Too Many Settlements?

[Flash]

In the same manner as other Civ games, I rushed to build more cities (in this case towns).

In Civ 7, initially my maximum allowed towns is 4 and anything beyond that incurs lots of happiness penalty which used to be an annoying garbage especially when you took over opponents capital city in Civ 6. Has Civ 7 taken this further to annoy the player and discourage wars?

I hate razing cities since that immediately opens up locations for enemy settlers

How do u play a conquest game? Is my only choice to Raze cities down? Because taking over these nice cities is a massive debuff in happiness.

Let me know what you do (conquesting/warring player comments only)

[Steve]

Burn 'em. Paths to victory have been sharply reduced in this installment so far. There's only a few good ways to win, and most of them aren't early-game friendly.

This is an installment that punishes the early-game player most.

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by Flash:

In the same manner as other Civ games, I rushed to build more cities (in this case towns).

In Civ 7, initially my maximum allowed towns is 4 and anything beyond that incurs lots of happiness penalty which used to be an annoying garbage especially when you took over opponents capital city in Civ 6. Has Civ 7 taken this further to annoy the player and discourage wars?

I hate razing cities since that immediately opens up locations for enemy settlers

How do u play a conquest game? Is my only choice to Raze cities down? Because taking over these nice cities is a massive debuff in happiness.

Let me know what you do (conquesting/warring player comments only)

You can safely go over the settlement limit if you manage your happiness. Some builds are better for this than others.

There are 3 settlement cap increases from tech, 2 from the leader skill tree, and then a couple more special ones from specific civilizations. Plenty of people get up to 9 settlements in the Antiquity Age.

[Crono]

I just lost a couple of cities to the AI because i got the rebellion crisis after being slightly above settlement limit. The way i see it now i should have slowed down a bit and increased the limit first.

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by Crono:

I just lost a couple of cities to the AI because i got the rebellion crisis after being slightly above settlement limit. The way i see it now i should have slowed down a bit and increased the limit first.

Well rebellions are caused by low happiness iirc. Being 1 or 2 settlements above the limit would give you a -5/-10 happiness penalty in each settlement. So you definitely didn't balance your happiness with your expansion. But it is perfectly safe to gove above the cap if you *have* balanced happiness.

[katzenkrimis]

The idea is to steal and raze, not build.

Right from the start you need to attack. If you do that, things will be manageable.

You can go over the cap once in a while. I saw one play go over the cap by five or six towns, which is extreme, but you only need to complete the Legacy Path and complete the Age.

It's not like you're playing one continuous game.

[Flash]

So yea my current game Im managing things properly but I didnt expect these debuffs. I was just being a curious cat and suddenly found out that I had zero happiness XD

I brought happiness over to 4.. still in antiquity age.. But this is the big 2 problem here

1. What the hell? Every city now is annoyed? Im giving them more cities, more resources more jobs? It takes away any sense or logic.. gd awful debuffs

2. Im playing at Epic game length. If I raze cities Im giving so much opportunity and time for the enemy to keep sending settlers. By enemies I mean everyone else.... if they spam their cities everywhere I will start punching them x(

Im not buying another Civ game if these guys are going to keep up their 'let me further nerf warring and have people sing kumbaya and join hands with religion and culture' for every sequel

[Flash]

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

The idea is to steal and raze, not build.

Right from the start you need to attack. If you do that, things will be manageable.

I have 11 towns XD.. Im doing just fine but its just pissing me off royally to see a happiness debuff. Right now I dont know how it will slow my progression since I dont know the game mechanics enough to know how significantly high happiness will help me. I dont want to raze... precious... my precious!

[plaguepenguin]

If you plan ahead and use sources of happiness (buildings and some of the resources) you can offset the negative happiness involved in exceeding your settlement cap. I played two over for most of Antiquity and Exploration, going briefly to 3 over at intervals, and managed to keep it together. It helps to be selective in what settlements you conquer, because only some of them give you happiness resources. I've just entered a conquest phase in the Modern, so not clear how that's going to pan out, but, some terrain now gives happiness and there are nicer happiness buildings, so I suspect that with planning you can stay at least 2 ahead of the cap without crippling the flow of celebrations, much less causing cities to revolt.

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by Flash:

Originally posted by katzenkrimis:

The idea is to steal and raze, not build.

Right from the start you need to attack. If you do that, things will be manageable.

I have 11 towns XD.. Im doing just fine but its just pissing me off royally to see a happiness debuff. Right now I dont know how it will slow my progression since I dont know the game mechanics enough to know how significantly high happiness will help me. I dont want to raze... precious... my precious!

Well maybe this only impacts Marathon but I am under the impression that game/age speeds besides standard are bugged. Guess you'll find out and report back to us whether the age ends before you can do anything.

[Martin]

Burn Cities and Play Hunt the Settler.

[campcreekdude]

Originally posted by Martin:

Burn Cities and Play Hunt the Settler.

Yea to knock out a civilization you gotta destroy all cities and settlements. They keep changing the capital.

[jollibee]

I didn't know it was going to be -5 happiness in every single town and city for going over one. This seems way too much. I think they need to remove the happiness debuff and only have a city limit but not for towns, so if you go over your city limit then the happiness can go down a bit but should be able to have as many towns as you want.

[Wish Bear]

you can dip over the cap if you are about to get a tech/building/civic that gives you one more....but the happiness number at the top is excess it does not spread to the unhappy cities so managing happiness through resources or buildings in towns means a lot of excess happiness and more festivals. but a city or three over the cap hurts if you don't have the money/resources to buy your way happy

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by jollibee:

I didn't know it was going to be -5 happiness in every single town and city for going over one. This seems way too much. I think they need to remove the happiness debuff and only have a city limit but not for towns, so if you go over your city limit then the happiness can go down a bit but should be able to have as many towns as you want.

Towns are extremely strong and important. So they can't really do that.

Note that it is fully possible with some builds to have enough happiness in each settlement to overcome the maximum -35 happiness per settlement debuff when you are 7 or more settlements over the cap. And yes, being 8 settlements or more over doesn't increase the penalty. In which case you can completely ignore the settlement cap.

[jollibee]

Ok so if we manage happiness we can essentially build as large as we want, that's good to know.