Current Meta and Tall vs Wide

[Cymsdale]

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?

It's already a soft cap. Going over it is not that big of a deal if you have happiness bonuses.

 

[GeneralZIft]

It's already a soft cap. Going over it is not that big of a deal if you have happiness bonuses.

Yeah I know it's a soft cap, I'm just saying something less outright, instead of a cap, rather like a meter, could be better. That would be adjusted via several factors, might feel a bit more authentic than an arbitrary cap.

 

[chazzycat]

I have had good success in the late game with a massive specialist economy (30+ specialists per city) using all the growth modifiers and specialists boosts, with a high town:city ratio. It was by far my most successful game in terms of modern era yields. But yeah, I still wouldn't claim it's optimal yet. Filling a factory city with 10 fish in the modern age is where it really seems to take off, but that is pretty late. I'm guessing the optimal playstyle involves a lot of cities AND towns to support them and enable specialists.

 

[Krikkit1]

Yeah I know it's a soft cap, I'm just saying something less outright, instead of a cap, rather like a meter, could be better. That would be adjusted via several factors, might feel a bit more authentic than an arbitrary cap.

Except the cap is already adjusted by several factors (multiple things can make the cap go up and the happiness it affects is can be influenced by several factors)

 

[GeneralZIft]

Except the cap is already adjusted by several factors (multiple things can make the cap go up and the happiness it affects is can be influenced by several factors)

That's not what I mean. If instead it was a meter, you could have Cities cost 30 stability and a Town cost 20 stability, then various factors can add small amounts of stability.

That's a more 'continuous' measure than a set cap, so you don't have to have 0.5 settlements for a town in the settlement cap. See what I mean?

 

[Steinernein]

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."

Arguably Xerxes the Not-So-Militant since his bonus goes towards unique improvements, so you'll want to have more unique improvements than not which means less urban districts/quarters which means less city.

 

[cdstephens]

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.

I've seen this take before, but I'm curious if you can do an alternate build on coast.

Going Sailing -> Fishing Quay + God of the Sea -> Altar increases the yields on fishing boat tiles by a large margin. The downside is that God of the Sea only comes online with an Altar, making this slower than a Sawpit/Brickyard opening. But if you take mementos that give you bonus gold (like Lydian Lion), you could just buy the Altar ASAP after you unlock Mysticism. Would that be competitive with Brickyard/Sawpit?

 

[King Flevance]

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.

After thinking about it, this only discourages settlement spam but doesn't help tall strategies prosper.

Maybe also add that for every 2 cities that you are under the cap, you gain a +1 specialist limit in your cities. BUT if you expand later, that specialist gets turned into a typical population again.

 

[Taefin]

I think the growth mechanics are interfering with tall-wide balance, with minimal food needed to avoid starvation, but food in towns not helping boost city pop growth nearly as much as cheesy stacking of growth bonuses (are they still calculated growth bonuses wrong, as reducing the cost by X% instead of adding % toward? I haven’t tried abusing growth, since it looks unfun.) I don’t question whether a Rome town sprawl is near-optimal for antiquity, but in more general gameplay, getting too many cities seems too powerful since this is more buildings and more specialists, by getting more smaller cities that aren’t hitting the absurd food-per-growth numbers. On top of this, food buildings become nearly worthless for larger cities (often only 2-3% increase in growth).

Absent a steeper settlement cap penalty for cities than towns, I think food/growth can be modified to reward having fewer cities, with more +2 specialists (using the tall attributed).

 

[jshelr]

Good advice above. Just played a science game and was well ahead (on "king" level) looking to explore the features of the new game. Going into the modern era, Rome zoomed past me in science. We had significantly fewer settlements than the Romans and our huge capital didn't seem to help much. Lot's left to learn, of course, but the game seems more like civ 6 than civ 5 for sure. I would kind of like to see them reintroduce some of the "corruption" effects that reduced city spam way back in civ 3 and civ 4.

 

[Mesix]

Some of the victories should be more optimized for tall empires.

 

[chazzycat]

One city is not really gonna be competitive past antiquity, so that's the wrong lesson to learn. That does not mean tall is bad. The specialist economy just doesn't really kick into high gear until the modern age, so you need to expand more cities or you'll fall way behind in late antiquity or certainly by the exploration age. One university/observatory etc. is just not enough output to keep the pace and specialist slots are very limited.

To me tall is 2-3 cities by end of antiquity, growing to 4-6 by end of exploration. With 3+ food towns for every city. Whereas "wide" would mean more towns are being converted to cities, maybe something closer to a 1:1 ratio or possibly even lower.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

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

It's a 4X game of course Wide is going to be better than Tall .....

I think what they've done is very clever in that you can sort of play tall by just having a minimum number of cities (1 in the case of Augustus/Rome!) but still claim the land and the resources you need.

 

[pmarc]

My main issue with the scaling in Civ6 was that conquest was so much more efficient than self-settling due to the cost increase mechanic on each settler. At least here both the towns/cities you self-settle and those you conquer have the same impact on the cap.

Civ4 maintenance was a good balance IMO, but I know a lot of people didn't like how punishing it could be if you weren't careful, the settlement cap is easier to understand and probably won't surprise new players as much. I haven't played Deity yet in Civ7, I wonder if the AIs get bonuses that allow them to exceed the cap comfortably. (The Deity AI in Civ4 is reputed to be challenging, but that's only because it gets ridiculous bonuses so it can REX, spam and upgrade units with little economic impact.)