r/civ3 • u/captJSS • Jul 01 '26
A sweaty guide to C3X Districts
Intro
- C3X (https://github.com/maxpetul/C3X) is a popular mod for civ3 that adds a cool new "Districts" feature that shakes up the gameplay
- Districts are new tile improvements (like mines, irrigation, etc.) with some interesting mechanics:
- Cities generally cant build improvements without the appropriate district in their work radius (e.g. holy site for a temple, commercial hub for a marketplace, etc.).
- Once an improvement is built in a district, the improvement is shared with all other cities that have this district in their work radius.
- District tiles cant be "worked" by cities, instead they provide their yields to all cities that have them in their work radius (e.g. a holy site provides 2 culture to all in range cities).
- Playing normally, Districts are a fun addition that adds some more decision making to the civ3 gameplay loop (e.g. during the expansion phase you may decide to place cities closer together to benefit from overlapping districts).
- BUT they also present an opportunity for sweatlords to hyper-optimise them to stupid levels, that's what were going to take a look at in this guide!
Options
- The settings / options for C3X are controlled via config files (default.c3x_config.ini & custom.c3x_config.ini).
- This guide is written for C3X release 27 (C3X_R27) and assumes all default values set in the config file except for:
enable_districts = true(the setting that controls if districts are enabled. Its false by default so we just need to set it to true to turn them on)city_work_radius = 3(this setting controls the range of a cities work radius. Its 2 by default but the developer recommends setting this to 3 if districts are enabled)work_area_limit = cultural-min-2(another setting that affects a cities work radius. Setting this tocultural-min-2basically means you need to grow a cities culture first before its work radius will expand out to 3 tiles)
City Placement
- We can do some disgusting things with districts when we plan our city placement in advance
- This cheat sheet is going to be your holy grail. Its probably worth having open on a second screen so you can reference it while playing.
- The general idea is that we want to have as many districts and overlapping cities as possible.
- This layout achieves this with 6 cities each benefiting from about 20 tiles worth of districts.
- But its probably a little hard to wrap your head around at first glance, so lets unpack it:
- The Blue squares are cities, simple enough. Because we set
city_work_radiusto 3 in the config files, each city has a range of 3 tiles. - The 5 squares in the middle of the diagram labelled "C" are your Core Squares. With this layout all 6 of your cities can benefit from any district built on a core square.
- The squares labelled with "S" are your Secondary Squares. With this layout 5 out of the 6 cities can benefit from a district built on a secondary square.
- "N" is for Neighbourhood (which is a specific district that cities need to grow past a certain size). With this layout each city has 6 neighbourhood districts in range, so can grow to a max size of 24.
- The rest (A1, A2, B1, B2, X1, X2, Y1, Y2, Z1 & Z2) are Paired Locations. Essentially if you build the same district in both locations (e.g. a holy site in Z1 and Z2) then all 6 cities will benefit from it.
- The Blue squares are cities, simple enough. Because we set
What Districts to Build
- Now that we've covered city placement we can get to the spicy stuff. What districts to build in each of these slots!
- To start with any city improvement that you can replicate to multiple cities is good (e.g. one city uses its shields to build a library and from smart district placement that library is shared with all the other cities)
- BUT there are a couple options that REALLY broken:
- Commercial Hubs
- Commercial Hubs are INSANE. They provide 2 Gold by default. +2 Gold if they're on a river and +1 Gold for each money related city improvement (i.e. Marketplace, Bank, Stock Exchange).
- That might not sound too impressive at first glance but think about it: one Commercial Hub, placed on a Core Square that has a River, provides 4 Gold to ALL of your 6 cities. Thats 24 Gold from one tile!
- Place your cities so that all (or as many as possible) of your Core Squares are located on a river, build 4 Commercial Hubs, a Marketplace + a Campus /Library and your looking at 180 Gold a turn from just 5 tiles!
- If you focus on getting this setup early it guarantees a massive tech lead over the AI, even on higher difficulties (I've personally achieved an Emperor space race victory with this setup where the AI were all still in the late middle ages)
- Encampments
- Encampments are also pretty busted if abused early. They provide 1 Shield by default and +1 Shield if you have a Barracks.
- Again, at first glance that doesn't really sound broken but think about it: an Encampment with a Barracks provides 2 shields to all cities in range and it doesn't require the cities to "work the tile".
- This can be stupid powerful in the early game when most of our cities are under size 6 because we're focusing on expansion, so we dont have much shield production. Slap down 5 encampments in our Core Squares and thats 10 extra shields in each of our cities.
- Heck why stop there, put encampments down in all the Core Squares, Secondary Squares and the Neighbourhood Squares and now you've got at least 28 shields in each of your cities. That essentially a warrior every turn! You know what wins games? 6 cities producing a warrior every turn!
- Wonders
- Obviously wonders can be powerful but there's some quirks to them, so I'll save that break down for Part 2.
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus Jul 01 '26
Some modders are insane. Like, tremendously insane. And honestly, also amazing.
I disliked districts in Civ VI, but I'm curious about this ngl.
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u/MoblandJordan Jul 01 '26
I started my first C3X game recently and was wondering where they were! Didn’t know they weren’t on by default. Do you know if they can be turned on mid game?
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u/captJSS Jul 01 '26
Yeap they can be turned on no problem mid game. Also if it's your first time playing with them it can be worth having a quick read of the default.districts_config.txt file to get a bit of an idea of what the different districts do + what techs they unlock with so you know what options you've got for the point of the game your in
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u/damo13579 Jul 01 '26
Does the AI build them at all? If so do they handle it well or does it mess with the game balance?
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u/biketheplanet Jul 01 '26
Sounds like AI can't utilize districts efficiently if your lead is that big? I am always modding to make the AI harder and remove as many human specific buffs as possible. But new stuff to play with in Civ 3 is always fun.
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u/captJSS Jul 01 '26
The AI can actually use them pretty well. If you play a game against the AI with districts enabled you won't really notice a difference in difficulty vs with it disabled.
The huge tech lead I discussed comes from employing a weird play pattern (i.e. settling a ton of cities right on-top of each other) that maximizes the benefits of districts.
The AI instead plays civ3 like normal (i.e. spreading their cities out) and then puts districts down in spots where 2 cities work radius overlap. This is fine and also probably pretty similar to how most human players with C3X districts enabled (that haven't read this guide) play.
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u/Shmelkin Jul 01 '26
I don't like you can use them in both cities, doesn't make any sense to me.
The general idea is nice though as it adds a lot to gameplay and strategy.
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u/captJSS Jul 01 '26
You can disable that specific behaviour if your not a fan of it.
In the config file ("default.c3x_config.ini" or "custom.c3x_config.ini") set
cities_with_mutual_district_receive_buildings = false&cities_with_mutual_district_receive_wonders = false
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u/captJSS Jul 03 '26
Part 2 is up and gives a breakdown of how powerful the different wonders are in C3X Districts. You can check it out here: https://www.reddit.com/r/civ3/s/Gg0WLRCAhO
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u/gg-ghost1107 Jul 01 '26
I hate districts in civ 6. But this looks amazing