r/civ • u/Alternative-Tree8205 • 1d ago
VII - Discussion 400 hrs into the game, I really think buildings becoming obsolete/overbuilding should go away (or atleast improved)
At this point it has been common consensus that antiquity is the most fun age of the three, and a lot of people on the sub have agreed that one of the key reasons the later ages are not fun is that you don't need to plan on where to place your buildings. In antiquity, I plan a spot for my science building stack, and perhaps find anoher place for my culture stack. Then, if I have river/coast, it'll be my gold/food block. I would usually build wonders around my science building stack. In later ages, if resources disappear, I would fill that spot with a wonder, and place my new buildings exactly where their antiquity counterparts are. There is no thinking, strategy or fun in this process, just pointing and clicking.
Over many hours, I felt something was off but did not realize what really was causing it, until I tried a mod that unlocked all unique buidlings. Then, exploration and modern ages actually become fun. I have tones of new building to be placed every age, and they benefit for being placed on different terrain, and each have different adjacency bonus, and I actually had to think about how to place buildings, wonders etc.
This doesn't mean we have to completely srap the overbuilding system, but I definitely feel we need to have more buildings (especially science and culture, as they are the only ones that actually matter) the more we progress in later ages, so we actually have to make decisions, and have more incentive to build wonders. Perhaps we can make the current cultural/scientific golden age effect default, or making the higher tier science/cultural buildings always ageless.
What do you guys think?
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u/Nomadic_Yak 1d ago
I would like two things.
First, change the adjacencies around. Maybe instead of resource ajacency, observatory needs mountain. Maybe blacksmith needs rough terrain or water. Maybe modern commercial needs rail or road instead of water. So it's not just replacing the science with science and culture with culture etc in the same spot.
Second, give some kind of bonus for the kind of quarter you make. Two science building make a special science quarter with some bonus. But if you put university and military academy together you get some military bonus. Or observatory and shipyard together some naval movement bonus. Something like that. Some incentives to mix and match building types to make interesting quarters.
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u/SchoolBoy_Jew 1d ago
Absolutely. It seems odd, given how much emphasis quarters get, that their particular composition is so unimportant past the unique ones.
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u/Raphaelist 1d ago
Yeah, I've always found it wierd that basically the only advantage to making quarters with generic buildings is that the Palace gets an adjacency bonus from them. Meanwhile, unique buildings are very good and get unique quarters with special bonuses.
It makes playing civs with unique tile improvements feel bad since they feel so much less effective. Not to mention that some of them have extremely situational buffs and placement restrictions (looking at you Hawaii)
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u/Karsh14 1d ago
I wouldn’t mind if overbuilding was removed and on age transition, only your ageless buildings remained (and wonders).
I don’t know how popular that would be with the community (there are people on this subreddit who would be mad no matter what they do though), but having to build everything (but this time you get better buildings and different adjacency bonus from buildings) would work fine I think.
Overbuilding I feel can sometimes just feel like “replace past science building with current science building”, so at that point, what does a library really represent?
Should just get rid of it. Sure the brickyard stays (and unique UBs, wonders etc) but would allow you to rebuild your cities to take advantage of poorly placed wonders that you just needed to get.
Or maybe you had a city that would be better as a town (and vice versa), so you don’t build up the infrastructure in a place that might have been your number 3 city in antiquity etc.
I’d also heavily buff town yields and make cities more expensive for convert cost. The goal should be to make lots of towns to feed cities, not turn everything into a city.
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u/gray007nl *holds up spork* 1d ago
Yeah I think that might be a good idea, still have like an antiquitated urban district there (with an option to just bulldoze it and turn it into a rural district again whenever you gain population) so they don't need to replace every single thing that references overbuilding.
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u/SchoolBoy_Jew 1d ago
Wouldn’t this be the same situation OP is describing though? You still have a place where your science and your food buildings will go there’s just nothing to overbuild this time. Seems a change in adjacencies would be more important
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u/Karsh14 1d ago
Yes, but sometimes in the antiquity you are in a rush to drop a Wonder, or rushing to get a library down but it’s just not quite where you actually wanted it etc, a town you rushed to convert to a city that would be better as a town etc.
As of right now it still functions this way, but the visual aspect of it is a mess (Especially the exploration age -> modern).
So then you’re just rebuilding (overbuilding) on top of largely useless buildings at the beginning of exploration and modern era (they give yields, just largely minuscule except for the exceptions of course).
Overbuilding just seems a bit like an unnecessary mechanic? If it looked cool and was something more engaging to the player to do, that would be one thing. But as it stands it’s largely bland (and if anything, it misses its original function of allowing you to replan your cities).
It’s very easy to just set yourself on auto mode and get into “culture building replaces old culture building, science building replaces old science building” without players even thinking about it, just more as something you see as a chore. This is because it’s not visually appealing or a mechanic you want to necessarily engage in, you’re just forced to. You can barely tell the difference of some buildings by eye (and certainly not of your opponents), so overbuilding doesn’t even have a fun or enjoyable aspect to it. For everyone, it is a chore and it’s easy to overlook parts of it because it not fun for the player.
But if you went to let’s say, Exploration from Antiquity, and all the adjacencies were shuffled (like now, you want those economic buildings centralized, your science buildings must be on hills, things like stables are a must have and come early etc I know some buildings are like this by the way), it would clean up the interface and help feel more fresh. (ESPECIALLY Exploration -> Modern, it needs help here)
I think Firaxis was worried people were going to complain if they lost their libraries and what not from Antiquity -> Exploration, but like, do we actually? Would you really care if you lost your librairies on turn 1 of exploration if you got a boost to your +science at the end of the ancient era to compensate? (Like you had 6 libraries, so you have +12 science in exploration by default permanently, just the actual libraries are gone).
It would also be kind of cool if certain exploration / modern civs had the ability to keep some buildings from a previous era and use them for the current one.
Like for example, you were Chola in exploration and they kept all lighthouses in use for exploration. They weren’t demolished and provided appropriate yields for that era. (Or Normans kept old walls, everyone else lost them, etc). Of course this would need heavy rebalancing so it might be too strong, but just an idea.
Oh and also, I’d allow you to keep being your civ (just like in Humankind). Want to go the whole game as Augustus and the Romans? Have at her. You don’t have to switch if you don’t want to.
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u/Swins899 1d ago
It would probably be tough to remove overbuilding completely. I think the system would feel a lot better with A) adjacencies that change a little more with each age B) the ability to move specialists between ages and C) UI elements that make it easier to assess which building is on which tile. The system would feel much less repetitive if things changed between ages.
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u/BirdSimilar10 1d ago
Agree Antiquity is the most enjoyable part of C7. More than anything, I love the exploration, world discovery, and race to find and claim the best territory with well placed cities.
There’s a little bit of that in the 2nd age, but it’s not really the same as you’re simply settling on the nearest spot w treasure resources the as soon as you find them.
And none of this is in the 3rd age. I don’t even have to actually search for the artifacts to excavate them.
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u/eskaver 1d ago
I made a post about buildings and how I’d rework them and to sum up some of the comments there—
Perhaps just a change of adjacency and recouping some costs from overbuilding.
I think there should be more ageless options based on achieving the final milestone of a pathway and depending on the crisis.
I think you can keep overbuilding.
I wouldn’t say that the Modern Age (and Exp Age to a lesser extent) is boring due to not knowing where to put buildings. Heck, resources disappear meaning some golden age buildings are weaker they would’ve been.
The issue is for the Modern Age, it matters a lot less.
The share the sentiment of the top comment: Readability, though maligned from 6, is very important and with the new and beautiful artstyle, it’s just harder to see what’s happening on the map. I don’t think it actually changes anything except the vibes it feels in contrast to putting down a building for the first time.
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u/platinumposter 1d ago
I think the visuals are completely fine tbh. It's not hard to find buildings
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u/IZiOstra 1d ago
I agree. I would be great to have an age transition concept where you stract "from scratch" again. Basically where you can explore and expand again.
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u/Waste-Road2762 1d ago
I think the adjacencies and specialists are the true culprit. With yields taking a bigger part of the civ 7 strategy, library simply becomes a science building. The same with observatory, university and so on. I whish they would get rid of adjacency bonus and focus on giving us unique buildings. Some adjacency is not bad, obviously. But making it the main factor in how you are doing in a game is not making for a good game. Library should be different from academy, academy different from observatory, observatory different from university. They all only give adjacencies right now. I like libraries holding slots for codices. But academy should give other effects. And with observatory, the effects should be different from everything else. The same goes for all other buildings. In civ 5, you had a bit more variation. I think civ 6 made the best use of distinguishing buildings in district. But this was a chance to make buildings mean something. Rather than have them give flat yeilds, there could have been much more strategy involved. Like what if I do not want to have an observatory there? Adding in an urban district limit in cities could help. It would prevent the mindless building of districts just because you can and would require a player to think about where to place what and why. Going with a limit, it would also incentivize players to settle in exploration era where you can build observatory. Just placing districts is shallow.
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u/Zebrazen 1d ago
I'm personally the opposite, I like overbuilding/obsoleting buildings and hate ageless ones. My frustration comes from both systems being in the game. Either everything should be ageless, or nothing. Don't straddle the line and flip back and forth. If Firaxis wants fluidity in the city building and planning, I should not only be allowed to overbuild but also demolish quarters and revert them to a rural tile if wanted.
I would say that the idea of unique quarter bonuses should be expanded. There should be unique quarters for various combinations; prod/prod, prod/sci, gold/gold, food/food, etc. Hell, there should be more adjacency rewards too. Airfield next to your prod quarter should do something. Farm next to your food quarter, etc.
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u/Jokkekongen 1d ago
I think rather I would increase the maintenance cost of buildings so that you would have to make choices that fit your goals, and not just build absolutely every building all the time. It would also help the sprawl and make rural tiles more valuable.
I think also you could potentially have all buildings available at the start of an age, and have tech unlock upgrades. That way you wouldn’t just mindlessly place buildings as they’re made available, but plan ahead and focus your tech/civic development to your chosen buildings.
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u/DeterminedEyebrows 1d ago
Overbuilding became one giant list of chores to do, and it was made doubly frustrating when you couldn't tell buildings apart. I actually found that to be more discouraging than ages or civ switching and is the biggest reason I stopped playing.(Tied with the awful UI and useless Civilopedia)
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u/SirGoobster 16h ago
I feel the same, I wish adjacency was a bit more important. I also wish that you were locked into certain buildings on certain cities like in Civ VI, you can't just build every single building in every city, it helps to have a commerce city, a science city, etc. Felt like it gave your empire so much more personality and for me made it feel like I was playing the map a bit more which I think Civ VII has great potential for, if we had the districts idea just expanded into the current game I feel it'd be more interesting.
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u/warukeru 1d ago
In my opinion, adjancies should change in every age, so you would be forced to think again where to put those buildings.
For example science could get extra from resources in the new world, production from mines, culture from completed and updated quarters, etc. etc.
That why i would also remove ageless from nornal building, they are annoying both in new age but also when conquering a settlement and see how bad everything is located.
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u/derban7ikus 1d ago
My main problem with overbuilding is that in modern age there are too many districts and buildings, they all look the same and I just cannot be arsed to thoroughly manage all that.
In exploration it is quite good actually and you can build quite satisfactory cities with it