How do you feel about being limited in number of cities and can we conquer the world?

[Boris Gudenuf]

If you mean the book by Paul Cooper, there is a video series and podcasts on youtube, too.

Fall of Civilizations

A podcast about the collapse of civilizations throughout history. Why do civilizations collapse? What happens afterwards? And what did it feel like to watch it happen?

www.youtube.com

The book was written based on the podcast series. I got the book through the History Book Club last week and just started reading it this weekend. It's a good overview, and he includes a lot of the latest speculation on Climate Change and other natural disasters (Icelandic volcanoes seem to be a favorite 'culprit' now) as contributors to the collapse or decline of societies, without being too welded to the idea. I very much like the fact that he presents the various theories as Theories, not as newly-established Facts, which they aren't - yet.

 

[Krikkit1]

Managing too many cities exhausts me, I like playing tall. OCC was my favorite in Civ 5.

Hopefully your style might actually be the Widest type…One city that you actually manage, and lots of towns auto feeding it.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Hopefully your style might actually be the Widest type…One city that you actually manage, and lots of towns auto feeding it.

So basically, Rome.

 

[Professor Phobo]

Oh yeah i'm going to abuse towns to pump up one mega city, already know that's going to be my jam.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Ehhh, sort of? It's not a bad model for the municipia and colonia (both Latin and Roman varieties) during the Middle Republic that were founded by Rome. But it doesn't take into account all the nominally independent city-states and tribes that they conquered, but who kept their autonomy while accepting Roman Suzerainty. And the situation is even more complicated once you look at how Rome administered it's territory outside of Italy, and it all changes during the Empire. Multiple times.

But to some extent, and within the confines of the games model, yes.

Rome had an almost bewildering variety of municipal organizations and relations by the time of the Empire, and they were not always related to the size of the municipality or its relationship with Rome or any other city or settlement. That makes Rome a good model for the game mechanic: a web of Cities and Towns, the latter feeding the former to various degrees.

A more precise model of the in-game mechanic would be Uruk, one of the earliest Mega-Cities, and Hacinebi and Arslantepe, a pair of copper mining towns in eastern Anatolia set up solely to mine and smelt copper and provide it via pack train to the city: two 'specialized towns' circa 3300 BCE.

I suspect this will be closer to the actual way it works in Civ VII: more precise relationships from largely specialized Towns each supplying one City, with the number of Towns able to supply the same City subject to changes within and between Ages.

Bet anything, though, that number of Towns in support will be a major determinant for producing really Large cities in the game.

 

[historix69]

Ursa Ryan talks about the cities and towns mechanic in his preview :

I see problems there :
- if every civ starts with a cap of 3 and can increase it to a cap of ca 7 in antiquity, how can you scale empire size with map size? How can you populate a large map other as by adding lots of players?
- OOC in form of "One City with as many towns as possible to feed it" will likely become a very strong and popular strategy.
- Changing towns into additional cities will reduce number of towns and divert part of food from towns to your other cities so that all your cities will grow slower and stay smaller.
(eg cap of 7 : 1 x (city with 6 towns) or 2 x (city with 2.5 towns each) or 3 x (city with 1.33 towns each) or 4 x (city with 0.75 towns each))
- it probably would be good to be able to assign towns to specific cities so that your capital can still grow while you build a 2nd city.
- it seems strange that the cap does not distinguish between small towns and huge cities. A city of 100 counts the same to the cap as a small town with size 1 ...
- if you are at the cap and are in war with another empire and conquer their towns and cities, you will likely go over your cap and get a massive happiness penalty, in worst case resulting in your own cities revolting ... (I think that's worse than what happened in Civ 5 if you completely ignored the happiness mechanic there.) (That's completely different to Civ 3 where you could garrison lots of troops in your cities to supress uprisings.)
- towns and cities have different mechanics. If conquered cities turn into towns, what happens to all the buildings and districts there. And if a player re-conquers one of his cities, will he get back part of the population and buildings and districts he built there before or is everything lost?


- I remember "Rise of Nations" by Brian Reynolds which also had a cap for settlements, but that only affected the ability to place a new settlement, so when you were at your cap you could still conquer more cities without negative consequences ...
- "Millennia" has a cap for towns per city/region. The town cap slowly increases from 1 to 4 while progressing through the 10 ages. Region population can also grow from 1 to 50 or 100 or more allowing them to work as many tiles. This forces players to actually preplan the enormous later size of the city region including locations for all the 4 towns per city and keep the region and the spots for the currently unavailable towns empty (or place outposts there) for large part of the game which does not feel good. (Alternative in Millennia is to build a temporary city in the reserved area and later raze it ...)

 

[Krikkit1]

Guessing the answer to some of those

MAP SIZE
The base number for an era (3) itself could depend on map size
OR…map size could multiply that number (and then round off)

REVOLTS
Would probably happen in recently conquered Settlements first

Would probably be able to be fought off using military units (doing combat with rebel units)

TOWNS v CITIES conquest
They said you can’t Buy certain buildings in towns. That doesn’t mean the town couldn’t have them.

I would imagine the buildings stay (some might be potentially destroyed by the “collateral damage” of conquest, some might do nothing if they are in a town (and not be buyable in towns), but they could stay until the place became a city again.

 

[Deggial]

Is it confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the city cap also applies to towns?
Is there a reliable source?

Because somehow I can't imagine it working that way. After all, it is called the city cap.

 

[GeneralZift]

Is it confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the city cap also applies to towns?
Is there a reliable source?

Because somehow I can't imagine it working that way. After all, it is called the city cap.

It's not it's called the settlement cap

 

[Nikolai II]

Is it confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the city cap also applies to towns?
Is there a reliable source?

Because somehow I can't imagine it working that way. After all, it is called the city cap.

Settlement cap is the name I think? And it would be logical to limit settlements as opposed to merely cities. Else it's ICS all over again.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Yeh, I think they've referred to it as the settlement cap so far. This is the sort of thing that could quite easily change between now and release though!

 

[Deggial]

OK, settlement cap then.
I am still not convinced, the interpretation is more than guesswork - at least, until we have an explicit confirmation.

Towns are way too important to access resources, if anything.
Regarding ITS (we need a new acronym ): No problem as long as they are not directly controllable, imo. The opportunity cost of building a new settler might be enough. Also, they will be easy prey for any wannebee conqueror, as they will not be defended by city walls.

 

[pokiehl]

OK, settlement cap then.
I am still not convinced, the interpretation is more than guesswork - at least, until we have an explicit confirmation.

It’s definitely both cities and towns that the cap refers to. That’s the very reason for the new term Settlement.

For example, there’s a screenshot of the Antiquity Age victory progress screen. For domination, it specifies you need to conquer 12 cities or towns, and says that “settlements” you capture from another player are worth 2 for this victory condition.

 

[Nikolai II]

Also, they will be easy prey for any wannebee conqueror, as they will not be defended by city walls.

Assuming you cannot buy some walls in towns, that is.

 

[Deggial]

It’s definitely both cities and towns that the cap refers to. That’s the very reason for the new term Settlement.

For example, there’s a screenshot of the Antiquity Age victory progress screen. For domination, it specifies you need to conquer 12 cities or towns, and says that “settlements” you capture from another player are worth 2 for this victory condition.

I can agree with your first sentence - at least, if it is actually refered as settlement cap by Firaxis (and not just colloquially).
Your example dosn't prove anything, I am afraid. Sure, it refers to both cities and towns - but it only emphasizes the umbrella term.

Unfortunately, AriochIV is a bit ambiguous here, too: "There is a Settlement Cap which increases over time; if you have more cities than this cap, they will be subject to a Happiness penalty."

 

[Krikkit1]

Towns are way too important to access resources, if anything.

That is the point, accessing resources is going to require you to “win hearts and minds” of the locals… either by making them happy to be in your empire woth policies and buildings, or using troops to remove their hearts and minds when they rebel.

(and spending your home cities blood and money on “ungrateful towns” also lowers the happiness in those home cities)

 

[Deggial]

So... in the meantime, I saw a screenshot where the settlement limit was 15 or so.
15 is quite a lot, if it only applied to actual cities.
This seems to imply that it's an in fact a settlement limit and not just a city limit.

I'm still not completely convinced, though. It's a little counterintuitive. How are we going to keep track of how many cities we can support? Upgrade towns to cities until we suddenly run out of happiness?

(Please forgive me; it's me coming back after a looooong hiatus. I'm still not completely up to date with all the information available).

 

[Siptah]

I'm still not completely convinced, though. It's a little counterintuitive. How are we going to keep track of how many cities we can support? Upgrade towns to cities until we suddenly run out of happiness?

I'm not sure whether everybody who talked about it used the correct terminology. Some people might have said city cap or each additional city etc. when the correct term would have been settlement cap or additional settlement. I believe the cap to be per settlement all the time and only, i.e., you can support 15 (or 7 in antiquity) settlements. I hazard the guess that it doesn't matter whether they are towns or cities for this calculation. As soon as you go above the cap, every one of them gets -5 happiness.

 

[chaosprophet]

How it was show around, yeah settlements caps means cities plus towns. I don't mind the cap, but I wish they either had separated caps for towns and cities, or at least have something like a town counts as half for the cap, so you could spread some towns around in places you wouldn't really eventually make into a city, like a defensive position, a place you want just to get a few luxuries or the like. The 3 at the start seems very low for a initial cap when both are counted, but we gotta see how it will work. Also would be interesting if the cap is adjusted depending of the map size.


One way I can see it can work, is that towns may be easier to be happy / have a higher happiness bonus than a city or the happiness negative bonus affect it less. That way would be easier to keep the towns happy even with negative bonus from going over the cap, without sending resources like luxuries to the town, while the cities getting bonus from luxuries from their own territory plus from what the towns send them.

On the other hand, if you have only cities and goes over the cap would be harder to keep them all happy in comparison with having the same amount of settlement but a bigger number of towns.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Knowing that there is a soft cap on the number of settlements and going over that limit results in a Happiness penalty unfortunately leads us to knowing very little until we get information about the Happiness system itself. For example:

• can garrisoning military units suppress the effects of unhappiness?
• does unhappiness immediately lead to revolts or are there interim steps or a time lag during which steps can be taken?
• what are the details around revolts? does it affect towns and cities or just cities? is it a military revolt that you can put down or do they immediately flip to another civilization or to independent people status?
• what is the benefit of happiness? is there an opportunity cost to going over the settlement limit even if the penalties don't push you into unhappiness, just reduce the amount of happiness?
• celebrations seem to be a thing again and presumably are related to happiness, but how exactly?
• is happiness civilization-wide or city-specific or a combination of the two?
• can I assign specialists to be Elvis-impersonators, to the great joy and satisfaction of my people? if not, why not and to whom do I send my complaint?