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

[WillK96]

Then there's very little that differentiates this from regular play. Unless you pick certain combinations of leaders and civs and mementos, such a logical approach would usually result in what I said (3-4 cities with 2-4 towns). Some games may go differently, but they're very much the exception, in my experience.

If we're talking about the extreme of really converting 100% of towns into cities, that would be a different approach from the usual

Hard disagree that you'd end Antiquity with 3-4 cities and 2-4 towns. Something like 5 and 3 or 6 and 2 seems more likely from my experience (which consists of hitting 2-3 maxed out legacy paths on Deity). Regardless, something like 4 cities and 4 towns, where the town play is excruciatingly vapid (leave these towns as towns because you can't afford to convert them into cities) is unsatisfying from a gameplay and game design perspective. Which buffed town specialization would help fix.

Edit: Essentially my argument and suggestion is that right now, there is very little reason to ever found a town with the intention of leaving it a town forever, until the modern age when you need the extra food for your cities (and then your hampered by the settlement restrictions, which my suggestion approach addressed). This could be fixed with deeper and more rewarding bonuses around settling specific settlements as towns with more powerful specialized bonuses (generally a "town buff"). If you're having fun playing with 4-5 cities and and a few towns in Antiquity (and scaling in Exploration) and are fine that on a micro level a city is better than a town in really any circumstance (but recognize the need to leave some towns as towns for the gold) more power to you, enjoy the game.

 

[aelf]

I'm also not sure growing towns into cities gimps your gold production - especially if you're able to stockpile at the end of an age, which you should be able to do in antiquity and exploration. You can only carry over a limited amount. And then everything sets back to towns anyway.

It doesn't gimp your gold production so much as it's a gold sink. In the YT video posted in the OP, in Exploration Age, the amount of gold he started with was far from great and he had a deficit to boot that took almost 25 turns to solve. And that's without having to fight a war in Antiquity at all.

In my first attempt, the amount of gold it took to build some structures to grab the needed camels and gypsum quickly, plus the costs of fighting a few wars (because, hey, settling to grab those resources gets the AI pissed at you and can result in surprise wars), meant that I'd really have to start Exploration age with no gold if I wanted a fourth city.

Hard disagree that you'd end Antiquity with 3-4 cities and 2-4 towns. Something like 5 and 3 or 6 and 2 seems more likely from my experience (which consists of hitting 2-3 maxed out legacy paths on Deity). Regardless, something like 4 cities and 4 towns, where the town play is excruciatingly vapid (leave these towns as towns because you can't afford to convert them into cities) is unsatisfying from a gameplay and game design perspective. Which buffed town specialization would help fix.

You can disagree, but that's not my experience.

It may be different if you're playing economic civs, but that 600+ gold cost of converting to a city is really painful otherwise. And what for? 3-4 cities in Antiquity are enough to win on Deity.

 

[WillK96]

In my first attempt, the amount of gold it took to build some structures to grab the needed camels and gypsum quickly, plus the costs of fighting a few wars (because, hey, settling to grab those resources gets the AI pissed at you and can result in surprise wars), meant that I'd really have to start Exploration age with no gold if I wanted a fourth city.

Have you used the antiquity econ golden age to keep the cities from Antiquity? I've found the Antiquity age econ golden age is really easy to reliably hit, but you have to focus on traders early. That may also help your war issues since the trade routes boost your relationship score.

 

[Acken]

Why are we using Antiquity as a benchmark. Strategies need to prove they perform well for a complete game not one third of it where your final yields do not matter.
Show us that doing that in Antiquity gives a good momentum that translates to a strong mid and end game.

 

[aelf]

Have you used the antiquity econ golden age to keep the cities from Antiquity? I've found the Antiquity age econ golden age is really easy to reliably hit, but you have to focus on traders early. That may also help your war issues since the trade routes boost your relationship score.

Why is it a good thing to select a particular golden age to solve a problem you created yourself?

Traders don't really help with surprise wars. There are definitely a few factors that have to go right to enable this approach or something similar to it, such as availability of resources, AI behaviour, and having enough land to settle, that having at least a few towns is the more likely outcome. And that seems right.

 

[WillK96]

Why are we using Antiquity as a benchmark. Strategies need to prove they perform well for a complete game not one third of it where your final yields do not matter.
Show us that doing that in Antiquity gives a good momentum that translates to a strong mid and end game.

Sure, exploration also makes sense to have many more cities than towns, especially to hit the science legacy path (which I've found is easiest to hit in one quarter in 5 different cities with strong adjacency), which sets you up for a strong start to the Modern era, where the yields matter the most. And generally cities vastly outperform towns on yields, even when the building yields are reduced by the era transition.

 

[WillK96]

Why is it a good thing to select a particular golden age to solve a problem you created yourself?

Traders don't really help with surprise wars. There are definitely a few factors that have to go right to enable this approach or something similar to it, such as availability of resources, AI behaviour, and having enough land to settle, that having at least a few towns is the more likely outcome. And that seems right.

All the golden ages are supposed to set you up to reward you for your investment in Antiquity. For example, the cultural and scientific golden ages "solve" the problem of building expensive (to build and maintain) cultural and scientific buildings that are neutered by the age transition (by retaining their base yields and adjacencies). I've found the Econ golden age and fealty from the militaristic path synergize incredibly well. You should try it.

Disagree with the traders not helping with surprise wars. I found that on my first few playthroughs of Deity, the AI declared war on me fairly frequently. But after I started giving everyone friendly greetings and after I started using a lot of traders, I have had no issues with surprise wars (there are still one or two, but they are not frequent nor inevitable). I've also found they're quite easy to fight off with a single commander and 3-4 ranged units, some of which you should be hard building anyway. And at the end of the era, you should be building several military commanders and military units to fill their slots to set you up for the next age. Not trying to be condescending but what difficulty are you playing on and for how many hours? Just trying to the quantity of your experience.

 

[tman2000]

It may be different if you're playing economic civs, but that 600+ gold cost of converting to a city is really painful otherwise. And what for? 3-4 cities in Antiquity are enough to win on Deity.

This is somewhat missing the point. It may be optimal to decline to upgrade to cities because of the cost, but that's imposed by the game's balancing limitations. The game doesn't have to be designed that way. It comes off as being forced to use towns through constraints, in order to artificially make towns seem worthwhile.

A true town-city ecosystem would involve situations where you can convert a town to a city but don't because the particular function of the town is imminently useful. Right now this becomes most true in niche situations:

• Fishing towns without the tile space to function as effective cities
• Temple towns if you need to slot relics for culture victory at the last minute
• Hub towns if you're low on influence and are in a situation to get big boosts (hard to tell unfortunately

Overall, with food being nerfed and production as king, however, cities remain the optimal choice when you can afford to make them. Imposing constraints to make it unaffordable to covert to a city instead of something else is not the same as making towns preferable to cities.

 

[Smayo]

Fealty is just disgustingly good in general isn’t it. If there was a memento that said, in Exploration, get the Golden Age Academies legacy for free, I would value it less than Corona Civica, which is Fealty with a downside. Admittedly, settlement limit starts to devalue on training settlers and is instead a lot more about conquering, due to settler cost formula (training a Zamindar as Xerxes KoK on 28 settles costs like a wonder).

That being said, I watched the video, I felt like it was a good strategy, but I think his conclusions were flawed.

A: he said he wasn’t leaning into the strat, but Han getting +1 pop on new settles is a big deal for cheaper cities, and Xerxes KoK for extra gold and settlement limit. And also the +2 prod on happy cities.

B: Gypsum and Camels are in no way guaranteed, again his Xerxes start encourages Camels as I believe he has a desert Bias. But dunno about Gypsum admittedly, and Han probably is grassland bias based on their wonder.

C: Towns are not useless. He even says he settles some locations with no intent to turn them into cities, it was just for the resources. That’s like, what they’re for? Even if they were, the mechanic of needing to spend more to invest a town into a city is nice, it means you don’t invest as much placing a settlement, because if you miscalculated, just keep it a town. It also lets you reprioritise on the new Age.

D: he literally just played antiquity.

 

[aelf]

All the golden ages are supposed to set you up to reward you for your investment in Antiquity. For example, the cultural and scientific golden ages "solve" the problem of building expensive (to build and maintain) cultural and scientific buildings that are neutered by the age transition (by retaining their base yields and adjacencies). I've found the Econ golden age and fealty from the militaristic path synergize incredibly well. You should try it.

Disagree with the traders not helping with surprise wars. I found that on my first few playthroughs of Deity, the AI declared war on me fairly frequently. But after I started giving everyone friendly greetings and after I started using a lot of traders, I have had no issues with surprise wars (there are still one or two, but they are not frequent nor inevitable). I've also found they're quite easy to fight off with a single commander and 3-4 ranged units, some of which you should be hard building anyway. And at the end of the era, you should be building several military commanders and military units to fill their slots to set you up for the next age. Not trying to be condescending but what difficulty are you playing on and for how many hours? Just trying to the quantity of your experience.

My first attempt at this approach was on Deity. I had no problems in that game at all. In fact, it was an easy game. I just found it not all that beneficial to create a fourth city.

I had -111 from leader agenda from Benjamin Franklin a few turns after he declared war (the only save I have around that time that I can check). Though at the point he declared, he wasn't even hostile yet so reconciliation wasn't an option. I really don't think a few traders was going to make a difference to the trajectory of that relationship. In fact, I had sent my first trader to him.

I don't think your questions are condescending by themselves, but coupled with your assumption that things will always go the way you say, it makes for a rather unproductive conversation.

 

[Melkus]

@tman2000
Ok, but converting is conceived by FXS as a town upgrade that costs money - so this discussion becomes rather semantical in nature?

But I'd like to make town specialization more interesting too, so I fall between the chairs here, I guess.

Have you used the antiquity econ golden age to keep the cities from Antiquity? I've found the Antiquity age econ golden age is really easy to reliably hit, but you have to focus on traders early. That may also help your war issues since the trade routes boost your relationship score.

Agreed, you can pretty much always take the econ age in Exploration - especially with this strat, if you pull it off - but you may have to get a few towns settled in a hurry to fix your gold problem. All these obsolete buildings just have to weigh you down - at least a little? (No doubt that there are some civs with unique buildings that help with that.)

 

[Acken]

Sure, exploration also makes sense to have many more cities than towns, especially to hit the science legacy path (which I've found is easiest to hit in one quarter in 5 different cities with strong adjacency), which sets you up for a strong start to the Modern era, where the yields matter the most. And generally cities vastly outperform towns on yields, even when the building yields are reduced by the era transition.

Cities individually outperforming towns in yields is a given.
But that's not the claim being made in the thread, which is that you should convert as much as possible during Antiquity.

As you move through the ages, then yes more cities will be better for the main reason that growth diminishes in value as you get closer to the end. 5 cities in exploration is not a lot, you can easily have 15+ settlements in that age. The question is what ratio at each age is the best for the overall progression. And I've failed to see compelling evidence of the ideas presented in this thread.

 

[WillK96]

My first attempt at this approach was on Deity. I had no problems in that game at all. In fact, it was an easy game. I just found it not all that beneficial to create a fourth city.

I had -111 from leader agenda from Benjamin Franklin a few turns after he declared war (the only save I have around that time that I can check). Though at the point he declared, he wasn't even hostile yet so reconciliation wasn't an option. I really don't think a few traders was going to make a difference to the trajectory of that relationship. In fact, I had sent my first trader to him.

I don't think your questions are condescending by themselves, but coupled with your assumption that things will always go the way you say, it makes for a rather unproductive conversation.

I'm not assuming they'll also go the way I say. My point is that generally, in a binary, cities are better than towns, so you want to maximize the amount of cities you can afford to have. This 1) defeats the purpose of towns allowing you to be competitive while "playing tall" (which now apparently means less cities and more towns, where in reality it should mean less settlements overall) and 2) makes for stale, repetitive gameplay in the context of the cities to towns calculations.

I've found this conversation entirely unproductive because you chose to interpret "the meta is to convert as many towns into cities as you can" to mean "you should empty your gold to buy every city you can possibly afford as quickly as you can possibly afford and playing any other way is suboptimal" and really did not engage with my suggestions for more stimulating and satisfying town play as linked below:

I agree with the increased cost to cities improving the value of towns. I also agree with customizing where the food from towns goes. To make towns more useful, I'd change 3 more things:

1. I'd increase the settlement limit by about 50% in Antiquity and Exploration
2. I'd make food much harder to get in cities.
3. I'd make the town specializations much more focused and powerful. For example, I'd allow Fort Towns to spend production to build units (maybe at a decreased cost or at half cost, while the rest of the production is converted into gold) and trade towns to build merchants, fishing quays, and trade buildings, I'd allow Urban Centers to build/buy at least the tier 1 science and culture buildings, Hub towns to build/buy influence buildings (I'd also allow the hub town to generate influence based on foreign settlement connecitons, Farming and Mining towns to +3 their production on improvements rather than +2, etc... I'd also prohibit or increase the cost of buying units in the non corresponding town. Want to buy an Archer in the urban center town? That's going to be double the cost buying the archer is in the current build of the game. Same for buying a merchant in a fort town, etc.

I think this would make town play a lot more complex. Do I want to have a fort town near the closest civ for logistical purposes? Or do I want to build a hub town for the added influence? Or a mining/farming town that is more difficult to defend, but gives the cities more food/gold?

Right now, at least in the first two ages, town play is very sterile.

I'd also decrease the settlement restrictions in the modern age. Want a farming town 2 tiles away from the capital? That's fine, the capital will just ceded the tiles its grown into to the town's first ring. In this way, towns would function as a modern day suburb and or urban agglomeration with a different focus (Thinking of NYC and something like Buffalo - which would be like 1 tile away IRL).

Thoughts? I think this would introduce some really interesting and complex decision making into the game beyond the current meta, which is to basically leave it on growing town until you have to change it because of a crisis or some other rare instance (Carthage's bonuses, etc...)

 

[WillK96]

@tman2000
Ok, but converting is conceived by FXS as a town upgrade that costs money - so this discussion becomes rather semantical in nature?

But I'd like to make town specialization more interesting too, so I fall between the chairs here, I guess.


Agreed, you can pretty much always take the econ age in Exploration - especially with this strat, if you pull it off - but you may have to get a few towns settled in a hurry to fix your gold problem. All these obsolete buildings just have to weigh you down - at least a little? (No doubt that there are some civs with unique buildings that help with that.)

The obsolete buildings certainly weigh you down a bit. But nothing a quick settle can't fix. Especially with the added limit from Fealty.

The point again here is that FXS concept of a town just being a worse city which you can pay to upgrade makes the city and town interplay boring and repetitive, outside of a few contrived circumstances re:crises.

 

[aelf]

I'm not assuming they'll also go the way I say. My point is that generally, in a binary, cities are better than towns, so you want to maximize the amount of cities you can afford to have. This 1) defeats the purpose of towns allowing you to be competitive while "playing tall" (which now apparently means less cities and more towns, where in reality it should mean less settlements overall) and 2) makes for stale, repetitive gameplay in the context of the cities to towns calculations.

I've found this conversation entirely unproductive because you chose to interpret "the meta is to convert as many towns into cities as you can" to mean "you should empty your gold to buy every city you can possibly afford as quickly as you can possibly afford and playing any other way is suboptimal" and really did not engage with my suggestions for more stimulating and satisfying town play as linked below:

I'm not sure why you and others who are insisting on the current 'city meta' seem so keen to push the conversation towards your suggested changes to the game. Maybe they're good, idk. My interest is in discussing the current state of the game and, in my view, having had a few games with the city meta in mind, I find it unnecessary for successful games and not always feasible.

I don't think that's a controversial view at all. You can quibble about how many cities you want to have, which may only be a difference of 1 from mine depending on the circumstances. But I think that has little to do with difficulty level and experience at the game. And all your advice so far seems to be on how to make the way you prefer to play more viable without regard to whether the approach is necessary. I mean, really, what for? So we can win on Deity a dozen turns faster?

 

[tman2000]

@tman2000
Ok, but converting is conceived by FXS as a town upgrade that costs money - so this discussion becomes rather semantical in nature?

But I'd like to make town specialization more interesting too, so I fall between the chairs here, I guess.

Not really semantical if the idea of adding towns was purely to make the game easier for casual players on lower levels of difficulty where they can play a hybrid Civ Revolution style of settle-it-and-forget-it with one or two cities to pay attention to.

I had thought that towns are streamlining things so that we can devote attention to warfighting and make the late game more manageable. However, weak food and king production remain an argument against the utility of towns as towns.

 

[chazzycat]

People kinda just keep repeating over and over that towns suck, but it doesn't really fit with my experience at all, as I mentioned a couple pages back.

The central issue I have with the premise that cities are always better is this: how on earth do you keep them growing? Every time I play with relatively few towns, my cities just stagnate around size 30. So in order to keep growing my outputs to keep pace, I feel like I would be forced to just continually expand to more and more cities, which means conquering the AI. Which is fine of course, if you want to play that way I'm sure it works out fine.

But I have had good success with tall strategies too. I prefer to play peacefully when possible rather than take advantage of the AI's weak military tactics. These tall strategies absolutely do also work fine on the highest levels, if you lean into it. It requires some investment into the proper attributes and whatnot to make specialists much more valuable than they are by default, and also a strong prioritization of FOOD (yes the thing that everyone says SUCKS).

My very first attempt at deity level, I used the Khmer (trash civ, food sucks, yawn) and had a blast. Were my antiquity yields amazing? Not really. But I set my foundation up to succeed in the later ages, and it worked to a tee. Easily sailed to victory comfortably ahead in every victory track and every output, with just 3 cities, and like 20 towns. Based on the power of food and specialists.

The modern age is where this strategy really takes off. Pack a factory full of fish, and watch your investments into food pay off BIG TIME as you place dozens of specialists with crazy yields. Even before that it's quite strong in exploration too, but takes off to another level in modern.

I just feel like there are plenty of different valid approaches, if you lean into them. Blanket statements like "cities are always better" just don't hold up to scrutiny.

 

[WillK96]

I'm not sure why you and others who are insisting on the current 'city meta' seem so keen to push the conversation towards your suggested changes to the game. Maybe they're good, idk. My interest is in discussing the current state of the game and, in my view, having had a few games with the city meta in mind, I find it unnecessary for successful games and not always feasible.

I don't think that's a controversial view at all. You can quibble about how many cities you want to have, which may only be a difference of 1 from mine depending on the circumstances. But I think that has little to do with difficulty level and experience at the game. And all your advice so far seems to be on how to make the way you prefer to play more viable without regard to whether the approach is necessary. I mean, really, what for? So we can win on Deity a dozen turns faster?

Again you are not identifying the subject of the discontent around towns. Per the devs livestreams and diaries, towns were introduced to do the following:

1) Have less micro in the later ages
2) Allow cities to focus on production while outsourcing their food production
3) Increase the tactical element of civilization building (e.g. should this settlement be a town or will it develop into a city).

Right now, they achieve none of those goals. Not a single one.

1. They don't lead to less micro later in the game than Civ VI for two reasons. First, they grow so quickly in the modern age that I'm constantly assigning their population to new tiles. Which is an insane amount of micro. They could fix this with an automated tile selector system that could be toggled off or on. Second, because they are generally less optimal for pursuing the desired win conditions (aside maybe econ but even then, cities have more ways to get more resources slots so better to have cities), you are still left with a large amount of micro because most of your settlements are cities.

2. Cities right now have, through tile improvements and buildings, more ways of generating food than towns! This is especially true in the modern era. Cities can entirely sustain themselves. Why would we need towns to feed the city, when the city does a better job at feeding itself?

3. Again because production is more important than food, and towns production is effectively nerfed to 1/4 of what the natural yield is (production is converted to gold at a 1:1 rate, and gold is worth 1/4th production, though you can use it globally which is valuable), it does not make much tactical sense, outside of a few very niche situations, to settle a settlement as a town for the purpose of always being a town. Sure, you can't convert all your towns into cities, but on an individual level, each town would serve the civ better as a city than a town.

This is a fundamental failure of game design. So no, it is not about making the way I prefer to play more viable, it is about introducing a more complex and satisfying decision chain into the game, which would make the game feel more dynamic and less sterile—a fundamental pillar of game design.

 

[stealth_nsk]

From gameplay point of view, towns serve 2 functions:
1. They are intended to minimize settlement management.
2. They provide tall-wide variety in strategies.

For the first function, it's important to note that we could generally ignore antiquity as there aren't many settlements.

For the later game I disagree that town growth brings micromanagement. It doesn't require significant effort, it's reactive and it stops once you specialize towns (we still not 100% sure if it's intended or not).

Regarding tall-wide strategies, I think the fact that we have disagreement about how many towns are optimal, already shows that it owrks to some extent. But clearly it will need tweaking once bugs will be settled, settlement connections will work in more clear way and so on.

 

[Smayo]

I'm not assuming they'll also go the way I say. My point is that generally, in a binary, cities are better than towns, so you want to maximize the amount of cities you can afford to have. This 1) defeats the purpose of towns allowing you to be competitive while "playing tall" (which now apparently means less cities and more towns, where in reality it should mean less settlements overall) and 2) makes for stale, repetitive gameplay in the context of the cities to towns calculations.

I've found this conversation entirely unproductive because you chose to interpret "the meta is to convert as many towns into cities as you can" to mean "you should empty your gold to buy every city you can possibly afford as quickly as you can possibly afford and playing any other way is suboptimal" and really did not engage with my suggestions for more stimulating and satisfying town play as linked below:

Again you are not identifying the subject of the discontent around towns. Per the devs livestreams and diaries, towns were introduced to do the following:

1) Have less micro in the later ages
2) Allow cities to focus on production while outsourcing their food production
3) Increase the tactical element of civilization building (e.g. should this settlement be a town or will it develop into a city).

Right now, they achieve none of those goals. Not a single one.

1. They don't lead to less micro later in the game than Civ VI for two reasons. First, they grow so quickly in the modern age that I'm constantly assigning their population to new tiles. Which is an insane amount of micro. They could fix this with an automated tile selector system that could be toggled off or on. Second, because they are generally less optimal for pursuing the desired win conditions (aside maybe econ but even then, cities have more ways to get more resources slots so better to have cities), you are still left with a large amount of micro because most of your settlements are cities.

2. Cities right now have, through tile improvements and buildings, more ways of generating food than towns! This is especially true in the modern era. Cities can entirely sustain themselves. Why would we need towns to feed the city, when the city does a better job at feeding itself?

3. Again because production is more important than food, and towns production is effectively nerfed to 1/4 of what the natural yield is (production is converted to gold at a 1:1 rate, and gold is worth 1/4th production, though you can use it globally which is valuable), it does not make much tactical sense, outside of a few very niche situations, to settle a settlement as a town for the purpose of always being a town. Sure, you can't convert all your towns into cities, but on an individual level, each town would serve the civ better as a city than a town.

This is a fundamental failure of game design. So no, it is not about making the way I prefer to play more viable, it is about introducing a more complex and satisfying decision chain into the game, which would make the game feel more dynamic and less sterile—a fundamental pillar of game design.

1: not having to choose production half’s your micro on town vs city. Also when you have gotten all the resources possible from that town, just set a specialisation and forget about it, it’ll be just fine

2: sure you CAN generate more food in cities vs towns, but then you are reducing the other yields in that city. Towns can’t really produce science or culture, and covering your farm tiles with buildings that fueled your initial city growth feels like a natural progression.

3: yes every town would be more efficient as a city. It’s also true upgrading my Warrior to Spearman is more efficient, it’s got more stats! But for both of them, there is a gold cost that might be better spent elsewhere. Sure I could convert my town to a city, then use to prod to make a +8 bazaar in twenty turns, or I could just buy a bazaar in my city, and get that bonus immediately.
Admittedly it’s hard to quantify which is better because of all of the purchase reduction modifiers.

Now from my 3 points, it sounds like I hate your guys and your argument, but I do agree, something is rotten in the state of cities. I just think what’s rotten is the growth formula, either the original, or the quick fix to prevent 1 turn growth hasn’t been correctly balanced around yet. Food is given so little value, both in unique improvements and resources, so fixing that could go a long way to improving balance. Like offsetting things like Gypsum being worth so much more than Kaolin, or even Hides to Fish if we want to be city agnostic, will do a lot to fix things without resorting to drastic balance changes.