What is going to be the breaking point of turning a town into a city ?

[Disgustipated]

My take is this. If there is a good balance of resources, you should concentrate on turning it into a city at some point. But if you are heavy on 1 resource (like food, production etc.), keep it as a town and specialize it into a farming town, mining town, etc.

My big thing is I don't want my towns stealing good tiles from my cities.

 

[Elhoim]

Also interesting to imagine what they mentioned, a humongous city where all the 36 hexes are all wonders or urban tiles, needing some towns to give food as it would barely produce any themselves.

I'm not sure the cities are limited in the range they can expand to, so it might be more than 36 hexes.

 

[_hero_]

Great question…

One thing, I don’t know how I feel about towns literally halting population growth once specialized.

That seems like a big penalty, and makes it seem like having perma-towns will be a big disadvantage.

Maybe I’m overreacting and it’s in fact an interesting decision to make. Curious to know others’ thoughts here.

I noticed that population growth is significantly faster than we're used to. In their dev stream, Roma had reached 20 pop at 1670 BCE. I don't think anything shown yet indicates any housing or pop-limiting mechanic outside of local happiness. Consider you get the yields of every hex regardless of pop, and you import food from the appropriate towns, I suspect that towns that convert to cities will see their population skyrocket.

Also, it was a bit confusing the way it was stated, but when explaining about specializing towns for the rest of the age Carl said "you can switch it back to a growing if you want to" which seemed to imply that you can turn the growth on/off but you can't swap specializations otherwise.

 

[rocksinmypath]

yes but… you’ll still lose the food supply to the town it was connected with… so before making that decision, you’ll have to make sure you’re not crippling another town

So, as I mentioned in a different thread, I don't think citizens require food maintenance any more. It basically means even desert tiles implicitly provide 2 food in Civ 6 terms, and so, food will generally be easy to find in Civ 7. Specialists do cost 2 food each, but it looks like a city with ~20 pop can easily generate >30 food and can easily support many specialists without starving. City boundaries are still limited to 3 rings (= 37 tiles), and at least in Antiquity, there appears to be a limit of 1 specialist per urban district. To me, all this suggests that you could easily end up in a situation where it doesn't make sense to keep towns pumping food into cities, as these cities can grow fast on their own, have no problem maintaining population without external help, and they have little to gain from gaining new citizens because they have nowhere to put them.

 

[Trengilly]

I'm not sure the cities are limited in the range they can expand to, so it might be more than 36 hexes.

There have been multiple mentions that cities can only work the 36 hexes in a three hex radius. I think its pretty much confirmed.

 

[tedhebert]

So, as I mentioned in a different thread, I don't think citizens require food maintenance any more. It basically means even desert tiles implicitly provide 2 food in Civ 6 terms, and so, food will generally be easy to find in Civ 7. Specialists do cost 2 food each, but it looks like a city with ~20 pop can easily generate >30 food and can easily support many specialists without starving. City boundaries are still limited to 3 rings (= 37 tiles), and at least in Antiquity, there appears to be a limit of 1 specialist per urban district. To me, all this suggests that you could easily end up in a situation where it doesn't make sense to keep towns pumping food into cities, as these cities can grow fast on their own, have no problem maintaining population without external help, and they have little to gain from gaining new citizens because they have nowhere to put them.

The cities certainly WERE high pop cities in the livestream... 20-30 pops in antiquity... So maybe you're onto something. Of course, we'll have to wait quite a bit to confirm

 

[8housesofelixir]

There have been multiple mentions that cities can only work the 36 hexes in a three hex radius. I think its pretty much confirmed.

Yes, some content creators mentioned that according to the devs, Civ 7 shares the same engine as Civ 6 and 5, which has the 3-tile radius of cities baked in its code.

 

[Atlas627]

Right, but then they’re not doing anything except growing in population. Seems like a bad choice to stick with.

They'd still turn their production into gold, and if you buy any buildings in them those still provide their yields. You'd grow the cities if you want it to grab more land or get more yields for later.

I guess the text there is so far confusing: "Growing Town (default): Increases Town's Growth by 50%. (Towns without a Growing Town focus send all their Food to connected cities)"

The part in parenthesis give the impression that they specialized towns don't grow at all as they give all their food to the cities. But then it wouldn't make sense for Growing Town be "Increases Town's Growth by 50%" if there is no growth when not a growing town. So it may be the case that it probably still growth somehow even when specialized...

Or the amount of food sent to cities is the same regardless of specialization, and then choosing Growth Town makes the Town keep all that Food and multiply by 50%.

I'm not sure the cities are limited in the range they can expand to, so it might be more than 36 hexes.

They've confirmed settlements can only expand outward 3 tiles.

I noticed that population growth is significantly faster than we're used to. In their dev stream, Roma had reached 20 pop at 1670 BCE. I don't think anything shown yet indicates any housing or pop-limiting mechanic outside of local happiness. Consider you get the yields of every hex regardless of pop, and you import food from the appropriate towns, I suspect that towns that convert to cities will see their population skyrocket.

Well Rome also had a bunch of towns feeding it, no?

Also, it was a bit confusing the way it was stated, but when explaining about specializing towns for the rest of the age Carl said "you can switch it back to a growing if you want to" which seemed to imply that you can turn the growth on/off but you can't swap specializations otherwise.

When you pick the specialization, you commit for the Age. You can swap back and forth to Growth though. The UI showed this when they selected their specialization.

 

[tedhebert]

I'm not sure the cities are limited in the range they can expand to, so it might be more than 36 hexes.

They've confirmed settlements can only expand outward 3 tiles.

Sorry, I think that's wrong...They confirmed that cities can only USE 36 hexes, but also that they CAN grab hexes further out but NOT work them

 

[Atlas627]

Sorry, I think that's wrong...They confirmed that cities can only USE 36 hexes, but also that they CAN grab hexes further out but NOT work them

We've seen footage of districts being placed in the third ring without grabbing additional land. That is exactly how culture bombs worked in 6, and we know the engine is the same, so I assume the only way to grab land outside the 3 rings is to have it naturally expand there...which doesn't exist in 7. There is no natural expansion.

 

[rocksinmypath]

The cities certainly WERE high pop cities in the livestream... 20-30 pops in antiquity... So maybe you're onto something. Of course, we'll have to wait quite a bit to confirm

There's a possibility that the game is currently wildly unbalanced, and population isn't supposed to grow that fast, but assuming that's not the case, I think this is how things could work:

In Antiquity, cities are able to grow very quickly from abundance of food from rural districts, aided by food supplied by towns. The capital, for instance, should be able to reach 30+ pops by mid-late game, and this will be enough to essentially saturate all of the workable tiles in the city. This means that farming towns, while useful early-game, will lose their significance quickly and naturally become first candidates for city promotion. Mining towns, which provide extra gold, can be used to accelerate the promotion of farming towns by helping you collect the gold required for promotion more quickly. In the meantime, farming towns can be put back on growth focus, so that you can save on promotion expense. Once farming towns promote, value of gold diminishes since gold's primary use is to develop and promote towns. That puts mining towns next on the list for promotion. Now, as more towns promote to cities, there are fewer towns left to support the growth of new cities as well as the push for promotion of older towns. This is when it would make sense to settle a new town, and you'll want to try to time your next settlement limit increase (obtained via civics, etc.) to coincide with this.

In Exploration, I'm assuming the number of specialists each urban district can host will increase (probably to 2). I don't know if that increase happens with the beginning of the age, with a certain tech or civic, or with new buildings available in the age (this is the closest one to how specialist slots work in Civ 6). Whatever it is, when it happens, it will do two things: a) cities are no longer saturated at ~36 pop, and b) urban districts become radically more valuable. The latter factor incentivizes you to start irreversibly replacing rural districts with urban districts. That means your capital, for example, will actually start struggling to support its own growth. In terms of metagame, all this could imply one of the following:

- You should go back to settling more farming towns in Exploration.
- You shouldn't have built any farming towns in Antiquity, as they're inferior to other towns. Instead, you've started building them in Exploration.
- You should've kept your farming towns from Antiquity instead of promoting them. When they're done pumping food into cities, put them back on growth focus for the rest of Antiquity, so that they're bigger and can thus export more food in Exploration.

Regarding the other two town types:

- Fort towns are very special towns you'll want to use for supporting your war effort and never for supporting your cities. I imagine that will be the case in all three ages.
- Trading towns, since they provide happiness, probably grow in importance as time passes and your cities fill up with specialists each of whom incurs a -2 happiness penalty. It also thematically fits for trading towns to start becoming useful in Exploration.

 

[_hero_]

Well Rome also had a bunch of towns feeding it, no?

That's kind of my point. Since you can feed cities with towns, it isn't really that big a deal if a town "falls behind" in pop.

 

[_hero_]

I agree 100% and this is my main point of contention also.

For gameplay reasons, there should be a clear distinction between towns and cities. The current set-up doesn't seem to draw such a line.

The problem with that is since towns will feed cities, that would make the meta Infinite Town Sprawl.

I could maybe see having Towns and Cities count towards different caps, or maybe Towns only cost half as much of the cap as Cities do, but having no cap at all on towns would force wide play I think.

 

[aieeegrunt]

There is a mod for Civ6 that allows a city to work tiles beyond the third ring, so it’s not baked in.

I mean if a modder can do it, I’m sure the actual devs can.

 

[Josephias]

Great question…

One thing, I don’t know how I feel about towns literally halting population growth once specialized.

That seems like a big penalty, and makes it seem like having perma-towns will be a big disadvantage.

Maybe I’m overreacting and it’s in fact an interesting decision to make. Curious to know others’ thoughts here.

I feel we'll need more info of that. This was one of the things that feelt a bit artificial or counterintuitive to me. As others said, we may have been mislead by the text.

Another option, that I think is allowed by the texts we saw at the livestream, is you can switch between "growth" and the selected specialization (see image)

This makes you consider the decision when to stop growth for a bigger support to your empire or when you keep growing for increased benefits. As some said initially growth future rewards (more tiles worked) will for sure surpass the benefit of halting the town growht. That's probably one of the reasons you don't even are asked until pop.7 .

After that, each additional pop in the town makes the package of future rewards smallers, and the immediate benefit of increasing the yields of the (more) tiles you are working better, so probably there is a compromise point that will fluctuate as well depending on the terrain and resources available to the town and your immediate need (and this need, if you can then revert to "continue growing" can be considered as well for for temporary support).

 

[tedhebert]

We've seen footage of districts being placed in the third ring without grabbing additional land. That is exactly how culture bombs worked in 6, and we know the engine is the same, so I assume the only way to grab land outside the 3 rings is to have it naturally expand there...which doesn't exist in 7. There is no natural expansion.

I’m pretty sure they said it can expand to more than 36 but can’t use them… but hey, the point is a little moot anyways, as long as you can’t work them might as well not be there

 

[m_mus]

I hope the dependence of cities upon towns for their food supply makes warfare more strategic. At least in my MP-group, warfare just means to siege down city after city. I hope in Civ7 warfare happens in more open terrain (= not in range of walls/encampments) so that more unit types can excel in their respective role. Spreading out an invading army to cut the network of towns feeding the city sounds like a more sophisticated approach to warfare that could induce more "open field battles". At least that's what I hope.

 

[Atlas627]

There is a mod for Civ6 that allows a city to work tiles beyond the third ring, so it’s not baked in.

I mean if a modder can do it, I’m sure the actual devs can.

The devs and those modders pointed out that this is using a convoluted workaround that isn't actually working the tiles beyond the third ring, but is just tricking you into thinking it is.

I’m pretty sure they said it can expand to more than 36 but can’t use them… but hey, the point is a little moot anyways, as long as you can’t work them might as well not be there

Are you thinking of the part I mentioned above, where the devs were talking about how modders had managed to trick the game into "working" beyond 3 tiles? But yes you're right, the point is moot.

 

[Acepox]

The problem with that is since towns will feed cities, that would make the meta Infinite Town Sprawl.

I could maybe see having Towns and Cities count towards different caps, or maybe Towns only cost half as much of the cap as Cities do, but having no cap at all on towns would force wide play I think.

There are, in fact, vastly more towns than cities in the world. I don't see that as a problem.

The city would still be where you build wonders, units, particular projects, etc. They could have more ramifications for culture, policies, governance, etc.

Town sprawl means you'd be incentivized to actually occupy the entire map and not restrict yourself to 4-5 key cities as in Civ 5, while also not having ridiculous urban centers in the Arctic or the Sahara, as in Civ 6. Best of both worlds.

Edit: Changed "Civ 7" to "Civ 6", as I meant to say.

 

[Elhoim]

There have been multiple mentions that cities can only work the 36 hexes in a three hex radius. I think its pretty much confirmed.

That's a pity, I kinda hoped they expanded it to 4, or even not having a hard limit especially considering how Old World or Millenia do that. The cities are even "wider" than before, so a bigger radius makes sense as well. Basically, avoiding the whole silly "single hex that are just out of reach and a city is poped there".