Civ 7 looks gorgeous, but the sprawly gameplay direction has gone opposite i was hoping for. Here's why:

[Futumch]

Looks like Battle Isle for the Amiga, but souped up dramatically.

 

[Nikolai II]

Firstly, there's a balance of rural towns to urbanised cities. I saw Ursa Ryan covers this quite well. He mentioned:

1. Towns can never build urban districts.

He said that? Others have mentioned being able to buy buildings, so surely there is urban districts in towns too?

 

[Republic of San Montuoso]

He said that? Others have mentioned being able to buy buildings, so surely there is urban districts in towns too?

I feel however that the available buildings will be severaly limited, and perhaps limited to specialization. Like granary could be built only in farming towns, market in trade hubs, stuff like that. So perhaps you could have one or two urban districts in towns, but all the rest would be rural districts.

 

[fossar_]

He said that? Others have mentioned being able to buy buildings, so surely there is urban districts in towns too?

Thanks for the correction, I've rewatched and edited appropriately. Towns can't build urban districts directly and won't buy themselves. However as you've seen, urban buildings can be bought for them, and urban districts placed in the process.
It remains to be seen how urban they will look as a result. I'd still imagine drastically less than cities.

 

[TreVor_ish]

Towns will be able to build rural districts (like former tile improvements - for instance, plantation on a resource). I believe there will be more rural district options than tile improvements alone.

Urban districts will not necessarily take less space than in CIV VI, currently to build a library, first I need to build a science district and then place a library inside of it.
This is now streamlined. So, instead of building an empty districts to place buildings inside of them, I will be able to build those buildings directly on the map.
Some districts between ages will become obsolete (will provide less yields). For instance - in place of library build in one age, I will be able to build an academy on same tile. (similar to Old World) I wonder how would it look like, if I would like to have all science district buildings placed next to each other in one city.

 

[BladeRunner2025_]

Humankind 2 / SimCity 2024

 

[TheGrayFox]

I don't mind city sprawl and I really do like the idea of destacking cities. i think the problem is that cities sprawl out too far and should only go out a tile or two, that way continents don't just become blobs of ubran cities seperated by nothing.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't mind city sprawl and I really do like the idea of destacking cities. i think the problem is that cities sprawl out too far and should only go out a tile or two, that way continents don't just become blobs of ubran cities seperated by nothing.

While I absolutely Love the "Everything on the map" philosophy of Cv VI which resulted in City Districts with all the buildings visible in them, the City Sprawl should really only be a possibility in the Third Age of Civ VII. Pre-Industrial Cities simply could not spread too far without becoming utterly unmanageable and unlivable. It took powered transportation - first by steam, then by internal combustion and electric-powered mass transit (trolleys, subways) to allow cities to Spread Out.

Today, as a result we have numerous world cities that cover territory in excess of 200 - 300 square kilometers. Classical Athens was stuffed inside city walls that you could walk around in a long day. Modern Athens spreads clear across the Attic peninsula from shore to shore - if you wanted to run the original Marathon you'd breathe automobile fumes the entire distance!

So, keep the Districts, but I hope there is some kind of limitation on how far from the city center and how many you can actually build until the very late game. The fact that they have added Towns as separate 'Districts' is encouraging, because it implies strongly that you cannot just drop Urban Districts everywhere. Let's save the Megalopolis Sprawl from Boston to Washington DC for the Third Age, thank you.

 

[acluewithout]

I’m a big fan of the sprawling cities. I’m one of those people that really liked the idea behind the C6 ‘city lights’ mod. I also mechanically love the idea of more unpacked / sprawling cities (up to a point).

The Civ 7 city / town mechanics look very promising. C 6 already sort of had this concept conceptually - you could create powerful mega cities by keeping a highly promoted Governor in a city, and then your other Cities could become sort of ‘feeder’
cities through a combination of projects, allocating population, and trade routes.

In Civ 6, the colonial mechanics / policy cards, and how some IZs worked (especially industrial zones) really enhanced this big city / feeder city mechanics which was fun. And then, you were also sort of capped with mega cities, because of having only a limited pool of Governors, although you had a lot of room to play with the idea notwithstanding the cap.

Personally, I liked Civ 6’s implementation, because it created this fun ‘tall and wide’ play style. As a result, I’m mostly excited about Civ 7 - the formal ‘city v town’ split seems to give this mega-city / feeder city a much better foundation. eg one of the problems with how it was implemented in Civ 6 is that you had to set up all your feeder cities with continuous projects - Civ 7 towns should eliminate this
problem.

I think Civ 7s approach could also have some other interesting developments, eg having governors again, but perhaps working more like commanders. Or, more interesting dynamics around a Civ 7 version of loyalty or colonial mechanics. Or, make conquest more nuanced, because if you capture city, your opponent loses a city but you may only gain a ‘settlement’.

My biggest hesitation with C7 is some of the knock on changes from the new city / town / district changes. At first blush, I’m not thrilled about the resulting changes to tile improvements, workers / builder, trader units, trade routes etc, and not a huge fan of now having more limited selection of districts (although at the same time love having more generic districts instead of blue-science, purple-culture etc). I’m extra sad not having a ‘harbour’ district anymore.

But I think FXS were already recognising workers / builders and traders don’t work after the very early game / become too much micro in Civ 6, and has moved towards sort of elimination by giving them automate options. So, although I’m worried getting rid of builders / traders / allocating pop etc
might remove some fun optimisation play from the early game and or really change the game’s feel. However, I think we really have to wait and see, because these change are so much part of other things FXS are doing in the game, and taken together have potential to work really well.

So, yeah. Not sure what this all ends up
looking like, but lots of what’s being implemented in C7 looks really promising.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I'm in the camp that doesn't like urban sprawl. One civ-complementary hobby is looking at historical atlases, and what they give you is a country, with some little pinpricks representing cities. That's how I wish Civ maps would look. It even bummed me that when you zoomed out of Civ V, the label for your city's name would only shrink to a certain extent, so when you were as zoomed out as far as you could go, cities still dominated the space visually more than I would have liked.

Continues to bother me, too, that units are these gigantic towering figures relative to cities. Why don't they just kick the walls down?