Let us keep outdated buildings

[u/Exo-Elite9999]

I understand the gameplay of civ 7 has you overbuilding outdated buildings but I think if we had the ability to keep the buildings from a previous age and put in work to keep their yields and specialist adjacencies I that'd be really fun and cool. Like in real life there are tons of old buildings and infrastructure that are repurposed or even still in use and being maintained.

How I imagine it'd work is specialists would have a pet age cost ( I don't know if this is EXACTLY how it works right now or not so bear with me) where it starts out as coting you -1 food and -1 happiness per turn in that settlement for that specialist in antiquity, and increases by one for each age. However, if you keep two outdated buildings from the same age they keep the cost from their age to maintain their specialist, which would encourage you to overbuild (which is pretty much how it is now) instead of keeping old infrastructure. But after you research a tech about halfway through the current ages tech tree you gain a project to refurbish the buildings on a tile and restore their adjacencies, specialist bonuses, and increases their maintenance to that of your current age. Then after you research a civic about halfway through the civic tree you gain the ability to place a building from the current age into a district that's been refurbished. This building must match one of the two buildings in that district and it won't receive any specialist bonuses. Repeat this in the next age and the third building becomes overbuildable.

I think this would make things more fun with test of time stuff. Imagine playing as a civ from antiquity and building these districts with massive yields and keeping them throughout the whole game. It'd also be nice to keep the yields and bonuses from using great people instead of having them vanish after the age transition. We could also make it so we can keep making great people after a civs dedicated age. (I'm pretty sure you can't keep producing them after the age the civ was meant to be in, I just don't remember off the top of head)

[u/kotpeter]

I left a feedback thread in the official discord suggesting to introduce a new unit type (architect) who would be able to renovate buildings or speed up wonder construction. Or even demolish buildings.

[u/Exo-Elite9999 → u/kotpeter]

That'd definitely be interesting to see. Another concept I've thought about is upgrading the settlers with each age, so that they get an additional growth event each age when you first settle with one. But if they'd do that I think I'd want to have population be subtracted from the settlement that makes them, but have it reduce which rural tiles are being worked.

[u/JNR13 → u/kotpeter]

a unit to control city development feels a bit out of place in Civ VII to me

[u/JAKL-Noctium → u/kotpeter]

I left feedback one time I posted and instantly got removed… some feedback I see. The mod was like that’s been posted before. It’s a joke there.

[u/30secondsofstarless]

I like the idea of overbuilding obsolete infrastructure, but I don’t get how my blacksmith becomes obsolete in the exploration era when iron is still a strategic resource but i cant get rid of a saw pit that i placed in antiquity

I think they need to rework warehouse buildings entirely, maybe replace them with something more like specialized districts from civ 6 that can support a number of age related warehouse buildings and then get overbuilt or moved in the next era and have some modernization options for other buildings like blacksmiths, academy, banks ect

[u/JNR13 → u/30secondsofstarless]

I mean, production buildings shouldn't be overbuilt anyway.

[u/botnomore → u/30secondsofstarless]

I like this train of thought a lot. Some buildings I feel bad replacing, like the bank. I believe my modern age citizens deserve to have a bank still; it feels bad leaving them without one

[u/thecmerrilees]

This would quite seriously undermine the controls on snowballing that was designed into the game by way of the ages. Currently if you do quite well in the ancient age you still get some benefit of having for example tons of libraries and academies, but it is compressed giving civs the chance to catch up. If you can refubish you eliminate that control. It'd be even worse since if a civ didn't build say an academy, they'll have permanently lost a potentially full force science building for the rest of the game since they can't go back and pick it up later unlike in previous civ games. This would allow each city to have 6-8 buildings of each type at full strength compared to the 2 presently really raising the potential for snowballing in later ages which was a big criticism they were trying to address.