Towns vs Cities? Bad/Good Design? META?

[Melkus]

That means your net gain is +6 production and -24 happiness

True, but what do -24 happiness mean? As long as your settlements stay above 0 happiness individually, not much - and the sheep can be used to save the ones that hover around zero from the penalty.
So you probably have to wait a bit longer for the next celebration, and that's it.

If you plunge half your towns into unhappiness (typically happens when I go 2 over the limit), that's a harder problem. And of course, things may go wrong. The wrong crisis may break out. That's what I like about this system, it's rarely easy to calculate the consequences of going over the limit. (Though it wouldn't hurt the game to make this part even more dynamic.)

 

[Atchulhu]

Now that they've somewhat fixed towns and made them function the way they seemingly want, the other ugly reality has become clear: it's such a piss-poor alternative to cities, from a gameplay point of view. In previous Civ games, settling a city was exciting. Developing it over time and seeing it grow from a fresh new settlement to a sprawling metropolis was so satisfying, and the mechanics involved in that were interesting enough to basically sustain a playthrough on its own. Just developing an empire and optimizing the structure was sufficiently engaging that you could feel like it was a proper game of Civ even if that's all you did.

Towns are a joke compared to that. A town in VII is barely more engaging to play with than a single district was in VI. There are so few decisions to make and so little interaction to be had that it really doesn't add any depth to the gameplay experience. And while you can convert them to cities, that's a) prohibitively expensive and b) not something you're supposed to do extensively. The game is designed around the assumption that you'll have something like 2-4 cities, maybe half a dozen in an unusually huge game where you go nuts with settlers. Any more than that is not worth it, not practical, not encouraged by the game's fundamental design.

Coupled with the dumbing-down of districts and the removal of builders, the whole element of establishing your empire in VII is such a pale imitation of its predecessors and doesn't feel satisfying at all. It doesn't really feel like playing a full-fledged game of Civ unless you're also engaging in all the other systems and dipping into warfare, competing for city-states, rushing wonders, etc. And this, together with the repetitive nature of legacy paths, is why every game feels the same in VII. There isn't a satisfying, appealing way to play two games of VII that feel meaningfully different, because unless you're doing all of the things every time, it's like playing half of a game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Now that they've somewhat fixed towns and made them function the way they seemingly want, the other ugly reality has become clear: it's such a piss-poor alternative to cities, from a gameplay point of view. In previous Civ games, settling a city was exciting. Developing it over time and seeing it grow from a fresh new settlement to a sprawling metropolis was so satisfying, and the mechanics involved in that were interesting enough to basically sustain a playthrough on its own. Just developing an empire and optimizing the structure was sufficiently engaging that you could feel like it was a proper game of Civ even if that's all you did.

Towns are a joke compared to that. A town in VII is barely more engaging to play with than a single district was in VI. There are so few decisions to make and so little interaction to be had that it really doesn't add any depth to the gameplay experience. And while you can convert them to cities, that's a) prohibitively expensive and b) not something you're supposed to do extensively. The game is designed around the assumption that you'll have something like 2-4 cities, maybe half a dozen in an unusually huge game where you go nuts with settlers. Any more than that is not worth it, not practical, not encouraged by the game's fundamental design.

Coupled with the dumbing-down of districts and the removal of builders, the whole element of establishing your empire in VII is such a pale imitation of its predecessors and doesn't feel satisfying at all. It doesn't really feel like playing a full-fledged game of Civ unless you're also engaging in all the other systems and dipping into warfare, competing for city-states, rushing wonders, etc. And this, together with the repetitive nature of legacy paths, is why every game feels the same in VII. There isn't a satisfying, appealing way to play two games of VII that feel meaningfully different, because unless you're doing all of the things every time, it's like playing half of a game.

You could view towns as an analogue of Civ5 puppet cities. They have the same goal as in Civ5 - reduce management load on a player, so smaller number of strategic options is welcome and deliberate. Considering Civ7 normally has bigger empires than Civ5 or Civ6 that's a pretty logical things to have. And it's great that unlike puppet cities you get towns without any wars.