True. There were also no tiers of warehouse buildings that added to the yield of the improvements. You built a lumber mill in Civ 6 without also needing extra saw pit and a saw mill buildings in each age.
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Playing as a Continuous Civ- A HUGE Mistake
- Thread starter Albertan Civfanatic
- Start date
James_Champagne
Warlord
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- Sep 7, 2019
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- 269
Yeah, the art style of VII I just find a bit faceless, I suppose. V had that classy Art Deco look, and while I know VI's art style had a lot of detractors I quite liked it. VII's map just looks like a kind of bland realism (and like other people here, I don't like the city clutter), while the leader art also seems very off/uninspired (with a few exceptions . . . okay, I'll admit, Blackbeard looks pretty cool). While on the subject, I really hate how the leaders have gone from personally addressing you to instead addressing the avatar of your leader . . . I know that probably sounds petty but it kind of removes me from the process a bit. In VI the leaders felt larger-than-life but here they feel really small.
kaspergm
Deity
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I think this sums up the problems with Civ7 unpacked cities very well. I was always baffled by the way they handled it - back in Civ6 days, people wanted more buildings pr. district, and then instead they went the opposite way and made it less buildings pr. district. The mix-and-match of building was something many players asked for, and while it could have potentially opened up for interesting synergy options, the current system doesn't really offer much of that yet instead makes the map very unreadable, so that feels a bit like a double-miss. The only part where I think Civ7 districts work better than Civ6 is the coherency, ie. your urban districts tend to be more coherent instead of the weird spread you often got in Civ6. There's still the issue of resources, which was something I had hoped they would have rethought in a more regional context, but that was not to be either.
stealth_nsk
Deity
Less buildings per district is inevitable consequence of overbuilding, which, in turn, is part of ages system. That part can't be accessed independetly. In the same list is the ability to mix and match, which is a natural consequence of overbuilding (if you could overbuild something with a specific building only, that would make overbuilding pointless).
So, when we discuss decisions made for the buildings in Civ7, the only ones which don't directly follow from the ages are:
- Continuous urban sprawl instead of Cov6 free positioning
- Ageless buildings
EDIT: Also, regarding number of buildings per district, 2 clearly provide better visuals. The difference in naval districts in Civ7, depending on how many adjacent land tiles it has, is just beautiful.
kaspergm
Deity
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Yeah, that's a fair point.
stealth_nsk
Deity
Continuing those thoughts. Actually what we got in Civ7 is very close to have more buildings per district. I mean you still have 1 tile to host, for example, all your science buildings and you put up to 6 of them in this tile (up to 8 once 4th age will come). Yes, new ones replace old ones, but it doesn't change things much from gameplay perspective - you build something in district, you get increased yields. And from visual side having just 2 buildings at the same time clearly better (problems come from other areas).
Another thought is that one of the reasons for warehouses to exist is continuous urban sprawl. You need some urban districts to connect to desired tiles and there cheap early warehouse buildings are the way to go. And probably making them overbuildable, but still available in later ages would be too complex.
Another thought is that one of the reasons for warehouses to exist is continuous urban sprawl. You need some urban districts to connect to desired tiles and there cheap early warehouse buildings are the way to go. And probably making them overbuildable, but still available in later ages would be too complex.
kaspergm
Deity
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About the argument that what Civ7 offers is more buildings per district, I guess that's both true and untrue in the sense that yes, you can argue that you can put two science buildings in a district per era where Civ6 only had what would be the equivalent of one science building each era, but then again, for the very reason that Civ7 offers more buildings for each yield and on top of that also offers all the warehouse buildings, the net result is sort of the opposite: You need more district tiles to hold the buildings in each city in Civ7 than you did in Civ6 - even more so because the district limit in Civ6 meant you couldn't actually build all buildings in each city, a limit that seems completely gone in Civ7.
So yes, I agree technically, but I at the same time think that if they Civ7 system is going to work, there needs a hard/harder limit on how many urban districts a city can sustain, particularly in the ancient era. Whether that is going to be a fantasy limit (similar to the settlement limit), limited by population (as in Civ6), limited by distance (i.e. ancient era can only have urban districts in first ring), limited by gold cost (i.e. soft limit), or something else entirely, I can't say. Personally I like the idea of a distance limit going up each era.
stealth_nsk
Deity
Yes, warehouse buildings increase number of tiles required and yes, it's probably the consequence of continuous urban sprawl. Regarding tiles, I think first is the most healthy solution would be to allow settlements taking tiles from each other (at least unworked ones, even better if you could build urban tile on your other settlement's rural tile). That way district placement could improve by a lot.
GeneralZift
Professional
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- Feb 25, 2019
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I think we should have a separate thread for the packing/unpacking cities. There's a lot of nuance to talk about what could be interesting gameplay there.
It hasn't crossed my mind before, but I wish they actually had locked the number of districts you can create (and ability to place them on the second and third ring) behind rural population, instead of the scaling the production cost from buildings you already hold. That would help balance out tall/wide better, introduce more interesting decisions (do you place Library in an existing, single-building district, or wait for the next population growth to create new district with better adjacencies), and help balance food against production, instead of just making production an even more critical yield.
You could also start doing some cool things with the currently undertuned antiquity civs once that's in place - Carthage has no limits in the capital, Khmer's specliasts count as two rural pop.
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I wonder if they could have somehow designated warehouse buildings almost more like UI, so built on top of an existing rural tile. So, in the sense that they don't take up a building slot, but a rural tile with a warehouse building would count towards connectivity of urban districts. They would become a little weird, in that they would be both an urban and a rural tile in a sense. And you probably would want to allow them to be placed on an urban tile as well, so that building over it wouldn't delete the warehouse building.
But if you did that, it might help some of the sprawl feel, since at least all those tiles I current have set as like granary+sawmill will now stay as a rural tile. Your cities would end up being a little more disjointed, yes. Although I feel that you would still in the end connect things up. And it would have the added bonus if you did it flexibly, you could allow that warehouse tile as a bridge to jump a resource tile, and be able to place a building around the other side. Rater than now when you have to create this long chain of warehouse buildings sometimes.
McSpank01
Prince
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- 375
It's hard to come up with a complete solution here on a discussion board, and I haven't thought it through enough, but my general sense is that one of the issues with urban sprawl is that cities and towns do not feel all that distinct.
How I imagined the game working was that cities and towns would look and function incredibly differently, and would have a symbiotic relationship, needing each other to succeed. Earlier versions of Civ 7 really didn't manage that at all, with Cities simply being the optimal settlement type and it being far better to build as many as possible. Towns were just kind of relegated to Cities in waiting.
I think the recent changes to costs have kind of helped it but maybe they don't go far enough.
In my head, Cities would basically be almost purely urban settlements, and towns would be almost purely rural. Cities would need to have numerous towns to feed them and produce the basic subsistence goods needed to function. Cities would also exist to produce higher tier good and products, pumping out research and culture and gold and influence, but barely able to feed themselves. If you wanted more cities, then you probably need more towns, or towns which have higher productivity to feed the cities.
To be honest I'm taking my cue from other games like Victoria and Anno 1800 here in modelling how higher tier pops are reliant on lower tier ones. Clearly the game already is attempting to do this with specialists and rural tiles etc, but it feels like the game really needs to lean into that mechanic. So potentially cities are all about specialists, making almost nothing without them. It would need for buildings and quarters to have more room to add more specialists but that would also lead to taller, more specialised cities.
I would also do away with food buildings for cities like gardens etc. It should really be about the towns when it comes to food. Maybe the capital is the exception here as you have to start somewhere, or maybe not, maybe the capital is a town until you have another town to convert it.
So yeah, I would very much like to lean into the towns and cities mechanics and make it far more specialised.
How I imagined the game working was that cities and towns would look and function incredibly differently, and would have a symbiotic relationship, needing each other to succeed. Earlier versions of Civ 7 really didn't manage that at all, with Cities simply being the optimal settlement type and it being far better to build as many as possible. Towns were just kind of relegated to Cities in waiting.
I think the recent changes to costs have kind of helped it but maybe they don't go far enough.
In my head, Cities would basically be almost purely urban settlements, and towns would be almost purely rural. Cities would need to have numerous towns to feed them and produce the basic subsistence goods needed to function. Cities would also exist to produce higher tier good and products, pumping out research and culture and gold and influence, but barely able to feed themselves. If you wanted more cities, then you probably need more towns, or towns which have higher productivity to feed the cities.
To be honest I'm taking my cue from other games like Victoria and Anno 1800 here in modelling how higher tier pops are reliant on lower tier ones. Clearly the game already is attempting to do this with specialists and rural tiles etc, but it feels like the game really needs to lean into that mechanic. So potentially cities are all about specialists, making almost nothing without them. It would need for buildings and quarters to have more room to add more specialists but that would also lead to taller, more specialised cities.
I would also do away with food buildings for cities like gardens etc. It should really be about the towns when it comes to food. Maybe the capital is the exception here as you have to start somewhere, or maybe not, maybe the capital is a town until you have another town to convert it.
So yeah, I would very much like to lean into the towns and cities mechanics and make it far more specialised.
Substantially stronger specialists at the cost of very meaningful food penalties for each specialist would be a very interesting way to try and enforce more of a symbiotic situation between towns and cities. If you wanted, you could still have a city with its own independent production queue and ability to build anything while maintaining itself through its own food production like you have now if you simply didn't invest in specialists, but you could significantly boost the city's more advanced yields in exchange for needing towns feeding it via specialists.
What really surprised me - given the "towns feed cities" model they were going for - is that cities can no longer starve, like in the previous entries. Each new growth requires more food, sure, but if you de-specialise all your towns, they cities will still have enough to sustain their current population forever.
stealth_nsk
Deity
I think that's again consequence of ages, because towns are expected to be despecialized after age transition.
Yeah, of course, and the risk of starvation could be a factor into how quickly you need to re-specialise them again.
McSpank01
Prince
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- Dec 8, 2016
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- 375
Yes I guess you could allow cities to become more self sufficient but it should probably be a quite inefficient way to utilise them. IMO cities should be these fragile elements that can be made incredibly powerful, but are highly reliant on a strong worker base from outside the city using towns to power it. In emergencies maybe it would be possible to move to a more self sufficient model, which may be necessary as towns are easier to invade and take by enemies.
While this may move the discussion further into OT, I wonder how it would play if production between towns and a connected city would behave similarly as food does. I.e., your buildings can give you a solid production base in a city, but you could also rely on nearby towns for city production, or have both of you want to get really productive.
Currently, town production is on one side devalued, because it is turned into gold, but enhanced because it is turned into a global resource instead of a local.
Would keeping it local but valuable make the game more strategic and interesting? Or if this was possible with the mining town specialization?
Currently, town production is on one side devalued, because it is turned into gold, but enhanced because it is turned into a global resource instead of a local.
Would keeping it local but valuable make the game more strategic and interesting? Or if this was possible with the mining town specialization?
stealth_nsk
Deity
Connections mechanics is one of the worst part to me. There are several types of connections with different rules and none of them is transparent. So, unless this would be somehow completely fixed, I'd went to opposite direction and would try to make all town outputs global. Not sure how exactly this should work.
Crashdummy
Prince
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- Jul 22, 2025
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- 500
In the subject of city sprawl, i dont like it, i was sad when it was introduced, but clearly many people liked it
That being said, i think it was clearly better done in Civ 6 and the current worse implementation is another bad consequence of the incredibly bad idea of Ages resets
And i really, really dont understand how they didnt see the map cluttering in some internal testing. But its just another item that i think was not properly tested in a really long list
Civ VII general quality is, in my opinion, by far the worst in the series
That being said, i think it was clearly better done in Civ 6 and the current worse implementation is another bad consequence of the incredibly bad idea of Ages resets
And i really, really dont understand how they didnt see the map cluttering in some internal testing. But its just another item that i think was not properly tested in a really long list
Civ VII general quality is, in my opinion, by far the worst in the series
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