Settling in later eras

[skyclad]

Here is a suggestion, maybe its been up before. But i think its an important one!
One problem with civ is that if you settle a city later in the game it is almost useless.
Instead settling could have different bonuses depnding on era:

Ancient = nothing
Classical = free 20 hammers
Medieval = 2 pop and 50 hammers
Renn = 3 pop 100 hammers
Etc...

What do you think? Just balance the numbers a little and suddenly settling good spots later in the game be comes more valuable. Possibly also increase cost of settlers per era to maintain some balance.

 

[LDiCesare]

CtP did something like that. You had a different, advanced, settler unit, which when used gave you more advanced cities.
It was not actually very useful.
Normally, there shouldn't be any free space to settle after renaissance anyway, and even if we look at the real-world examples, I don't think american or brasilian cities founded "recently" were particularly advanced. Apart from Brasilia, which is the sole counter-example I can think of.

 

[historix69]

In Civ5 in late game you got a big speed-up due to social policies giving you +1 hammer and +3 hammer coastal, as well as opportunity to rushbuy buildings like granaries, aqueducts, workshops and later factories (at a discount of 40% to 73% with commerce, Big Ben, order), combined with several production-boni from buildings, policies, railroad and Golden Age. A wide variety of luxuries increased the chance for the "We love the President" - Growth-Bonus in the new city ... additionally you could also target the new city with several Food- and Production-Trade-Routes ...

 

[Magil]

In Civ5 in late game you got a big speed-up due to social policies giving you +1 hammer and +3 hammer coastal, as well as opportunity to rushbuy buildings like granaries, aqueducts, workshops and later factories (at a discount of 40% to 73% with commerce, Big Ben, order), combined with several production-boni from buildings, policies, railroad and Golden Age. A wide variety of luxuries increased the chance for the "We love the President" - Growth-Bonus in the new city ... additionally you could also target the new city with several Food- and Production-Trade-Routes ...

Theory is all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that due to trade route design (especially not being able to cancel them early), it was better to send food trade to your developed cities than new ones, and even with all the bonuses you could stack, new cities still took too long to become worth it (culture and science costs were %-based, remember, and by that time tech and policy costs are in the thousands).

Really, the best way they can make late settled cities worth it is not to take this approach of giving the new city a bunch of free stuff to jump-start it, it's to relax the arbitrary new city penalties.