Towns, towns and more towns.

[ogre51]

I really like towns, and spend more time thinking about them than I do cities. Of course towns are the initial step towards cities outside of the Capital so we have to constantly be looking at them as potential city locations in the future.
Towns to me are what I like best about Civ7. But I think they are too limiting. Should they replace cities, of course not however there are some things about towns that do change. The ages and the AI interactions and also the need of our empire.

One of the town limiting factors is I have a town on Growth, then switch to Fish/Farm. Great. However those from now on are my only options. Growth or Fish/Farm. What happens when that once friendly AI decides to plop their new settlement in a threatening location? We need the ability (1000 to make it a city, but not quite good enough due to lack of production) or (1000 to revert it to Growth again and choose a new specialty like Fort town?). Now we can go from Fort town back to growth. Crisis is past pay another 1000 and make it whatever. Why be locked in for the e n t i r e game as one specialty. Our needs for towns types changes as does the game. New ages, new challenges.

Example. I had a large lake (8-9 tiles), no navigable river connections to an ocean but is was amid good grassland tiles, 3-5 resources and the location itself would later in the game have 5+ city connections. I set it up as a food feeder (fish/farm). Production was very low so a future city site was not worth consideration. However the locations surrounding it were much more attractive to city investment. It was in a terrific location for a potential Hub town as the future of my empire unfolded. Game changes, constantly. Why be punished for meeting an important need by feeding my capital initially and yet not having the option to make it an already developed "new" Hub town later. We evolve or we limit our empire to become even more successful. How about religion? In Exploration we either create a new religious town or we do without. What happens when we have met and exceeded our settlement by a few already. Just ignore it and endure the happy hit?

I use the following mods for my towns.
Enhanced Town Focus
Town Focus Buildings (I would hope that previous iterations of the towns evolvement would retain the added buildings)
Unique Quarters in towns
Also helpful are although not just town oriented are
Warehouses Fixed
GP - Warehouses Adjecencies
City District Upgraded (has 4 rather than 2 building spaces)

One last thing about towns are the unique city state buildings. City States and our Empires Towns are very similar to me. Good for a city state? Then good for my towns. However these should only apply to being built for the specialties towns. For instance the reverting into a Fort town used earlier would allow for building of the military building Hill Fort. All of this is going to become REAL expensive both in time and gold of course but at least options would exist for an evolving game.

I just feel towns need to be more flexible in the current age as I play Long age length, decisions made early to satisfy ones need will in my games more than likely need to change. Simply building more towns is only a stopgap not the solution, at least for my viewpoint. Would need to examine the possibilty for becoming to OP, questions about why make a city? when a town can with time just about become one. Lot of questions in this forgetful brain of mine and not enough answers.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Pfeffersack]

I share your love for towns and also quite put in an effort to make them shine in my games Beside the inevitable supporting farm towns, I usually have at least two hub towns to bring in extra influence. The rest is more situative (trade and factory towns are nice), though I have to say that I need to find a purpose for a mining town yet - boosting production to be converted into Gold usually isn't needed and to grow a town first you usually don't invest that much in hammer-creating improvements (rough/forested terrain is where the basic buildings often go to). Religious towns suffer for me from the unsatisfying gameplay around religion...the missionary whack-a-mole isn't fun and I just don't like idea to waste the specialization of one of my beloved town on that feature

(...)

Example. I had a large lake (8-9 tiles), no navigable river connections to an ocean but is was amid good grassland tiles, 3-5 resources and the location itself would later in the game have 5+ city connections. I set it up as a food feeder (fish/farm). Production was very low so a future city site was not worth consideration. However the locations surrounding it were much more attractive to city investment. It was in a terrific location for a potential Hub town as the future of my empire unfolded. Game changes, constantly. Why be punished for meeting an important need by feeding my capital initially and yet not having the option to make it an already developed "new" Hub town later. We evolve or we limit our empire to become even more successful. How about religion? In Exploration we either create a new religious town or we do without. What happens when we have met and exceeded our settlement by a few already. Just ignore it and endure the happy hit?

(...)

It sounds like you assume that you can't change a picked town specialization for the entire game. That however not true: You are only locked with it for the current age. I concede that sometimes even that is pretty limiting and your suggestion to be able to buy out with a hefty fee has something, but at least it is not that bad

 

[ogre51]

Thanks for your thoughts @Pfeffersack . Yes I do, although I have yet to try Modern. Antiquity is my favorite age by far. My concern is I play Long ages (sometimes I use slow/no future tech advance to realy stretch out the ages). In my playing, even with just standard speed though I still see the need for towns to change a few times, not all of the towns but a few. Now I just load up a few Commanders with archers and go whap whoever threatened me instead of changing over to say that Fort town that was set up for food or whatever and watch as they die attacking me. I enjoy that especially in a town With Izzy I only build cities on Natural wonders everything else settled are towns.

If playing Exploration on the new world I will set up a city on both coasts if needed otherwise will just use conquered ones and patiently wait for the timer to go away or take over a gained IP and build it as a city. There are so many ways to play this game and I do not want to always have to use the current "meta" of the week as if I even could anyway Making gold, building production, defeating the enemy. Basics. Everything else comes with it. My favorite civ/leader is Izzy and Maya. Probably will continue as that is my playstyle, they are good with the towns to me. Economy and Military. Same style I played in V and VI. Izzi's gold buys stuff, the Mayan troops kill stuff and we eradicate the other Civs.

Towns have so much potential and it drives me crazy to not be able to do anything about it. In addition to the gold cost maybe once the switching is completed it can never be a city.

 

[Taefin]

Between town designation and warehouse placement, every game has 2-3 majorly regretted decisions for me. For towns, I wonder how much has to do with not wanting players to switch into trade town for 1 turn to set up routes and then switch to something more useful.

 

[Krikkit1]

Between town designation and warehouse placement, every game has 2-3 majorly regretted decisions for me. For towns, I wonder how much has to do with not wanting players to switch into trade town for 1 turn to set up routes and then switch to something more useful.

The thing with town designations is it at least resets on age... Warehouses don't. Old Warehouses should be able to be made obsolete (at least in cities)

 

[ogre51]

@Taefin Your good, I have regretted so many of my in game choices. I think increasing Gold cost (1000, 2000, 3000), cannot ever make it a city and maybe other "penalties" could work. I agree though that it probably would be misused

 

[uppi]

@Taefin Your good, I have regretted so many of my in game choices. I think increasing Gold cost (1000, 2000, 3000), cannot ever make it a city and maybe other "penalties" could work. I agree though that it probably would be misused

In what situation would you pay 1000 Gold to change a town specialization? How would you ever get enough benefit from that that it would be worth the cost?

 

[Pfeffersack]

In what situation would you pay 1000 Gold to change a town specialization? How would you ever get enough benefit from that that it would be worth the cost?

Not for regulary use probably, but if you are suddenly out for influence and one of your towns has gained a lot of connections...or if during a crisis at the end of the age and you could need a specialisation giving happiness...or a fort town in an unexpected war.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I"ve made use of most of the specializations in my games. Early in the age, all the towns stay "Growing" while I take 10-20 turns to decide what they need. Obviously, the first few towns in Antiquity stay "Growing" to help get the empire started.

Exploration / Religion Tactic: In one of the strategy threads, I had someone recommend the following.

• Try taking Brahmanism as your reliquary belief (2 relics per AI capital)
• Produce your Missionaries quickly, sending them for the capitals right away. Convert their urban district, move on
• As your city-built temples fill up, buy a temple in a town and specialize it as Religious so that its Temple has 2 relic slots rather than 1

Exploration / Island Town: some of my Distant Lands settlements to generate Treasure Fleets are often small, 1, 2, 3 tile islands. Those will soon become fishing towns Any coastal towns in Antiquity may become fishing as well.

Antiquity / Happiness Crisis: Last night, I got the (Un)Happiness crisis as I ended Antiquity, having waged a big war agains Hatshepsut. Her towns got really unhappy, but they had resources. Making them Trading Towns helped stem the bleeding and reduce the risk of revolt. Situational, but it helped to have NOT chosen a specialization earlier in the age.

Antiquity / Exploration, High Production: If I have a town which has a mine, quarry, and woodcutters, it doesn't seem to make sense to call it a "farming town." I will usually specialize it as "Mining Town" even if I don't see a clear benefit.

Exploration / Feed the Specialists: If you're pursuing the Science legacy path in Exploration -- to get your yields up, using specialists -- you will need food. You may want to consider which mix of "growing towns" and "farming towns" will help your cities grow so that specialists may be assigned.

I've made a few centrally located towns into Hub Towns, for increased influence. I rarely use "Urban Town". If a town has quarters (say, it was a city in an earlier age, or it was a city under its former owner), I'm probably going to promote it to city anyway. I don't see the benefit in specializing it.

 

[uppi]

• Try taking Brahmanism as your reliquary belief (2 relics per AI capital)
• Produce your Missionaries quickly, sending them for the capitals right away. Convert their urban district, move on

The strategy is good, but there is no need to produce missionaries quickly. It might save you a charge or two if you get to a capital before any other missionaries. So you might end up needing three missionaries instead of four on a small map, but that is not a huge benefit. I tend to send out missionaries in pairs, put one on an urban district and one on a rural district and convert on the same turn, so no other missionary can interfere. But it does not matter whether that happens on turn 20 or 50. At the beginning of the exploration age, production is spent much better on settlers (or military) to get a foothold in the distant lands. You just should take care not to wait too long, because you might get the religious crisis which reduces the number of conversions.

 

[Siptah]

It depends whether you need missionaries quickly. If you want to maximize relics, you need the fast. Convert a capital, then conquer it, so that the opponent gets a new capital. Then convert that again, etc.

I rarely choose the religious towns though, but instead the belief that gives +1 relic slot in cities.

 

[vorlon_mi]

The strategy is good, but there is no need to produce missionaries quickly. It might save you a charge or two if you get to a capital before any other missionaries. So you might end up needing three missionaries instead of four on a small map, but that is not a huge benefit. I tend to send out missionaries in pairs, put one on an urban district and one on a rural district and convert on the same turn, so no other missionary can interfere. But it does not matter whether that happens on turn 20 or 50. At the beginning of the exploration age, production is spent much better on settlers (or military) to get a foothold in the distant lands. You just should take care not to wait too long, because you might get the religious crisis which reduces the number of conversions.

Agree... I think that my emphasis on speed was pre-patch, when it was impossible to convert a holy city. The AI often use their capital as their holy city, so speed was important to do an initial conversion before they even founded a religion. Post-patch, I agree, the conversion can happen at a more deliberate pace. Focus on Distant Lands is definitely the priority.

 

[sixty4half]

The strategy is good, but there is no need to produce missionaries quickly. It might save you a charge or two if you get to a capital before any other missionaries. ..... But it does not matter whether that happens on turn 20 or 50.

Since relics give 2 culture/happiness and you get 2 relics, a 30 turn difference is 120 culture/happiness plus any bonus' you might have so it does matter a little bit. But only a little. The happiness might matter more depending on the situation.