Struggling with some of the new mechanics

[TTC]

1) Do I want to convert my towns to cities as soon as I can?

2) After a new age starts, can I build over all of the blue-hued tiles?

(I'm sure I'll have plenty more questions like these!)

[Tricking Trapster]

For 1, that depends. You can just have towns for the reason of 'there's resources there I want' but if it turns out to be a genuinely good location you want to use for a city then you upgrade it.

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by TTC:

1) Do I want to convert my towns to cities as soon as I can?

2) After a new age starts, can I build over all of the blue-hued tiles?

(I'm sure I'll have plenty more questions like these!)

You generally want to have 1-2 towns per city to maximize population growth. But it all depends on your specific build. Leader, Civ, Momentos, etc.

[martinolund]

1) read the help file (F9) and they recommend a ratio of 1:1 when it come to city vs town.
2) the blue hued tiles are specialist and sure you can build over them if you want. You may not want to do that depending on what you already have built there, your choice.

[TheNightglow]

1) I m not sure if I understood it correctly but to me it appears that far away towns are not in your trade network, not allowing you to use their resources, meanwhile if you upgrade them to cities their resources become usable
if something is outside your trade network I think you always want to upgrade it so you can funnel the bonus resources to the correct cities
in all other cases it really depends on your leader, policy choices and production needs
for instance Augustus has huge discounts on purchases in towns, but not in cities

also upgrading a town to a city costs significantly less if the town has a lot of population, so waiting to upgrade is cheaper

2) not all can be build over, if a building counts as ageless it can not be replaced
the game tells you which one is ageless in the build menu, but once the building is placed it will never tell you again
so in the next age you wont know which tiles can be build over twice unless you remember which ones said ageless

[taomastercu]

Originally posted by TheNightglow:

1) I m not sure if I understood it correctly but to me it appears that far away towns are not in your trade network, not allowing you to use their resources, meanwhile if you upgrade them to cities their resources become usable
if something is outside your trade network I think you always want to upgrade it so you can funnel the resources to the correct cities
in all other cases it really depends on your leader, policy choices and production needs
for instance Augustus has huge discounts on purchases in towns, but not in cities
(take all the above with a grain of salt, i m not 100% sure if I understood correctly when stuff is added to your trade network)

2) not all can be build over, if a building counts as ageless it can not be replaced
the game tells you which one is ageless in the build menu, but once the building is placed it will never tell you again
so in the next age you wont know which tiles can be build over twice unless you remember which ones said ageless

You'll very rarely want to build settlements in such a way that many towns would be outside your trade network. But yes if you screwed it up you may need to make a settlement a city.

[TheNightglow]

Originally posted by taomastercu:

Originally posted by TheNightglow:

1) I m not sure if I understood it correctly but to me it appears that far away towns are not in your trade network, not allowing you to use their resources, meanwhile if you upgrade them to cities their resources become usable
if something is outside your trade network I think you always want to upgrade it so you can funnel the resources to the correct cities
in all other cases it really depends on your leader, policy choices and production needs
for instance Augustus has huge discounts on purchases in towns, but not in cities
(take all the above with a grain of salt, i m not 100% sure if I understood correctly when stuff is added to your trade network)

2) not all can be build over, if a building counts as ageless it can not be replaced
the game tells you which one is ageless in the build menu, but once the building is placed it will never tell you again
so in the next age you wont know which tiles can be build over twice unless you remember which ones said ageless

You'll very rarely want to build settlements in such a way that many towns would be outside your trade network. But yes if you screwed it up you may need to make a settlement a city.

i mean.... the entire 2nd age... right? and then in the third age all the 2nd age stuff wont be in the network

also if I see an invaluable resource, like tea or camels, I would want to put a city down on it even if its far away, so I can funnel the resource to my capital right? to boost storage and science output

[Will be deleted]

Cities are much more useful than towns, they can get all buildings which is important for things like science and culture, 1 city and 9 towns mean you can only build one library while 10 cities mean you can build 10 libraries so huge difference.

Production is also much more efficient than gold, each production cost 4 gold to buy which is very inefficient, instead of buying stuff save the money to convert towns to cities.

Cities can also have more goods and use more types which is nice for ancient era economic legacy path.

Besides the cost of converting towns into cities (which is probably the best way to spend your wealth) the only advantage a town really has over a city is the growth focus give a massive reduction in how much food it cost to grow population in the town, specializations feels seldom worthwhile because the amount of food needed to grow pops increase dramatically meaning the best way to increase empire wide population would be that each city have the same amount of people rather than trying to grow a very large population in one city.

Like first pop maybe cost 20 food, population 20 may cost 1000 or more food which would be 50 times more expensive. Meaning sending food to other cities that are probably larger than the town is not really a good option generally and it would be just better to aim for it to become a city and perhaps keep it on growth. Some specializations like the trade range one may be worth it in right situation but you can probably turn it back to growth once you taken advantage of the specialization.

[Ghoust]

Hello;

1) The ratio is usualy 1;1. You can specialize your town when either all resources are taken or when you want to make more food, usualy 8-10 pop. The 1;2 ratio happens usualy when your town has more production than it has food.. said production is converted to gold.. not food. Thats when you make another town close to your city that has a food focused. Hint the 1;2. Or when you want to maximaze growth... your call.

When it comes to converting towns to cities it really depends.. does it have good adjacencies for districts? Can you make a good town to support the city? Your call.

The main reason you want to have a town supporting a city is because of specialist.. they are the sole core of your empire when it comes to adjacencies. So you need growth.

2) Most of them, because a lot of buildings are not ageless.. example: You built a library in antiquity age, it will have its base science value + adjacency. However, those adjacencies are lost once you enter exploration age... therefore what you should do is replace said library with its exploration science building counterpart for its adjancencies.

Keep exploring!

[PlayKnight]

I find that if you upgrade to a city before it hits the level 7 specialization point, production is meh and too many turns to accomplish what you want. Which really only matters depending on your era goals.