Cities

“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.” – Aristotle

Cities are the engines of your civilisation. They produce food to grow, hammers to build, gold to fund your empire, and research to advance through the ages. Every unit, building, wonder, and spaceship part is produced in a city. Mastering city placement, growth, and management is the single most important skill in Annhexation.

Founding Cities

Cities are founded by Settlers (60 production, no tech required). Move a Settler to the desired location and use the Found City command. The Settler is consumed, and a new city of population 1 appears on the tile.

Where to Settle

Good city locations share these qualities:

• Near food sources. Grassland (2 food base), river tiles (+1 food with Agriculture), and coast (+1 food, +1 gold) support fast growth.
• Access to production. Hills (+1 production) and Plains (1 food, 1 production) nearby ensure the city can build things at a reasonable pace.
• Near resources. Iron and Horses within future border range unlock powerful military units.
• Defensible terrain. Hills, forests, and rivers near the city provide defensive bonuses for garrisons.
• Spacing. Cities should be at least 3 hexes apart (the game prevents founding closer). A spacing of 4–5 hexes allows each city to claim a productive territory without excessive overlap.

When a city is founded, it immediately claims the surrounding 1-hex radius as its territory. The city centre tile clears any forest (converting it to grassland) and the city receives a founding production bonus of 10 toward its first build.

Population and Growth

How Growth Works

Each citizen (population point) consumes 2 food per turn. Surplus food beyond consumption accumulates toward the next population level. The food required to grow is:

Food to grow = 15 + (population x 5)

Growth slows naturally as cities get larger. Each new citizen requires more food, and cities eventually reach an equilibrium where food production matches consumption.

Starvation

If a city’s food production falls below its consumption (2 food per citizen per turn), the city starves. The food stockpile decreases each turn, and if it reaches zero, the city loses a population point. Starvation can cascade – losing a citizen means fewer tiles are worked, potentially reducing food production further.

Avoid starvation by:

• Building Granaries (+2 food) early.
• Setting city focus to Food in struggling cities.
• Building Farms on nearby tiles.
• Building Aqueducts (+3 food) in large cities.

City Centre Yields

The city centre tile (the hex the city occupies) is always worked for free and provides minimum yields regardless of the underlying terrain:

If the terrain naturally provides higher yields, the higher values are used. For example, a city on grassland hills would provide 2 food (grassland base), 2 production (1 from hills + 1 minimum), and 1 gold (minimum).

Tile Working

Population determines how many tiles a city works beyond the centre:

• Centre tile: Always worked for free.
• Additional tiles: One per population point, chosen automatically based on city focus.

A size-5 city works the centre plus 5 additional tiles (6 total). The game automatically selects the best tiles based on the current city focus setting.

City Focus

City focus determines how the automatic tile selection weights different yields:

Change focus in the city panel. In practice, new cities benefit from Food focus until they reach a target population, then switch to Production or Balanced for building.

Culture and Border Expansion

Cities generate culture from Temples (+2) and Cathedrals (+4), as well as from wonders like Shakespeare’s Theatre (+8). Culture accumulates and triggers border expansion at set thresholds:

Each expansion pushes the city’s workable area outward, claiming unclaimed tiles and opening new hexes for tile improvements. A city at border level 5 controls a large swathe of territory, providing many workable tiles and a deep defensive perimeter.

You can also buy tiles adjacent to your current borders for gold, accelerating expansion when culture alone is too slow.

Building Construction

Cities build units, buildings, and wonders from their production queue. Each turn, the city’s production output is applied toward the current item. When accumulated production meets or exceeds the item’s cost, it is completed and the next item in the queue begins.

Buildings

Buildings provide permanent bonuses to the city. Key buildings include:

Buildings have ongoing maintenance costs in gold per turn. Factor this into your economy.

Wonders

Wonders are unique structures that can only be built once across all civilisations. If another player completes a wonder before you, your production is wasted. Wonders provide powerful empire-wide or city-specific bonuses. See individual wonder entries in the Annhexopedia for details.

Processes

Instead of building a unit, building, or wonder, a city can run a process — its production is converted into another yield at 33% efficiency each turn. Three processes are available from the start of the game with no tech requirement:

Processes solve the “nothing useful left to build” problem. Once your city has a full set of buildings and a strong garrison, you can keep its production output meaningful by funnelling it into research, culture, or gold rather than stockpiling units you don’t need.

A process never completes — it runs indefinitely until you switch the city to something else. Switching to or from a process loses no progress (a process has no cost to track). Processes cannot be rush-bought, since there is nothing to rush. Production buildings such as Workshop (+2 production) and Factory (+4 production) make processes proportionally more efficient — a city with a Factory running the Research process converts noticeably more production into research than one without.

Coastal Cities

Cities adjacent to at least one coast tile receive a bonus of +1 gold per turn. This makes coastal settlement attractive for economic strategies and is further enhanced by building a Harbour (+2 gold, +1 food). England’s Harbour gold bonus (+1) stacks on top.

City Capture and Resistance

When an enemy melee unit captures your city:

• Population drops by 1 (minimum 1).
• The city enters resistance for 5 turns.
• During resistance, the city produces at half its normal rate unless a military unit is garrisoned in the city.
• Some buildings may be destroyed during capture.
• All territory, improvements, and remaining buildings transfer to the new owner.

If your capital is captured, the Palace is automatically rebuilt in another city (if you have one), establishing a new capital.

Razing Cities

After capturing an enemy city, you may choose to raze it instead of keeping it. Razing destroys the city entirely – all buildings, improvements, and the city itself are removed from the map. This is useful when a captured city is in an indefensible location or when you want to deny the territory to your enemy.

Capital and Palace

Your first city is your capital, which automatically receives the Palace building (free, no maintenance). The Palace provides +3 gold per turn and designates the city as your seat of government.

If your capital is captured, the Palace relocates to your next most important city. Losing your capital is strategically devastating but not game-ending. However, if all your capitals are captured via the Domination victory condition, you lose the game.

Government and City Yields

Your government type affects all city yields:

Strategic Tips

1. Prioritise food early. A size-1 city is nearly useless. Build a Granary and set Food focus to grow quickly to size 3–4, where the city becomes genuinely productive.

2. Every city needs a Library. The +2 research per city is the foundation of your tech advantage. Build Libraries as soon as Writing is researched.

3. Production is king in wartime. Switch focus to Production and build Workshops/Factories in cities near the front. The ability to replace losses quickly wins wars of attrition.

4. Do not over-expand. Each city’s buildings have maintenance costs. Founding cities faster than your economy can support them leads to gold deficits and a crippled military.

5. Garrison your cities. A single military unit garrisoned in a city provides +25% defence. During resistance after capture, a garrison restores full production.

6. Build Temples for borders. Culture expansion is slow without Temples. A city stuck at border level 1 misses out on many workable tiles.