Satrap's Palace in our city, the DPR Wizard will often prioritize placing new Research Quarters next to the Satrap's Palace because the EQ gains more influence than the Research Quarter may gain from terrain or adjacency elsewhere.  Inca will find the DPR Wizard suggesting we build next to mountains because we'll gain +3 or +6 food and that may be a higher number the district's may make in its specialty elsewhere.  This means we often need to "test" our quarters in a ton of places to see where it's actually best to optimize for its specialty.

Cure_off provided a recent example in this thread, and I've mentioned some other cases myself, and vensa has also proposed colour-coded recommendations with different metrics.

I'd like to propose two or three definitions of "best location", and have the DPR Wizard colour code them so we can tell them apart:

• A Gold recommendation would maximize the specialty of the district regardless of lost food or industry or that "total FIMSI" may be higher elsewhere: This would be the absolute best tile(s) where a Farmers Quarter would generate the most food, a Makers Quarter the most industry, etc. for Market and Research Quarters.  Importantly, this would be where you'd get the most Stability for non-emblematic Commons Quarters (emblematic CQs don't generate stability the way basic CQs do, so shouldn't count as "stability specialized"). Emblematic Quarters would be treated as one or both of their "counts as" districts, and if they don't count as anything, then they can only really be maximized for FIMS.  This would typically be enough for the influence- and faith-based districts like Grand Teahouses, Opernhausen, Sultan Camii, Tera, etc. to be placed for maximum influence/faith/stability, but it's possible they'd also need an "Influence* Specialty" value set to prioritize that over other side-bonuses.
• Siler recommendations would be what the DPR wizard normally does: Maximize total FIMS gains vs losses, which means a bias towards existing districts with large but odd adjacency bonuses, and Farmers and Makers Quarters going where they do only moderate good with the least harm to the other "FI" value.
• We could even introduce Bronze recommendations when the best placement for the district is to build over an existing district, destroying it.  This is usually the best place to put Commons Quarters because you flip the tile from negative stability to positive stability.  But I'd first and foremost want to see a "Gold Recommendation" where I can build that Commons Quarter without destroying anything, nestling it up against 3-4 basic districts, and see a bronze recommendation where I could get +40 stability but really wreak havoc on my city's production.

I've mocked up a "Gold" recommendation vs. "Silver" recommendations below (thanks for the screenshot, Cure_off!), though a Gold recommendation would still be transparent until you hovered your mouse over it.

Thanks!

Cure_off wrote:

I find it good, except that you did seem to forget about influence. With the very low output you can get from infrastructure, it is an important source of influence from some EQ: Tera, T-house,  teatro, archaeological dig and even the Betteghe di Artisti, all provide variable amount of influence depending on placement.

I'd have chosen Red, as the warning colour, instead of Bronze.

PS: First link is broken.

I wouldn't say I "forgot" it, just that I didn't want the thread to be too long to read, and that influence-based EQs should work out as being their best FIMSI output already, given how good the yields on the Teahouse and Opernhaus, etc. are.   I went back and gave them an explicit shoutout, though, to make it clear that influence is also a district yield, yeah.  My primary goal was to say that a basic Commons Quarter is first and foremost a Stability Quarter and should be prioritized a such.

Red works, too.  I chose Bronze because it's thematically third place, and as a pleasant side effect, it is "metal red". :)

PS: Thanks!  Not sure what happened there; I've fixed the link to your bug.

A little bit of a self-bump here.  With the "Together We Rule" release out, and with the Era I Embassy providing massive amounts of Influence on district adjacencies (which, by the way, may be too high), the Embassy adjacency bonus has a tendency to defeat all other recommendations.  It's nice to know that I can place a Makers Quarter next to the embassy for +10 Influence and +2 Production, but I'd love a second opinion on the District Placement Recommendation that tells me where I can find place a Makers Quarter for ideal industry.

(Mistake with the screenshot: I'm hovering over it so it's the active placement point.  It is what the UI is recommending, though)