Taefin
King
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2020
- Messages
- 821
I’m curious to hear of folks thoughts on dynamics of playing wide vs semi-wide (clearly there is not much of any optimality reason for playing under settlement limit).
Personally I like how the game had felt at every level of expansion I have done, particularly in the dimension FXS said was their goal, to reduce the explosion of micro and ensure choices have multiple good options.
I just finished exploration age as Mongolia, where I got to the maximum -35 happiness for the first time (28/14 settlements).
The main effect that I can see of playing 7+ above limit is that yields in towns and some cities plummet, and you need to offset the influence penalty (e.g., by turning several towns into hub towns). I entered modern with the lowest science yield of any game I’ve played so far (220 or so) despite getting both exploration science buildings in all of 7 cities (and in several captured towns). I invested most golf income into snowballing gold-focused unique improvements, and it didn’t feel like it would be more optimal to convert more towns to cities (for instance, after converting the most viable towns to cities, whenever I got to 5k+ gold I would convert another, lower-production town and buy up most buildings, since even buying up only production buildings it would take too long to produce science/happiness buildings).
I’m guessing several civs give you a way to get at least a few cities out of the happiness pit. Mongolia get tradition for +4h/assigned resource in captured settlements, so I’ve moved by entire empire to what used to be my neighbor (just be careful not to eliminate an AI, or the game reassigns you as the founder of cities you captured from them).
This definitely won’t be a common playstyle for me, but it’s been fun (I’m excited see if I can turn my huge empire to my advantage now, or just finish conquering the world).
All that to say, playing at any amount over the settlement cap feels fun and viable (I might avoid 4-6 above, all cost and no reward), and I appreciate never having that feeling from Civ6 of building a new settlement mid-late game and having to wait 40 turns to build anything (even builders) because of scaling. In civ7, I love how even towns with small yields are still good for getting resources and they add those few yields to somewhere else where they can be used. And the micro for these towns is short lived until they hit 7 pop or secure all resources.
Personally I like how the game had felt at every level of expansion I have done, particularly in the dimension FXS said was their goal, to reduce the explosion of micro and ensure choices have multiple good options.
I just finished exploration age as Mongolia, where I got to the maximum -35 happiness for the first time (28/14 settlements).
The main effect that I can see of playing 7+ above limit is that yields in towns and some cities plummet, and you need to offset the influence penalty (e.g., by turning several towns into hub towns). I entered modern with the lowest science yield of any game I’ve played so far (220 or so) despite getting both exploration science buildings in all of 7 cities (and in several captured towns). I invested most golf income into snowballing gold-focused unique improvements, and it didn’t feel like it would be more optimal to convert more towns to cities (for instance, after converting the most viable towns to cities, whenever I got to 5k+ gold I would convert another, lower-production town and buy up most buildings, since even buying up only production buildings it would take too long to produce science/happiness buildings).
I’m guessing several civs give you a way to get at least a few cities out of the happiness pit. Mongolia get tradition for +4h/assigned resource in captured settlements, so I’ve moved by entire empire to what used to be my neighbor (just be careful not to eliminate an AI, or the game reassigns you as the founder of cities you captured from them).
This definitely won’t be a common playstyle for me, but it’s been fun (I’m excited see if I can turn my huge empire to my advantage now, or just finish conquering the world).
All that to say, playing at any amount over the settlement cap feels fun and viable (I might avoid 4-6 above, all cost and no reward), and I appreciate never having that feeling from Civ6 of building a new settlement mid-late game and having to wait 40 turns to build anything (even builders) because of scaling. In civ7, I love how even towns with small yields are still good for getting resources and they add those few yields to somewhere else where they can be used. And the micro for these towns is short lived until they hit 7 pop or secure all resources.
