Zones feel completely unnecessary. What will change if there will be just building slots and no Zones? Nothing.
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However, removing one zone will dramatically reduce the customization itself.
Maybe a bit of a crazy thought but what if planets could have more than 1 Urban district with its own set of zones.
The next Urban distric twould probably be hidden behind technologies.
The additional district could be under more player control. They provide less housing but increase the ability to plan zones on the planet.
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We need to be able to have scaling production of all resources from the start and all on one colony (because of certain origins), so they had to do this with zones in some way. Building jobs were not scaling and more awkward to replace.
Technically they could further condense industrial and archives into one "early zone", or make early versions of both. But besides flavour names, would there really be any point?
Is the build queue auto-opening something set by hard code or is it a new function in the guitypes? Because if it's the latter that's pretty epic for modding! Lots of fun applications to making subsidiary windows that aren't initially hidden.
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Will the Urban zone receive any more attention? Its most basic use in previous patches was to provide three flexible building slots, but now every planet starts with that. Since Urban zones only add clerk jobs, I think their role is basically gone.
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My take:
- The change from 3 to 2 zones seems to be for the worse, I really don't like it. 6 default building slots+2 zones is essentially an urban zone pre-picked for the player, in pre 3.99.6 version terms, removing player choice. It also lowers the value of other zones compared to alloy/cg and research ones.
- What I noticed in 3.99.5 is that I simultaneously had too many and too little building slots. Specialized slots went unused most of the time, while government/urban ones were valuable. This is because there's few specialized buildings.
- Zones being research locked sucked. There's no tech restriction on amount of districts you can build in live, and neither there should've been on zones, which inherit this function.
- Jobs per zone balancing is harder than necessary because empires now start with 20 more pops: 28/32 live vs the live equivalent of 48/52, and because of the tech restrictions on zones.
As things are currently, I believe the best balance would've been a main zone with 6 building slots and 3 zones with 2 building slots each, and no tech restrictions on zone slots. Jobs proportion would retain live values: an urban district upgrade with 3 zone would add about 200 jobs.
Ideally however, I would set the main "Planetary Capital" District to be 4 buildings (one slot is the capital building) + 2 zones with 2 building slots each, emptied the basic resources districts, and allowed the player to pick and choose what goes in those district slots. Want more urban buildings and urban zones? Sacrifice self-sustainment, pay the trade logistics tax and add more urban districts at expense of local basic resource production.
- The change from 3 to 2 zones seems to be for the worse, I really don't like it. 6 default building slots+2 zones is essentially an urban zone pre-picked for the player, in pre 3.99.6 version terms, removing player choice. It also lowers the value of other zones compared to alloy/cg and research ones.
- What I noticed in 3.99.5 is that I simultaneously had too many and too little building slots. Specialized slots went unused most of the time, while government/urban ones were valuable. This is because there's few specialized buildings.
- Zones being research locked sucked. There's no tech restriction on amount of districts you can build in live, and neither there should've been on zones, which inherit this function.
- Jobs per zone balancing is harder than necessary because empires now start with 20 more pops: 28/32 live vs the live equivalent of 48/52, and because of the tech restrictions on zones.
As things are currently, I believe the best balance would've been a main zone with 6 building slots and 3 zones with 2 building slots each, and no tech restrictions on zone slots. Jobs proportion would retain live values: an urban district upgrade with 3 zone would add about 200 jobs.
Ideally however, I would set the main "Planetary Capital" District to be 4 buildings (one slot is the capital building) + 2 zones with 2 building slots each, emptied the basic resources districts, and allowed the player to pick and choose what goes in those district slots. Want more urban buildings and urban zones? Sacrifice self-sustainment, pay the trade logistics tax and add more urban districts at expense of local basic resource production.
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The intent of the two customization Zones are to let you turn your City District into the type of District that you want for that planet, whether it's an Industrial District (Industry + Industry, or Factory + Foundry), Research, Unity, Trade, or some weird combination of them.
They also let us restrict buildings to those slots if we want, or allow special Zones based on planetary features, civics, or other player choices.
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The AI still can't handle the zones. An AI nation can't grow stronger because it's completely overwhelmed by the zones, its economy, crime rate, and everything else.
Please finally remove these annoying zones.
They don't add any gameplay value whatsoever. They make things more complicated (especially for new players), the AI can't handle the entire system, it makes for more micromanagement, it's buggier, more annoying, more restrictive, and no fun. And even from a roleplaying perspective, it's completely illogical.
Please.
Please finally remove these annoying zones.
They don't add any gameplay value whatsoever. They make things more complicated (especially for new players), the AI can't handle the entire system, it makes for more micromanagement, it's buggier, more annoying, more restrictive, and no fun. And even from a roleplaying perspective, it's completely illogical.
Please.
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A few more change notes:
- The Colony, Refinery World, Rural, and Fringe Planet colony designations have been removed
- Hive/Machine Worlds now have Spawning/Assembly Zones instead of adding 100 pop assembly jobs via the planet class.
- Unemployed simple drones now have demotion time (same amount as unemployed workers)
- "Adjusted rural job numbers" = rural districts give double (200) jobs as urban zones
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It does feel a little strange that a fully developed 20+ city district planet has the same capacity for special buildings as a tiny freshly colonised world, unlocking more building slots as you develop a zone may allow for more organic development of a planet?
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I only got to play for about an hour before work. Some initial thoughts:
As others have pointed out, removing a Zone lowers the max potential of jobs quite a bit. On a size 15 World, that's about 1,500 jobs that just poofed out of existence. The extra buildings slots somewhat make up for this, but those will likely be taken up by other mandatory buildings the Planet needs to function which means you won't be using them to replace those now missing jobs. This is not an issue if the balance is changed so the two Zones give the output of what three Zones used to give. Otherwise whatever previous balance that was there is now gone.
The Subterranian Urban Zone for Subterranian Origin I think is a massive missed opportunity to showcase the true potential of Zones and even worse highlights some very obvious design issues. I honestly feel like it's uninspired to just put an Urban Zone in and call it a day. Clerks (Which I thought were being removed but are still given by Urban Zones) are not that great, so getting extra Clerk jobs from your Mining Zone is not very exciting. It's big benefit used to be that it gave Building Slots every 3 Mining Districts, with Uncapped Mining Districts meaning you could unlock most Building Slots through Mining Zones if you wanted to. Having an Urban Zone in the new version of the game is not the equivalent, due to the changes the game is making. Building Slots used to be the main way to get Jobs outside of Districts. However now the main way to get Jobs is through Zones, not Buildings. So having an Urban Zone in your Mining District is practically pointless. Whereas before if you wanted a Research Planet you could fill up on mostly Mining Districts, with just a small handful of City Districts to get whatever Building Slots you're missing, now if you want a Research Planet you're going to still put Research Zones down in the City District and build City Districts not Mining Districts like a normal non-Subterranian Empire. It completely misses the point of what made Subterranian work and that's something that scares me about this rework.
Overall the game is much more readable now which is great. Adding Building Slots to the City District does address the need for more Building Slots for the more mandatory Planet Buildings which is nice, though came with it's own can of worms of reducing total output from the planets due to the now missing jobs from the 3rd Zone being removed. A small step in the right direction that hopefully will continue without player input once the Open Beta ends this week.
As others have pointed out, removing a Zone lowers the max potential of jobs quite a bit. On a size 15 World, that's about 1,500 jobs that just poofed out of existence. The extra buildings slots somewhat make up for this, but those will likely be taken up by other mandatory buildings the Planet needs to function which means you won't be using them to replace those now missing jobs. This is not an issue if the balance is changed so the two Zones give the output of what three Zones used to give. Otherwise whatever previous balance that was there is now gone.
The Subterranian Urban Zone for Subterranian Origin I think is a massive missed opportunity to showcase the true potential of Zones and even worse highlights some very obvious design issues. I honestly feel like it's uninspired to just put an Urban Zone in and call it a day. Clerks (Which I thought were being removed but are still given by Urban Zones) are not that great, so getting extra Clerk jobs from your Mining Zone is not very exciting. It's big benefit used to be that it gave Building Slots every 3 Mining Districts, with Uncapped Mining Districts meaning you could unlock most Building Slots through Mining Zones if you wanted to. Having an Urban Zone in the new version of the game is not the equivalent, due to the changes the game is making. Building Slots used to be the main way to get Jobs outside of Districts. However now the main way to get Jobs is through Zones, not Buildings. So having an Urban Zone in your Mining District is practically pointless. Whereas before if you wanted a Research Planet you could fill up on mostly Mining Districts, with just a small handful of City Districts to get whatever Building Slots you're missing, now if you want a Research Planet you're going to still put Research Zones down in the City District and build City Districts not Mining Districts like a normal non-Subterranian Empire. It completely misses the point of what made Subterranian work and that's something that scares me about this rework.
Overall the game is much more readable now which is great. Adding Building Slots to the City District does address the need for more Building Slots for the more mandatory Planet Buildings which is nice, though came with it's own can of worms of reducing total output from the planets due to the now missing jobs from the 3rd Zone being removed. A small step in the right direction that hopefully will continue without player input once the Open Beta ends this week.
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I'm still on the fence about effectively merging the Industrial District and the City District (and every research/unity building). Not having separation there means mixed worlds have to micro their jobs a lot more, which becomes significant when youre also encouraged not to make fully specialised planets, without having decent trade income.
Having 3 basic-resource districts and 1 everything-else district, even with the subdistricts / zones, seems weird.
Idk.
Having 3 basic-resource districts and 1 everything-else district, even with the subdistricts / zones, seems weird.
Idk.
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I believe we should consider it more that the buildings are customising the city/settlement (district) rather than expanding their size or taking up new spaces of their own.
The size of a district is the size of a district. Fairly consistent no matter how big the planet it. What a bigger planet lets you do is build more of them.
I think from a storytelling perspective this bit is OK.
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I think it meant that Subterranean can pick any of the Urban Zones for thier Mining Districts (like the Industrial Zona), and not just the Urban Zone.
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The current design fails to fully reflect the impact of planetary size on district scale. Simply adjusting development levels is not intuitive enough. If players were given more construction agency, it would enhance their sense of achievement and engagement. Therefore, I believe building slots should present a close correlation with planetary size.
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Unfortunately that is not the case. When you click on the Zone Replacement icon your only two choices are Mining Zone and Subterranian Urban Zone.
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some of the buildings do seemingly nothing when you apply the scale of the number of districts to them, the removal of an entire city zone means you will rely on the buildings a little bit more, but the buildings don't scale at all.
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