Civilization VII: Towns and Cities Overview

In Civilization VII, cities have been completely reworked. Settlers no longer create cities, but instead create towns, a brand new type of settlement. Towns can specialize in different areas, shaping your economy, military, or culture, and can even be converted into cities. But when is the right time to make that transition? In this video, we'll break down the differences between towns and cities, and develop some golden rules that you should always keep in mind. My name is Drongo, this is Civ 7, and join me. As we take one more turn. When you start a game in Civ 7, the first unit you'll interact with is the Founder, which establishes your capital city. At first glance, it may resemble the Settler, but unlike Settlers, who create towns, the Founder is a unique one-time unit. You can't train Founders, only Settlers, meaning that every new settlement after your capital will always begin as a town. Towns function similarly to cities, but come with a few key differences. Most notably, they don't have a production queue, meaning they can't train units or construct buildings naturally. Because of this, towns don't generate production at all. Instead, all their production is automatically converted into gold and added to your income each turn. Another key difference is growth, which is where towns truly shine. When founded, they receive a plus 50% growth bonus called Growing Town, making them expand incredibly fast. Unlike a simple food bonus, this doesn't increase food income, it actually reduces the food cost of new citizens by 50%, so instead of needing 30 food for your first citizen, you'll only need 15. That's a massive advantage early on compared to a city. Towns can purchase buildings just like cities, and they cost the exact same, however, towns do have a more limited selection. You can buy ancient walls for defense, you can buy an altar to activate your pantheon, and you can purchase warehouse buildings which boost the yield of tiles your citizens are working. Towns cannot purchase science, culture, happiness, production, food, or gold buildings. These only become available once the town upgrades to a city. The only exception to this rule is Augustus, who can actually purchase culture buildings in towns. The purpose of a town is to help drive your civilization toward victory, and it won't do that by staying in its early growth phase forever. Once a town reaches 7 population, you'll have the option to convert it into a specialized town. Not only do towns enjoy 50% faster growth so that they grow very fast naturally, but each time they purchase a building, their population is also increased by one, allowing for rapid specialization. But is it always the right move? Before we dive into whether specialization is worth it, here's our first golden rule. Do not specialize a town unless you've secured all nearby resources. That means securing all your gold, all your salt, all your horses before you specialize. Once a town is specialized, all the food it generates is sent to the connected cities, meaning that it stops growing and won't produce new citizens to work additional tiles. While you can still purchase buildings to increase population, you won't be able to unlock new resource tiles naturally. Technically you can switch a specialised town back to growth mode, but I found that it's easy to forget to switch it back, wasting valuable food that should be feeding your cities. Now there is one exception to this golden rule, yes I know that tarnishes its golden status a little, but since this is an over explained video we need to cover it. If your enemy is preparing for war, massing forces at your border and has a hostile relationship, you can immediately specialise your town into a fort town. This provides plus 5 healing, 4 units every turn and plus 25 health to town walls, giving you a crucial defensive edge. And if you haven't reached 7 population yet but need to specialise immediately because the war is imminent, you can purchase warehouse buildings to push your town's population over the 7 threshold and unlock fort town before the attack begins. Keep in mind that once you specialise your town, in this case into a fort town, there's no switching to another specialisation after the war is over. It's a bold and difficult decision, but if it saves your town and shifts the war in your favour, its value far outweighs the alternative, which is trying to defend without it and hoping to specialise in something else later at the potential cost of losing the town or even the war itself. So back to our original question, if the ultimate goal of a town is to become either a specialised town or a city, should we specialise it? immediately upon reaching 7 population. There's no strict rule for when to specialise a town, but here are some key factors to consider. The main reason we specialise is to start sending its food to connected cities, so we want food generation to be as high as possible without delaying the transfer for too long. If it takes 900 food to grow to your next citizen, and your town generates 30 food per turn, is it really worth waiting 30 turns for just an extra 3 food from a farm? Probably not, but what if the tile we were growing to was plus 3 culture instead? That brings us to golden rule number two. Prioritize growth towards resources and prioritize tiles that generate culture or science. Resources provide huge bonuses in addition to the yields on the tile, and tiles with science and culture benefit your entire empire immediately, with no reduction or penalties. They're also much harder to obtain in the early game, especially before unlocking specialists, making these yields essential wherever possible. While sending food to connected cities is a major reason to specialise towns, the specialisation itself can be just as important in deciding when to do it. Let's break down each specialisation one by one and identify the best timing for transitioning into them. Four towns are fairly straightforward. If you're under attack, they're an emergency defensive response. But even if you're not at war, they can still be a smart choice if you've expanded a little too aggressively and now share a border with an angry neighbour. In those cases, prioritising a fort town over another specialisation can absolutely make sense. Next up is the Urban Centre, which grants plus one science and plus one culture to Quarters. Quarters are created when two buildings, like a library and an arena, or a blacksmith and a villa, are constructed together on the same tile. Only then does the Urban Centre bonus activate in these towns. Due to the limited number of buildings that are available in towns for purchase, this bonus doesn't have a high ceiling with regard to numbers. The maximum number of quarters you can create is two. One by combining your city hall with a granary, and another by pairing any of the brickyard, the sawpit, or the altar. Once again, Augustus is an exception. Since he can purchase culture buildings, he can buy a monument allowing him to form a third quarter, giving him a small but unique advantage. This bonus can also be combined with two pantheons, Goddess of Festivals and God of Wisdom, which give plus one culture or plus one science respectively to quarters in settlements with an altar. While these bonuses might feel weak due to the low number of quarters you can actually build in towns, if your empire grows wide and you have the gold to support the purchasing of buildings, it can add a serious amount of science and culture to your total. Overall, this is a situational bonus since it's rare that you'll be able to afford warehouse buildings in towns while also justifying the investment. The yields are usually too small to be worth it, and if one warehouse does get decent yields, it likely means that the others won't be worth the cost. The only time these numbers will add up is if you've got a large amount of land and a strong gold income. Let's cover another straightforward specialization, the trade outpost. This provides plus two happiness on resource tiles within the town and grants a plus five trade range bonus. With two primary use cases, this is a well-balanced specialization. If you're playing a trade-focused strategy, a plus 5 trade range could mean the difference between reaching an opponent's capital or falling just short, which in turn could net you a ridiculous amount of resources. The second use case requires more consideration, as you'll need to weigh its value against the final two specialization options we'll cover next. Simply put, the more resource tiles in the town, the stronger this specialization becomes. Likewise, if happiness is central to your strategy, trade outposts become much more valuable. For example, if you're playing Shalamein, you'll likely prioritize trade-out posts more than if you were playing Machiavelli, since Charlemagne benefits significantly from happiness and celebrations, while Machiavelli doesn't. Finally, you may find yourself in a direct need for happiness. Maybe you're losing a war and struggling with war support, or perhaps you've overcommitted to specialists in your capital. In these cases, deciding whether a trade-out post is worth it is easy, but without these clear pull factors, it can be a careful balancing act. Finally, for the Antiquity Age, we have the last two specializations, and the ones you'll likely consider the most. Fishing Town and Mining Town. A Fishing Town boosts food yields from farms, pastures, plantations, and fishing boats, while a Mining Town enhances production yields from camps, woodcutters, clay pits, mines, and quarries. These two specializations will often be the most impactful choices. The easiest way to decide between these specializations is to click on the town itself, open up town details, go to the building breakdown tab, and scroll down to improvement. Most of the time, the right choice will be obvious. 5 mines providing plus 5 gold is usually more valuable than a single farm giving plus 1 food. Before we move on to cities though, let's walk through an example of how a town grows and the best decision you can make along the way. When you settle a town, you'll start at 2 population. This is the citizen that's working your city hall, together with one citizen that you can have work any tile within your town's borders. When a settlement grows, you choose a new tile, which automatically gains an improvement based on the terrain. No work is needed. A forest becomes a woodcutter, a plains tile turns into a farm. You'll want to assess your closest resources and whether you should prioritize them or whether you should delay them. A cotton resource is going to be a lot more valuable than a silk resource at turn 20. In this example though, we've got this beautiful waterfront view. We see a silk tile to our north that we want to beeline towards. We put two farms down along the route to it and after putting the plantation on the silk, it's clear this is going to be a fishing town specialization. You eye off the next resource, a horse tile just out of reach of your capital and again follow the same pattern. You put down a woodcutter, followed by a second woodcutter, and all of a sudden now you're not too sure which specialisation to go. This is where we introduce the leapfrog technique. At this point the granary is giving a pretty solid yield of plus 4 food, and instead of constructing it with the town hall, we can build the granary over the top of the town hall. of an existing woodcutter citizen which forces it to relocate. Building on a rural tile converts it into an urban tile. Urban tiles must be placed adjacent to existing ones, so it's not as simple as picking or choosing which tiles we want and don't want, we need to be strategic. But by doing this, we're now able to leapfrog and take the horses, which puts us at a total of four tiles getting a bonus from the granary, and further cements our fishing town specialization as the right choice. Let's take a look at it again, but instead... We're going to do it a different way. What we're going to do here is go to the farm, then we'll go to the mine, and then we'll go to the silk. From here, we'll then take the woodcutter and the second woodcutter, and now we'll leapfrog by putting a saw pit on the first farm, and then take the horses with that citizen. This leapfrog technique can be very good at helping you narrow down your specializations and maximizing the benefits that you get from them. Let's look at another way that we could have played this. Let's- Say for the sake of the argument, the silk has been taken by the city-state in the north, and we'll also pretend that we can't see the horse's tile, or maybe that it's not even there. What we can do is turn our focus completely to water. The great thing about water is that it's food that's going to be reinvested in more food, which gets reinvested into more food. It allows you to bring your town online very quickly and start supporting the capital, which remember, is the primary goal of your town. So finally, with towns, here is our third golden rule. Your tile acquisition priority is... 1. Contested Resources 2. Contested Tiles with Strong Yields, Science or Culture 3. Uncontested Resources 4. Uncontested Tiles with Strong Yields, Science and Culture 5. Uncontested Tiles with Medium Yields 6. Uncontested Tiles with Low Yields Natural wonders go pretty much above everything else, but the key here is securing everything over your opponent first, and then working... backwards from there. When it comes to making that final call as to whether this town becomes a specialised town, it will depend on the available tiles that are left and how much you value them. You then need to weigh that up with how much you need that extra food going to your connected cities, and you need to consider how long it's actually going to take you to get that citizen out and start working in your town. There is absolutely no hard and fast rules when it comes to switching your town into specialisations, but if I had to give a number... I would say it starts to feel really slow around 6-7 core population in the town. Keep in mind the core population does not include the population that you get from buildings, which is added on top, but it's still represented in that number that you see. Now finally, let's get to the question of when we actually turn these towns into cities. There's a lot less devil in this detail, so it will be a much shorter section, and we'll start it off with a golden rule. Golden rule number four. Prioritize turning towns into cities if they have high production. do not turn towns into cities if they have low production. The whole point of towns and cities is that cities can't support themselves, so they need towns to lift the heavy load when it comes to food. By settling your cities on high production areas, this guarantees you'll be able to make use of their production queue and receive support from connected towns. Support that isn't going to go to waste. There's no strict time frame on when to actually convert a town into a city. If you've got a very low food area with a very high production, There's a justification for turning that town into a city as soon as possible, so that it can hook up with the connected towns and start growing as quickly as possible to make use of the tiles. Generally though, you'll want to wait until it reaches at least 5 core population, as this will reduce the cost down on the conversion. Whenever you convert your town to a city, it is going to cost you money, it's expensive to do, but as the town grows larger, the cost is reduced. Golden rule number 5. If you're planning on turning a town into a city because it has good production, do not. not turn it into a specialized town first. You need your city to grow large, and turning it into a specialized town stops all growth completely. But I'm sure you've already seen, yes, there is an exception to this golden rule. If someone goes to war with you, and you believe it is absolutely required for the town to remain in your control that it must be specialized, then you may turn it into a fort town. Just make sure that once the disturbance is cleared, that you immediately get it back and growing. Another important thing to note is that cities are able to slot specialists. whereas towns can't. They're able to construct and purchase science and culture buildings, which are integral for progressing through the age. It can be difficult knowing exactly how many cities you should have and how many towns that you should have, but a general rule to follow, and credit to the Civilopedia for this one, is not to convert all towns to cities, but instead to keep a one-to-one ratio of towns and cities. This way, you've always got support for your cities. Finally, we have the last available town specializations. Religious Site and Hub Town in the Exploration Age, and Factory Town in the Modern Age. While this video was originally intended to focus only on the Antiquity Age, it's worth briefly covering these later specializations to give a complete picture. The Hub Town Specialization Civilization provides plus two influence per settlement connected to the town. That doesn't mean that every settlement that it's got a road that can ultimately connect to the town gets that plus two influence. What that means is plus two influence per settlement connected to the town. Your typical yields for this are quite low, but there will undoubtedly be circumstances where multiple settlements all run into the same town, and it is this town that will specialize in being a hub town. The best way to think about it is like branches of a tree. How many of those branches are actually connecting? and that's the number that you're getting. Next up, the religious site, which provides plus 2 happiness and plus 1 relic slot on temples in the town. The temple is a religious building, available in the exploration age and can be purchased in towns. Temples have a base of 1 relic slot, so increasing it to 2 is quite a big jump. While there are other ways to gain relic slots, temples are an important part of growing towards the 12 you will need for a cultural golden age in the exploration age. Finally, the Factory Town, which provides plus 100% gold towards purchasing a factory in the town. Factories, together with Factory Towns, require an entire video just to explain how they work, but to cut it short, factories are a key component of the Railroad Tycoon legacy path, and having a Factory Town as your specialisation is going to allow that town to come online a lot faster in the modern era. The new town and city mechanics are massively enjoyable, and it really makes you stop and think about the decision you're about to make. Overall, I've really enjoyed the depth that this change has brought to the game, and I'm confident that it will be a fan favourite for years to come. If you've enjoyed watching this video, feel free to leave a like. If you've got any feedback, positive or negative, then please leave a comment. And if you'd like to see more Civilization 7 content, then don't forget to subscribe, because remember, there's always time for one more turn.

In this video, we'll break down the differences between towns and cities, and develop some golden rules that you should always keep in mind. My name is Drongo, this is Civ 7, and join me. As we take one more turn. When you start a game in Civ 7, the first unit you'll interact with is the Founder, which establishes your capital city.

At first glance, it may resemble the Settler, but unlike Settlers, who create towns, the Founder is a unique one-time unit. You can't train Founders, only Settlers, meaning that every new settlement after your capital will always begin as a town. Towns function similarly to cities, but come with a few key differences. Most notably, they don't have a production queue, meaning they can't train units or construct buildings naturally.

Because of this, towns don't generate production at all. Instead, all their production is automatically converted into gold and added to your income each turn. Another key difference is growth, which is where towns truly shine.

When founded, they receive a plus 50% growth bonus called Growing Town, making them expand incredibly fast. Unlike a simple food bonus, this doesn't increase food income, it actually reduces the food cost of new citizens by 50%, so instead of needing 30 food for your first citizen, you'll only need 15. That's a massive advantage early on compared to a city. Towns can purchase buildings just like cities, and they cost the exact same, however, towns do have a more limited selection. You can buy ancient walls for defense, you can buy an altar to activate your pantheon, and you can purchase warehouse buildings which boost the yield of tiles your citizens are working.

Towns cannot purchase science, culture, happiness, production, food, or gold buildings. These only become available once the town upgrades to a city. The only exception to this rule is Augustus, who can actually purchase culture buildings in towns. The purpose of a town is to help drive your civilization toward victory, and it won't do that by staying in its early growth phase forever. Once a town reaches 7 population, you'll have the option to convert it into a specialized town.

Not only do towns enjoy 50% faster growth so that they grow very fast naturally, but each time they purchase a building, their population is also increased by one, allowing for rapid specialization. But is it always the right move? Before we dive into whether specialization is worth it, here's our first golden rule. Do not specialize a town unless you've secured all nearby resources. That means securing all your gold, all your salt, all your horses before you specialize.

Once a town is specialized, all the food it generates is sent to the connected cities, meaning that it stops growing and won't produce new citizens to work additional tiles. While you can still purchase buildings to increase population, you won't be able to unlock new resource tiles naturally. Technically you can switch a specialised town back to growth mode, but I found that it's easy to forget to switch it back, wasting valuable food that should be feeding your cities.

Now there is one exception to this golden rule, yes I know that tarnishes its golden status a little, but since this is an over explained video we need to cover it. If your enemy is preparing for war, massing forces at your border and has a hostile relationship, you can immediately specialise your town into a fort town. This provides plus 5 healing, 4 units every turn and plus 25 health to town walls, giving you a crucial defensive edge. And if you haven't reached 7 population yet but need to specialise immediately because the war is imminent, you can purchase warehouse buildings to push your town's population over the 7 threshold and unlock fort town before the attack begins. Keep in mind that once you specialise your town, in this case into a fort town, there's no switching to another specialisation after the war is over.

It's a bold and difficult decision, but if it saves your town and shifts the war in your favour, its value far outweighs the alternative, which is trying to defend without it and hoping to specialise in something else later at the potential cost of losing the town or even the war itself. So back to our original question, if the ultimate goal of a town is to become either a specialised town or a city, should we specialise it? immediately upon reaching 7 population.

There's no strict rule for when to specialise a town, but here are some key factors to consider. The main reason we specialise is to start sending its food to connected cities, so we want food generation to be as high as possible without delaying the transfer for too long. If it takes 900 food to grow to your next citizen, and your town generates 30 food per turn, is it really worth waiting 30 turns for just an extra 3 food from a farm?

Probably not, but what if the tile we were growing to was plus 3 culture instead? That brings us to golden rule number two. Prioritize growth towards resources and prioritize tiles that generate culture or science. Resources provide huge bonuses in addition to the yields on the tile, and tiles with science and culture benefit your entire empire immediately, with no reduction or penalties.

They're also much harder to obtain in the early game, especially before unlocking specialists, making these yields essential wherever possible. While sending food to connected cities is a major reason to specialise towns, the specialisation itself can be just as important in deciding when to do it. Let's break down each specialisation one by one and identify the best timing for transitioning into them. Four towns are fairly straightforward. If you're under attack, they're an emergency defensive response.

But even if you're not at war, they can still be a smart choice if you've expanded a little too aggressively and now share a border with an angry neighbour. In those cases, prioritising a fort town over another specialisation can absolutely make sense. Next up is the Urban Centre, which grants plus one science and plus one culture to Quarters.

Quarters are created when two buildings, like a library and an arena, or a blacksmith and a villa, are constructed together on the same tile. Only then does the Urban Centre bonus activate in these towns. Due to the limited number of buildings that are available in towns for purchase, this bonus doesn't have a high ceiling with regard to numbers.

The maximum number of quarters you can create is two. One by combining your city hall with a granary, and another by pairing any of the brickyard, the sawpit, or the altar. Once again, Augustus is an exception.

Since he can purchase culture buildings, he can buy a monument allowing him to form a third quarter, giving him a small but unique advantage. This bonus can also be combined with two pantheons, Goddess of Festivals and God of Wisdom, which give plus one culture or plus one science respectively to quarters in settlements with an altar. While these bonuses might feel weak due to the low number of quarters you can actually build in towns, if your empire grows wide and you have the gold to support the purchasing of buildings, it can add a serious amount of science and culture to your total. Overall, this is a situational bonus since it's rare that you'll be able to afford warehouse buildings in towns while also justifying the investment. The yields are usually too small to be worth it, and if one warehouse does get decent yields, it likely means that the others won't be worth the cost.

The only time these numbers will add up is if you've got a large amount of land and a strong gold income. Let's cover another straightforward specialization, the trade outpost. This provides plus two happiness on resource tiles within the town and grants a plus five trade range bonus.

With two primary use cases, this is a well-balanced specialization. If you're playing a trade-focused strategy, a plus 5 trade range could mean the difference between reaching an opponent's capital or falling just short, which in turn could net you a ridiculous amount of resources. The second use case requires more consideration, as you'll need to weigh its value against the final two specialization options we'll cover next.

Simply put, the more resource tiles in the town, the stronger this specialization becomes. Likewise, if happiness is central to your strategy, trade outposts become much more valuable. For example, if you're playing Shalamein, you'll likely prioritize trade-out posts more than if you were playing Machiavelli, since Charlemagne benefits significantly from happiness and celebrations, while Machiavelli doesn't.

Finally, you may find yourself in a direct need for happiness. Maybe you're losing a war and struggling with war support, or perhaps you've overcommitted to specialists in your capital. In these cases, deciding whether a trade-out post is worth it is easy, but without these clear pull factors, it can be a careful balancing act. Finally, for the Antiquity Age, we have the last two specializations, and the ones you'll likely consider the most.

Fishing Town and Mining Town. A Fishing Town boosts food yields from farms, pastures, plantations, and fishing boats, while a Mining Town enhances production yields from camps, woodcutters, clay pits, mines, and quarries. These two specializations will often be the most impactful choices. The easiest way to decide between these specializations is to click on the town itself, open up town details, go to the building breakdown tab, and scroll down to improvement.

Most of the time, the right choice will be obvious. 5 mines providing plus 5 gold is usually more valuable than a single farm giving plus 1 food. Before we move on to cities though, let's walk through an example of how a town grows and the best decision you can make along the way.

When you settle a town, you'll start at 2 population. This is the citizen that's working your city hall, together with one citizen that you can have work any tile within your town's borders. When a settlement grows, you choose a new tile, which automatically gains an improvement based on the terrain. No work is needed. A forest becomes a woodcutter, a plains tile turns into a farm.

You'll want to assess your closest resources and whether you should prioritize them or whether you should delay them. A cotton resource is going to be a lot more valuable than a silk resource at turn 20. In this example though, we've got this beautiful waterfront view. We see a silk tile to our north that we want to beeline towards. We put two farms down along the route to it and after putting the plantation on the silk, it's clear this is going to be a fishing town specialization.

You eye off the next resource, a horse tile just out of reach of your capital and again follow the same pattern. You put down a woodcutter, followed by a second woodcutter, and all of a sudden now you're not too sure which specialisation to go. This is where we introduce the leapfrog technique.

At this point the granary is giving a pretty solid yield of plus 4 food, and instead of constructing it with the town hall, we can build the granary over the top of the town hall. of an existing woodcutter citizen which forces it to relocate. Building on a rural tile converts it into an urban tile.

Urban tiles must be placed adjacent to existing ones, so it's not as simple as picking or choosing which tiles we want and don't want, we need to be strategic. But by doing this, we're now able to leapfrog and take the horses, which puts us at a total of four tiles getting a bonus from the granary, and further cements our fishing town specialization as the right choice. Let's take a look at it again, but instead...

We're going to do it a different way. What we're going to do here is go to the farm, then we'll go to the mine, and then we'll go to the silk. From here, we'll then take the woodcutter and the second woodcutter, and now we'll leapfrog by putting a saw pit on the first farm, and then take the horses with that citizen. This leapfrog technique can be very good at helping you narrow down your specializations and maximizing the benefits that you get from them.

Let's look at another way that we could have played this. Let's- Say for the sake of the argument, the silk has been taken by the city-state in the north, and we'll also pretend that we can't see the horse's tile, or maybe that it's not even there. What we can do is turn our focus completely to water.

The great thing about water is that it's food that's going to be reinvested in more food, which gets reinvested into more food. It allows you to bring your town online very quickly and start supporting the capital, which remember, is the primary goal of your town. So finally, with towns, here is our third golden rule.

Your tile acquisition priority is... 1. Contested Resources 2. Contested Tiles with Strong Yields, Science or Culture 3. Uncontested Resources 4. Uncontested Tiles with Strong Yields, Science and Culture 5. Uncontested Tiles with Medium Yields 6. Uncontested Tiles with Low Yields Natural wonders go pretty much above everything else, but the key here is securing everything over your opponent first, and then working... backwards from there.

When it comes to making that final call as to whether this town becomes a specialised town, it will depend on the available tiles that are left and how much you value them. You then need to weigh that up with how much you need that extra food going to your connected cities, and you need to consider how long it's actually going to take you to get that citizen out and start working in your town. There is absolutely no hard and fast rules when it comes to switching your town into specialisations, but if I had to give a number...

I would say it starts to feel really slow around 6-7 core population in the town. Keep in mind the core population does not include the population that you get from buildings, which is added on top, but it's still represented in that number that you see. Now finally, let's get to the question of when we actually turn these towns into cities.

There's a lot less devil in this detail, so it will be a much shorter section, and we'll start it off with a golden rule. Golden rule number four. Prioritize turning towns into cities if they have high production.

do not turn towns into cities if they have low production. The whole point of towns and cities is that cities can't support themselves, so they need towns to lift the heavy load when it comes to food. By settling your cities on high production areas, this guarantees you'll be able to make use of their production queue and receive support from connected towns.

Support that isn't going to go to waste. There's no strict time frame on when to actually convert a town into a city. If you've got a very low food area with a very high production, There's a justification for turning that town into a city as soon as possible, so that it can hook up with the connected towns and start growing as quickly as possible to make use of the tiles.

Generally though, you'll want to wait until it reaches at least 5 core population, as this will reduce the cost down on the conversion. Whenever you convert your town to a city, it is going to cost you money, it's expensive to do, but as the town grows larger, the cost is reduced. Golden rule number 5. If you're planning on turning a town into a city because it has good production, do not. not turn it into a specialized town first. You need your city to grow large, and turning it into a specialized town stops all growth completely.

But I'm sure you've already seen, yes, there is an exception to this golden rule. If someone goes to war with you, and you believe it is absolutely required for the town to remain in your control that it must be specialized, then you may turn it into a fort town. Just make sure that once the disturbance is cleared, that you immediately get it back and growing. Another important thing to note is that cities are able to slot specialists. whereas towns can't.

They're able to construct and purchase science and culture buildings, which are integral for progressing through the age. It can be difficult knowing exactly how many cities you should have and how many towns that you should have, but a general rule to follow, and credit to the Civilopedia for this one, is not to convert all towns to cities, but instead to keep a one-to-one ratio of towns and cities. This way, you've always got support for your cities. Finally, we have the last available town specializations.

Religious Site and Hub Town in the Exploration Age, and Factory Town in the Modern Age. While this video was originally intended to focus only on the Antiquity Age, it's worth briefly covering these later specializations to give a complete picture. The Hub Town Specialization Civilization provides plus two influence per settlement connected to the town. That doesn't mean that every settlement that it's got a road that can ultimately connect to the town gets that plus two influence.

What that means is plus two influence per settlement connected to the town. Your typical yields for this are quite low, but there will undoubtedly be circumstances where multiple settlements all run into the same town, and it is this town that will specialize in being a hub town. The best way to think about it is like branches of a tree. How many of those branches are actually connecting?

and that's the number that you're getting. Next up, the religious site, which provides plus 2 happiness and plus 1 relic slot on temples in the town. The temple is a religious building, available in the exploration age and can be purchased in towns.

Temples have a base of 1 relic slot, so increasing it to 2 is quite a big jump. While there are other ways to gain relic slots, temples are an important part of growing towards the 12 you will need for a cultural golden age in the exploration age. Finally, the Factory Town, which provides plus 100% gold towards purchasing a factory in the town. Factories, together with Factory Towns, require an entire video just to explain how they work, but to cut it short, factories are a key component of the Railroad Tycoon legacy path, and having a Factory Town as your specialisation is going to allow that town to come online a lot faster in the modern era.

The new town and city mechanics are massively enjoyable, and it really makes you stop and think about the decision you're about to make. Overall, I've really enjoyed the depth that this change has brought to the game, and I'm confident that it will be a fan favourite for years to come. If you've enjoyed watching this video, feel free to leave a like.

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Transcript for:Civilization VII: Towns and Cities Overview

Transcript for:
Civilization VII: Towns and Cities Overview