Amenities and how many I need? When is it safe to sell?

[Larsenex]

Greetings,

I need a quick tutorial on how amenities work and the relation of them to luxuries. Also are 'bonus' resources like Sheep, Fish, Whales, Cattle, Deer, Wheat, Stone are these also 'counted' as amenities?

If I have say 2 mercury is it safe to sell one or do I want to keep it and how would I know I should hang on to it?

My empire has, 16 cities most are size 10 or higher. I have tried to build Entertainment districts in locations that can reach other cities but the ai did not settle how I would do it so whatever. I have MANY bonus resources and few luxuries so how can I tell if I have an item that is 'safe' to sell to other ai?

This is really the question I need help with. Also our interface is not helpful, it doe not tell me the name of the resource and instead has a small icon (when you click on the empire details page).

Thanks for any help in advance!

 

[Grotius]

My understanding is that the first luxury is the only one you need -- that you should sell any extra copy.

 

[Danzo_87]

Keep one copy, sell the rest like you would in civ v, bonus resources only provide amenities IF you are the suzerain of Buenos Aires

 

[Larsenex]

Ok for some reason I thought they were good on helping even if you had more than one copy.

 

[GKShaman]

Never hang on to Mercury. Always a bad idea.

 

[snwboardn]

From what I've heard one luxury will provide amenities to the closest 4 cities. Like others have said I have also heard that duplicates do nothing for you unless you get a perk from a city state.

 

[npburg]

My understanding is that luxuries provide 4 points of amenities but that a single city can only use one point per luxury type. What that means is if you want to go tall you need to have many different types of luxuries, and if you go wide you can get by with duplicates. If you go wide and tall, you should get both many copies and many types.

For example, if I have cotton, then I have 1 point of amenities for up to 4 cities. If I get another cotton and only have 4 cities then that second amenity is free to sell. However, if I have 5 to 8 cities then that second cotton is useful since I would have 8 points of amenities from cotton to spread to up to 8 cities.

As a rule of thumb for a wide empire, you want to look at how many cities you have and divide that by 4 and this will tell you how many copies of a luxury you should keep.


As for how many types of luxuries you should get, this depends on city sizes. One amenities is enough for two population starting at size 3 so at size 3 you need 1 amenity, size 5 needs 2, size 7 needs 3, etc...

As a rule of thumb about large cities, using the largest city as a base line, the number of luxury types should be (max city size - 2) / 2. So a city of size 12 means you could try to get 5 amenities.


As your cities grow taller, you need to get more types of luxuries; however, luxuries are not going to be able to keep up so it will be important to start building Entertainment Districts/Buildings and getting civics and religious bonuses to amenities to grow even larger cities. As as your empire grows wider as well things get complicated as there is a behind the scenes global happiness going on due to the game system attempting to balance luxury amenities between your cities. It is possible to see a case where building an entertainment district in one city will improve the amenities in another city due to the luxuries being redistributed; but this is not a predictable behavior.

Due to this complexity it is possible you could have more luxuries than you actually need given the rules of thumb above; but, they should be sufficient to figure out a target.


As for your specific questions:
- Bonus and Strategy resources do not count as amenities.
- If you have 16 cities most are size 10 or higher the you should target getting 4 copies of 4 types of luxuries so 16 total luxuries. It also works if you get 2 copies of 8 luxuries since the extra types still work; however, 8 copies of 2 types of luxuries would not work as half would go to waste. If you have amenities from non-luxury sources then you need less luxuries; but again, that is hard to figure out at a glance.

 

[dexters]

Duplicates don't count I thought?

Regardless of tallness or wideness.

A tall empire with 4 cities get 4 amenities from 1 copy of a lux. A wider 8 city empire will still only get 4 amenities even if I have 2 copies of the same lux. to get 8 amenities I need another luxury

AM I wrong here?

 

[snwboardn]

Here is the link I saw that says only 1 luxury counts npburg, I had to take the link off of google (block reddit at my work)
http://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58vmu8/extra_luxury_resources_dont_give_amenities_to

 

[LanguishViking]

A city gains 1 amenity per luxury it has avaiable. Each on map luxury provides 4 copies which can be distributed to any 4 cities by the AI.

Lets say you have 6 cities and 1 copy each of two unique luxuries (one copy of luxury A and one of luxury B). The cities are population

7 - 7 - 5 - 5 - 5 - 5

first 3 pop don't count and each population requires 2 amenities so each city requires

2 - 2 -1 -1 - 1 -1 amenity

so an optimal distribution of luxury A and luxury B to these 6 cities is

AB - AB - A - A - B - B

People have been talking about how you should build cities in batches of 4, no. Build the cities you feel suit yourself but be aware of you amenities and housing balance.

Lack of and surplus of amenities can really affect your yields.

Surplus amenities can make your city happy or even ecstatic granting increased growth and yeilds.
So 4 amenities per luxury resource and each city can only use each luxury type once.

Expect cities to grow to the amenity or housing cap quickly so manage housing and amenities accordingly. I suggest that every now and then you just count amenities and housing above 3 and see which to develop.

 

[Larsenex]

I believe NPBurg is correct. I thought the extra copies of luxuries do helpl if you are going a bit wide. I have 15 cities so I need 'four copies of four luxuries IF I did not build entertainment districts. I am still building those anyway and hopefully they do not change the luxuries amenities. Now that i know about bonus resources I am going to go on a killing..uh..selling spree!

 

[kampori]

Devs in previous Lets Plays specifically and categorically said that extra copies are necessary, as the 2nd copy will start giving amenities to cities 5-8 and so on.

But with all this chatter recently it seems to not have made it into launch. I expect it's a bug to be honest. Not only did the devs say it specifically, but it also makes complete sense for it to work like that. Unless you have an Empire-wide happiness like Civ5, it makes no sense that only 1 luxury would count.

 

[Stilgar08]

It is definitely wrong that more than one copy of a luxury does give any amenities! You can and should use them for trades (or gifts)!!
There was some misunderstanding in the community prior to release that proves itself to be long living.
Bonus resources only add to amenities if you are souzerain of Buenos Aires.

You can even try it out yourself: more than 4 cities? Check amenity stats, save, give all copies away for free except one, next turn, check stats. No change (not due to luxuries at least)

 

[Ryika]

Thankfully, the information below this spoiler is incorrect.

Spoiler :

Alright, I loaded one of my old save games and did some quick testing.

8 Cities. I had a total of 24 Amenities (counted these directly from the Information in the City view) from Luxury Resources. I had 2 Copies of Spices, one imported from a City State.

Traded one of the copies with India. UI still showed 24 Amenities, but that was to be expected, UI doesn't update properly on the same turn.

Hit next turn. Total of 24 Amenities got reduced to 20.
Did the same experiment without selling my Spices and at the next turn it was still 24 Amenities.

So unless the UI itself is bugged additional copies of the same Amenity >DO< fuel additional cities.

 

[Stilgar08]

Not for me!!! Any other possible reasons for less amenities??

 

[Atlas627]

Why can you trade luxuries more than 1 at a time? Why can you buy luxuries you already have? Why does the AI value selling you luxuries you already have, but doesn't value buying luxuries it already has? Why does the manual say that the value of different luxuries changes on Era, but that doesn't actually happen?

I think many things were scrapped as time went on. I hope they add them back in.

 

[Stilgar08]

A unique Luxury provides 4 amenities, limited to 1 per city -- full stop, end of story. Extra copies of a luxury provide no more amenities, no matter how many cities you have. Extra luxuries are only good for two things: (1) to be traded to another civ in exchange for whatever you might want or need (including perhaps another unique luxury that will provide 4 amenities) or (2) to serve as back-ups or hedges for the risk that your first copy of that luxury might get pillaged, or be located in a city that is conquered by another civ, or otherwise lost through some unimaginable calamity.

During the pre-release period, the community convinced itself (on zero evidence, but oodles of wishful thinking) that a second copy of a luxury could provide 4 more amenities (for cities 5 through 8), that a third copy could provide another 4 amenities (for cities 9 through 12), etc. All of that was incorrect, and remains incorrect.

It is just 4 amenities from a unique luxury. Extra copies of that luxury provide no additional amenities, regardless of how many cities you have.

As for the question posed by the OP (why does the AI seem to want to buy extra luxuries?), that is probably an AI trading glitch, and not any indication that somehow extra luxuries actually have value to the AI.

 

[Atlas627]

Why are you *allowed* to trade 3 of a luxury all at once? If there was *never* any intention to move away from Civ5's system of unique luxuries, they would have coded it the same way. This isn't something that just slips in by accident. I'm not saying that they currently make a difference, but its clear that at some point they did (or the coder thought that they should, and implemented it that way)

 

[mnf]

Devs in previous Lets Plays specifically and categorically said that extra copies are necessary, as the 2nd copy will start giving amenities to cities 5-8 and so on.

But with all this chatter recently it seems to not have made it into launch. I expect it's a bug to be honest. Not only did the devs say it specifically, but it also makes complete sense for it to work like that. Unless you have an Empire-wide happiness like Civ5, it makes no sense that only 1 luxury would count.

Wow, it would be so nice if it did work like that. But the way it is now (while it doesn't make much sense) does facilitate trade between civilizations, since we'll all very easily have something each other wants. I'm not sure which way would be better for gameplay...maps are random, after all. I do start to feel that unique luxuries acts as a good stopper on city sprawls and rapid expansion in the early age. Imagine if duplicates work, then there would be no stopper to rapid expansion and city sprawls at all. As long as the land you grab has any luxury resources, you're adding to the empire. Maybe that's why they reverted on the design and went back to unique luxuries.

 

[Ryika]

Thankfully, the information below this spoiler is incorrect.

Spoiler :

I would like others to test whether they can replicate my results. I would run more tests, but I don't have a second save file that I could use as a basis for more testing.

I assume it's either that multiple copies DO in fact provide amenities to cities that don't have the same luxury yet and the claim that a second copy does "nothing" is just a falsehood that has spread by word of mouth while nobody actually bothered to test it, or that city state luxuries are handled differently for some reason.