Towns Are Broken, I Have A Fix (Higher Growth Rate, More Expensive Cities)

[tman2000]

I was inspired by this video which presents a pretty hard META for antiquity age towns and cities. Where, in the end, you just want cities.

I recognize why having one or two support towns in exploration is good, and why modern's settlement and specialist limit increases make towns more useful, especially to simplify settlement management. Still, towns have always seemed like a forced feature that don't work as well as they should.

I have a pretty simple solution for towns, though

1. Growing settlement growth rate is now 100-150% normal growth. Specialized towns grow at a normal rate and produce migrants if full. Farming towns don't grow.
2. Cities are now more expensive (3x?)
3. You can customize where town food yields go.
4. In addition to the specialization and growing options, there's a third option always available: worker's camp. This allows for the production of militia: a slightly lower combat strength, tier appropriate infantry unit with very weak ranged ability. It also allows for a 2x building production rate for town buildings.

By growing faster, towns can start building up yields earlier and support cities more. This will make a harder trade off where even if you can afford a city, you might just not want to. Towns would feel right to me if I was really reluctant to take a massive food supply offline. A medium food supply town maybe might better serve as a city. Likewise, a mining town that I can fully expand with age-based warehouse multipliers will produce enough gold that I'd be reluctant to take it offline. Ideally you take 2-4 very productive, large towns across the ages, where the rest go through a life cycle of new settlement, specialization, city (or remain specialization).

Cities will be more expensive, to rebalance progress. You should still have the same number of cities at the same average turn number, as before the modified town growth. This also serves to incentivize using towns.

You absolutely should be able to customize which cities receive food, but there should be range limits. I was thinking whether towns should receive food from other towns and that seems definitely like going overboard. Thematically, the gold cost of converting a city is analogous to supporting an administrative class which is represented in the abstract by the happiness and gold costs of city specific buildings. One imagines these bureaucrats manage the food disbursement. Things like trading towns should be able to direct happiness to specific cities, not just globally, to make them more useful.

Since we're trying to make towns more useful and worthwhile, they should have the ability to produce basic defensive units and even buildables. This is because, especially in the antiquity age and age transition, or during a war, you sometimes might not have much gold to go around. This is why I've come up with the militia unit which is basically useful, but rather weak. I also think, again because of times when gold is tight, that towns should have production ability. It should be less efficient than cities, which is thematically appopriate. These are more like last resort options, but again they support the idea of towns for their own sake. As for militia, you might want to nerf their combat ability in later ages (i.e. town levy will be strong in antiquity, just slightly less than an infantry, to support poorly developed empires, whereas "national guard" in modern age will be a fair bit weaker, since you likely have good production, many cities, and lots of gold by then). You don't want to be steamrolling other empires with militia (unless they're very weak).

What do you think and where can I go to learn about modding? I think this kind of modification would be rather simple to implement and test out. At least the modified growth rates.

 

[stealth_nsk]

1. We've discussed that specialized towns not growing could be a bug. If it is and if it will be fixed, towns will become much more useful.
2. There are areas where towns are already really useful, i.e. hub town could produce much more influence than a city and without any buildings.

 

[tman2000]

1. We've discussed that specialized towns not growing could be a bug. If it is and if it will be fixed, towns will become much more useful.
2. There are areas where towns are already really useful, i.e. hub town could produce much more influence than a city and without any buildings.

Useful hub towns seem like something that will be nerfed though, since they're typically coastal towns which have an "all connected to all" situation that's a result of the poorly conceive connections system.

I just posted on this here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-city-connections-ought-to-work.696797/

My idea is to have more logic about settlement connections, and for settlements with multiple connections there's a distance buff on connection route distances coming into that settlement. So there'd be an incentive to create hub towns anyway, and the specialization becomes a natural choice of specialization for such a town.

I agree that having specialized towns grow makes sense, but again, I'd have a growing town grow much much faster, and I agree that farming towns need to have no growth. Not just by definition (since there is no population shrinking and negative growth, there's no meaningful sense of food surplus, so a farming town just needs to not grow), but also since if a town grows too big you want the growth to stop.

 

[Krikkit1]

Useful hub towns seem like something that will be nerfed though, since they're typically coastal towns which have an "all connected to all" situation that's a result of the poorly conceive connections system.

I just posted on this here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-city-connections-ought-to-work.696797/

My idea is to have more logic about settlement connections, and for settlements with multiple connections there's a distance buff on connection route distances coming into that settlement. So there'd be an incentive to create hub towns anyway, and the specialization becomes a natural choice of specialization for such a town.

I agree that having specialized towns grow makes sense, but again, I'd have a growing town grow much much faster, and I agree that farming towns need to have no growth. Not just by definition (since there is no population shrinking and negative growth, there's no meaningful sense of food surplus, so a farming town just needs to not grow), but also since if a town grows too big you want the growth to stop.

I don't think having specialized towns grow makes sense, that's less of a trade off, since specializing to Anything then just gives a massive food bonus.

If towns are poorly rated, increase the specializations (faster growth, bigger food on Farms, etc.)

 

[Steinernein]

I don't know if it is even meta, I think you'd have to go through at least the first two ages with different combinations of leaders/civs/mementos to figure out when you go spam cities versus when you keep some towns.

 

[Melkus]

So - this video is basically not so much about towns - but a Gypsum/Camel hack (which allows him to transfer a chunk of production to a city, build production buildings, move it to the next one)
Towns are weak in this because they can't use this boost at all.

And he uses a +2 production memento for cities. Probably not necessary for the strat, but a bit of an eyeroll nevertheless.

 

[tman2000]

I don't think having specialized towns grow makes sense, that's less of a trade off, since specializing to Anything then just gives a massive food bonus.

If towns are poorly rated, increase the specializations (faster growth, bigger food on Farms, etc.)

I mean, peasants had to send all their surplus to the lord. If NO food is being sent then by definition there should be growth. This is analogous to imperial towns in the HRE which attracted skilled peasants to become craftsman and is pretty close to the specialized town concept.

 

[aelf]

Yeah, I haven't watched the whole thing, but watching a bit in the middle makes me suspect this is not nearly a universally good strategy.

I did do something like this in my last game. I wanted to complete the military legacy path as Mongols, so I played the opposite way in Antiquity by focusing mostly on my capital and only using a few towns to grab needed resources, and then selecting the Military Dark Age at the start of Exploration. I did achieve my objective, but I was very behind by the end of Exploration age. What I did was convert most of my towns into cities so I could buy science and culture buildings to give me something to build off of in Modern Age. I suppose what I could have done was what Drongo is advocating and do the conversion over time and use production instead of gold. But is this really an easier or superior way to play? I'm not sure.

 

[tman2000]

So - this video is basically not so much about towns - but a Gypsum/Camel hack (which allows him to transfer a chunk of production to a city, build production buildings, move it to the next one)
Towns are weak in this because they can't use this boost at all.

And he uses a +2 production memento for cities. Probably not necessary for the strat, but a bit of an eyeroll nevertheless.

There's still a lack of incentive to keep specialized towns for their own sake.

I'd prefer for strong towns that grow very easily, but this is held in check by gating advanced progress behind cities which remain properly snail's pace/trade off balanced. This also allows for unique civs that can lean even harder into town/militia play, like peasant's rebellion kind of stuff.

 

[Melkus]

There's still a lack of incentive to keep specialized towns for their own sake.

FXS may have to tweak some numbers (early conversion has to hurt more, I guess?), but he stacked his deck more than a little bit.

Gypsum in itself is a massive problem for town/city balance. (And the 1:1 conversion from production to gold is a massive disadvantage, of course - these two issues are related in a way)

 

[uppi]

1. Growing settlement growth rate is now 100-150% normal growth. Specialized towns grow at a normal rate and produce migrants if full. Farming towns don't grow.

Please, no! I like the ability to turn off growth so the town will not bother me anymore. It did its thing, it has grabbed the resources it was supposed to grab, now I do not want to need to care about it anymore.

 

[Melkus]

What if a specialized town doesn't count towards the settlement limit? (Probably would have to lower the limit across the board then... At least by 1 per age.)

[Edit: Or let's say it counts as half a settlement, but rounded down]

 

[aelf]

Also, it seems this approach doesn't work if the AIs declare war.

The real breakthrough here, as mentioned, is the rolling camel/gypsum system. But if you don't have enough of those reachable early without risking death by DOW, then it doesn't work.

 

[chazzycat]

Seems like a good strategy if you start with multiple gypsums and camels, sure. But he never really explains his thesis of "cities are just always better" sufficiently to convince me that it's a universally applicable strategy.

 

[Melkus]

Yes, it doesn't take into consideration that early pressure may make it impossible to calmly convert your towns, for instance.

And the long-term implications for specialists etc.. His yields are just so huge that it seems to stops conversation right there, but that may be deceptive. It is strong though.

 

[Menocchio]

Also, it seems this approach doesn't work if the AIs declare war.

The real breakthrough here, as mentioned, is the rolling camel/gypsum system. But if you don't have enough of those reachable early without risking death by DOW, then it doesn't work.

This is the crux of it, I agree. Towns certainly could use a buff, but this is extremely geographically dependent and flies on the wing and a prayer of non-hostile AIs. I think it seems strong in the current patch because, for whatever reason, the AI at least in my games has been mostly passive.

 

[tman2000]

Please, no! I like the ability to turn off growth so the town will not bother me anymore. It did its thing, it has grabbed the resources it was supposed to grab, now I do not want to need to care about it anymore.

That's what farming towns do. While "worker's camps" will have neutered growth.

Anyway, the only thing you do is select growth tiles. It's the most minimal streamlined thing left to do, I can't imagine it's that annoying.

 

[tman2000]

FXS may have to tweak some numbers (early conversion has to hurt more, I guess?), but he stacked his deck more than a little bit.

Gypsum in itself is a massive problem for town/city balance. (And the 1:1 conversion from production to gold is a massive disadvantage, of course - these two issues are related in a way)

My preference with balance is that I sometimes don't like these very tight margins where there's a snails pace type feel and heavy need to minmax.

I'd prefer towns that just grow like gangbusters, almost thoughtlessly filling up space. But then this is made up for with cities which are much much tighter. The interplay between towns and cities would then come from strategically managing settlement connections, food distribution and town specialization. Where it's now very reasonable and clear when you would specialize into one thing or another, context clearly leading into strategy. Such as my idea that towns where you manually create multiple connections add a trade distance reduction to each connection, allowing you to move more food around your empire more easily. This becomes integrated into your natural geographic planning, and obviously this becomes a good hub town candidate.

A settlement with lots of rough terrain will become a natural mining town candidate, where you wouldn't really ever think "gee should it be a religious center this age?" Because it's grown out enough to be a very lucrative source of gold you'd be very reluctant to use any other way.

 

[tman2000]

I'd prefer towns that just grow like gangbusters, almost thoughtlessly filling up space.

To add to this, you should make it easier to pillage farms without having to use a full turn of movement, and simultaneously make repairing farms a tad more expensive. Then military action can serve as a counter to easily grown farming towns. This is completely consistent with history.

 

[chazzycat]

Is it just me or do his science/culture yields at the end of exploration age seem...not great? Honest question. I just reached deity level a couple days back and don't have a frame of reference yet.