What's your City VS town ratio so far

[tedhebert]

Before I got my hands on the game, I really expected to be the type of player who turn every settlement into cities. I could not fathom why you'd want to leave some as towns.

But so far, my experience had been that I'm having a ratio of 2 towns for every cities. So about 4 cities to 8 towns or 5 cities to 10 towns.

What's your number so far ?

I read somewhere in here that a 1:1 ratio would be the best ? Is that what you also think ?

Thanks for your thoughts on this

 

[pietro1990]

I think the ratio you have is good. however if you play rome you should focus mainly on the capital and maybe only have second city. Bassicly put a lot of towns close to rome and put one other city somewhere else. I played as rome and only have rome as city for a long time only after mid game i started making a second city a little furder away

 

[pietro1990]

I think the ratio you have is good. however if you play rome you should focus mainly on the capital and maybe only have second city. Bassicly put a lot of towns close to rome and put one other city somewhere else. I played as rome and only have rome as city for a long time only after mid game i started making a second city a little furder away

Edit: In the exploration is different you have for example specializations in relic's wich can be usefull!!

 

[Tanel]

In my first game I had 6 cities and no towns. Also got the economic legacy to keep them as cities. Didn't add any new cities in the Exploration. I was doing really good in that game. Obviously if you are not getting the Economic Golden age it might not be worth it to upgrade to city super late but generally in Antiquity I felt like you want as much cities as you can reasonably get. In Exploration you want a bit more towns to grow specialist for the cities.

Second game I played with Augustus and Rome so I tried to just do 1 city and all towns but that wasn't really good because you can't build a lot of buildings (you want to build Libraries for the Codexis and Unique Buildings if your civ has them) and efficiency of food drops a lot with population increasing so I still made one more into city and then 3 cities in Exploration currently.

Also depends on your settlement limit. With a higher limit you will likely have more towns because cities are expensive.

 

[Siptah]

In antiquity, I try to have as many cities as possible.

In exploration, I had 1:1.

In modern, I had 2 towns per city

 

[Taefin]

I wonder if I am playing suboptimally. In both my games, I have played 2 cities in antiquity, add a third DL city in exploration (and in the only modern age I’ve played I kept three cities with the +2 sci/cul specialist buffs until I need more cities to house artifacts at the very end.

Does anyone know what the gold/production exchange rate is? I’m thinking it’s 3:1 (600 gold buys something that takes 200 production). In that case, maybe I should be converting more cities.

 

[Black Gate]

I've been playing 1:2 or 1:3 for most of my games so far. Near the end of my last game, where I was on the warpath and ended with I think 35 settlements, it was more like 1:5 since I saw no point converting a few when I was so close to victory. From reading this thread I guess I should be converting a few more...

 

[UWHabs]

Definitely need some more playing around to figure out the balance. To me, I haven't really been treating it as any fixed ratio, but more-so "do I have a town which I think would be better as a city". I feel I've been very low on cities - this last game, I've only had 2 cities in the antiquity, I went up to 4 in exploration (3 homeland + 1 distant lands). Just about to move over to the modern, and I'm not sure what layout I will opt for. It always feels like every city from the previous age I do need to bring back as a city, if only to be able to overbuild its previous generation of buildings.

I think in my current game, I probably should have tried to convert one more city in antiquity, so that I could have another copy of my UB/UQ active. To me, in my brain, I've always felt like there was an extra penalty to converting towns to cities, like that it took up an extra settlement slot or something of the nature. So I've tended to avoid it unless if there was a reason. But I guess in reality, this is sort of the civ 7 version of tall vs wide. Certainly once you have cities, you can cram a lot of resources into them, and make them super strong. But maybe I tend to go too top-heavy, and being able to spread them around to more cities, and get more buildings down, might help in the end.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I like to have 1 cities to 2 towns (1 Farming/Fishing and 1 Mining) but that's more OCD than optimal gameplay lol.

 

[Siptah]

I'm also far from sure that any of my ratios are optimal. My reason for having mostly cities in antiquity (if possible) is that I don't specialize towns that early. I want them to grow, grab tiles, and resources. Hence, they seem better off as cities than unspecialized towns. Especially as cities help more with science and culture, while also providing slots for codices and resources. This might be wrong and it's better to specialize towns early on to get 2 super cities early on.

 

[Nikolai II]

I keep 3-4 cities, rest towns, giving me huge gold income later in the game and thus I can buy stuff to my hearts delight. Modern game you might have 16 towns, 4 cities. It’s wild. Last game I had over 1500 gpt around turn 70 modern age IIRC.

 

[evonannoredars]

I usually go roughly 1:1, although once they add a clear way to have an overview of which towns are connected to and sending food where (lens, panel, whatever) it'll probably change as it'd become easier to assess where I could do with more food or which towns are less useful.

 

[Cymsdale]

I'm in exploration age and swimming in so much gold (I focused on economy) that I just made everything a city. I have 13 or 14 now I don't remember the exact number. Maybe this is suboptimal but it doesn't seem to be hurting me in any way.

 

[Devilbound]

Depends on variables. Playing the standard (largest) map in antiquity age I tend to have 3-4 cities in the end and 4-5 towns. This ratio gradually changes over the ages to being the opposite in the end of the modern age, or even a few more cities than that. But it all depends on variables a lot. Which should be given imo. I do like some towns in there too because I like high pop cities.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I try to have as few cities as possible so that the towns can boost them up. 1-2 cities in Anitquity. 3-4 in Exploration, and 4-5 in Modern.

Rome and Khmer really want to only have 1 city.

 

[Elhoim]

Rome and Khmer really want to only have 1 city.

Yeah, too bad the connection system is kinda wrong.

 

[Big J Money]

Going for economic in Antiquity, I went over my max by 1 and turned most towns into cities. I would have turned them all if I could. However, somehow I missed the information that towns send food to cities. I saw the message that production is turned into food, but I thought that was for the town itself. Was playing Egypt / Hat.

Before playing, I was mistakenly under the impression that towns would not count against the settlement limit and I anticipated I would have lot of towns.

Minor aside: what's the point of a farm focused town? From what I can tell, you'd have to have a heck of a lot of farm plots for it to produce more food than the default growth option which gives you 50% more food.

Edit: I went back into game and see there is very clear text explaining this when you click to choose your focus...

 

[Cymsdale]

Minor aside: what's the point of a farm focused town? From what I can tell, you'd have to have a heck of a lot of farm plots for it to produce more food than the default growth option which gives you 50% more food.

When it's farm focused, it's sending the food to cities. When it's on growth it's using the food for itself.

 

[Elhoim]

When it's farm focused, it's sending the food to cities.

If it's connected to one, if not it's wasted. I basically did a quicksave and quickload before changing to farm focused because I couldn't tell if it was going to send it or not.

 

[pokiehl]

I need someone to sell me on towns. I'm really disappointed that they stop growing when they specialize, but maybe that is indeed better for gameplay? As it is right now I just promote to city as soon as I can. I don't really get the system.