Civilization 7: How To Increase Settlement Limit

Over time in Civilization VII, you’ll start to accumulate more and more settlements. You can get more settlements by using your own units, negotiating with other leaders, or taking settlements by force. However, the more settlements you acquire, the more at risk you are for exceeding your settlement limit.

At the top of your screen, you’ll see a building icon next to the happiness icon. The building icon has a fraction next to it, and this tells you what your current settlement limit is (the right number) and how many settlements you currently own (the left number). While it’s possible to go over your settlement limit, this has fairly substantial consequences. So, to avoid that, you can simply increase your overall settlement limit in Civilization 7.

How to increase settlement limit in Civilization 7

The settlement limit warning

At the start of a playthrough in Civ 7, you’ll have a settlement limit of four. This is more than enough to get you through the first third of the Antiquity Age, as you’ll have your capital and at least a couple of additional settlements you founded through Settlers, Suzerainship, or war with other leaders.

After a certain point, though, you will want to find ways to increase the limit so you can continue to add to your empire and expand your reach across the map. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many ways of increasing the limit manually. There are only two main ways to increase the settlement limit, and we’ll explain both of the methods below:

Unlock new Technology or Civics

The Feudalism Technology unlocks a +1 to settlement limit

Researching specific Technologies or Civics can come with a bonus that increases your settlement limit. Usually, this is only a +1 to the limit, which might not help too much if you’re already several settlements over budget. However, the higher the limit, the better, as you always want to find ways to boost the maximum number of settlements you can have.

To see if a Technology or Civic offers a boost to the settlement limit, carefully read the description of each one. A boost to the settlement limit is always indicated by the black and gold “Plus” icon that’s found in the description of a new Technology or Civic.

While you can consistently research both Technologies and Civics throughout an age in Civ 7, using the Espionage Action to steal another leader’s Technologies is a great way to accumulate more of them.

Espionage Actions… in action

You can use this Espionage Action against any leader you’ve met by selecting their portrait in the top-right, scrolling down the list of actions, and selecting the one that can steal a Technology. This costs major Influence and runs the risk of you getting caught, but it’s usually worth the trouble.

Get to the next Age

The second major method of increasing your settlement limit is to progress to the next age in Civ 7. Every time you move on to the next age, your settlement limit is increased by four. So, if you move on from the Antiquity Age to the Exploration Age, you will see your limit increase from four to eight (if you didn’t manually increase the limit yourself).

Moving to the next age in Civ 7

While this isn’t the best news for players playing on a longer game speed or higher difficulty, it’s the best way to massively boost your settlement limit.

What happens if you exceed the Settlement Limit?

Naturally, your expansion goals might be too lofty for your current settlement limit. Fortunately, you are technically able to acquire as many settlements as you want without the gaming stopping. However, there is one significant downside to maintaining an exceeded limit.

For every one settlement you’re over your current limit, you will lose -5 Happiness in every single settlement you own. So, if you’re three settlements over the limit, that results in a -15 Happiness across the board. This could be extremely detrimental to your gameplay, as lower happiness levels can cause your citizens to riot and go into unrest. If a settlement goes into unrest, you need to fix it but you’re unable to produce anything in that settlement for over 10 turns.

So, while it’s not a huge deal to be a couple of settlements over for a brief spell, you want to try and avoid acquiring too many settlements for long periods of time in Civ 7.