Current Meta and Tall vs Wide

[PoundedChicken]

I'm thinking the current meta for the game is still wide over tall. I've found most effective way to get ahead of AI so far is:

• Get to max settlements asap whenever they increase eg. 3 settlements by turn 30
• Get all the techs/civis that increase settlement cap
• Prioritise city placement by looking for combo resources + open space (few mountains, not too many navigable rivers unless your leader/civ has associated bonuses), you reall need some nicely spaced resources so that you have optionality for placing buildings/quarters to max adjacencies
• Build everything you can until you get to about 80% age progress, Food then Science/Culture then production then happiness
• If noone declares war on you, go to war with whoever is conquering other civs and take those settlements
• Max your trade routes with merchants
• Get camels one way or another
• Initiate deals with leaders that are lower than you on whatever the yield type the deal generates
• Convert towns to cities once they get to 10 pop(ish) and have something like a 3 city : 2 town ratio (assuming you keep growing)

What does everyone else reckon?

 

[Isca Dumnoniorum]

I think this is a fair summary - I'd say exceed max settlements though. The penalty is small enough for 1/2/3 cities over that you likely won't notice it (at least outside of the happiness crisis? I've not played that so don't want to speak out of turn).

 

[Xaviarlol]

Copied from my thread in the Modding forum:

So the age old issue of Wide being better than Tall is upon us in Civ 7.

The main issue is that there are no penalties to adding more settlements, until you reach the settlement limit, in which the penalties are quite minor. However, I don't think its fun that it is always optimal to get to your settlement limit. I would like to look at ways to reward Tall play.

Idea 1 - Provide a free Migrant unit every age for every unused settlement limit. eg. If you have 5 settlements but have a limit of 8 (ie 5/8), you receive 3 Migrants at the end of the age. For those who don't know, the Migrant is a unit in the game that can be used in a city to increase its pop, allowing you to take a new rural tile.

Idea 2 - Add a mechanic that reduces science and culture for every city, either above the city cap (easy to mod) or for every city regardless of cap (harder to mod).

Regarding idea 1, do any modders know or have any ideas on how to get the game to determine total settlements vs settlement limit, and apply the modifier as per above?

 

[wesplaysciv]

Don’t forget stealing techs and civics

 

[Sagax]

Settlement limit is funny. It’s nothing if you are slightly above it, can become crippling if you go way overboard, but once you hit the -35 happiness cap, you got nothing more to lose from going even more bonkers. If you are already that much over the limit, chances are you have already managed your happiness well enough.

 

[Cymsdale]

I for one am glad we've moved on from Civ 6's desire to jam "tall" down our throats. If there is useful land to settle you should want to settle it.

 

[AD1730]

I for one am glad we've moved on from Civ 6's desire to jam "tall" down our throats. If there is useful land to settle you should want to settle it.

Civ 6 favored wide over tall by a large margin. The move to put districts and wonders on map tiles makes wide gameplay by far the stronger strategy in Civ 6.

 

[vorlon_mi]

So far, I haven't found any downside to growing to the settlement limit. As @Cymsdale wrote, if you have useful land to settle, you should add it to your empire. Winning a civ game with only one city (the famous One City Challenge, OCC) is a variant that some people enjoy. Civ3 and Civ4 had other variants, like the 5CC (Five City Challenge) to win by military means. While Civ5 made playing with only 3 or 4 self-founded cities a normal style of play, that empire size was not optimal in Civ2, Civ3, Civ4, or Civ6. (Or even BERT, which was also based on the Civ5 engine.)

The city / town duality changes the calculations in Civ7. I could see some players having no more than 3 *cities* with 2-3 towns each to feed them. This is analogous to the Civ4 cultural victory, where one needed 3 cities with "temples" to build a "cathedral" (the actual names varied with the religion); the victory condition was achieved when 3 cities reached "Lengendary" culture status.

How does one define "tall" in Civ7? Only 3 cities? Or only 3 settlements?

 

[Acken]

Wide vs Tall has to do with the number of cities rather than settlements. Your cities can't even grow unless they are fed by multiple towns.

 

[Cymsdale]

I may have mashed Civ5 and Civ6 together a bit in my mind with how much they tried to push tall. Civ 5 was atrocious, Civ 6 backed off a little bit.

I think tall vs wide in Civ 7 is less of a question of how many settlements total, but more how many of those settlements are made into cities.

 

[Menocchio]

So far, I haven't found any downside to growing to the settlement limit. As @Cymsdale wrote, if you have useful land to settle, you should add it to your empire. Winning a civ game with only one city (the famous One City Challenge, OCC) is a variant that some people enjoy. Civ3 and Civ4 had other variants, like the 5CC (Five City Challenge) to win by military means. While Civ5 made playing with only 3 or 4 self-founded cities a normal style of play, that empire size was not optimal in Civ2, Civ3, Civ4, or Civ6. (Or even BERT, which was also based on the Civ5 engine.)

The city / town duality changes the calculations in Civ7. I could see some players having no more than 3 *cities* with 2-3 towns each to feed them. This is analogous to the Civ4 cultural victory, where one needed 3 cities with "temples" to build a "cathedral" (the actual names varied with the religion); the victory condition was achieved when 3 cities reached "Lengendary" culture status.

How does one define "tall" in Civ7? Only 3 cities? Or only 3 settlements?

The game mechanics largely define "tall" as "3 cities or fewer." This is judging based on some of the leader attribute abilities, where they give, say, a +2 bonus if you have 3 cities or fewer, +1 otherwise. Playing with just one singular city is pretty viable depending on your leader/civ combo, since the yields you get from specialists (and policies) can get enormous if you plan it right.

 

[vorlon_mi]

The game mechanics largely define "tall" as "3 cities or fewer." This is judging based on some of the leader attribute abilities, where they give, say, a +2 bonus if you have 3 cities or fewer, +1 otherwise. Playing with just one singular city is pretty viable depending on your leader/civ combo, since the yields you get from specialists (and policies) can get enormous if you plan it right.

Fascinating. Which leaders have bonuses that reward having 3 cities or fewer? I didn't dig into the details as Firaxis announced each leader. The first 6 or so that I read didn't mention 3 cities or fewer.

If it's a civ that rewards 3 cities or fewer, then which age is that? I would find it surprising if a Modern civ has a bonus for 3 cities or fewer.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I for one am glad we've moved on from Civ 6's desire to jam "tall" down our throats. If there is useful land to settle you should want to settle it.

Civ 6 favored wide over tall by a large margin. The move to put districts and wonders on map tiles makes wide gameplay by far the stronger strategy in Civ 6.

Agreed, how on earth did Civ6 force Tall. If anything, you could maybe say Civ5 forced Tall. Holy smokes if you didn't play Wide in Civ6 you were just neutering yourself.

 

[Menocchio]

Fascinating. Which leaders have bonuses that reward having 3 cities or fewer? I didn't dig into the details as Firaxis announced each leader. The first 6 or so that I read didn't mention 3 cities or fewer.

If it's a civ that rewards 3 cities or fewer, then which age is that? I would find it surprising if a Modern civ has a bonus for 3 cities or fewer.

None of the leaders directly besides, arguably, Augustus—but the leader attributes trees (Diplomatic, Expansionist, Cultural, etc) have some abilities that do: "+1 Resource Capacity in Cities, or +2 Resource Capacity if you have 3 or fewer Cities" from the Economic tree for example, or "+15% Food and Happiness towards maintaining Specialists, or +30% if you have 3 or fewer Cities" in Expansionist, which also has the interesting later bonus of "+1 Specialist Limit in all Cities. -1 Settlement Limit."

 

[HarisPilton]

Hi, this is my take on min-maxing the game. My play experience with this tactic is both on online multiplayer and offline singleplayer, with hard AI's and maximum amount of civ's for the map size. This answer relates to online game speed.

Your first two capital builds is 2x scouts. Their focus is scouting for land for your next settlement. Goodie huts, for turns 1 - 20 your scouts should prioritise food and production to capital, to increase settler production. On turns 20 forward they prioritise culture to help hitting your settlement cap of 8 or 9 as fast as possible. (9 with memento)

Your third build is either sawpit or brickyard, depending on the terrain. Once chosen only pick the associated tiles. If you build sawpit only expand on vegetated tiles and so on. You should not focus to get bonus resources unless they are salt (20% production on units, which is nice for upcoming settler pump) or the improvement matches your built warehouse.

Your fourth build until turn 30 is to only pump settlers. Building a settler should take between 2-4 turns per unit depending if you have salt or not. Normally I have 3 turns per settler, in great starts its 2 turns.
By the end of turn 30 you should have 7-9 settlements with a settlement cap of 6-7. Your first 2 town settlements should focus on food, set specialisation to food towns once they get to 7 population, buy granary in each of them once settled. For science research first the boosts to your build warehouse type in capital, then focus on researching military first to get the best units as fast as possible. Science is however not a focus on this play style, do not worry too much about your science per turn

In short, current meta is very favourable to playing wide. This strategy will absolutely crush anyone trying to play tall. In early antiquity you will hit over 100 gold per turn while your enemies are still at 20 gold per turn. This will allow you to buy military very quickly if you are being attacked, or scale up your towns and capital with buildings if no pressure.

General tips about strategy
- Don't worry about optimal town settlement locations or settling next to maximum resource. Just settle anywhere to hit your settlement cap and maximising your map territory. Especially if you are pressured by hostile city states not allowing you to bring the settler to your preferred map location. With 9 - 12 settlements by late antiquity you will hit the quest cap of 20 resources 100% guaranteed. Never settle to far from your capital or other towns (trade network range)
- Don't worry about science, science is basically a waste in antiquity age as it does not allow snowballing like in civ 6. In order to build a snowball momentum that translates to next ages, we therefore focus on the actual significant things like: culture to hit settlement cap, maximum settlement count to claim the land and gold production to buy a massive army and 5-6 commanders to carry them on to the next age. You should hit over 300 gold per turn at late antiquity age. If you struggle convert towns to mining towns to you can afford to buy more military, if you are allowed to play peacefully allow the towns to grow as large as possible.
- Do not buy anything that you don't need in capital or towns. When settling a town already decide if you are going to focus on lumber, mines or food. Only build the associated warehouse in it. In mid/late antiquity you should by the rest of ageless buildings in towns to min-max adjacency bonuses. Only if you are allowed, if you are fighting multiple wars to worry about that.
- This strategy pairs well with Rome/augustus as you get free legion when settling and increased gold in capital for each town and max culture production from town city centers
- Bonus resources are not your focus until mid/late antiquity, however prioritise sending any food or production resource to capital, do not keep them in towns.
- Your first 3 settlements should border to other players so you can claim your land. The next 4 settlements you can set close to capital on uncontested lands.
- This strategy is aggressive, AI players will attack you, this is good to level up your commander. Real players in multiplayer might also attack you, be prepared to defend your land.
- Keep all settlements as towns until late antiquity age. You can convert 1-2 towns to cities to ramp up science at late antiquity age if you are not under pressure. Not needed tho, science is not that important.
- In late antiquity build happiness buildings in each town and assign a happiness resource to them to prevent rebellion once crisis starts
- If you managed to conquer other civ's cities and got to 10+ settlements at late antiquity age and managed to hit 100% military quests all is good, if not, build additional settlement at the last turn on antiquity age to reach military quest goals of 12 settlements before transitioning to next age. Very important! You want to pick +2 settlement cap as after transition, and you want to earn military points to get the +1 settlement cap from attributes
- Optimal play is 1 city and rest as towns. Why? Towns produce food for your mega city capital and gold for your empire. You need the gold to buy units on your battlefronts. Towns are easier to keep happy. This strategy allows you already to reach then end of culture tree, and quite close to the end of science tree. There is no need to convert in order to build additional science or culture buildings.
- Your resource priority is salt in early game and camels & happiness resources in mid and late antiquity
- If the map allows it, settle 2 towns on islands so you can pick Hawaii for the next age transition. Hawaii has the best culture production, which allows you to min max settlement cap in next age as fast as possible to expand before you enemies do
- If you play rome/augustus (recommended) in antiquity age pick the Rome specific civics first (+2 settlement cap and gold for each town). Once rome civics are done, you can continue to mysticism (religion is not important for us, as it does not increase our settler production in early game)

 

[ggmoyang]

It looks like city spam approach is better in most cases, unless you have great tool that works on towns. (e. g. Ming great wall)
The city growth formula has exponent part so you could get more pops by not focusing food on one big city.
Cities can build various buildings which translates to more yield, and they can use production which is more efficient than gold.
One problem is demotion to town on age transition, so economic golden age is very important.

 

[Evolena]

- Optimal play is 1 city and rest as towns. Why? Towns produce food for your mega city capital and gold for your empire. You need the gold to buy units on your battlefronts. Towns are easier to keep happy. This strategy allows you already to reach then end of culture tree, and quite close to the end of science tree. There is no need to convert in order to build additional science or culture buildings.

For the Food, only if they are really connected to your Capital, which with 7+ Towns may require using Merchants.

 

[King Flevance]

It would be nice if all town halls required maintenance but only cities counted toward your cap.

 

[Mudkip1001]

It would be nice if all town halls required maintenance but only cities counted toward your cap.

Bump! This times a 1000! or make towns a 1/2 point.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I'd like them to replace the city cap with a new more fluid system, but I don't have any good ideas as of writing...
Perhaps a stability mechanic?