Civilization VII

[Tamas]

Thanks, I found the Reddit post just last night

[Syt]

I'm still trying to figure out what the best strategy for towns is. Most of the time I tend to expand tem as much as possible and switching them to cities. When I guess it's often more efficient to keep them as farming/mining towns to feed the cities where I don't want to worry about keeping rural tiles.

[Tamas]

I'm still trying to figure out what the best strategy for towns is. Most of the time I tend to expand tem as much as possible and switching them to cities. When I guess it's often more efficient to keep them as farming/mining towns to feed the cities where I don't want to worry about keeping rural tiles.

Yeah same, the realisation was just slowly dawning on me that it's probably not optimal to waste city tiles on food (production I have no other option for, I guess). Except for coastal/sea tiles, which can be nice. Navigable river hexes can be bonused up to high heavens but they do take the spot from a city tile.

[Syt]

I'm still trying to figure out what the best strategy for towns is. Most of the time I tend to expand tem as much as possible and switching them to cities. When I guess it's often more efficient to keep them as farming/mining towns to feed the cities where I don't want to worry about keeping rural tiles.

Yeah same, the realisation was just slowly dawning on me that it's probably not optimal to waste city tiles on food (production I have no other option for, I guess). Except for coastal/sea tiles, which can be nice. Navigable river hexes can be bonused up to high heavens but they do take the spot from a city tile.

Plus the ongoing repair costs from flooding. (BRING DAMS BACK!) But you can use them for harbors, bridges, wharves, shipyards ...

Re: age transitions, I wish there was a better preview of what happens, the unlocks screen is not quite as good. Or maybe a menu where you can "buy" units that carry over (assign a cost for each unit, give player a budget based on era performance). Some of the era transition perks let you up the amount of units you get beyond the ones you carry over, but better player control would go a long way, I think. Similar with retaining cities from previous age (though I guess technically that's in, with the 200g cost for the first few town-city switches at the start of a new age).

[Syt]

The system I like the least for now is religion in the Exploration Age. It seems a bit lackluster for now and suffers from an "everyone gets a religion" issue - not helped by a game of whack-a-mole trying to keep cities in your religion, and no defensive units to deploy for "religious combat" like in Civ6. That the game distinguishes between rural and urban population is in theory a nice touch (and the only part of the game where it seems to matter?) but in practice just adds busywork IMO. But you can't ignore it entirely because you want at least one legacy milestone to avoid a cultural dark age (though you can use tech to acquire the necessary relics, I guess). Mostly I try to keep some missionaries in my territory to re-convert some cities back to me while trying to spread my religion through trade, missionaries, or conversion diplo actions. Unless I ignore it completely.

However, Missionaries make great scouts in foreign territories, because they ignore borders (like Explorers in Modern Age).

[Solmyr]

Still enjoying it FWIW. I'm not on the level of Mr. "I beat Deity" Solmyr (saw your achievement in my feed )

It wasn't too hard. The AI is very defensive early on, so you are fairly safe from being conquered. On Deity you are usually very behind on tech and civics in the early ages, but it mostly won't matter because the game is won in the Modern Age. And right now culture victory is piss easy - you only need the first civic you can research and 15 great works. I used Friedrich, Baroque, as he gets great works from conquering settlements. Just collect all the artifacts you can and then conquer some easy towns for the rest.

[Solmyr]

I'm still trying to figure out what the best strategy for towns is. Most of the time I tend to expand tem as much as possible and switching them to cities. When I guess it's often more efficient to keep them as farming/mining towns to feed the cities where I don't want to worry about keeping rural tiles.

If the town has high production yields, I usually convert it to a city at some point. If high food but low production, then they stay as towns. It also depends on your civ and leader though. E.g. with Mughals you get +75% gold but -25% everything else, so having a couple of high-production towns can really explode your gold reserve and you can just buy anything you want.

[Solmyr]

The system I like the least for now is religion in the Exploration Age. It seems a bit lackluster for now and suffers from an "everyone gets a religion" issue - not helped by a game of whack-a-mole trying to keep cities in your religion, and no defensive units to deploy for "religious combat" like in Civ6.

There's actually no need to re-convert your settlements, unless you are running certain civics where that matters. Otherwise, once you've gotten the relics you can from converting, it doesn't affect anything anymore.

[viper37]

OpenCritic reviews for those who don't have it:
https://opencritic.com/game/17742/sid-meiers-civilization-vii