Chevalier Rides Again: A City Lights exploration

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

[this space reserved for later]

So What's Going On Here?

For the next, well, while, I'm going to be playing a long-term PBEM with some friends using the City Lights mod for Civ VI. I think and plan best when I write down my thoughts, and there may be some interest in the mod for those now finding vanilla VI stale. So, I thought I'd write down my thoughts and plans for the better edification of all interested. 

City Lights mod overview

The biggest question, of course, is what exactly IS the City Lights mod? The design doc may be found here, but I'll give you the highlights. 

In essence, City Lights is an effort to enable "tall" gameplay for Civ VI, via a complicated system of specializing cities as either urban-focused or rural focused. Urban cities rely on dense neighborhoods and plentiful fresh water for housing, and must be supported via extensive use of internal trade routes to continue to grow and produce into the late game. In return, they can maintain very high populations and can achieve monstrous adjacencies and bonuses in gold, science, and culture production. Rural cities, in contrast, sprawl out onto the map via small farming and mining town districts, drawing great tile yields from the map and serving as the supporters of the urban cities, at the cost of weaker science and culture. 


Urban boroughs, the fuel of the high pop and adjacencies in the late game. They do harm tile yields, however, and have restrictive placements.

The urban boroughs gain +1 of the relevant yield when next to any district, and return +1 adjacency to the same district. Think of them like a government plaza in terms of adjacencies, except they also profit. The goal obviously is to use them to fill out dense, built up urban areas. They also gain +1 production for each adjacent district, with further specialists and district improvements available (yielding in their turn further enhancing projects and improvements). The stacking possibilities are obvious and there's a lot of potential to exploit here. 


On the downside, each borough is -3 amenities and -10 gold in upkeep, meaning gold generation and entertainment districts will be very important. In turn, that suggests a need for high populations to support the ED district slot. Each borough also is a -1 to basic tile yields in the city, so all 3 is -3 farms, -3 mines, etc, so the city will gain little from the map (but that means you can freely pave over just about everything, I think!). 


Rural towns, which enhance the on-map tile yields around them at the expense of district adjacencies. 

The key to the mod is the rural towns and their districts. Internal trade routes have been altered so that only the rural improvements provide food and production in yields - every other district generates science/culture/gold/faith. With urban cities unable to generate their own food, you NEED to run internal routes to rural cities to feed your urban science monster. Every rural district can be built multiple times per city (unless it has a borough district), and enhances the nearby improvements: farms and plantations for farming towns, fishing boats and camps for fishing villages, and mines/lumberyards for mining colonies. They are a vital source of gold, food, production, and amenities. They don't like being adjacent to other districts, giving -1 adjacency, and only benefiting from holy sites and encampments. 


A mature rural city - note the repeated districts.

As a bonus, the districts ALSO grant farmers/fishers/miners, who can build 2 of their respective improvements. Thus, you can substitute these guys instead of builders, for the most part. Part of my planning will be detailed attention to the amount of builder charges needed. 

So, the basic loop of the game: Build 'rural' cities first and spam the cheap rural districts, focusing on generating gold, food, and amenities. Once established, you can then begin to create the specialized urban cities, which will need the rural resources as support while supercharging science and culture (and strong production from districts). Empire-wide planning is accordingly rewarded - each city must be considered as to how it fits into the whole, rather than as an isolated unit. 


Rules of the Game

So the game is with my friends, thus 'carebear' rules are followed. This isn't a cutthroat win-at-all-costs Realms Beyond game, instead meant to be a sandbox exploration of the mod. 

Accordingly, I can't win by rapidly building out a military and murdering my neighbors (sorry, PBEM 19 thrawn). Instead, I will need to outplan them and build a vastly better internal empire that just outproduces and outresearches them (advice welcomed, PBEM 21 thrawn). Limited wars are possible for specific islands or other strategic points, but beyond that, domination is mostly out. Instead we're going to have to maintain enough army for our own security (I told them I was fair game) while focusing on a peaceful win.  

The map is Island Plates with low sea levels, no balancing has been done - we might get lucky or we might get screwed, it's up to RNG! Turns will hopefully come a few times a week - I'm hoping for 3-4, but I don't think I can expect 5-7 turns a week. 

General Intentions

After a lot of thought, I think I'm going to take the Cree for this game. Obviously, lots of interesting and strong choices with the enhanced setup - Japan's urban density makes it to my mind obviously the strongest choice available in the mod, and Persia's trade routes with gold and culture sync well with the mod, as well. Other civs have been tinkered with to make them better fits, but it wound up not mattering since most people took vanilla civs anyway. 

The Cree have a bonus to internal trade routes that I think will really help me with food and growth early in the game. I can identify sites with lots of bonus resources, where the mekwekap will sync well with the rural districts, and let me run urban cities on almost a one to one basis (since 2 urban cities will run 2 routes each to 2 rural cities, getting more food and more gold than normal). I think I can thus run a somewhat higher proportion of urban cities later in the game than others, and use smart city planning to outtech and outproduce the others to space. 

Religion is on the table, and Work Ethic is obviously a potentially very strong choice if I can swing it. No other civ can strenuously contest religion if I prioritize it, which I am considering. 

Culture might be a weakness in this setup, and I will need to keep an eye on cultural victories (I've never defended against one against the AI, don't know how hard it is). Backup plan here is if a civ is dramatically outpacing me in culture, then sending a task force to burn a city is possible. 

Overall setup is:

Civ 1: Germany
Civ 2: Periclean Greece
Civ 3: The Netherlands
Civ 4: Rome
Civ 5: Victorian England
Civ 6: Cree (me)

Comments on the other civ choices and my opponents later. Should get the first turn late tonight or tomorrow. 

[ljubljana]

YES more CMF content!! following with interest

i think it's safe to say i speak for all of RB's Civ6-ers when i make the following statement: we missed you!

[El Grillo]

Welcome back, indeed! Hope all is well, and I'll be lurking with interest.

[Amicalola]

I don't know how to play Civ 6 but I will also be vaguely lurking along.

[ljubljana]

A few quick questions about the mod:

- Do the urban boroughs count as specialty districts? I'm trying to imagine what district construction order in a midgame urban city would look like if so (as I suspect from the screenie of size-8 Aachen with just 3 vanilla districts and a borough) - maybe something like CH, campus, classical borough, renaissance borough? IZs seem very difficult to fit in under this mod as your river valleys will need to be allocated to borough stacking instead of aqueduct stacking. Holy Sites seem nerfed relative to vanilla as well (WE stacking excluded) and hard to squeeze in under the pop cap except maaaybe for (Germany and) the Cree, who definitely seem like an inspired choice for this food-constrained setup.

- Where are all the trade routes going to come from? CHs and harbors seem pretty awkward in this mod as their gold generation is appallingly bad compared to the rural district yield bonuses and they don't benefit much from boroughs compared to, say, a campus, BUT domestic TRs are more important than ever to support urban cities, plus you're the Cree for whom skipping the CH is heretical even in vanilla. Is there some other source of TRs in the mod that I'm missing or that's not mentioned in the design doc?

- How are urban cities going to build stuff, anyways? It seems like maybe the food problems from boroughs might be a bit less bad than advertised, IF plantations/fishing boats/camps lose gold rather than food from the borough penalties as their "primary yield", or if you can supplement at some cities by working stuff like marsh sugar/rice WITHOUT a plantation/farm. But the hammer situation will be ROUGH with -2 or -3 on mines and lumbermills since the majority of hammers in most vanilla game states come from those two tile improvements. Perhaps the general solution to both problems for urban cities is to grow to size 7-10 ASAP on the back of domestic TR food while building the non-borough districts, and only then drop the boroughs next to the campuses and accept that you will never be able to build anything substantial there for the rest of the game? Seems like a tough ask from a foodhammer snowballing perspective to try to pull that off any sooner than like turn 120 though...

- When do the rural districts unlock on the tech/civics tree? Getting a few of these up in the capital and/or second city ASAP seem like the One Right Choice for the Cree early game to make a monster domestic TR city, but it's unclear from the doc just HOW dedicated a beeline is possible here... In a similar vein, how many Cree super-TR cities do we want to set up here, anyways? In vanilla the answer is just one since every city can run a route there, but here it seems to be roughly equal to the ratio (# total cities)/(# urban cities) since I assume we will want almost all the TRs allocated to supplying food to urban research powerhouses, each of which may need more than one TR to get up to speed quickly and then stay food-neutral once the boroughs go up.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

A few quick questions about the mod:

- Do the urban boroughs count as specialty districts? I'm trying to imagine what district construction order in a midgame urban city would look like if so (as I suspect from the screenie of size-8 Aachen with just 3 vanilla districts and a borough) - maybe something like CH, campus, classical borough, renaissance borough? IZs seem very difficult to fit in under this mod as your river valleys will need to be allocated to borough stacking instead of aqueduct stacking. Holy Sites seem nerfed relative to vanilla as well (WE stacking excluded) and hard to squeeze in under the pop cap except maaaybe for (Germany and) the Cree, who definitely seem like an inspired choice for this food-constrained setup.

The towns and boroughs count as green districts, like Aqueducts, Neighborhoods, or Dams/Canals. So you can build them at any city regardless of population - I suspect the player behind Aachen in the shot just hasn't really maximized Germany to the fullest. Reading around and playing with the mod, though, it seems highly unlikely that I'll ever manage all 3 urban boroughs at once, barring an exceptional setup - due to programming constraints they HAVE to be placed the same as aqueducts. It's notable that one player in our game took Rome - I don't think he considered that Rome's unique district will be directly competing with the boroughs! Baths are pretty good, but do they compare with boroughs and the possibilities of science or culture stacking? That I'm not sure of. 

- Where are all the trade routes going to come from? CHs and harbors seem pretty awkward in this mod as their gold generation is appallingly bad compared to the rural district yield bonuses and they don't benefit much from boroughs compared to, say, a campus, BUT domestic TRs are more important than ever to support urban cities, plus you're the Cree for whom skipping the CH is heretical even in vanilla. Is there some other source of TRs in the mod that I'm missing or that's not mentioned in the design doc?

The only source of trade routes is still CHs and harbors, sadly. That said, though, I think I can use this. Cree get one bonus route naturally at pottery - which obviously I'll beeline - and this is an island plates map with low sea levels, so lots of large islands/smallish continents means I can prioritize harbors over commercial hubs. Y'all know that I will cheerfully ignore CHs over harbors in...well, damned near every game I've played, and I think harbors will be just fine in this mod. They don't get the super adjacencies, BUT they don't compete with the new districts for placements, apart from the niche fishing village (boosts nets and camps, gives 1f/1h on trade routes to the city). Furthermore, any rural city won't be building campuses or theater squares, so I can definitely devote one slot to a harbor and one to a holy site for gains in food, production, and gold. 

- How are urban cities going to build stuff, anyways? It seems like maybe the food problems from boroughs might be a bit less bad than advertised, IF plantations/fishing boats/camps lose gold rather than food from the borough penalties as their "primary yield", or if you can supplement at some cities by working stuff like marsh sugar/rice WITHOUT a plantation/farm. But the hammer situation will be ROUGH with -2 or -3 on mines and lumbermills since the majority of hammers in most vanilla game states come from those two tile improvements. Perhaps the general solution to both problems for urban cities is to grow to size 7-10 ASAP on the back of domestic TR food while building the non-borough districts, and only then drop the boroughs next to the campuses and accept that you will never be able to build anything substantial there for the rest of the game? Seems like a tough ask from a foodhammer snowballing perspective to try to pull that off any sooner than like turn 120 though...

Basically, urban boroughs will only be viable once you have a robust domestic trade network in place. The first classical borough comes online only with Construction, I believe, so there's no rush to it. Further, the more districts adjacent to a borough, the more production you get - plus, they have specialist slots that give +2/4/6 production per citizen. Since your on-map yield will be poor, sometimes those two cogs for a loose citizen will be valuable. My rough expectation is that I won't be building a borough until the middle game, when I have a city with a mature district cluster available, at which point I can place it and strip the city of all useful tiles, giving them to its neighbors. At that point the city will be entirely dependent upon internal production via the borough and via trade routes - so a WE Holy Site/IZ combo might be worth getting down FIRST, too, which in a triangle will be worth something like 3 extra hammers just via proximity (boosted via policy cards, of course). The holy site should be worth 4/8 hammers and faith, the IZ can probably hit 3/6 without too much trouble, and the borough will be at 2 for a total of 9 production from the 3 districts apart from any buildings or specialists or adjacency cards. That seems do-able, but it demands 2 district slots and I KNOW I'll need at least a campus and a harbor/CH, so probably we won't see this before a size 7/10 city. 

When do the rural districts unlock on the tech/civics tree? Getting a few of these up in the capital and/or second city ASAP seem like the One Right Choice for the Cree early game to make a monster domestic TR city, but it's unclear from the doc just HOW dedicated a beeline is possible here... In a similar vein, how many Cree super-TR cities do we want to set up here, anyways? In vanilla the answer is just one since every city can run a route there, but here it seems to be roughly equal to the ratio (# total cities)/(# urban cities) since I assume we will want almost all the TRs allocated to supplying food to urban research powerhouses, each of which may need more than one TR to get up to speed quickly and then stay food-neutral once the boroughs go up.

I don't remember exactly how early they unlock, but it's early - usually before turn 60 we should have access, and they can be worthwhile builds in lieu of (ugh) builders. For certain we'll probably want one as early as we can to run our early trades to for quick growth - up that point we'll be playing a vanilla game, just with a supercharged Cree rural city helping our entire economy snowball. Once that snowball lets me get a few cities to that size 7/10 area, then the boroughs start to become attractive. Obviously this will all be dependent upon the terrain - we'll need clusters of resources to properly utilize the rural towns, and sadly that WILL compete with mekwekaps for placement, and at the urban cities we'll need space to place lots of district clusters with relatively decent adjacencies, so the precise planning will have to wait. 

The Players

Most of the players are new to Gathering Storm, having only just been coaxed out of vanilla civ 6. Disappointingly, all save 1 still selected a vanilla civ to play - one was bold enough to take the Dutch because polders seemed fun (they ARE fun!). A bit surprising, but people will play what they're comfortable with - I think most Civ 6 players aren't like us, determined to explore the outer limits of the game. 

Barbarossa

Extra military slot is useful but takes some expertise to get full use out of. The city-state attack bonus might not matter depending on how aggressive the player is. The real meat will be hansas and the extra district slot, but I think both are slightly nerfed in this mod. It's hard to properly place districts at rural cities since they are repulsed by the town districts, hurting your adjacencies, so the extra district slot might be a bit superfluous in rural towns. By contrast, it'll be handy in the urban cities, but will need really good planning on Germany's part to get full use. Call it a wash. The Hansa will be great in urban cities, easy to get good adjacencies and nice dense urban clusters around the boroughs, but that's a midgame problem. Again, Germany will not be able to really spam hansas in every rural city. On the whole, I think Germany is a perfectly solid choice. 

Pericles

Extra wildcard slot is always useful. Or is it diplomatic? Can't remember. Anyway, we know Greece - the hoplite is no threat at all, Pericles' extra envoys are countered by just eating city-states, although it will make him annoying to compete against for, say, Auckland or Nan Madol if they spawn. The Acropolis remains niche, though it does sync well with the boroughs. Out in rural cities you shouldn't see too many, since the adjacencies will be hurt and you'll be giving up valuable mines for your mining towns. Still overall a second-tier civ, I think.

Wilhemina

Decent choice. Polders are boosted by farming towns, I think, and sync well since it gives farming towns more reach and flexibility onto the coast. Wilhemina's trade routes are slightly nerfed, though - international trade with its useful culture is de-emphasized in this mod, and the loyalty bonus from internal trade doesn't matter much. Sevens are a frightfully useful tool in their era and I would hate to go up against this player - a RB veteran - in a naval war. Definitely one to watch. 

Trajan

Trajan is on the whole a strong civ with no especial bonus in this mod, I think. Legions are legions, free monuments are monuments, and roads are roads. The bath, as noted above, is slightly anti-synergistic with urban districts, so he'll struggle to really get all the mileage out of Rome that he could. 

Victoria
RNDs are a good strong district in this mod. It will grant bonus trade routes on foreign continents so look to see the English player colonizing far and wide. The free naval unit obviously is also strong, although buggy as Archduke discovered to his ultimate misfortune. Late-game Sea Dogs, Red Coats, and the boosted coal would make England a pretty fearsome naval power, and he has no especial bias for or against the new rural/urban mechanics. If this weren't a carebear game Victoria would be high on my "to be murdered before the Renaissance" list, but I should be able to manage the threat. 

Cree

The Cree get full visibility on alliances (nice with the carebear setup), boosted trade routes dependent upon my improvements, extra tiles upon trade, a bonus trade route, the mekwekap, and the boosted scout. The scout is a nice-to-have but won't matter much ultimately - I am clearly banking on the trade routes to make this civilization go. Mekwekaps should be good in the early game to get my cities going, gradually being phased out for the more useful towns and boroughs, and the enhanced Cree trade is designed to feed my cities ala TBS in PBEM17 - grow them into early-game monsters capable of outresearching and outbuilding the rest of the map. Other than the domestic trade synergy, no especial bonuses in this mode. 

I was seriously tempted by Japan and Korea (Korea has weird mechanics and can basically ignore urban cities altogether), but decided not to go all-out, Japan would be unfairly good, I think.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Off to a rocky start - the first player started the game yesterday morning, but didn't take his turn until the evening. Player 2 took his turn the following morning, and it's sat with player 3 now for twelve hours. I know all these people and they're reliable, but they do drag their heels. 

Anyway, I played a test game with the mod. 

Some observations:

1)Gold is no factor without a heavy military to support. The rural towns generate huge amounts of gold. Accordingly...

2)Monumentality really is the only possible goal. I really, really need a Classical or Medieval golden age to spend all my accumulated faith and gold on settlers. Work Ethic was easy to get running and get - well, nothing like absurd Russian DOTA lavras but pretty solid holy sites fueling settler expansion and production at home. Meanwhile the rural towns and harbors contributed plenty of gold for more expansion.

3)I neglected my Plaza until late, but that's a mistake. The Classical Borough is not very strong and its spot should be taken by the plaza in a traditional set up. 

4)By contrast, the Renaissance Borough is quite strong, with one improvement giving you a thrice-repeatable project granting a trade route each time! THAT could get truly frightening by the end. 

At that point I halted. Basically, I think playing the map is best, and when I get a good Cree super city, then STACK the farms, mining towns, and fisheries as high as I can. That can serve as a destination for every other city. No real need for a second super city until I had multiple urban cities down - growth was easy. Will need to remember to include campuses and hte plaza in early build order.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Spoke too soon. 

Chevalier Rides Again
Turn 1




The turn greets me with kind of an ugly start. My friends hate the early game and run a mod that spawns you with a bonus scout and builder. Interestingly, my Cree also spawn with a scout, not an oki. Oh, well, it's an island map, the scout is of limited use anyway. 

I spawn on the forest two tiles west of my settler's present position - on salt water, with not a single even 3-yield tile in the first ring! Ouch! It's a horrible start, but scouting to the east reveals the tiny river with a bit of wheat and rice. It's not much, but there is fresh water, farmable resources, mountains for early adjacencies, and fish offshore. 

So here is my initial plan: 

I will found on the settler's present spot, rather than delay a turn for further exploration. That will give me the wheat and rice first ring to at least quickly grow in pop, although production will be limited for a bit. Initial dotmaps make me think I can plot a decent rural city here. There's only one viable aqueduct spot for a potential borough, so that's out, but the farming town can boost both wheats, a fishing village can catch 3 fish, and a mining camp will boost two lumbermills and the desert hill mine. Ugh, what a rotten neighborhood! 

Hopefully we can make it work. To the east I have space for a decentish holy site and campus, worth probably 3 faith and science each. I want to go early HS to try and lock down Work Ethic if at all possible. Early build, I'm not sure. I have scouting covered, and a builder is already out. An early slinger to chase archery, or a second warrior to keep barbs on the island down (or an oki! That would do good barb suppression) are my possible choices, it seems. 

Off we go!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Morning thoughts: with the boroughs, getting late-game cities up and running quickly might be an issue.

I will also hopefully have a surplus of gold and faith (no intention of Grand Master's Chapel to sink faith into an army of conquest). Moksha and Reyna might be viable choices for late-game governors if I can swing the titles. It's 4 titles apiece, so 8 total if I want to pray for districts/buy them outright, but we might have the titles to spare.

Loose plan is to take Pingala 1 (+15% science and culture in his city), Pingala 2 (+1 culture per pop) as usual to speed up Political Philosophy and the early governments. Then I think Magnus 1 (+50% chops) to Magnus 2 (+2 food to trade routes ending in a city) to stick him in, say, my capital. Naturally I have NO camp or pasture resources to profit from Poundmaker's trade bonus, but even without those Magnus+all 3 communities would result in 5f/3h trade routes ending in my capital, good for getting expansions up quickly.

Victor can be skipped. Amani is a nice-to-have but not essential (might use her to skip around for era points if I really need them, though).

Liang actually might be skippable. Builders are much less important due to the abundance of Farmers/Miners/Fishers coming out of the rural towns. Will need to re-examine civics tree and consider how many titles I'll get and how they might best be spent.

That's all for now. Hopefully 2-3 more turns this week.

[williams482]

Ooh, this is exciting! Looking forward to following along. I've never looked into City Lights before, but the mechanics described sound interesting for sure.

From a spectator perspective, the crappy start is definitely a good thing. Nothing against your anonymous friends, but just the fact that you plan to write things down probably makes you a heavy favorite, and drawing a 3/2 deer with a big river and a bunch of hills would have made things much less interesting.

Have you thought about wonders that might be high priorities to pursue here? Colosseum seems as nice as ever if you can stick it in the middle of a cluster of urban centers, and Colossus is suddenly much stronger with the increased importance of trade routes. City specialization might also make the terrain-specific ones stronger than normal (if you find the right terrain for them) because boosted tiles won't compete with districts the same way they can in the base game. On the whole I'd guess that most wonders are even worse investments than they are normally (especially Pyramids, unless it boosts the specialized mini-builders?), but worth a thought.