Towns vs Cities? Bad/Good Design? META?

[Calcifer]

Not sure if youre aware of this, but towns still grow even when you choose a specialization (even though the ui implies otherwise), they just don't get the 50% bonus. I'd say that specialising is almost always correct. In the antiquity age going for Science/Culture on Quarters and Influence is good and in later ages the farming/mining spec seems preferable.

Specialised towns don’t grow. The turn counter for growth is still shown in the town banner but it doesn’t progress.

I’m really curious, I see a lot of people here not using town in antiquity. How do you manage to pay for 6 cities so early in the game? Can you actually get buildings in all cities in reasonable time? I find myself struggling a lot in antiquity, usually I can make 2-3 cities and my gold economy is always stretched super thin. Gold usually starts coming in greater quantity in the second half of exploration age, then for me it’s just a matter of balancing food yields to still be able to place some specialists.
In modern age especially specialists start to be really good, because the raw yields you get from policies start to outshine your building adjacencies.

 

[aelf]

Initially, I went with my gut when deciding whether to turn towns into cities. One criterion is population size (I favoured larger towns when deciding which to turn into cities); another is need for certain buildings that can't be built in towns.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is the attributes that give bonuses for specialists or resource slots when you have 3 or fewer cities. Those have influenced me to keep to no more than 3 cities. Is this more efficient or not? I'm not sure, but I can see how with certain playstyles (such as buying the majority of your buildings as Mughals), this might be better.

A funny thing is the Augustus AI's agenda is disliking civs with towns and not cities. Does that mean he will never be really happy with you unless you convert all your towns to cities? That's wild.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

Specialised towns don’t grow. The turn counter for growth is still shown in the town banner but it doesn’t progress.

I’m really curious, I see a lot of people here not using town in antiquity. How do you manage to pay for 6 cities so early in the game? Can you actually get buildings in all cities in reasonable time? I find myself struggling a lot in antiquity, usually I can make 2-3 cities and my gold economy is always stretched super thin. Gold usually starts coming in greater quantity in the second half of exploration age, then for me it’s just a matter of balancing food yields to still be able to place some specialists.
In modern age especially specialists start to be really good, because the raw yields you get from policies start to outshine your building adjacencies.

Well, some specialized town will go on growing, but that's a sign they are not in your network (not a good news...). The production is still transformed into gold (as for unspecialized towns), but if there is no outlet for the food the town will use it. The only way to solve the problem is to use a trader to link the town manually to a city, but that is a bit expensive...

As for me I still struggle with money in the early game. Most likely because the towns come late, and that to have them grow fast I tend to target food tiles when given the choice. But money is mostly used to buy units in defenceless towns, or to supplement wars (because the military legacy is not doable without some conquest). And although the first two cities are doable, the third tends to cost in the thousands, or at minimum several hundreds, which is far too much (I already have difficulties to reach the 100 gold income, that would be even more difficult with even more buildings gold and happiness maintenance costs...)...

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The only way to solve the problem is to use a trader to link the town manually to a city, but that is a bit expensive...

A port works if it is on the Coast.

 

[Siptah]

And although the first two cities are doable, the third tends to cost in the thousands, or at minimum several hundreds, which is far too much (I already have difficulties to reach the 100 gold income, that would be even more difficult with even more buildings gold and happiness maintenance costs...)...

The only way you see costs in the thousands is if you convert conquered cities. Your own cities cost 1000 when founded and the cost is reduced with more population. There is a hefty penalty for conquered cities (+100%?), and a smaller penalty if you already have a lot of cities. I think this is necessary, otherwise conquering foreign cities and upgrading them for 200-300 gold (due to high pop) would be just too good.

 

[Fluffball]

I am liking the new town/city system if for no other reason that it being another meaningfull decision for the player.

I think many are not really getting them at the moment due to the lack of info the game provides as well as the none intuitive connections system.

I think people are starting realise how good a resource influence is but many are still not sure about hub towns as you can't see connections with converting or having a mod to make the decision before hand.

If, when and where you convert towns to cities very much depends on the situation. I usually primarily stick a town down to grab resources, generally in antiquity to get 20 slotted and then aim for trading fleet resources in exploration.

Once a town has got all the resource tiles i tend to have a look at its location and situation and decide if a) it will make a good city, then if so b) would it be better feeding my other cities and if not then c) what is the best specilisation.

As a general planning rule I like to stagger towns and cities, town - city - town or a spoke system as if you have a city not connected to towns they are essentially impossible to grow from the exploration era onwards as the food/growth seems to be designed around cities getting fed huge amounts of food by towns.

 

[evonannoredars]

I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I got a famine that led to citizens leaving city and destroying a building in the very, very late game. It was a game that I dragged on artificially, and at some point in the modern era, I had two cities with famines. They showed negative food income and lost a citizen every turn. I got a notification that they have a famine (the food icon in red) as well. However, there clearly was something wrong, as buying some food buildings did not increase the produced food in these cities - they were stuck at -22 per turn forever. They also had massive unhappiness (but no revolt or red fist). So, I'm not sure what exactly triggered it: unhappiness, lack of food, or a combination. However, as there is the famine text and icon, I assume that the base system for negative growth/loosing population is included in the game for some reason. It might be a leftover from something they experimented with, or something that's just meant to be very unlikely to happen, or an unfinished feature. It would be great to see this expanded upon!

Was it a city with a lot of specialists? Only reason I can think of why a city would end up in the negatives with food.
Sounds really cool tho, I wish food was less easy to get an absurd amount of so that ensuring cities are fed was important - or have regular city buildings cost food maintenance too, feels odd that they don't.

 

[kaspergm]

Problem is, cities don't have SHRINKING population like they did in previous games. I think in Civ 4 I would let cities shrink sometimes.

Towns feeding cities doesn't make sense if cities can't shrink from lack of food. I feel like the devs kind of forgot.

Wait, just to make sure I understand this correctly, are you actually telling me that a city will not lose population if it doesn't have enough food?

 

[UWHabs]

Wait, just to make sure I understand this correctly, are you actually telling me that a city will not lose population if it doesn't have enough food?

I don't think they have a notion of negative food. It's not like old games where each citizen ate 2 food, you simply have an amount of food that you generate, and ever increasing level to the next food bucket. You could have a size 50 city generating 20 food a turn, and it would still "grow". It might be 100 turns until it does, but technically it keeps growing.

 

[MrRadar]

• Hub is good in theory, maybe in the early phase of modern or exploration for some good influence boost, and for those small settlements used to fill gaps in your territory. However, something about them is severely nerfed. I'm sure there's some cheese that would ruin the game if they buffed hub towns, but frankly I think they should because I think no one's really using them.

In my first GOTM I specialised my second settlement that was settled as a small town just to claim 3 resources into a hub town, as I noticed that it had 4 connections, that resulted in 8 influence per turn. Over 100 turns it will bring me 800 influence that is good for like 4-5 spy-stolen techs/civics if I remember the Explo stealing cost and maintenance correctly. So just this town alone lets me concentrate on my chosen branches of the tech and civics tree and not fall too far behind on the other branches. As you can only run one spy operation for tech and one for civic at the same time, this one town will basically cover my spying needs for the entire Age, leaving other influence from buildings for endeavors interaction with AI civs and IP taming.

• Hub towns are sometimes marginally useful in modern for filling gaps and generating a little early influence but otherwise ignore them.

Given the above, I think that they do not deserve to be ignored. A couple of well connected small hub towns can bring quite an amount of influence. And the best part is that they can be put to work rather quickly, as you can drop them in the middle of your future cities, to claim just a few resources, and be specialized as soon as they reach pop 7, which can be helped by rural displacement or a lucky migrant event. The earlier the town starts working the better.

Which leads me to doubt this assumption as well:

• In Antiquity, build all towns as if they're going to become cities. Look for resource adjacencies.

I'd say, plan your settling already with a vision of what you're settling - a town with a targeted specialization, or a city. Because a town does not need all that city sized space, it only needs to claim the resources and/or fertile/food rich tiles, and time spent growing is time when the town is not contributing to the greater good. Cities will mostly need all the 3 rings reserved for them for all the buildings and wonders, so leave more space for them than for the towns.

The purpose of towns, as I understand it, is to help overfilling cities with food, so that they can have all those specialists. You can have 20-30 cities with no towns, of course, but probably they will not grow into mega-cities. But if you have 7 cities helped by 20 towns or so, those cities will be huge, with lots of specialists, and as for production, frankly, who needs all that numerous production opportunities when you can just buy most things with gold?

 

[stealth_nsk]

If every city has connection with every town, 50/50 is optimal ratio in terms of combined food output and thus in terms of population (by AM–GM inequality law). Weird connection logic complicates math, but I believe it's still 50/50, you just need to be sure to maintain this balance for every part of your empire.

Surely, there are other things to consider than just food/population, but I believe it's more about which settlements should be cities and what specialization should towns have.

 

[Krikkit1]

I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I got a famine that led to citizens leaving city and destroying a building in the very, very late game. It was a game that I dragged on artificially, and at some point in the modern era, I had two cities with famines. They showed negative food income and lost a citizen every turn. I got a notification that they have a famine (the food icon in red) as well. However, there clearly was something wrong, as buying some food buildings did not increase the produced food in these cities - they were stuck at -22 per turn forever. They also had massive unhappiness (but no revolt or red fist). So, I'm not sure what exactly triggered it: unhappiness, lack of food, or a combination. However, as there is the famine text and icon, I assume that the base system for negative growth/loosing population is included in the game for some reason. It might be a leftover from something they experimented with, or something that's just meant to be very unlikely to happen, or an unfinished feature. It would be great to see this expanded upon!

Specialists do have a food maintenance cost, so if you built up a massive high specialist city and then cut it off, you could have negative food.

 

[Fluffball]

In my first GOTM I specialised my second settlement that was settled as a small town just to claim 3 resources into a hub town, as I noticed that it had 4 connections, that resulted in 8 influence per turn. Over 100 turns it will bring me 800 influence that is good for like 4-5 spy-stolen techs/civics if I remember the Explo stealing cost and maintenance correctly. So just this town alone lets me concentrate on my chosen branches of the tech and civics tree and not fall too far behind on the other branches. As you can only run one spy operation for tech and one for civic at the same time, this one town will basically cover my spying needs for the entire Age, leaving other influence from buildings for endeavors interaction with AI civs and IP taming.

I started off focusing on tech/civic stealing once I caught on to hub towns (get the mod that shows connections) but have started using it to go for IPs.

As (the bonus from) IPs are another thing the game doesn't tell you about i think many players are ignoring them.

Antiquity, if you get a cultural IP you can get a civic every time you suzerain and IP and in all ages a free tech from science IPs.

In all ages you can get 5% gold for each CS you are suzerain of and 5% science.

You have to think about it with the free tech/civics as you want to get the appropriate IP first as I don't think it is retrospective but for the 5% bonuses it is for total suzerain of IPs.

If I focus i can usually get 5 or 6 suzerain which it that number of free techs/civics and 25-30% more gold or science output.

 

[Melkus]

once I caught on to hub towns

It's actually a bit weird that a hub town can be so much better at power projection than a converted city. Wouldn't be surprised if hubs in coastal towns are considered overpowered soon.

 

[Siptah]

Was it a city with a lot of specialists? Only reason I can think of why a city would end up in the negatives with food.
Sounds really cool tho, I wish food was less easy to get an absurd amount of so that ensuring cities are fed was important - or have regular city buildings cost food maintenance too, feels odd that they don't.

Specialists do have a food maintenance cost, so if you built up a massive high specialist city and then cut it off, you could have negative food.

Yes, they had a lot of specialists, and this might have been a factor. But it can‘t be the whole story: otherwise, building food buildings and pillaged urban districts should have solved the crisis. And both were connected to towns providing hundreds of food as well - much more than specialist maintenance. I will try to find the save later today, if I still have one and post some screenshots.

 

[MrRadar]

Antiquity, if you get a cultural IP you can get a civic every time you suzerain and IP and in all ages a free tech from science IPs.

In all ages you can get 5% gold for each CS you are suzerain of and 5% science.

You have to think about it with the free tech/civics as you want to get the appropriate IP first as I don't think it is retrospective but for the 5% bonuses it is for total suzerain of IPs.

If I focus i can usually get 5 or 6 suzerain which it that number of free techs/civics and 25-30% more gold or science output.

Picking Siam can raise this to really silly levels
Their "Itsaraphab" ability lets you to vassalize IPs immediately for a small influence extra, so you can have all the IPs of the world for yourself, just like Alex did in CivV. Just be prepared to defend them, if you go to war, as AI kills them off rather efficiently.

 

[marius_kaparius]

I love the City/Town design it gives me quite a lot to think about. A recent adjustment I've made is to not bother with production buildings on towns until I'm ready to convert them to a city. This is because production is converted to gold but we know that gold is roughly on a 4:1 ratio with production so it is only a 25% efficiency. Food on the other hand is converted directly. I've also started liking the Trade Hub specialization when there are 3+ resources on a town since it adds enough happiness to essentially support the happiness hit of another town/city past the limit.

 

[UWHabs]

I love the City/Town design it gives me quite a lot to think about. A recent adjustment I've made is to not bother with production buildings on towns until I'm ready to convert them to a city. This is because production is converted to gold but we know that gold is roughly on a 4:1 ratio with production so it is only a 25% efficiency. Food on the other hand is converted directly. I've also started liking the Trade Hub specialization when there are 3+ resources on a town since it adds enough happiness to essentially support the happiness hit of another town/city past the limit.

Those buildings are useful to push the borders, or if you have a lot of gold in your empire and you're buying the sawpit for like 90 gold, especially if you have the attribute to give bonus food. But yeah, if it's only going to give you like 3 production (ie 3 gold per turn), and it costs you 200 gold to buy, it's going to take 60+ turns to pay itself off. If you buy it in a city, counting the 4:1 spending ratio, it pays itself off in 20 turns, which is a much better ROI.

 

[Horatio Thorne]

I love the town/city concept. It’s one of my favourite new features.

I begin the game by surrounding my capital with satellite towns, grabbing resources to slot in my capital and choosing to expand on food tiles as much as possible. As soon as I can specialise I choose farming town and send all the food to my capital.

My capital expands on production tiles as much as possible and relies on food from the feeder towns.

Once this is up and running I can pretty much do anything. I can add more feeder towns, or start to think about having a second city, or commonly I go on the offensive and gobble up some nearby settlements.

Towns are excellent. I will only upgrade to a city if there’s a real reason to do so. I can generate enough science and culture with just one or two cities, and the food coming in from the towns means those couple of cities are going to quickly become huge and powerful. In Antiquity I find I only want more cities for places to build more Wonders usually.

Towns are awesome.

Oh, and hub towns have easily doubled my influence generation in the early game.

 

[kaspergm]

I don't think they have a notion of negative food. It's not like old games where each citizen ate 2 food, you simply have an amount of food that you generate, and ever increasing level to the next food bucket. You could have a size 50 city generating 20 food a turn, and it would still "grow". It might be 100 turns until it does, but technically it keeps growing.

The design decisions taken with this game keeps baffling me.