Cities and Growth

Founding a city

• A Settler founds a city on the tile it stands on; the unit is consumed.
• A Settler costs the same all game (88). What grows with your empire is the unhappiness every city adds: see Empire Size.
• A city building a Settler does not grow: its food surplus is held back and 50% of it goes into production toward the Settler instead. A shortage of food still starves it.
• Every city other than the capital costs 0.15 gold per turn for each tile it lies beyond 6 tiles from the capital, and 15% more of that for each of its citizens. Its expenses tooltip shows the figure.
• Courthouse: Halves the upkeep from distance to the capital in this city.
• Cities must be at least 3 tiles apart, and cannot be founded inside another civilization's borders. A warlord camp's ring of territory counts.
• A new city starts with one citizen and claims the tiles next to it. Your first city holds your seat of government and is your capital.

Working the land

• The city tile itself is always worked and always yields 2 2 1 2 1, whatever lies under it.
• Every other citizen works one tile within 2.5 tiles of the city that lies inside your borders, and produces that tile's yields: the terrain, plus any feature, improvement or trade good on it.
• Citizens are seated on the best tiles automatically; the governor's focus (balanced by default, or food, production and so on) steers the choice, and you can seat them by hand from the city screen.
• In the city inspector, click a free tile to move a citizen onto it (an idle one if there is one, otherwise the one on the least useful tile), or a worked tile to take its citizen off.
• Once you place or remove a citizen by hand, the whole city is locked: every citizen on a tile is pinned (highlighted yellow) and the governor leaves them where they are. It still places new citizens as the city grows, and pins them too. Picking a focus, or Unlock All, hands the whole city back to the governor; right-clicking a pinned citizen lets the governor re-place just that one.
• A tile nobody works produces nothing, however well improved.

Growth

• Each citizen eats 2 a turn (less when the city has spare health). Food left over is stored, and when the store fills the city grows by one citizen.
• The store gets bigger with every citizen: growing from 1 to 2 takes 23.2, a city of 5 needs 42.01, a city of 10 needs 88.23 (x1.16 per citizen).
• A new citizen does not empty the store: the city keeps 1 turn's worth of the food it was making, or more with a Granary. Food-keeping bonuses (a Granary, some relics and policies) add together, but keep at most 70% of the store.
• A city short of food eats its store; when the store runs dry it loses a citizen, down to its last one. It never dies of hunger. After losing one it gets 2 turns' worth of that shortfall back in its store, so a city that stays short rides out 2 more turns before it loses the next citizen.
• Sickness burns part of the food surplus, so an unhealthy city grows slowly or not at all: see City Sickness. The growth bar turns yellow once the next citizen is more than 50 turns away.

Production

• Production builds the item at the front of the city's queue; the queue can hold several. A share of every city's raw production is set aside as Public Works first.
• Buildings, wonders, policies and slotted artifacts with a production modifier speed up the kinds of item they name (military units, wonders, buildings).
• Instead of building, a city can run a project that turns its production into wealth, science or Public Works every turn (listed under Buildings).
• Each city costs 1 a turn, plus the maintenance of every building in it.

Culture and borders

• Culture accumulates in each city from its tile, its buildings, its trade goods and its policies. At 25 a city reaches culture level 1, then 100, 400 and 1600 for the levels after (x4 each).
• A city keeps all of its culture for its borders. Only part of it reaches your empire's culture bank, which pays for governments, policies and religions: see Earning Culture.
• A city's borders reach one tile around it to begin with, and one tile further for every culture level. Each level also gives its defenders +20% (a new city counts as level 1), up to level 5.
• Where two cities' borders meet, the tile belongs to whichever has laid down more culture on it, so borders can shift over time.
• Only tiles inside your borders can be worked or improved, and a trade good only counts once its tile is yours. A city that outgrows its borders wants culture buildings.

The capital

• Your capital is the city holding your seat of government (the Palace to begin with). Completing another seat of government elsewhere moves the capital there.
• Every other city connected to the capital by a working road earns +2 and +2 a turn.

Capturing a city

• Defeat every defender on the city tile and move in. See Battle System.
• A captured city loses half its citizens, rounded down; a city of one is destroyed outright. It loses 50% of its buildings (rounded down) and always its Palace, riots for a while, and its culture starts again from nothing. The conqueror rebuilds what was destroyed at full cost.
• Retaking a city you once owned is a liberation: it keeps every citizen it has, its old culture returns, it does not riot, no more buildings are destroyed, and the buildings you lost when it fell can be repaired for 50% of their cost.
• Rather than occupying a captured enemy city you may raze it, at a cost of -5 integrity. Warships in the harbour of a city that falls are lost with it.
• A civilization that loses its last city is destroyed. See Victory and the Scoreboard.