In every age of Civilization VII, you need to get your hands on new settlements for any chance of progress. You get new settlements in multiple ways including winning wars or simply discovering new locations.
Whatever the case may be, you can create new settlements for your civilization but at some point, you need to upgrade them into cities.
When you get a new settlement under your wing, it starts off as a town but there is a whole process to upgrading towns to cities in Civ 7.
| Aspect | Town | City |
|---|---|---|
| Production | Purchases via gold only | Produces via turns or gold |
| Growth | Halts if Focused | Unlimited (until tile limits) |
| Specialization | Focus boosts (e.g., +food) | No Focus; versatile development |
| Buildings | Limited to basic structures | Access to advanced districts |
How to turn towns into cities in Civilization 7
Here’s what you need to do:
- Click on the capital tile of the town you want to convert
- At the bottom of the town’s menu, select “Convert to City”
- The cost scales with the number of cities you already own and the town’s size (larger towns cost less). A well-developed town might cost ~300 gold, while a new town could exceed 500 gold
As soon as you send a settler out to find a new town, it begins to return resources to your capital.
If you want to transform the settlement further, you must upgrade the settlement to do so—because you can only spend gold to construct more infrastructure there. Towns, however, only take a little upkeep while cities provide benefits such as allowing you to train military units, and additional resource bonuses. All it takes to go from town to city is a boatload of gold and food.
When to convert towns into Cities
I recommend you wait until the town reaches its maximum tile expansion to reduce conversion costs.
Note that towns that have a Focus (e.g., food or production boosts) can’t grow any more. Convert them only when their specialization is no longer needed.
The first thing you need to know is how many cities you require for your path to victory. Say you need 3 academies or 7 wonders; you would probably be looking at 3–4 cities to provide enough production to finish these.
A key thing to know is how much production and gold you will need to gain and spend during the age. With that knowledge, you can in theory choose when to upgrade which towns into cities.
Or, if you suddenly have too much of a resource, you may be forced to level up to cities before it all just goes to waste!
To me, any spot that is “complete” (full resource and top tier tiles) and is 6–10 people population is a town, and anything larger should be a city with room for expansion.
