Cities, towns, districts, quarters and settlements, oh my!

[OzzyKP]

I’m on my phone so I do t have any interesting content to share, but there sure are a lot of different city-type terms that have been bandied about so far.

What’s a quarter? What’s a town? What’s a settlement? Inquiring minds want to know!

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I think you initially place a settlement which can grow to be a town or a city. You can leave it as an outpost just gathering resources for your empire.

A city has rural and urban districts, buildings and walls can be placed in a district. Initially there are 2 slots e.g. you can place a granary and a wall

 

[OzzyKP]

What's the difference between a city and a town? And what's the difference between a quarter and a district?

 

[Josephias]

As far as I gathered from the different prieviews (feel free to correct)

City - works "almost like" your standard Civ city (there are several changes, gameplay-wise, part of them being the management of districts with grow below, the non-allocation of population to tiles, etc...but, in the end, cities keep being the "core" element of your civ)
Town - is a non-operative city (no build queue), having only resource-gathering capabilities. Production gathering is converted to gold and you can still "buy" some buildings that ease town conversion to city at a later stage. Indeed, (and probably except your first), your settlers settle towns, not cities, and you would then decide to evolve them.
Settlements - I cannot recall having heard it fully explained, so I take it is used as a generic for towns + cities. Ah, there is a cap in there, I don't know it would apply only to cities or to all types of settlement.

Districts are anything that expands your city town. It seems now they are generated with population growht and come in two types: rural and urban.
- Rural Distritcts are the replacement for the old improvements, and probably also for citizen allocation to work tiles. This is: now you don't seend your city people out to the wilderness to gather resources, but each time the city grows, you are able to assign a patch of land were they live and work providing you the tile resources (per IGN, you may be limited to adjacent tiles, a la humankind / endless legend, with seems a bad move to me - and to them, but let's wait for more info)
- Urban Districts are also built allocating population and take up a tile (so there is some compromise between "growing" your city or getting resources). Growing your city as urban districts work as building slots. Each urban district will be able to hold a number of buildings (seems it will be increasing with each Era, starting with two in the Ancient), so your will be limited on what you build in your city to the number of Urban Districts you have.
- Quartiers seem to be dedicated urban districts (dedication being generated by the type of buildings you select in them): this is, when you build matching buildings in an urban district, it becomes a Quartier with probably added benefits. The example I have got for this, albeit "unique", explain quite well: as egypt, you can build a Mortuory temple (unique building) and a Mastaba (unique) in an urban district. This will make the urban district become a Necropolis quartier, wich has added benefits over the separated buildings. You may imagine similar potential combinations for "standard" Civ VI districts, so building a library and a school in a district might turn it into a Campus quartier, or a barracks and a guard tower may make a district turn into a Military quartier, etc...

 

[OzzyKP]

Awesome, thanks!

 

[GeneralZIft]

The city cap thing isn't so bad since you can increase it. Plus it's not a hard cap, you can go over and experience only sadness. So if you have super happy empire by design you can overexpand too

 

[Professor Phobo]

Do we know how Districts will work this time? I really didn't like them in Civ 6, the micromanagement/preplanning of adjacency bonuses just never clicked with me. And one of my favorite things with Civ 5 was doing a OCC with the difficulty low and just sort of vibing with the game while listening to a podcast, which wasn't doable in 6 since you really couldn't just not expand.

 

[Jkchart]

Do we know how Districts will work this time? I really didn't like them in Civ 6, the micromanagement/preplanning of adjacency bonuses just never clicked with me. And one of my favorite things with Civ 5 was doing a OCC with the difficulty low and just sort of vibing with the game while listening to a podcast, which wasn't doable in 6 since you really couldn't just not expand.

Yes - you place buildings on thr map in a chosen location. If there’s an existing district with an open building slot, it goes there. If no district yet, it creates a new urban district in that tile with more building slots upon completion. We don’t build separate color coded districts anymore.

 

[ombak]

Yes - you place buildings on thr map in a chosen location. If there’s an existing district with an open building slot, it goes there. If no district yet, it creates a new urban district in that tile with more building slots upon completion. We don’t build separate color coded districts anymore.

I really like this implementation. Had I replied to the "do you want districts to return" thread I would have said yes, but I'd like to see more iteration on the concept. However, I don't think I would have had any specific idea of what direction to go in. I don't think this idea would have occurred to me (nor the rural district to urban district part of how this works, which I also really like).

I am sure there is a lot more to learn about districts in Civ 7 but this appears to be a great next step so far.

 

[Jkchart]

I really like this implementation. Had I replied to the "do you want districts to return" thread I would have said yes, but I'd like to see more iteration on the concept. However, I don't think I would have had any specific idea of what direction to go in. I don't think this idea would have occurred to me (nor the rural district to urban district part of how this works, which I also really like).

I am sure there is a lot more to learn about districts in Civ 7 but this appears to be a great next step so far.

I’m a fan as well of this change. Especially since apparently some buildings can synergize based on what you place in the same district (example: put both Egyptian unique buildings in the same district and it becomes a Necropolis)

 

[Professor Phobo]

Yes - you place buildings on thr map in a chosen location. If there’s an existing district with an open building slot, it goes there. If no district yet, it creates a new urban district in that tile with more building slots upon completion. We don’t build separate color coded districts anymore.

So if I understand correct, an Urban District has two (by default) building slots, which can fit any building, and Rural Districts build whatever you need to extract the resource on that tile. So I'm mainly choosing whether to devote particular tiles to resource extraction, city buildings, or wonders?

 

[Mudokon Pop]

I love the idea that not every settlement needs to be a city. Sometimes I just want to found a settlement to get a resource or block another player. I get so burned out with endless 'what do you want to build next' prompts in the late game.

I wonder if any civ will have a 'can only build towns not cities' restriction as a unique ability?

 

[OzzyKP]

So if I understand correct, an Urban District has two (by default) building slots, which can fit any building, and Rural Districts build whatever you need to extract the resource on that tile. So I'm mainly choosing whether to devote particular tiles to resource extraction, city buildings, or wonders?

That seems to be the case. And it looks like you don't have to first build a district like Civ6, you build a building, place it on the map, and that becomes a district that can house additional buildings.

 

[nakzox]

Seems like cities vs. towns is pretty much identical to starbases vs outposts in Stellaris.

And districts in VII seem to work similarly to districts in Stellaris as well.

 

[E.C.H]

One of the Youtubers, Boesthius I believe, noted that you can apparently set the yield you want from a town when it's made and at the beginning of an age (but noted he wasn't a fan of how restricting that felt and wished it was more of a long-term project you set every so often to allow pivoting).

 

[Leefizzy]

I'm interested if the city+town cap is gonna encourage skirmishes in the early game in FFA MP, from what I can tell in 6, it's mostly relegated to scouts settler sniping or asking for delegation bribes/city state worker snags outside of barbs, as you build up the base of your engine for your victory, whether it be a the science victory for most civs or UU timing push with the 1 to 3 civs who can feasibly do it and/or culture fascism rush.


I'll never know for sure since I can't talk to the guys who came up and worked on the settlements, but the new town and city system etc. seem like hybrid pieces of many different mechanics/concepts from similar games before it. It could be an original idea initially, but everyone else just came out with theirs first, for better or for worse if the Humankind 2 comments I've seen are any indication.

CivBE's settlers founded baby outposts that turned into cities later, unless you had a specific deal with another civ to skip the process. Which meant settlers didn't found cities, it was something you got to eventually.
Humankind's outposts were capable of growing themselves and gathering gold if able for you to spend. and exploit notable resources with more investment.
On a lesser note, the towns attached to cities and vassal cities from Millennium, maybe I'm tired, but I see enough similarities to mention it, but feel like it's a bit of a stretch.

My personal favorite is the fact towns feed cities, I'm always a fan of at least one mechanic from most games that I end up fixating on, and feeder cities for me come from Stellaris and Endless space 2, where you can purposely divert resources from to feed other planets or 1 mega city if you felt like it.
I'm super stoked that another game, especially a big name series is adopting the feeding concept.

Maybe there's a Dev convention where someone pitches ideas and that becomes the new thing for the next release cycle type stuff is my favorite baseless conspiracy theory that isn't just the simpler, everyone is just copying each other when they see a neat idea that they can run with 1 for 1 or put their own spin on it. Or the 'no original idea' thing that a lot of people must've thought of at some point, it's just a matter of being to first to go public with it.

 

[thecrazyscot]

Some tidbits from this preview article:

New feature: towns​

• Settlers now found towns instead of cities
• Towns have no production queue: they convert Production directly into Gold
• You can use Gold to purchase units and buildings in towns
• Towns can be turned into cities by spending Gold; the cost increases with the number of cities you already control
• Towns can adopt permanent specializations with bonuses: farming town, mining town, military fort, trade outpost

Changes to cities​

• Cities no longer expand onto new tiles automatically. When a city grows, you're prompted to select an adjacent tile for it to annex. (You can still purchase tiles, too.)
• Workers are gone. Improvements like Farms and Mines are added to new tiles automatically.
• City tiles are now classed as "rural" or "urban." Rural tiles contain improvements (Farms, Mines, etc), and become urban districts if you add buildings to them. There are no longer predefined district types; you can place any combination of two buildings (as far as I observed) in an urban district.
• Some buildings are now classed as "Warehouse" buildings and work differently than in previous games: Granaries, for example, now provide +1 Food per farm improvement (In Civ 6, they provided a flat +1 Food/+2 Housing)
• Walls can now be built in each urban district; to capture a city, an invader must breach all of its fortified districts
• Resources can now be assigned to cities and towns, providing bonuses to them (I didn't play around with this too much, but I like that it makes resources more than just trade items; it seems like a significant feature that I just didn't get to see the full implications of)
• When you enter a new age, old buildings lose their special effects and adjacency bonuses, encouraging you to replace them with new buildings