Can I play without districts?

[mk53v3n]

Hi guys, I am not playing for very long, so maybe this is a total newbie question, but I was wondering: Can I play without Districts, and simply expand my starting settlement by building more Builder Huts and Hauling Posts to increase my road network and range?

I find the management of districts quite annoying, especially the exchange of goods, and would prefer to have one big settlement instead of multiple smaller ones. Is there a good reason / necessity to use Districts?

[Smeester]

There is a hard cap on distance, no matter the builders huts. I'm sure districts will get less finicky to manage as the early access progresses. For now there's a map called Diorama that is tiny - so small enough to cover the map without any districts. Has its own difficulties though!

[ziplip]

Yeah but you can figure out how far away you can get from the main first building when you think you can't go any further I would bet you can. I have had some large one district games on large maps

[Alcator]

Originally posted by mk53v3n:

Hi guys, I am not playing for very long, so maybe this is a total newbie question, but I was wondering: Can I play without Districts, and simply expand my starting settlement by building more Builder Huts and Hauling Posts to increase my road network and range?

I find the management of districts quite annoying, especially the exchange of goods, and would prefer to have one big settlement instead of multiple smaller ones. Is there a good reason / necessity to use Districts?

Districts really aren't that complicated. You can basically play in two main ways:

1. Independent districts: When you want to establish a new district, find the reach of your original district (click the District Center and see how far the green-yellow-red path lines end). Place a bunch of storage buildings for timber, water and other stuff near the end of the original district's reach, prioritize those buildings so that they get filled with material. Then, cut off the path just before them, place a district gate and plop a new District center nearby. Migrate 2-4 beavers there -- they now have enough water and food to survive for 10+ days, until they can establish all the necessary industries (Water pump, some farm, forester). Then migrate few more beavers, and they will be self-sufficient with regards to water and food, and slowly expand just like your original district.

2. Learn how the Distribution Centers and Drop Off points: You place the big tent building in the SOURCE district, and establish "Routes" for one or more types of goods towards a drop off point. This way, you can feed a new district with food and water until they become self-reliant. With Distrib Centers and Drop Off points, it's useful to set up the limits, although the default values work reasonably well. I would definitely suggest setting the LOW limits on the SOURCE district to 500 for Water, Carrots/Berries and Timber, 200 for Planks and some better food, and 50 on everything else. On the TARGET district, you set the HIGH limits to 300 for water and timber, 200 for planks and food, and leave 100 for everything else.

[grt8guy]

I think having a sandbox mode with District lines not being a requirement would be great

[Alcator]

Originally posted by grt8guy:

I think having a sandbox mode with District lines not being a requirement would be great

Districts were implemented to reduce the complexity of pathfinding; without them, the game would slow down to a crawl much sooner. So it's not some sort of "Game design" decision, but rather "How do we make the game work?" decision :-)

[jaquig]

Originally posted by Alcator:

Districts were implemented to reduce the complexity of pathfinding; without them, the game would slow down to a crawl much sooner. So it's not some sort of "Game design" decision, but rather "How do we make the game work?" decision :-)

They also had the beavers follow the set paths better, which directly improved pathfinding.

Another change was the path instantly built instead of needing to be built. Again, it helped with pathfinding.

[ziplip]

Originally posted by grt8guy:

I think having a sandbox mode with District lines not being a requirement would be great

I'd love to see a sandbox mode with no districts.

[mk53v3n]

Thanks for the quick reply guys, and especially @Alcator for the useful tips. I completely missed that I am able to set these low and high limits. That makes managing the districts indeed much easier.

However, it's interesting that the Devs implemented Districts to improve performance and eliminate their issues with pathfinding. I remember other much older city builders (such as The Settlers II, which I loved when I was a kid), which had similar game mechanics and did not have any performance issues. And the machines we had back then were so much slower than today. Did not think that this could be an issue on modern hardware...

But anyway, aside from the District management, the game is great and I really enjoy it, so I won't complain too much about this single aspect of an otherwise awesome game ;)

[City Builder]

Originally posted by mk53v3n:

Thanks for the quick reply guys, and especially @Alcator for the useful tips. I completely missed that I am able to set these low and high limits. That makes managing the districts indeed much easier.

However, it's interesting that the Devs implemented Districts to improve performance and eliminate their issues with pathfinding. I remember other much older city builders (such as The Settlers II, which I loved when I was a kid), which had similar game mechanics and did not have any performance issues. And the machines we had back then were so much slower than today. Did not think that this could be an issue on modern hardware...

But anyway, aside from the District management, the game is great and I really enjoy it, so I won't complain too much about this single aspect of an otherwise awesome game ;)

Get the mod "district_extender" and see how far you can extend a district and still get good performance.

[hektor]

Districts would be way less annoying if the UI for distribution centers worked better.

[DrHumpsenCadillac]

districts ruin this game for me, beavers over here starving and dying of thirst and wont go get water and food across imaginary lines. if i wanted to see a bunch of crybabies dying because they can't take care of themselves i would just go to europe. games are supposed to be fun not a babysitting job

[jonnin]

if no one said it, the only issue may be that some maps the mine square is too far, so you at best have limited metal resource, or none at all.

FYI: you can move your starter district building as you play. So you can slowly migrate toward the mine, and that would work, if you planned ahead to do that and built toward the mine and not away from it (exception for water early game).

[EleventhStar]

maps up to about 75x75 you can do with 1 disctrict by placing the district center in the middle of the map.

on most large maps you can build a metal gather flax at max pathing range of the start location, and then have the metal be in the max range of the flag. but usually the unlimited metal location will be out of range of your initial district. easiest way to fix that is just to edit the map and place a underground ruins where you want it.

[ChanceGateau]

Originally posted by EleventhStar:

maps up to about 75x75 you can do with 1 disctrict by placing the district center in the middle of the map.

on most large maps you can build a metal gather flax at max pathing range of the start location, and then have the metal be in the max range of the flag. but usually the unlimited metal location will be out of range of your initial district. easiest way to fix that is just to edit the map and place a underground ruins where you want it.

What bothers me is the locations of the metal deposits (a.k.a ruins) on the various maps. While it is true that humans can build anywhere, why would they put buildings on the top of a tall butte, without access to water? One would think the ruins would be closer to the rivers.

[citablekettle]

Originally posted by Alcator:

Districts were implemented to reduce the complexity of pathfinding; without them, the game would slow down to a crawl much sooner.

Is this actually known, or a theoretical conjecture? On the face of it, it doesn't sound very plausible.

Pathfinding when everything is on path rails and actors don't interact with each other should be trivial if done correctly. In this game, actors don't even normally change their mind en route, pathing can be precomputed between building entrances, pointing the way to the nearest other building for each possible next-task purpose.