One of the four Xs in 4X games like Civilization 7 is expand. You will never grow fast enough to compete with the other Leaders if you stick to just your starting capital city. An obvious but essential tip for Civilization 7 is to quickly expand out and found new towns to get more resources. As useful as towns are, you will eventually want to convert some of them into full cities for even greater benefits. The tutorials will tell you this is possible, but leaves out the important detail of exactly how. It won't take long, but will cost you plenty of gold.
How to upgrade towns to cities
Once you have sent a settler out and established a town, it will begin funneling some resources back to your capital. Until you upgrade them to towns, the only way to expand them is to purchase new infrastructure with gold. Towns don't require much attention, but you get more benefits such as creating military units and being able to accept more resource bonuses if you're willing to manage multiple cities. The only requirement you need when ready to upgrade towns to cities is decent chunk of gold.
Step 1: Create a settler and have them establish a town on an eligible tile on the map.
Step 2: Once the town is established and you want to convert it into a full city, click on the main town tile where you can pull up the list of purchase options.
Step 3: Tucked away at the very bottom border of the menu is the option to upgrade the town and how much gold it will cost.
Be aware that the price to convert a town into a city will go up with each additional city you have.
