Mod here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/improvedtowns-better-antiquity-growth-more-expansion.697002/
Just a first pass at altering parameters for fast growth in cities and enhance growth rate for growing towns. I really like the feel of this considering how the game is structured into time limited ages. You're running a race, really.
One thing that really works about this adjustment is food buildings really matter now. They're a legitimate trade-off with other buildings. I had production and science yields high in one city, but the other had a river so lots of food buildings and was spamming out specialists and keeping up with the first city. Somewhere in the middle there is a strategic decision about using these cities to produce military units and incorporating that into the trade off, or wonders, etc. Growth is much more sensitive to food, so you can grow a town at a proper clip in growth mode, but... making it a farming town and getting that food to cities really impacts growth rates in cities. An actual trade off.
On my playthrough, I didn't feel like the growth was overpowered. I did complete the entire tech tree, but a couple turns short of future tech. I'm sure this can be pushed much further, and you can always just increase science costs if needed for balance. For me the feeling of growth momentum and getting out large armies is what's fun. My design intent is for the best players with good circumstances to complete most tier three unlocks when the crisis starts, and for poor players to unlock a couple tier three techs on the last crisis policy. The cadence seems to fit within those parameters. Increasing city costs seems to work, though I tried to have the first city upgrade be not too prohibitively expensive. Growth speeds for growing towns helps make cities affordable with the population discount. It feels right. I think you ought to be able to convert over to cities towards the end of the age once you're done settling.
I got cramped on my map, even though it was standard size. Sometimes these are larger and sometimes they're not. Even without a settlement cap, I only settled 6 settlements. I do have the intent of adding a distance from capital based happiness nerf, but that's harder to build. Regardless, not having a settlement cap didn't seem to be a problem at all. Please feel free to just break my mod with 50 settlements or something. I would like to make 5-tile radius cities at some point, but I don't think this can be done just by adjusting the seemingly relevant parameters. That's my idea of tall, in combination with some ability to convert excess food into limited amounts of gold and happiness with a civic unlock.
Ideally I want to implement my upgraded town specializations, so you can settle out 5-10 towns and have them really be useful for 50 turns before converting them to cities or maybe leaving them as-is to complement a very tall city.
Anyway, this experience has taught me the fundamental flaw in Civ 7's design premise. The goal was to stop snowballing from ruining the late game. They did this by splitting things into ages which created a rubber band effect. In order for this to actually work, they had to draw tight reigns around settlement growth so that you physically can't snowball until the Modern age in terms of growth. This tightness makes the game not fun, because it's actually the cresting over the hill into the snowball that's the fun part.
My thoughts about Civ 7's core design premise going forward is that you just can't have an "all of human history" consistent 4X experience. With exploration, there's a dual game of colonization and religion, both of which can be developed, and which can serve as replacements for vanilla antiquity 4X play. Modern is going to have to become much much more scenario driven, almost like a war simulator with other things you can do (in my dreams, a light railroad tycoon game). When you piece these different scenarios together with your empire as the glue holding it together, I think you have a much more valid premise for "all of history" gameplay. It just kind of doesn't work to "reset" a completed 4X experience with new yield tiers that only work because of how hard you tightened down on food and growth from the onset. You can see why they had to do that, but it's just not fun and a different approach is needed.
Anyway, let me know what you think about "big" growth.
Just a first pass at altering parameters for fast growth in cities and enhance growth rate for growing towns. I really like the feel of this considering how the game is structured into time limited ages. You're running a race, really.
One thing that really works about this adjustment is food buildings really matter now. They're a legitimate trade-off with other buildings. I had production and science yields high in one city, but the other had a river so lots of food buildings and was spamming out specialists and keeping up with the first city. Somewhere in the middle there is a strategic decision about using these cities to produce military units and incorporating that into the trade off, or wonders, etc. Growth is much more sensitive to food, so you can grow a town at a proper clip in growth mode, but... making it a farming town and getting that food to cities really impacts growth rates in cities. An actual trade off.
On my playthrough, I didn't feel like the growth was overpowered. I did complete the entire tech tree, but a couple turns short of future tech. I'm sure this can be pushed much further, and you can always just increase science costs if needed for balance. For me the feeling of growth momentum and getting out large armies is what's fun. My design intent is for the best players with good circumstances to complete most tier three unlocks when the crisis starts, and for poor players to unlock a couple tier three techs on the last crisis policy. The cadence seems to fit within those parameters. Increasing city costs seems to work, though I tried to have the first city upgrade be not too prohibitively expensive. Growth speeds for growing towns helps make cities affordable with the population discount. It feels right. I think you ought to be able to convert over to cities towards the end of the age once you're done settling.
I got cramped on my map, even though it was standard size. Sometimes these are larger and sometimes they're not. Even without a settlement cap, I only settled 6 settlements. I do have the intent of adding a distance from capital based happiness nerf, but that's harder to build. Regardless, not having a settlement cap didn't seem to be a problem at all. Please feel free to just break my mod with 50 settlements or something. I would like to make 5-tile radius cities at some point, but I don't think this can be done just by adjusting the seemingly relevant parameters. That's my idea of tall, in combination with some ability to convert excess food into limited amounts of gold and happiness with a civic unlock.
Ideally I want to implement my upgraded town specializations, so you can settle out 5-10 towns and have them really be useful for 50 turns before converting them to cities or maybe leaving them as-is to complement a very tall city.
Anyway, this experience has taught me the fundamental flaw in Civ 7's design premise. The goal was to stop snowballing from ruining the late game. They did this by splitting things into ages which created a rubber band effect. In order for this to actually work, they had to draw tight reigns around settlement growth so that you physically can't snowball until the Modern age in terms of growth. This tightness makes the game not fun, because it's actually the cresting over the hill into the snowball that's the fun part.
My thoughts about Civ 7's core design premise going forward is that you just can't have an "all of human history" consistent 4X experience. With exploration, there's a dual game of colonization and religion, both of which can be developed, and which can serve as replacements for vanilla antiquity 4X play. Modern is going to have to become much much more scenario driven, almost like a war simulator with other things you can do (in my dreams, a light railroad tycoon game). When you piece these different scenarios together with your empire as the glue holding it together, I think you have a much more valid premise for "all of history" gameplay. It just kind of doesn't work to "reset" a completed 4X experience with new yield tiers that only work because of how hard you tightened down on food and growth from the onset. You can see why they had to do that, but it's just not fun and a different approach is needed.
Anyway, let me know what you think about "big" growth.
