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

[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?

 

[greenOak]

From my understanding, towns create duplicate copies of food collected and can send that food to cities, while the production they collect get turned into gold. Although we have no way of knowing for sure, I would guess that the rate at which towns turn production into gold is not efficient*, so in the end towns are amazing at generating food, probably worse at generating production, neutral? at producing gold, and presumably worse at producing more advanced resources like science and culture due to the lack of urban districts. This seems like a decent trade off where a town heavy empire can grow population faster than a city heavy empire but will lag behind in production, science, and culture.

However, upon hearing about town specialization I do wonder if it will ever be optimal to specialize towns in anything but food. It seems to me that you'd want to turn your high production settlements into cities and keep your high food settlements as towns.

*Based on past iterations of civ turning your production into gold (wealth, city projects) and then back into production (gold rushing) is extremely inefficient.

 

[Krikkit1]

From my understanding, towns create duplicate copies of food collected and can send that food to cities,....

Not sure that its duplicate, they may just have a fraction of their total food that they send (but holding back enough so that they don't starve)

As for the gold... I can see that Prod->Gold->Prod would probably be inefficient.... however, if there are large maintenance costs for the empire/army.. perhaps just Prod->Gold would be what towns are for. (and possibly it would be effective to help build up a city... as well as keeping the towns themselves productive.. since your farm towns will need gold to get their granaries)

 

[Disgustipated]

Also keep in mind some civs have a higher settlement cap than others. Rome and Mongols in particular. I hope at least a few other civs have higher settlement caps as well.

 

[Patine]

I think this feature, along with 1UPT and tactical combat on a strategic map, from Civ5, and urban improvements around the city, visibly on the main map, from Civ6, allows me to articulate a way of describing a trend in recent Civ game iteeration. I had used the term, "realistic," but, indeed, a lot of civ features are unrealitic. I had used, "scope and scale," but that, alone, is not enough. I think it's the move to a, "small world," feel, if you will, as opposed to the, "big world," feel of Civ1-4. I don't like the shift in seeming focus in that area.

 

[chaosprophet]

We need to get more information about towns. Maybe they just have a different benefit than cities where it would be useful to not turn one into a city whenever you have the resources to do so. Albeit, being able to build more buildings, wonders, and etc., makes me think chances are the benefit in towns is more likely somewhat related with when you go over the settlement cap, but we will see. Hopefully in some of the events someone asks firaxis about that.

 

[historix69]

We need to get more information about towns. Maybe they just have a different benefit than cities where it would be useful to not turn one into a city whenever you have the resources to do so. Albeit, being able to build more buildings, wonders, and etc., makes me think chances are the benefit in towns is more likely somewhat related with when you go over the settlement cap, but we will see. Hopefully in some of the events someone asks firaxis about that.

In the previews it is said that cities in Civ VII grow very slowly on their own. The more towns support a city with their food, the faster it grows, comparable to those Food-traderoutes in previous civ games. One guy said at the cap of 7 he had 1 city supported by 6 towns and the city grew very fast. The ratio between towns and cities roughly determines how fast your cities grow and how big they can become.
However only cities have production, so you will have to find a good balance between fewer bigger and more smaller cities to produce all those wonders, city improvements and military units ...

 

[chaosprophet]

In the previews it is said that cities in Civ VII grow very slowly on their own. The more towns support a city with their food, the faster it grows, comparable to those Food-traderoutes in previous civ games. One guy said at the cap of 7 he had 1 city supported by 6 towns and the city grew very fast. The ratio between towns and cities roughly determines how fast your cities grow and how big they can become.
However only cities have production, so you will have to find a good balance between fewer bigger and more smaller cities to produce all those wonders, city improvements and military units ...

That's interesting which them open up lots of questions like, if you turn a town into a city than their food production gets smaller? Or just that a town may need a much smaller amount of food to grow themselves than a city of same pop size? And then there is all the specializations too. Fishing and Farming makes sense for food, just that they would likely get more food from a certain type of terrain. But then there are Mining, Military, Trade at least, so they likely aren't supposed to be just for food, and maybe a mining town could send production back to the cities, or something like that.

Well, more details about towns and how happiness and over settlement cap interacts with them is second only to more details about when you transition to a new age as things I want to know.


More on topic, they did mention how Rome and some civs may have a higher settlement cap than others. The Rome example is good cause we got detailed info on the game guide page:

Legatus Pro Praetore

• Tier 1: Gain a free Infantry Unit in new Settlements that you found. Increased Settlement Limit. Unlocks 'Latinitas' Tradition.

So Rome extra settlement limit is tied with their unique civics tree. Which makes me imagine the unique civic tree bonuses may be things you carry over to the next age, if you research them on the current age. Would make sense than it being a bonus tied to the civilization that would then disappear if the next civ don't have one.

Maurya India also is similar having a unique civ that increases Settlement Limit.

 

[tedhebert]

I DO wonder how the link from town to cities will be operated… will towns automatically support the closest geographical city ? Will we as player have any kind of control on that ? If we do, will the support numbers be modified by distance from town to city, as in farther means lower rate ?

Can’t wait to know more

 

[chaosprophet]

I DO wonder how the link from town to cities will be operated… will towns automatically support the closest geographical city ? Will we as player have any kind of control on that ? If we do, will the support numbers be modified by distance from town to city, as in farther means lower rate ?

Can’t wait to know more

I would expected either the player being able to choose manually, or it being equally divided between all cities. But may be distance related like you said.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I think it's the move to a, "small world," feel, if you will, as opposed to the, "big world," feel of Civ1-4. I don't like the shift in seeming focus in that area.

I agree.

15 is quite a lot, if it only applied to actual cities.

15 is a very very small cap for an empire building game.

 

[Acepox]

I don't know a whole lot about the limit, but I know it's not a hard cap. You can go over that, but with penalties. I just hope they don't go too extreme Civ 5 style. There's a reason why I'm not a big fan of Civ 5, that being the biggest one. I also see this as yet another attempt to "even the playing field" by limiting player's options. And I have to say, I'm just not a big fan of all these rules changes punishing the player because they are "too good". But it remains to be seen how this works in game. I'm sure we'll find other ways to exploit over the AI. But taking their cities was always a good one.

It sure seems to me this game is having a much bigger focus of diplomacy over combat. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes you wonder if it will even be worth it to declare wars. With you being penalized for doing so. Hopefully they can get the balance right on that.

And will it even be possible to conquer the whole world? It's kind of ridiculous, but it's sometimes fun to do in games.

edit: And the other reason for limiting cities and the size of maps might be for performance reasons. I have a feeling this game is going to be tough for many people's systems to run.

The obvious solution to massive, multicultural but dysfunctional empires is to allow vassals. End result is you still dominate the world, but less micromanagement and your imperial core is still of a reasonable size and could still be overthrown by a rival who manages to liberate your vassals.

 

[8housesofelixir]

I think this feature, along with 1UPT and tactical combat on a strategic map, from Civ5, and urban improvements around the city, visibly on the main map, from Civ6, allows me to articulate a way of describing a trend in recent Civ game iteeration. I had used the term, "realistic," but, indeed, a lot of civ features are unrealitic. I had used, "scope and scale," but that, alone, is not enough. I think it's the move to a, "small world," feel, if you will, as opposed to the, "big world," feel of Civ1-4. I don't like the shift in seeming focus in that area.

More like "many small cities" vs. "several massive cities." Personally I never felt like Civ I-III cities are cities, just resource extraction points that you can spam on a grid (IV feels better because of the cottage-towns).

Although, with how city management became more and more region-management-like, and also the fact that we are going to have different "tiers" of cities in Civ VII (city vs. town), the trend seems to be moving away from a city-by-city dynamic of controlling territory, while having more depth in territorial management.

I'll predict that maybe in Civ VIII or IX, what we now know as "cities" will become "Provinces" instead, and what we now know as "districts" will become "Cities" instead.