Improved Town/City Ecosystem, Better Growth Implemented (Mod)

[tman2000]

T

Thread 'ImprovedTowns (Better Antiquity Growth, More Expansion)'

Mar 21, 2025

Mod Proposal: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/better-city-town-ecosystem-mod-proposal.696941/

Best for larger maps. Only for Antiquity Age.

Release 0.1.0

Basic parameter adjustments.

• City growth rate increased.
• City costs increased.
• Cheaper settlers.
• No settlement cap.

New Town Specializations:

• Urban Center adds +2 gold for quarters to make it an attractive alternative to new specializations.
• Mining Town add +4 production to rough terrain mines.
• Trade Town becomes Cult Center. Warehouse bonus based Pantheons receive double...

• tman2000
• Replies: 2
• Forum: Released Mods

I've finished upgrading the town specializations for now, in addition to better growth rates. The game plays like Civ 3 where settlers are cheap and there's no settlement cap. Cities are more expensive though. There are other features I want to implement but can't do very easily with the current modding tools.

Now towns should be more useful, both as settlements that you can make many of and which expand quickly, but which are harder to make into cities. They are also potentially useful enough that you don't want to convert one to a city even if you could.

Here are some changes I made to town specializations:

• Science town: +3 science on center, +2 for quarters, +1 for urban
• Culture town: same
• Urban center: same as before, but with +2 gold for quarters to offset the addition of above.
• Trade town: now the warehouse bonuses on Altars for applicable pantheons are doubled, with the old trade town bonuses as well. Now if you have something like a tundra pantheon, you can settle towns there JUST to claim the bonus.
• Mining towns: +4 production on mines. Depending on terrain and when you settle, can become +40 gold producers.

I wasn't able to make deeper changes, but these alone are quite fun. In the end, with a more expansion oriented play, the endgame of the age would have to be adjusted. Either with future techs doing more, or a more punishing and intense pain curve for the crisis. These changes only work for Antiquity. Extending this concept to other ages would require much more profound gameplay changes (for instance, exploration cities starting with half the population of antiquity cities and farms built over ruins).

You have to play this on standard sized maps, but if you have the larger map mod, please please do play on at least "large" size.

Also note that militia units have been added, cheap and weak. I felt this was necessary as a stopgap for the ecosystem of fast expansion of towns and slow expansion of cities, and when I played it out, I was right I think. Second tier has ranged and unlocks with bronze working. They also have one movement. They're purely a stopgap. I'd love to try a massive zombie wave though.

I'm going to next try and play on insane sized maps and see how it goes. I've also not applied different strategies like trying to get cities as quick as possible on purpose.

Anway, give it a try, it's as close as we'll probably ever get to a completely different balance paradigm using a town/city dichotomy. I don't think we'll ever have the right modtools to fully realize the concept.