Civilization 7: How To Upgrade Towns Into Cities

Across all three ages in Civilization VII, you’ll find yourself constantly acquiring new settlements in one way or another. Maybe you just won a war against another leader and took over their districts or one of your settlers discovered a location on their own. In any case, as you stack up more settlements in your empire, you’ll eventually want to make most, if not all of them, cities.

Settlements start as towns, which can only be expanded up to a certain point and carry a specialization with them if you choose. Cities, on the other hand, are generally larger and act as more of a focal point in the grand scheme of your empire. Below, we’ll show you how to upgrade towns into cities and the pros and cons of doing so in Civilization VII.

How to turn towns into cities in Civilization 7

Fortunately, the process of converting a town into a city is quite simple. The process can begin once you have founded or acquired a new settlement from another leader. Even if the settlement you took over from another leader was an existing city in their empire, it reverts back to a town once you take control.

To turn a town into a city in Civilization VII, follow the steps below:

• Click on the capital city tile of the town you want to convert
• Look at the bottom of the town’s menu on the left side of the screen
• Find the “Convert to City” option
• Look and see how much gold it costs to turn the town into a city
• If you can afford the gold cost, press the convert button, and your town turns into a city automatically

The gold cost to convert a town to a city is dependent on two factors. The first factor is how many cities you already have in your empire. The more cities you own, the higher the cost of converting to a new town. However, the cost of converting a town is reduced the larger it is. So, if you have expanded a town to its maximum size, it will cost less to convert than a smaller town you just founded.

Benefits of towns vs. cities in Civilization VII

There are a few things to consider when choosing to upgrade a town into a city in Civilization VII.

The biggest difference between a town and a city is the cost of producing buildings and units. Towns can only purchase buildings and units with gold instead of opting to wait a set number of turns. Cities, on the other hand, have the option to produce items using either turns or gold. While it’s always going to be quicker to produce items with gold, this can also put a hurting on your treasury.

For example, if you’re in a war and need units to defend a town, you can only purchase them with gold. This is great if you have a large treasury, but what if you’re out of gold? There’s no way to put units in that town unless you move them from elsewhere on the map or wait several turns to acquire the necessary gold.

The other major factor to consider in upgrading a town to a city is the Focus of your towns. Once a town’s population reaches a specific number, you can specialize it with a Focus. This is done by clicking on the capital tile of any town in your empire. Choosing a Focus means the town will produce more of a selected item, but it will also stop growing entirely. Also, once a town has Focused, it sends all of its food to your empire’s capital.

Some Focus options include producing more food, providing healing to units, extra production on mining, more happiness per resource tile, etc. Choosing a Focus largely depends on what tiles a town has access to and what buildings you’ve placed inside the town.

For the most part, you only want to select a Focus once a town is large enough because once you select one, that choice remains permanent for the rest of the current age. You can swap back to the default Focus, which allows a town to grow, but you can’t select any other option until the start of a new age.

If you choose to convert a town into a city, the town’s Focus is removed entirely. This can be a detriment to your capital if it relies on the food towns bring in.

Should you convert towns into cities in Civilization 7?

In Civilization VII, there’s no need to turn a town into a city until it fully develops. By letting the town grow to its maximum number of tiles, you reduce the cost needed to convert the town into a city and get the most out of its default Focus.

Speaking of the Focus, you don’t want to make every single town into a city because you need specialized towns that deliver food to the capital and earn extra production. Your cities should be centralized or coastal settlements that are large and connected to at least a couple of other settlements. The smaller and more out-of-the-way settlements should be kept as towns and given a Focus depending on what resource tiles they have around them.

Depending on how your empire is set up, you ideally want to make around one-third of your settlements into cities. This can change if you have a large, connected continent of settlements or if you have more spread-out settlements. The map type and difficulty mode also determine your town conversion rate, as different maps certainly call for other strategies.