Zones; what is good, what needs to be fixed before 4.0

[user192823]

What would be nice is if the 4 district slots were not predefined, besides the main capital one. If a player was allowed to replace basic resource districts with what he wants, including secondary urban districts (without the special government zone) it would make this new planetary management much more modular. A player could have the capital urban district with alloy/research zones and developed to 15, and a secondary amenity/trade urban district developed to 2-3, as needed. Maybe even a third urban district with unity/research or some special zone. This would adress OP's complaint about the inability to mix in smaller outputs. Ofcourse, you would still lose access to a basic resource, but it would be better that what it currently is and bring more decision-making.

Taking it further, the strategic resource buildings could, instead of giving a flat strategic resource bonus to their respective worker jobs, transmute part of their basic resource production to that rare resource. This would make it logical for basic resource planets to have two mining/energy/food districts, developing one or another depending on their needs.

 

[NorseGod]

What would be nice is if the 4 district slots were not predefined, besides the main capital one. If a player was allowed to replace basic resource districts with what he wants, including secondary urban districts (without the special government zone) it would make this new planetary management much more modular. A player could have the capital urban district with alloy/research zones and developed to 15, and a secondary amenity/trade urban district developed to 2-3, as needed. Maybe even a third urban district with unity/research or some special zone. This would adress OP's complaint about the inability to mix in smaller outputs. Ofcourse, you would still lose access to a basic resource, but it would be better that what it currently is and bring more decision-making.

Taking it further, the strategic resource buildings could, instead of giving a flat strategic resource bonus to their respective worker jobs, transmute part of their basic resource production to that rare resource. This would make it logical for basic resource planets to have two mining/energy/food districts, developing one or another depending on their needs.

For that to work, you'd need to divorce the concept of Zones being tied to City Districts, and move to each Zone creating their own Districts. This is something I'd prefer to see myself.

Including the base resource Zones in that change is an interesting idea. I'd considered it, but then it kinda takes some of the Speciality away from various planets and habitats, if every Colony can almost completely customize what Districts it makes.

 

[user192823]

For that to work, you'd need to divorce the concept of Zones being tied to City Districts, and move to each Zone creating their own Districts. This is something I'd prefer to see myself.

Including the base resource Zones in that change is an interesting idea. I'd considered it, but then it kinda takes some of the Speciality away from various planets and habitats, if every Colony can almost completely customize what Districts it makes.

View attachment 1275161

I see zones as district specializations. Your approach works but is much less modular, let me give an example from your screenshot. Suppose I want that planet to produce alloys instead of being an industrial zone that mixes cg and alloys, and I want trade also to supplement planetary deficit., or maybe amenities, more urban building slots, or maybe I have a crime problem and would rather sacrifice some unity instead of demolishing those clone vats or the auto-curating vault. In your version, I would have no way to add trade without entirely sacrificing the unity zone, nor a way to add the enforcer building without sacrificing vats or vault. And if I did so, I'd have to demolish those zones and rebuild, step by step. Even if the development level (that x/21 beside each zone) were inheritable and I could freely replace zones and conserve that development, I would be able to replace the industrial zone with an alloy one, but not add crime reduction, trade and amenities.

Now suppose that those three zones: city, unity and industrial from your screenshot were instead two urban districts with two zones each: one main one with, say 2 free building slots from the government zone, and 2 zones with 2 building slots each (basically, a nerfed version of what is currently 3.99.6) and a second urban district without the government zone, only 2 zones with 2 building slots. The first urban district government zone would have those vats and vault, an alloy and a CG zone. The second would have two unity zones. To add an enforcer building I could replace one unity zone of the second district with an urban zone, or an amenities zone, or a trade zone. Maybe I want both trade and the enforcement and can part with both unity zones. Maybe I want both alloys and cg, but not an even split. I could replace that CG zone from the first urban district with a industrial zone, and gain a 75/25 job split.

Just an example.

 

[NorseGod]

I see zones as district specializations. Your approach works but is much less modular, let me give an example from your screenshot. Suppose I want that planet to produce alloys instead of being an industrial zone that mixes cg and alloys, and I want trade also to supplement planetary deficit., or maybe amenities, more urban building slots, or maybe I have a crime problem and would rather sacrifice some unity instead of demolishing those clone vats or the auto-curating vault. In your version, I would have no way to add trade without entirely sacrificing the unity zone, nor a way to add the enforcer building without sacrificing vats or vault. And if I did so, I'd have to demolish those zones and rebuild, step by step. Even if the development level (that x/21 beside each zone) were inheritable and I could freely replace zones and conserve that development, I would be able to replace the industrial zone with an alloy one, but not add crime reduction, trade and amenities.

Or, you add another City District to create more Clerk Jobs for Trade, and then hit "Select Zone" on the right to make your third Zone selection an "Urban Zone" which also adds Clerk Jobs, and allows you to build Precinct Houses.

And if you wanted to swap from the mixed Industrial Zone to a Foundry Zone, yes that would require a scrapping and rebuild. But wouldn't it make sense that you'd need to rebuild to accomplish that? Right now in the Zones system, you can have a 20-District near-ecumenopolis planet, and in 10-days swap your entire industry from Alloys to Consumer goods, for the cost of rebuilding one Zone. I guess that's convenient, but it's a little less believable as scrapping and rebuilding.

Now suppose that those three zones: city, unity and industrial from your screenshot were instead two urban districts with two zones each: one main one with, say 2 free building slots from the government zone, and 2 zones with 2 building slots each (basically, a nerfed version of what is currently 3.99.6) and a second urban district without the government zone, only 2 zones with 2 building slots. The first urban district government zone would have those vats and vault, an alloy and a CG zone. The second would have two unity zones. To add an enforcer building I could replace one unity zone of the second district with an urban zone, or an amenities zone, or a trade zone. Maybe I want both trade and the enforcement and can part with both unity zones. Maybe I want both alloys and cg, but not an even split. I could replace that CG zone from the first urban district with a industrial zone, and gain a 75/25 job split.

Just an example.

That sounds dramatically worse, or perhaps I can't picture what you have in mind.

 

[Critical Ethics]

Here is my Empire, 22-years into the game. As you can see, I am currently in a Consumer Goods Defecit -6 on both this planet and my empire, and my one Planet has plenty of Unemployed Pops. I have 5 City Districts built, with an Archive and Industrial Zone.

View attachment 1275147

And here's is that exact same planet, after building a 6th City District, a year and a half later. I wanted a month after it was completed, to ensure everything was recalculated. I still have many Unemployed Pops, so all jobs are still being filled. And yet, I am still in a Consumer Goods Defecit of -4 for this planet and Empire.

View attachment 1275148

Because of the Mixed Disricts, building an additional City District only increases my total Consumer Goods Production by a net of 2 CGs. Meaning just to break even, I would need to build 2 more City Districts right away. If I did not have the Pops available to fill all those jobs, we would see the problem of Strata jumping occur, leading to losses in other resources.

Which leaves me the option of spamming Factories to fix this (aka the 3.14 "Problem" they want to fix with Zones), or once again fiddling with my Market Trades for a Defecit that I cannot fix through building Districts.

How is this better than being able to build Industrial or Factory Districts?

Your industrial zone is empty. If you drop a Civilian Industries in there (to match the +job admin building*) you'll get another ~10CG a month, putting you in positives. Every city district you build on the planet after that will increase your CG production slightly more than the increased CG requirements from the increased number of scientists and administrators. I find this more satisfying than them being individual districts because, once you've brought your planet back into balance in the manner I've described, scaling up both at once feels much more satisfying to me compared to the swinginess of building one and then the other manually while trying to keep their CG requirements in approximate lockstep.

*this is a symptom of the compromise that currently exists due to people complaining they cannot just spam factories cg districts. If the admin building was just acting as a modifier instead of a flat +job you wouldn't be having this problem. You are reaping the problem that others have sown, unfortunately.

 

[ShaTiK]

Okay, that's just ridiculous right now. You get to choose two zones per planet. And I completely and totally fail to see why they even bothered to give two at this point. Just make it one zone per planet. Not like there is any real need for mixed output planets anyways. And not like you can accommodate special planets like huge Gaias with current zone system anyhow. So I say - let player to choose one advanced resource per planet and be done with it. Not like 4x players expect some complexity in their games.

Honestly, this is wild to me. It is like devs have their own data on playerbase, and apparently my own understading of game genres and PDX 4X grand strategy user base is vastly different. So they cater to these players that want push one button per planet, so they would be free to watch twitch in the second window. I'm genuinely angry at this point, I know it is silly, but still - we are trying to have a somewhat productive discussion on how to make zones more fun, flexible and diverse and devs just keep hacking away, making system as primitive as possible.

I guess the silver lining is that AI might actually be capable of using this system. Not right now, obviously, in my latest game on 3.99.6 my militaristic human neighbor (which was already hilarious since I played as baseline humans) failed to colonize even a single planet, and also failed to build a single ship

 

[NorseGod]

Your industrial zone is empty. If you drop a CG plant in there (to match the other +job buildings you've built) you'll get another 10CG a month, putting you in positives. Every city district you build on the planet after that after that will increase your CG production slightly more than the increased CG requirements from the increased number of scientists and administrators. I find this more satisfying than them being individual districts because, once you've brought your planet back into balance in the manner I've described, scaling up both at once feels much more satisfying to me compared to having to build one and then the other manually while trying to keep their CG requirements in approximate lockstep.

So the answer is to spam more +X Jobs buildings, to fix the failings of the Zones system. When one of the entire goals of 4.0 was to make it so the answer wasn't to spam buildings.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Well the straight into food deficit spiral unless you add lots of agriculture districts or use trade to buy food seems resolved and the UI seems a little tidied up.

But what the . . . . is an 'Archives District' ? Is it a place holder of sorts ?

 

[user192823]

Or, you add another City District to create more Clerk Jobs for Trade, and then hit "Select Zone" on the right to make your third Zone selection an "Urban Zone" which also adds Clerk Jobs, and allows you to build Precinct Houses.

And if you wanted to swap from the mixed Industrial Zone to a Foundry Zone, yes that would require a scrapping and rebuild. But wouldn't it make sense that you'd need to rebuild to accomplish that? Right now in the Zones system, you can have a 20-District near-ecumenopolis planet, and in 10-days swap your entire industry from Alloys to Consumer goods, for the cost of rebuilding one Zone. I guess that's convenient, but it's a little less believable as scrapping and rebuilding.


That sounds dramatically worse, or perhaps I can't picture what you have in mind.

I assume by City District you mean City Zone in your screenshot. Clerks are a non factor, afaik they were supposed to be outright removed. Even if they are not and that city zone in your screenshot adds clerk jobs, they are a bad choice for both amenities or trade. I want traders and entertainers, or maybe I want medical workers.

As for 10 days to replace zones, I always assumed it was a placeholder time for testing purposes. Either way, in live you can already instantly replace artisans and alloys whenever you want.

I assume the maximum limit of zones in your example screenshot has been reached (grayed +). So I'm struck with the main capital city zone, the unity zone and the industrial zone. I would not be able to add an urban zone in your screenshot example because it would be the fourth one, not the third zone selection. So I'd have to demolish the unity zone. Which circles back to my post. In my example, I wanted to illustrate that what I proposed is more modular in what you can pick and choose than what you mentioned, with an example.

 

[NorseGod]

Well the straight into food deficit spiral unless you add lots of agriculture districts or use trade to buy food seems resolved and the UI seems a little tidied up.

But what the . . . . is an 'Archives District' ? Is it a place holder of sorts ?

It's a mixed Unity & Research Zone, the way Industrial is a mixed CGs & Alloys Zone.

 

[Critical Ethics]

So the answer is to spam more +X Jobs buildings, to fix the failings of the Zones system. When one of the entire goals of 4.0 was to make it so the answer wasn't to spam buildings as the answer to "I need more of this one resource/job", and the Zones system was supposed to fix it.

Got it.

I edited this in a bit too slow!

"*this is a symptom of the compromise that currently exists due to people complaining they cannot just spam factories cg districts. If the admin building was just acting as a modifier instead of a flat +job you wouldn't be having this problem. You are reaping the problem that others have sown, unfortunately."

 

[NorseGod]

I assume by City District you mean City Zone in your screenshot.

Nope.

Clerks are a non factor, afaik they were supposed to be outright removed. Even if they are not and that city zone in your screenshot adds clerk jobs, they are a bad choice for both amenities or trade.

That screenshot was based on 3.99.4, when City Zones created Clerks Jobs. And by splitting Zones into creating their own Districts, this system would need to do the same. Districts add Jobs, Buildings modify those Jobs.

I want traders and entertainers, or maybe I want medical workers.

If you want Traders, then build a Trade Zone instead of a Unity Zone. If you want Medical Workers, that's a building that goes in Zones that allow access to Amenity and Pop-Growth Buildings.

As for 10 days to replace zones, I always assumed it was a placeholder time for testing purposes. Either way, in live you can already instantly replace artisans and alloys whenever you want.

I assume the maximum limit of zones in your example screenshot has been reached (grayed +).

I just literally indicate that wasn't the case.

So I'm struck with the main capital city zone, the unity zone and the industrial zone. I would not be able to add an urban zone in your screenshot example because it would be the fourth one, not the third zone selection. So I'd have to demolish the unity zone. Which circles back to my post. In my example, I wanted to illustrate that what I proposed is more modular in what you can pick and choose than what you mentioned, with an example.

I don't understand what you're suggesting. Your explanation doesn't make any sense to me. I'm a visual learner, and your explanation isn't enough. Make a UI mock-up of your own to explain.

 

[NorseGod]

I edited this in a bit too slow!

"*this is a symptom of the compromise that currently exists due to people complaining they cannot just spam factories cg districts. If the admin building was just acting as a modifier instead of a flat +job you wouldn't be having this problem. You are reaping the problem that others have sown, unfortunately."

No, this is the result of the Devs realizing the unintended consequences of the City Districts * Zones system. The Devs don't care much about people complaining, until those people make some pretty good points. Mixing multiple jobs per District is mudding control over the Economy, and it's having unintended consequences. They have internal playtesters themselves, and their weekly feedback forms have avoided asking about Zones.

And this criticism in particular doesn't make sense. I'm saying that due to having mixed-jobs within the City Districts from Zones, you can't make more Districts as the solution to needing more CGs. The only thing three Zones gave me as adding another Industrial or Factory District, which can create wild swings in the economy.

I get it, you love Zones and you don't like seeing a bunch of people dislike them. But try to be rational with your responses. Mixing more jobs into districts doesn't fix my complaint that there are too many jobs mixed into one district.

 

[Critical Ethics]

No, this is the result of the Devs realizing the unintended consequences of the City Districts * Zones system. The Devs don't care much about people complaining, until those people make some pretty good points. Mixing multiple jobs per District is mudding control over the Economy, and it's having unintended consequences. They have internal playtesters themselves, and their weekly feedback forms have avoided asking about Zones.

And this criticism in particular doesn't make sense. I'm saying that due to having mixed-jobs within the City Districts from Zones, you can't make more Districts as the solution to needing more CGs. The only thing three Zones gave me as adding another Industrial or Factory District, which can create wild swings in the economy.

I get it, you love Zones and you don't like seeing a bunch of people dislike them. But try to be rational with your responses. Mixing more jobs into districts doesn't fix my complaint that there are too many jobs mixed into one district.

You gave me an example of a practical scenario where you have a problem with zones. I pointed out that the reason you have a high initial CG consumption is because you've built one flat CG job consumer and not built a flat CG job producer to compensate. If we remove the flat job producers from the equation things work fine, and if we include them they resolve each other's issues. You can't have it both ways.

edit: And if you filled both districts entirely with the appropriate mix of CG consumers/producers you would then be in the same situation as if neither existed - building cities and having the input/output balance handle itself due to the initial setup work you put in at the start. Which is the selling point of zones.

 

[Tisifoni12]

Perhaps 'Unity' / 'Archive' should be a 'Cultural' zone; museums (cultural archive), 'entertainment', religious / philosophical institutions, etc.

 

[-Marauder-]

How is this better than being able to build Industrial or Factory Districts?

It's strictly worse. It's why designations even shifted jobs on industrial districts. Initially that wasn't the case when they were introduced and it caused problems.

If they want to make zones work, mixed forced output basically has to go. Forcing players to play the game while wearing winter gloves in terms of control just doesn't work.

 

[-Marauder-]

I edited this in a bit too slow!

"*this is a symptom of the compromise that currently exists due to people complaining they cannot just spam factories cg districts. If the admin building was just acting as a modifier instead of a flat +job you wouldn't be having this problem. You are reaping the problem that others have sown, unfortunately."

What the hell are you talking about. Not only do you keep moving the goal post. You are pretending problems are caused by legitimate criticism of a new system which is being rushed and does not currently work on a lot of levels. People finding massive problems and Paradox scrambling to hotfix these things as they go turning their half baked change into a massive patch work held together by duct tape and invalidating itself is NOT the fault of the players.

 

[Critical Ethics]

As long as you pretend amenities, raw resources, and strata shifting problems don't exist, sure.

Amenity, energy, food, and mineral consumption don't scale in lockstep with jobs. The first three* scale with people and buildings and the last* has extensive off planet requirements immune to import tax. CG also scales with people, which is why you want your CG to grow slowly, such as, say, by 2CG per new city, but something requiring a sudden and empire wide shift in CG consumptions such as enabling Utopian Abundance should come with an appropriately wide-scale societal reconstruction. Such as building some planets designed for CG excess, using the pure CG zone.

*Civics obviously swap this around a bit.

And you said yourself you have plenty of excess citizens so strata shifting isn't an issue.

And assuming the goal when building new city-districts is to create more of the same balance, and not fixing a single-resource deficit in your empire. Which was my entire earlier complaint, that building a district can no longer fix a single resource shortage.

I mean, it can, if you're a multi-planet empire with worlds dedicated to having CG in excess of their requirements, and I've shown how your given single planet example can be solved on single planet without building more single-resource districts (and how building a single-resource-district-esque building was the problem in the first place).

Instead you gotta build +X Job Buildings, which is one of the same solutions as 3.14. But at least in 3.14, you could also fix it with Districts, too.

The only reason you have a problem is because you built a +X job admin building to go for an early unity rush. If there wasn't a spammable unity building then you wouldn't need a spammable factory.

If we accept your terms of spammable buildings being able to cause but not solve problems, we go back to my initial reply to Thiend - you have over three thousand trade going unused. That's enough to solve your CG problem well into the point when you become an interplanetary empire.

So you have two options - solve the problem using the same toolset that you used to cause it (and after that your city zones can advance in lockstep without causing you issues and saving you many clicks and attention), or use the toolset now available due to the trade rework that it was developed in conjunction with until you have enough planets to go empirical.

This example entirely proved my point that the thing you're saying that it's a problem you can't do, isn't needed because the new system works just fine without it.

 

[gekp78]

With the new update today, the city district and zone system mirrors the current live version. Each city district provides 200 jobs, equal to the same two pop jobs provided in the 3.14 industrial district. All the zones are is a way for you to shift the output of your industrial districts. Swap one CG job for a unity job, swap one alloy job for a researcher job, etc. I mean, I sorta get the complaints throughout the thread, but basically this system is almost the same as the live version, just with the added ability of being able to perform job swaps when you want/need.

 

[Everstill]

Here is my Empire, 22-years into the game. As you can see, I am currently in a Consumer Goods Defecit -6 on both this planet and my empire, and my one Planet has plenty of Unemployed Pops. I have 5 City Districts built, with an Archive and Industrial Zone.

View attachment 1275147

And here's is that exact same planet, after building a 6th City District, a year and a half later. I wanted a month after it was completed, to ensure everything was recalculated. I still have many Unemployed Pops, so all jobs are still being filled. And yet, I am still in a Consumer Goods Defecit of -4 for this planet and Empire.

View attachment 1275148

Because of the Mixed Disricts, building an additional City District only increases my total Consumer Goods Production by a net of 2 CGs. Meaning just to break even, I would need to build 2 more City Districts right away. If I did not have the Pops available to fill all those jobs, we would see the problem of Strata jumping occur, leading to losses in other resources.

Which leaves me the option of spamming Factories to fix this (aka the 3.14 "Problem" they want to fix with Zones), or once again fiddling with my Market Trades for a Defecit that I cannot fix through building Districts.

How is this better than being able to build Industrial or Factory Districts?

I think they really should hold the zone system until a later patch.

Just update the current district system adding 2 District slots so the player can choose what district it wants and balance the buildings to be modifier/bonuses to the jobs and keep working the zone system until later.

They already have good content in the new pop groups, pop growth and etc systems that they need to nail before they fix this mess of zones. This mechanic of multiplicative jobs by city district and it being much higher than the normal district is too crazy currently.