ImprovedTowns (Better Antiquity Growth, More Expansion)

[tman2000]

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 bonuses if altar is built. Other bonuses remain.
• Philosphers' Retreat provides +3 science on town center, +2 for quarters, +1 for non-quarter districts.
• Bards' Camp is the culture version of above.

New Units:

• Armed Farmers: 1/3 the combat strength of a warrior, 1/3 as expensive. 1 movement range.
• Militiaman: Unlocks with Bronze Working. Slightly less ranged strength than a slinger, as strong as a warrior. Much cheaper than a spearman. 1 movement range.

The build is missing a limit on settlements, which is meant to come from distant from capital. I'm considering a simple formula of every 5 tiles after 10 tiles distant from the capital adds -3 unhappiness (10-15 is -3, 15-20 is -6). Where each city mitigates one unhappiness tier (i.e.: 15 tiles no penalty, 15-20 is -3, 20-25 is -6). This includes the current steeper city costs. Also, I would like settlement cap increases to instead bump city costs down one tier (they are progressively more expensive). This way, settlement limits are controlled by cities, and you have essentially unlimited towns that can fit in the tiles closer to the capital. For now, it's very expansionist driven, but that's fun with so many options for good towns.

The final intent of this mod concept is for food distribution to be customizable. There are no new bonuses on farming towns, but the intent is to be able to target surplus food to desired cities.

To explain certain concepts:

1. The higher growth makes food valuable and tradeoffs between food specializations or buildings meaningful. It also pulls back the tight growth rates so expansion feels natural and rewarding. Cities being expensive are meant to provide a limit on growth, but frankly it's quite easy to get excellent yields by the end of the age and I think I'd prefer a modified endgame. Even so the point is to have expansion and wars and bypass the "race" to the forced ending.
2. Because of higher expansion, and the role of cities in producing professional military with production, new militia units have been added which are incredibly weak and have 1 movement range. These are stopgap defensive measures for an expanding empire where armies move in to support them if a major incursion is happening. The balance seems very good, and they serve their purpose of enabling more expansion. I haven't tried spamming them for a massive zombie wave attack.
3. Town specializations matter immensely now and one or two good mining towns will support your entire budget. Science and culture towns don't make a huge difference but if you commit to using many of them it would be a great strategy to try. Altar warehouse bonuses are buffed in trade towns, so if you have a rainforest buff for instance, you can go out of your way to maximally settle towns in the rainforest so they're all cult centers. It's now worthwhile to settle 2,3,5 tile towns to fill gaps. They can always add a little science or culture.

I want to do more, but I've reached some limits with current modtools. I can still do some UI tweaks and maybe implement a distance based settlement cap, maybe using functions from the map or trade UIs. We'll see. For now I'm stepping away until better tools are released.

This mod is meant to hopefully integrate with a larger concept for accommodating better growth rates. This includes things like making towns have a 2-tile radius, but can settle within 2-tils of cities instead of 3. Like increasing the town tile radius to 3 in exploration, and make cities smaller in that age. 5-tile cities if railroads are built in Modern. This kind of thing. Also an adjusted endgame that permits maxing out tech trees for a few turns prior to age end if you really max.

 

[Melkus]

I'm up for experiments with changing the town/city balance. (200% may be a bit much? But who knows.)

But very sceptical about "no settlement cap". People would have to come out with amazing stories to convince me about that one.
You'd need an overhaul of several systems to get away with this imo. (Making happiness more relevant in some other way, giving the techs and civics that give limit increases some other benefit etc.). And even then - I don't get the goal of this?

 

[tman2000]

I'm up for experiments with changing the town/city balance. (200% may be a bit much? But who knows.)

But very sceptical about "no settlement cap". People would have to come out with amazing stories to convince me about that one.
You'd need an overhaul of several systems to get away with this imo. (Making happiness more relevant in some other way, giving the techs and civics that give limit increases some other benefit etc.). And even then - I don't get the goal of this?

The intent is for there to be a happiness deficit based on distance from capital, which is mitigated the normal way you mitigate happiness, or, proximity to any city will provide a happiness mitigation.

The idea is that as you get 1-2 towns away from the capital, it becomes prohibitive to build new settlements, but as you upgrade to cities, it extends that radius a bit. There's also a system of road connections that extends that range if you're careful about managing city connections. This is all a lot more complex than changing the values about growth.

Right now, without a settlement cap, the real limitation is simply tile availability. It plays a lot like Civ III and doesn't necessarily feel bad. The AI doesn't seem to oversettle, again because of available space being limited.

One reason for this is I'm trying to add better functionality to towns, which I'm still figuring out how to do. I'm convinced that the tight limits on growth is a straightjacket intended only to accommodate trickle down effects into the modern age that I don't think end up being very fun by the time you get there. So, instead I want to draw a line between towns and cities, make cities harder to get, but towns very easy. Where you're going to win based on how you use cities.