This is Part 2 of a sweaty guide to C3X Districts. If you haven't read Part 1 yet check it out here.

If you've never heard of C3X before, its a popular mod for civ3, you can check it out here and the Districts feature here.

In this guide were going to take a look at the wonders we can build and how good they are when the benefits are stacked in multiple cities.

Its worth noting that to make use of wonder districts the following settings need to be enabled in the config file (default.c3x_config.ini or custom.c3x_config.ini):

• enable_districts = true (This is set to false by default so you will need to enable it before you can use districts. See Part 1 for other settings you should enable).
• enable_wonder_districts = true (This is set to true by default, so if you haven't made changes to the config file you don't need to touch this).
• cities_with_mutual_district_receive_wonders = true (This is set to true by default, so if you haven't made changes to the config file you don't need to touch this)

S Tier

• Statue of Zeus: This wonder is S tier in vanilla civ3 and with Districts it just straight up broken. There isn't really anything that can stop your military conquest when you have this wonder in multiple cities. The only downside is that you need Ivory to build it so its not an option in every game.
  • Pro tip: remember to add an Encampment + Barracks so all your ancient cavalry come out as veterans.
• Forbidden Palace: What's better then 1 city with low corruption? 6 cities with low corruption! Other then the statue of Zeus, this is easily the most powerful wonder you can build, always try to put it down where it will affect the largest number of cities.
  • A lesser know effect of the forbidden palace is that it decreases corruption across your entire empire (by increasing the "Optimal Number of Cities" value), with multiple forbidden palaces this effect stacks and can have a very noticeable effect on your border provinces.
  • Check out this article on civfanatics for the specific details: Everything About Corruption C3C Edition

A Tier

• JS Bachs Cathedral: In vanilla this wonder has a useful but modest effect, +2 happiness in each city in your empire. Being able to stack this effect with districts though really super charges it, have it in 6 cities and now your looking at +12 happiness across your empire.
  • To put that into perspective: every city in your empire can reach size 13 before you have a single unhappy citizen.
• Ironworks: +100% shields for every city in range. Its just a good bonus and the more cities that can benefit from it the better. The only downside is that it can only be built by a city that has Iron & Coal in its work radius, which means its hard to plan for / optimise the wonder districts placement. Its really something that your just going to have to take advantage of on the fly / when the opportunity comes up.
• Copernicus Observatory: +100% science for every city in range. Its just a good bonus and the more cities that can benefit from it the better.
• Newton's University: +100% science for every city in range. Just like Copernicus Observatory, its a good bonus and the more cities that can benefit from it the better.

B Tier

• Hanging Gardens: +3 happiness for in range cities & +1 happiness across your empire.
  • This is a really good bonus but it becomes obsolete when you research Steam Power (i.e. Railroads), which unfortunately kinda holds this wonder back.
  • If it didn't become obsolete it would be an easy A tier like JS Bachs Cathedral. Can still be good to build though to help you solidify a lead over the AI during the late ancient era / middles ages.
• SETI Program: +100% science for every city in range.
  • Just like Copernicus Observatory & Newton's University this is a good bonus to have and the more cities that can benefit from it the better.
  • Its in B tier rather then A tier though as it comes so late in the game that its unlikely to have as much of an impact when compared to Copernicus / Newton's.
• Shakespeare's Theatre: This is an awkward one, its bonuses are nice but its research path is honestly sub-optimal. You'll always have a better time building JS Bachs Cathedral for happiness, then continuing up the tech tree to Hospitals.
  • BUT if the AI beats you to Bachs then its your next best option for a happiness wonder (although it only affects cities in range of the district, rather then your whole empire like Bachs)

C Tier

• Hoover Dam:
  • This is where the tier list starts getting a little strange because for a couple of these wonders (Hoover Dam, The Internet & Sun Tzu's) we actually want to position the wonder districts AWAY from our cities so they only take up a tile in a single cities work radius.
  • See what makes these wonders good is that they save us from needing to dedicate a tile to a certain district (in Hoover Dams case an Energy Grid) in our big stack of heavily congested cities. Freeing that tile up for a better wonder or a Commercial Hub.
  • Hoover Dam is the best wonder out of the 3 (Hoover, Internet, Sun Tzu's) because the improvement it gives (Hydro Plant) is the most useful, while its District (Energy Grid) is the least useful.
• The Internet: Like the Hoover Dam / Sun Tzu's, this wonders benefit is that it frees up some space in your heavily congested city stacks. Rather then having to dedicate a tile to a Data Center district just to build a Research Lab, you can instead use that tile on a different Wonder.
  • Note: A Data Center with a Research Lab is actually decent, providing 8 science (which is more science then you get from a Commercial Hub) but gives a -2 happiness penalty. If you don't have a good wonder that can be built in the tile it saves you, then you can probably skip The Internet.
  • Also by this point in the game its pretty unlikely you actually need more research.
• The Colossus: A genuine banger of a wonder in vanilla that is distinctly "meh" in C3X Districts.
  • The problem with this wonder is two fold:
    • 1 that it can only be built on a coastal tile, making optimum placement difficult.
    • 2 if were playing like a sweaty little gremlin were not actually "working" many tiles (as there all covered in districts) so its benefit is pretty minimal.
  • Ultimately if you can build it on a tile that will benefit 2 or 3 costal cities its worth it but its available so early in the game that there's other things your probably going to want to prioritise first (city improvements, more settlers / workers, military units, Statue of Zeus, etc.)
• The Mausoleum of Mausollos: Provides +3 happiness to all cities in range.
  • Its available early, its cheap and never becomes obsolete so its useful BUT it takes up a tile that could be used by a better wonder / district.
  • Personally i'd rather wait for Bachs and build that instead but there's an argument to be made that getting this wonder early will help you snowball into a winning position
• Sun Tzu's Art of War: Like the Hoover Dam / The Internet, this wonders benefit is that it frees up some space in your heavily congested city stacks. Rather then having to dedicate a tile to an Encampment district just to build a Barracks, you can instead use that tile on a different Wonder.
  • Note: An Encampment with a Barracks is actually pretty good defensively (+2 Shields and a strong defensive bonus for units on the tile), so even with Sun Tzus you may still find yourself wanting to build Encampents
• The Great Wall: A really interesting wonder, it creates a wall around your entire empire that enemy units cant move through. Its situationaly useless or S tier depending on how the game is unfolding.
  • Note: its made obsolete by Metallurgy (i.e. late middle ages) so make sure your not caught off guard.
• Military Academy: Further Testing Required.
  • The military academy has two effects:
    • 1 that any city in range can build armies;
    • 2 that it increases the attack + defense value of armies by 25%.
  • Its not really clear whether this second effect stacks though? if it does it might move higher up the tier list.

D Tier

Literally Everything Else: Basically ever over wonder has an effect that does not stack when the wonder is present in multiple cities, so they are just as useful as in vanilla civ3.

There are a few interesting cases though which I'll call out specifically below:

• Cure for Cancer, Knights Templar, Magellans Voyage, Theory of Evolution, Universal Suffrage & Secret Police HQ:
  • While these wonders have effects that could stack in useful ways, C3X Release 27 (C3X_R27) does not have assets for them to appear in a tile on the map.
  • This means these wonders can only be built in a single city, limiting there exploitability. If you have the skillset and time to work on bringing these wonders to C3X I'm sure the developers / maintainers would appreciate the contribution
• The Oracle & Sistine Chapel: Despite the description for these wonders suggesting that there effects would stack, they don't. Making them very lackluster when compared to Bachs.

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 to cultural-min-2 basically 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.

https://preview.redd.it/15nal7aiekah1.png?width=1552&format=png&auto=webp&s=e62620de30d9ce160436e45c72fe0f3d544577f2

• 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_radius to 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.

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.