How do I build a "Town Center"

[Phanixis]

Upon researching either Bureaucracy or University (I have both), I am supposed to be able to build a "Town Center", an upgrade for the Great Hearth. But I cannot find the upgrade anywhere in the building queue. Does anyone know how to go about building this particular structure?

Thanks.

[MHarmless]

Upgrades are done from the list on the right hand side. Change the view to 'improvements'. All upgradable buildings will have little arrows on the right hand side. If it is green, you have the material and can click it to queue it.

[Phanixis]

Ok, I have found the upgrade arrows you are talking about. They let me upgrade from a farm to a irrigated farm and a stone pit to a mine, but the arrows are entirely absent from the Great Hearth.

[MHarmless]

Oh your capitol. That never upgrades, the great hearth is the capitol's city center. Town centers are I think the third tier of city center for your other cities.

There are a few things that only the great hearth can make, although not recalling specific items off the top of my head.

[Fenris]

you can't upgrade the great hearth, you can only upgrade the gathering halls

[archonsod]

Originally posted by mharmless:

There are a few things that only the great hearth can make, although not recalling specific items off the top of my head.

Nah, they have the same build list as a gathering hall. What's unique about the hearth is it has four supply slots which can be used to give city-wide benefits while a gathering hall has none.

[MHarmless]

Originally posted by archonsod:

Originally posted by mharmless:

There are a few things that only the great hearth can make, although not recalling specific items off the top of my head.

Nah, they have the same build list as a gathering hall. What's unique about the hearth is it has four supply slots which can be used to give city-wide benefits while a gathering hall has none.

Checked today when I got home, the Great Hearth is the only place you can make Censer, Codex, and Currency. In the other direction, City Hall and Town Center can both make Law Books, and Great Hearth can't.

Censer is maybe useful if you are pushing religion for some reason, and Codex is needed to train some religious units, but the big boy here is Currency, which gives 25 prosperity and a massive +20% production when used as an amenity, but oddly only lasts one turn, while you can get +15% from cars for the usual 10 turns.

Related, Law Books also only last one turn. I suspect these are both data errors, because like the car above there are plenty of amenities which are nearly as good and last literally ten times as long, and plenty just as powerful in other domains like health and happiness that are also all ten turns.

[Prometheus]

Considering how strong currency is I wouldn't be surprised if its meant to be something you have to craft turn to turn to keep the bonus up. Also I am pretty sure it can also be crafted in the Mint building.

[MHarmless]

Originally posted by Prometheus:

Considering how strong currency is I wouldn't be surprised if its meant to be something you have to craft turn to turn to keep the bonus up. Also I am pretty sure it can also be crafted in the Mint building.

Mint makes Coins, which you can input as one of the raw materials for Currency. I couldn't get it to even 2 units of currency a turn in a very developed city so I wasn't able to keep the buff up on more than the capitol.

[Prometheus]

Ah yah then maybe you are mostly right. I don't think its an error then. Probably a design oversight. They probably intended it to be different from the usual every amenity is 10 turns thing then didn't get around to fully balancing it due to work priorities. With how intricate the crafting system is in this game I'm a little surprised we don't see more instances poor tuning making something too difficult to use.