No ICS

[Evolena]

In the Modern age Dev stream, they started the Modern age with a cap at 16, and were at 22 at turn 75 (70% age progression). And if you don't care about what others leaders think of you because you're going full conquest, you can still raze some towns you're capturing. Althought that also give malus in combat strength?

[Edit] Ah no, it's war support for future wars. So happiness.

 

[Riconatic]

In the Modern age Dev stream, they started the Modern age with a cap at 16, and were at 22 at turn 75 (70% age progression). And if you don't care about what others leaders think of you because you're going full conquest, you can still raze some towns you're capturing. Althought that also give malus in combat strength?

I would like to have adjustable cap. Either setting base cap for every age or percentage of default etc.

22 is waaaaay to much for my taste most of my games.

But I guess that is moddable value easily.

 

[Evolena]

OP was concerned about being too restricted for settling and conquering to their heart desire.

 

[Riconatic]

OP was concerned about being too restricted for settling and conquering to their heart desire.

I am not sure if you replied to me as no quotation, but I assume so.

I have totally different concerns and your comment made me think those. Also it would help OP.

 

[Krikkit1]

In the Modern age Dev stream, they started the Modern age with a cap at 16, and were at 22 at turn 75 (70% age progression). And if you don't care about what others leaders think of you because you're going full conquest, you can still raze some towns you're capturing. Althought that also give malus in combat strength?

[Edit] Ah no, it's war support for future wars. So happiness.
View attachment 715986

War support affects happiness AND combat strength

 

[Arcaian]

22 is waaaaay to much for my taste most of my games.

It's worth keeping in mind that you can add a bunch of towns to make your limited number of cities better to fill out that limit. I'm not a fan of having too many cities in Civ - it's annoying when you get a million decisions each turn, none of which are individually particularly impactful. So I think I'll be tempted to keep a relatively small number of cities, but make them very powerful with towns

 

[Nikolai II]

Thank God we don't go back to ICS.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

[Edit] Ah no, it's war support for future wars. So happiness.

I wish you could loot a city and let the original owner keep it.

 

[Evolena]

I wish you could loot a city and let the original owner keep it.

You could return it in the peace deal? (unless it was already taken from someone else, in which cas I agree a third option "return to original owner" - maybe only if we are allied - would be cool)

 

[Siptah]

You could return it in the peace deal? (unless it was already taken from someone else, in which cas I agree a third option "return to original owner" - maybe only if we are allied - would be cool)

I've seen a multi-party peace deal in a german preview by PC Games. In a war together with an ally, the player got a city that belonged to the opponent civ B that the allied civ A conquered.

They didn't show enough context to grasp what exactly was going on with the peace deal though. There's only a screen that lists 2 cities of each side and the player could pick one of the opponent's to peace out. It's unclear whether civ A decided that the player gets a reward and the player just needs to choose, or whether it was a separate peace between player and civ B, or whether the player (as ally in the war) could end the war for all parties with benefits only for themselves. But it shows that allies can get cities in peace deals.

Here's the screenshot. The player is Confucius, Ashoka is their ally, and Amina the opponent. The case appears in a section of the video that can be headlined "The AI is sometimes much smarter than in civ 6 but sometimes it does really stupid things". So, I somehow assume that the player can end this war for all parties, and do so in a selfish way. The result (shown on the map later) is that the player gets Lalibela somehow.

Spoiler :

 

[Leucarum]

My concern from some of the previews is that the AI looks like it loves doing some extreme (suicidal?) forward settling, so ongoing penalties for removing cities, or holding onto more cities than you want, when you might be forced into war regularly just to stop the AI being dumb could be a serious frustration (Addendum : adding loyalty made Civ6 such a better game!).

 

[brick623]

Civ IV tried to eliminate ICS and probably did the best job at limiting it through the city maintenance system as ICS uttetly wrecked the economy unless you had mid-late game civics, wonders, and corporations.
Civ V tried to eliminate ICS with global happiness system but inadvertantly made it one of the best strategies.
Civ VI tried to limit ICS through the amenities system, and districts made ICS sub-optimal. Ideally you want to plan your main districts after completing some basic scouting.
My point being that even if the devs are actively trying to limit ICS, doesn't mean they will necessarily succeed in Civ VII. It would be pointless having an "Expansionist" upgrade tree if you got punished too hard for expanding a lot.

 

[Siptah]

Civ IV tried to eliminate ICS and probably did the best job at limiting it through the city maintenance system as ICS uttetly wrecked the economy unless you had mid-late game civics, wonders, and corporations.
Civ V tried to eliminate ICS with global happiness system but inadvertantly made it one of the best strategies.
Civ VI tried to limit ICS through the amenities system, and districts made ICS sub-optimal. Ideally you want to plan your main districts after completing some basic scouting.
My point being that even if the devs are actively trying to limit ICS, doesn't mean they will necessarily succeed in Civ VII. It would be pointless having an "Expansionist" upgrade tree if you got punished too hard for expanding a lot.

Just to get the nomenclature clear: expansionist in 7 means more food and specialists as much as it means more settlements. That‘s also why one of the two repeatable ends of the expansionist tree is „increase specialist limit per city by 1 while decreasing settlement limit by 1.“ Expansionist is thus as much about tall (maybe 3 cities and 8-15 towns) than it is about wide (maybe 10 cities and 15 towns).

 

[Krikkit1]

Just to get the nomenclature clear: expansionist in 7 means more food and specialists as much as it means more settlements. That‘s also why one of the two repeatable ends of the expansionist tree is „increase specialist limit per city by 1 while decreasing settlement limit by 1.“ Expansionist is thus as much about tall (maybe 3 cities and 8-15 towns) than it is about wide (maybe 10 cities and 15 towns).

Actually It seems there isn’t really tall or wide.
you want maximum total settlements up to the limit.
There is the issue of how many cities, but
it’s more like
3 cities and 15 towns
or
9 cities and 9 towns

 

[Acken]

A bit hard to say at the moment how this will balance out. We will have to see what is the cost of a new city (producing the settler, possible unhappiness when over the limit) vs what it brings. In the gameplay footage I've seen, happiness didn't look like a particularly challenging mechanic.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Didn't I read somewhere that building a settler does NOT cause a population loss in the city building it this time around? That was originally put in a sort of hand-brake to the bad old ICS--they must be confident it will be held in check well enough without.

 

[Ebon-Hawke-]

This guy is on deity going way over settlement cap with no problem. Was at 9/4 with still positive happiness also while the unhappiness crisis is going on and at war with 2 civs.

 

[Siptah]

Actually It seems there isn’t really tall or wide.
you want maximum total settlements up to the limit.
There is the issue of how many cities, but
it’s more like
3 cities and 15 towns
or
9 cities and 9 towns

Maybe. But maybe the last one is still 9 cities and 15 towns because you try to maximize your cap, while the tall player will try to maximize specialists.

 

[Krikkit1]

Maybe. But maybe the last one is still 9 cities and 15 towns because you try to maximize your cap, while the tall player will try to maximize specialists.

The way to maximize specialists is to maximize towns.
9 cities 15 towns is just as tall/wide as
3 cities 21 towns *** this one has the biggest cities
or
15 cities 9 towns *** this one probably has the most total specialists

 

[Siptah]

The way to maximize specialists is to maximize towns.
9 cities 15 towns is just as tall/wide as
3 cities 21 towns *** this one has the biggest cities
or
15 cities 9 towns *** this one probably has the most total specialists

It's not just about any specialists though. But it's a bit futile to discuss this, because we both haven't played the game yet and no one of the previews really went for specialists or the Science legacy path in Exploration Age. We'll see how the meta or at least common strategies will develop.