Small steps in the right direction

The new Civ 6 patch is out, and it turns out we mostly had all the information ahead of time.  The patch consists of a lot of good changes, mostly focusing on improving mid to late game buildings that were underused, as well as making the whole diplomacy victory and world council better.  I agree with basically all of their directions and the things they are trying to achieve.  Unfortunately I don't think they went far enough in many of their changes.

Specialists are better now that the top end buildings buff all specialists within their district.  They basically go from making 2 stuff per turn to 3 stuff per turn once you have the top end buildings constructed.  However, this is not nearly enough to make specialists good.  Throughout the game a citizen will normally be working a tile generating 4 stuff or more, and that increases as the game goes on.  Specialists in the early game are nearly unusable because you simply can't feed your people if you use them, midgame their returns are a joke compared to the 5 stuff you get on good tiles, and late game specialists get buffed all the way to 3 stuff while tiles continue upward to 6-7 stuff.

Now you might want to use specialists in a city that you have nothing left to build in and which you do not wish to grow.  So for example in the late game where you are trying for a science victory and are basically on cruise control you might use specialists.  But that is far too niche to my mind, especially when it is so easy to make them a reasonable option in other situations.

In any case this puts the structure in place for me to easily buff specialists, making them improve as you add infrastructure.  That much is welcome, certainly.

Another set of buffs that was well intentioned but a little too light handed was the improvements to Industrial Zones.  Workshops and Factories have been improved, but they still aren't good enough to make Industrial Zones worth building.  It is a step in the right direction though, and certainly makes the power imbalance between the various districts less stark. 

I think the designers are really certain that big cities with all the districts are good.  In that sort of scenario, a district that generates production in order to make more districts is a fine thing.  However, the ideal way to play is to simply spam small cities everywhere and chop all the forests down to get up your science or culture infrastructure.  After that, ignore the city as it sits there pumping out the resource you need to win the game.  Big cities need so much support in terms of housing, amenities, and food that it just isn't worth it, and if you have small cities with only 2-3 districts then one of those districts cannot be a district that just makes more production.  If you increase that production though, and make it easier to get the amenities and housing needed to grow a city big, then suddenly huge cities become a real contender.

We aren't quite there yet.  But I am happy to continue to nudge the numbers to try to make it happen.