-33% culture costs for additional cities

gamemaster3000

Warlord
Joined
Dec 6, 2005
Messages
159
I may have been undervaluing how good this social policy is. Depending on the way things are calculated, this could be the single best social policy in the game as it would allow you to get so many more social policies, but it really depends on how much it curbs exponential growth.

If anyone knows how new culture policy costs are calculated or has a link to a thread please share!
 
Isn't it just each new city makes the cost of the next policy go up by 5%

So you have one city and the cost of the next policy is 1000:c5culture: (for the sake of argument)
Then you found another city, and the cost will be 1050:c5culture:
That's 50:c5culture: difference, so the policy would reduce that 50 by 33%
Once you get the policy, the cost will be 1033.5:c5culture:

Now you'll need someone more experienced to tell you if the extra culture cost works cumulatively or off of the base culture. Depending on which it is, with a third city (and no -33% policy) will cause the next policy to either cost 1100:c5culture: or 1102.5:c5culture:
 
We need to find out what the policy costs would be for a single city though. The first 2 are 25 and 60 right?
 
You know, joncnunn is going to come here and lay the math out. That guy always works out the calculations. You read them and feel dumb for not seeing how simple it is.

C'mon Jon!!
 
Isn't it just each new city makes the cost of the next policy go up by 5%
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the number is 15 %, not 5 % (or at least was back in G&K).

So this policy reduces the 15 % penalty by 33 %, meaning you only get a 10 % per city penalty, rather than 15 %. Basically this makes it less damaging on your culture to settle new cities. It's useful, but not fantastic imo., certainly not the best policy in the game.
 
I think in BNW it's only a 10% increase per additional city; I don't know how the capital calculates into this (from what I can tell, the capital applies the 5% increase in beaker costs that all cities generate, and this could be the same).

So, that would be ~7% increase per city founded after you unlock that policy.

To be honest, there's a reason that policy also gives a free golden age. It's in an awkward spot for its primary effect to be of use; delaying expansion isn't worth it. The only ICS strategy doesn't even need that many social policies to necessitate getting it quickly, and probably gets more value out of the free great person often received concurrently for completing liberty.
 
Well I guess you can call it semantics whether the capital counts in or not, but if we consider the formula for policy cost given in the base code as being the "real" policy cost, then the capital does *not* apply a penalty, as this is indeed the cost you pay when you have only the capital.
 
This is map size dependent, but BNW did indeed reduce the standard cultural increase from 15% to 10% on standard size map and smaller. (The increase is smaller on bigger maps)

This also applies to BNW science increase (5% on standard size map and smaller), again less of an increase on bigger maps.

As a practical matter, the Representation policy value depends upon how many you self found. If you've only self founded a total 4 cities it's somewhat counter productive going for science victory since with only 4 cities you already will complete the first tree and typically already have 2 spare policies while waiting to be allowed to open Rationalism. Representation would give you a 3rd policy you'd be forced to pick before opening Rationalism. (Increase both numbers by 1 if you've built Oracle)
But if you self found 6+ cities, then its useful.
 
I asked this same question before and the answer was, I remember, the cost of social policy increase per city is reduced by 33%. Social policy costs increase each time you build a new city and this social policy decreases the cost by 33%.
 
That post doesn't deal with how many spare policies you're likely to have between completing Liberty as your first tree while waiting to be allowed into Rationalism by number of self founded cities.

It does however point point that the fraction is dropped.

Correct. Didn't mean to imply otherwise.
 
I play Civ enough to want to play well, but not enough to do a spreadsheet for all this. To someone who did do a spreadsheet, what were the conclusions on whether or not it's worth it?
 
I dont know why someone would want to do a spread sheet if all the information is already calculated by a 33% decrease in the social policy increase cost.
 
Bottom line, I feel effect of this policy been to insignificant to justify taking it if you do not do it for other purpose. Because if exponential base cost increase it will never save you enogth to even pay for itself (Number of policies you can take wize).
 
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