City-Heavy Antiquity Strategy for Exploration Snowball

[Manpanzee]

The town/city relationship and the proper ratio of the two settlement types is one of the most interesting new features of the Civ VII economy. The most popular informed take I’ve seen is something like “more towns than cities in Antiquity, scaling to around three towns per city later in the game”. This is also how I played my first few games, but I’ve grown interested in exploring city-heavy strategies, trying to see just how much value can be extracted from the economic golden ages.

After a handful of test runs, I’ve landed on the “six-city zero-town Antiquity” strategy as an interesting approach. Why six cities? Couple reasons:

• Attainability. Converting towns to cities costs a lot of gold past the first couple, and every town you convert to a city further sacrifices gold income. I’ve found that there’s usually just enough time to create six cities and sufficiently develop the last couple to justify the cost of converting them. Setting up 7+ developed cities is possible, but it may not be easy at high difficulty.
• Exploration era settlement cap. I think that it’s ultra important to spam out as much rapid expansion as you can afford early in the Exploration era. This means pushing well over the cap for a while. More settlements in Antiquity = more happiness penalties and more time over the cap in Exploration. That can be mitigated, but I’m trying to be attentive to the issue and build in a way to maximize my per-settlement yield coming out of Antiquity.

The goal with this strategy is to dominate the Exploration era. We are using the Antiquity era to maximize the next era’s slingshot, not to maximize Antiquity-era yields. What we want to do is launch a wave of Settlers and establish six distant lands settlements ASAP in Exploration. This provides enough self-founded settlements to max out the Militaristic track without war, and hopefully gives us the velocity to max out the Economic track in a reasonable timeframe.

We enter Exploration era with three priorities:

• Have enough gold and hammers to buy a second Cog on turn 1 and ready six Settlers to start crossing the ocean the instant Cartography unlocks.
• Carry over enough science from Antiquity to research Cartography relatively quickly. There are diminishing returns to this, since we also need time to get our Settlers out. Ideally Cartography takes no more than eight turns to unlock.
• Scale enough early-Exploration science to get to Shipbuilding ASAP.

If you manage to get out of Antiquity with a decent amount of gold, it probably takes no more than three cities to hammer out enough Settlers. So what are we getting out of those extra cities? For starters, we get more places to put Observatories and more potential for scaling early-Exploration science. We also get a lot of spare hammers to dedicate toward religion.

I think people are severely underrating spreading religion because it’s temporary. But the short-term value is immense – let’s say you get the “four science per foreign settlement” belief. Your Missionaries will give you unbeatable science ROI for as long as you can count on converting a full city per charge. Will the AI Missionary spam that kicks in mid-era prevent you from keeping these cities converted? Yeah, it will. But see the list of priorities above – if the yields from religion help fuel the race to Shipbuilding, that’s worth it, and it’s ok that you won’t get to keep everything all era long.

Attached are a couple screenshots from a successful example game – Amina leading Aksum into Chola on Deity/Standard/Standard. Key benchmarks: Sixth distant lands settlement founded on turn 18. Shipbuilding researched on turn 31. Final legacy path (Economic) cleared on turn 72, ending the age.

Is this the best way to play? Probably not. Is this a good way to play? Yeah, I think so, especially if your goals are something like “complete the full Exploration legacy grand slam in the short time you have available at high difficulty”.

 

[Fluffball]

As I play the antiquity era more I am pushing myself to get more cities but I am not sure zero towns is a good goal with the flexibility and eminence of gold.

I usually have masses of gold by the end of antiquity which I use to buy extra commanders while they are cheap, and unique buildings/improvement before they are no longer available and maybe convert another town to a city in preparation for the next era.

Then in exploration I usually have max gold carry over and high enough income to just buy 3 or 4 cogs on turn 1 then settlers while I get the appropriate tech as well as a temple and whatever missionaries I want while using hammers to build buildings with the overbuild policy card bonus.

Apart from gold which I usually a sparse resource in antiquity you can also get lot of influence from specializing towns which is generally rare throughout the game but particularly so in antiquity.

Even just taking maximum advantage of the 50% bonus from a town can make a huge difference in later eras when your main source of food for cities is usually towns.


Overall if, when or how many towns to convert is dependent on the situation. My aim/rule of thumb is to manage to max out the tech and civic trees in antiquity and get some of those wildcard points and I am finding (depending on how good locations are) 3-4 cities seems about right to do that while.still swimming in gold at the end of the era.

 

[jshelr]

• Carry over enough science from Antiquity to research Cartography relatively quickly. There are diminishing returns to this, since we also need time to get our Settlers out. Ideally Cartography takes no more than eight turns to unlock.

Nice post. I wonder if you could expand on the above bullet and maybe comment on the timing of settlers and shipbulding++ ? Thanks

 

[chazzycat]

I definitely agree that sending a wave of settlers & missionaries to distant lands ASAP is a key to success in the exploration age. As it should be.

Personally I enjoy the combination of food towns + constant monarchy food celebrations in the exploration age to crank up my urban population and maximize social policy slots, so I haven't tried this approach of going way over the settlement limit at the start. But yeah, I can see it working out very nicely for economic victory.

 

[Manpanzee]

I wonder if you could expand on the above bullet and maybe comment on the timing of settlers and shipbulding++ ? Thanks

I had a game where I really leaned into maximizing science carryover into Exploration, taking the scientific golden age with full Antiquity science infrastructure built out in all my settlements. I believe I actually got the Cartography research time all the way down to three turns. But it quickly became apparent that this approach didn’t leave me with the econ to take proper advantage of getting Cartography so quickly.

For Shipbuilding, initial science carryover becomes less important, since you have time to meaningfully build out Exploration science infrastructure to get you there.

One timing thing I didn’t note is that I only got seven treasure fleet resources from six settlements in my example game. I believe this is below average, and with some more patience planting Settlers you should be able to get at least eight most of the time. That makes a big difference, since going from seven to eight lets you get to thirty with only four treasure fleet cycles. If you prioritize that, there’s probably a bit more slack on timing the Shipbuilding unlock.

Personally I enjoy the combination of food towns + constant monarchy food celebrations in the exploration age to crank up my urban population and maximize social policy slots, so I haven't tried this approach of going way over the settlement limit at the start. But yeah, I can see it working out very nicely for economic victory.

I also like the food celebration a lot in Exploration. You do miss out on early era social policy slots by playing this way. On the other hand, delaying early celebrations means that the mid-era celebrations come in faster once you fix your settlement cap. You can make a case that this has you "peaking at the right time", with growth buffs coming at a phase of the era when you have the buildings and specialist slots to make the best use of them.

Having a lot of cities also makes it easy to hit the scientific legacy path, since getting the first 40-yield tile in a city is generally a lot easier than getting the second one. You won't have to find yourself in a situation where you need to grow into six specialists in a single city in order to hit the target.

 

[Auraiz]

It really depends if your map position dictates it. I think the goals and logic to your thinking are spot on but feels like theres a big loss in terms of opportunity costs with this.

City state suzerains bonuses are really strong right now, influence at the start of an age is very strong the right unique improvements can give a massive boost. Getting 6 cities up and fully running from ancient for a transition is expensive. You can probably do the same strategy with 4 cities, and 2 late antuiquity cities with good (coastal) connections that are meant to be set to hub towns for influence asap. Only build monument/villa for extra influence and warehouses in those 2 cities in antiquity, let them stay towns on age change. Use the gold saved for more UI/UB, another filled out commander to send to distant lands etc. Have triple the influence of any other civ and snag those city states early

 

[Fluffball]

I also like the food celebration a lot in Exploration.

I always do food/food/gold as growing cities gives much better long term yields in the first two eras while I don't bother with food in the last era and the flexibility of gold is so useful for rushing victory stuff.

 

[Bleidraner]

I am going to try this approach as I always have too few cities in exploration, which is where they count and I pay for it later, entering Modern with poor science and culture. In Modern, I think if you are going for fastest turns in one victory condition in Modern, then three cities are enough, as long as you have built a production monster and the other 2 are OK. I see a downside though, as especialization town in Exploration to hub towns gives you a lot of influence and makes it easy to befriend and get the OP bonuses from the IPs. Up to know I have especializad towns on t1 in exploration, this strategy seems to prevent that. Also, too few towns in exploration do not allow you to grow your future production monster as fast as you may want.

Its unclear to me though when is the ideal time to convert town to city. As soon as possible or do you grow them beyond the minimum you convert?

 

[Manpanzee]

I think a lot of the ideas in here are outdated at this point. These days I rarely go beyond four cities in Antiquity, and often end with only three. A few reasons for this:

1. Antiquity can often be made a lot shorter than I realized. There isn't actually that much time to convert and develop cities.

2. I didn't know about the "pre-legacy upgrade trick". Cities beyond four in Antiquity are generally going to cost 1,000g each. A city upgrade at the very start of Exploration (before clicking confirm on the Econ Golden Age) costs 300 gold. The savings make Antiquity city upgrades harder to justify. Is getting that last city upgraded late in Antiquity really going to provide more value than waiting til Exploration and saving 700g? Often it isn't.

3. I am also specializing most of my towns on turn one of Exploration at the moment. The changes to the food curve make me really want towns to get stuff growing, and having all my settlements at 50 turns to growth at the start of Exploration seems wrong. The cities all being around 20 turns to growth in my OP screenshot definitely isn't how things work now.

Its unclear to me though when is the ideal time to convert town to city. As soon as possible or do you grow them beyond the minimum you convert?

I don't think there's any clear heuristic. It depends on gold income and growth and what other stuff you may "need" to spend gold on. Sometimes I'll delay slightly and buy a building instead of trying to convert at the earliest possible opportunity, since the 50g savings from bumping the pop up can make this a reasonable value.

 

[Bleidraner]

Well I am going to to see if I can find a massively overpowered combo like Isabella and Maya (seems ot be the strongest, we had that in one of the GoTMs and it was amazing), see how fast I can do antiquity and then I wanna try to do manpanzee’s settler spam in turn one in Exploration with some other OP combo like Abbasid and then go to Modern with whatever I can get that offers military or cultural advantages. To try to see how fast this can be really done after the patches. I am going to chooose Continent plus and Standard/Deity. I wish there was a way to try to do one of these speedruns peacefully and compete, but the reality is that killing 1-2 AIs in Antiquity is absolutely necessary for a sub 100, and killing another one in Exploration also helps to go sub 70, so the real OP combos in Antiquity are probably more military in nature, and not the ones I mentioned above, in spite of the designated victory being science. Which I find a pity, war is Ok but I really enjoy the turtle approaches but they dont seem to be viable in civ 7. There seems to be a lot of luck involved based on what IPs you get, especially in Modern. Fortunately, goody huts are no longer the factor they used to be in other versions (remember the free settler in civ 5. Also there seems to be a few places like t90 in Antiquity and t70 in Exploration that are difficult to beat. Modern is different, only having to worry about one victory condition. Military is the fastest in Modern IMHO, so I will probably have to go for that. But I would like to try science.

 

[pmarc]

I am going to try this approach as I always have too few cities in exploration, which is where they count and I pay for it later, entering Modern with poor science and culture. In Modern, I think if you are going for fastest turns in one victory condition in Modern, then three cities are enough, as long as you have built a production monster and the other 2 are OK. I see a downside though, as especialization town in Exploration to hub towns gives you a lot of influence and makes it easy to befriend and get the OP bonuses from the IPs. Up to know I have especializad towns on t1 in exploration, this strategy seems to prevent that. Also, too few towns in exploration do not allow you to grow your future production monster as fast as you may want.

Its unclear to me though when is the ideal time to convert town to city. As soon as possible or do you grow them beyond the minimum you convert?

Like @Manpanzee I generally end up with 3-4 cities in Antiquity. Generally I pace the conversion not only based on gold, but also to avoid spreading my production resources too thin, so maybe I need to finish a wonder or some key buildings in a city before passing production resources to a new city. Starting exploration with 4 isn't too bad, you don't really need to build 6 settlers right away. A strong production town on the coast can probably build a 2nd settler by the time one produced in the middle of the land would get to the ocean anyway...

I don't think many cities is always the key for a good science/culture start in Modern. Ageless yields can come from (1) a strong UQ (like the Abbasids'), this is the main case where you want lots of cities; (2) specialists with fixed (non-adjacency) bonuses like Confucius, then you may want less cities; (3) unique improvements from your Civ or city-states that can be put in either towns or cities. It's nice that in the last 2 GOTMs we got both the example of a city-heavy setup (Hatshepsut with unique quarters and production bonuses) and a town-heavy setup (Xerxes with no UQ and gold bonuses).

I am going to chooose Continent plus and Standard/Deity. I wish there was a way to try to do one of these speedruns peacefully and compete, but the reality is that killing 1-2 AIs in Antiquity is absolutely necessary for a sub 100, and killing another one in Exploration also helps to go sub 70, so the real OP combos in Antiquity are probably more military in nature, and not the ones I mentioned above, in spite of the designated victory being science.

Since they reduced the age progression from eliminating a Civ to 10 in Exploration (same as a future tech or future civic, is that correct?), it seems non-warring strategies could be viable for fastest time in that age at least.

 

[Bleidraner]

@pmarc I think the Confucius specialists will benefit from extra cities, although you may be right, it may be better to have a lot of towns to feed the extra growth in a few cities. On your comment on Exploration, yes I think you can do a record time peacefully if you manage the kind of snowball that @Manpanzee usually manages to do. So far I have not been able to get as far as future tech or future civic before t70 which seems to be the turn to beat, mainly because I had not realized that the optimum befriending strategy is one that gives you 1 or 2 future techs/civics as opposed to early befriending, I have to try that and do it with 6 cities, I have not gone past 4 yet in exploration. BTW I think Manpanzees settler spam is more about accelerating the economic path in Exploration, with the side effect of an accelerated military path, more than a desire to have a lot of extra cities.

The problem is Antiquity. The reward for killing an AI is massive, and I just don’t see how I can get to a t90 age end peacefully. I am testing a few theories with overpowered combos (Isabella+Maya can give you a 600 gold start if you spawn near Everest, due to Everest discover all mountains in the continent, for example). That allows you to plant 3 settlements by t12, which helps an early snowball. But I don't think it is going to be enough, I will report back if I get anywhere. Although I am dying to try the Pangea+ so I may get distracted .

Hum, this makes me think there may be strategies that work in Pangea+ that do not work on the other maps. Hope they do a GoTM on Pangea+ soon.