District Planning: From One City to an Empire

Beginner · 2026-08-03

Districts are the skeleton of Civ VII yield. Beginners often build the same districts everywhere and end up strong at nothing. The right move is specialization: each city excels at 1-2 yields.

District layout plan — Fig 1: science / production / economy city role split

1. Role split

Science city: Campus on mountain, Library+University+Lab.
Production city: Industrial Zone by resources, pumps builds.
Economy city: Commercial Hub + Harbor, rolls gold.
Culture city: Theater Square by water, tourism.

2. Adjacency is soul

Campus by mountain, Commercial by river, Theater by water — adjacency doubles yields. Read the preview before building.

3. Empire layout

Cluster same-type cities to share district辐射 (e.g. Industrial Zone production辐射). Clusters beat scattered builds.

Tip: make the capital a "generalist core" and satellites "single specialists". Capital covers all yields; satellites max one — neither fragile nor mediocre.

4. Common mistakes

Uniform cities: full district set everywhere, none strong.
No adjacency read: random placement loses half yields.
Over-cluster: all cities in one spot, wiped together.