City Gold Output Calculating Incorrectly

In the middle of my game, I kept seeing my total gold and surplus gold changing from turn to turn. It seemed to be happnening randomly, and I could never figure out what game mechanic was causing it. I finally sat down tonight and decided to write the numbers down and see if I could figure it out.

I have a save game in 1854 where my gold output from cities is 151 and total gold output is 276. When I click next turn to 1856 (declining an open borders offer in the IT), my gold output from cities declines to 127 and total gold output is 241. Looking at the economic overview, I can see several cities' gold output has decreased (Marseille drops from 12 to 7, Chartes from 11 to 7, etc.)

Now here's the weird part: when I click on the city screem for Marseille, it shows 12 gold output for the city. Lo and behold, my gold surplus on the top of the main screen jumps by 5. I click on Chartes and the same thing happens: the city screen shows the same output they shows in 1854 and my surplus increase by 4. Same thing with Orleans, I get a 2 gold jump in surplus. My surplus has jumped by 11, and I all did was click on city screen not changing anything.

I've reproduced this several times, restarting Civ between attempts. I can load the 1856 save and see my +8 surplus jump by 11 to 19 after doing nothing but clicking on 3 city screens.

The weird part, part 2: the total gold output remains at 241, even though my surplus has increased. When I mouseover "241 total () Gold available to spend", I can see the total income has increased from 253 to 258 and the output from cities has increased from 127 to 132.

Clearly something fishy is going on here. I have 3 puppet cities that also show a decrease in gold output from 1854 to 1856 in economic overview. I suspect if I could click on them, they would show the same behavior, but I haven't tried annexing them to prove that point.

I have all these cities set on default focus. The only thing I can figure is that the city governor is changing the citizen allocation between turns and then changing it back when I click the city screen. That still seems like a wrong behavior and there's still something fishy with the gold calculation.

I have attached a PNG showing the change after I click the Marseille city screen and the 1854 and 1856 saves. I can load 1856 and reproduce this by clicking on the city screen for Marseille, Orleans, and Chartes.

I checked the bug list here and here and don't anything like this. My first post, so I apologize if I've done something stupid with the attachments. I'm not sure how to find the patch version - it's looks currently patched in Steam.

Thanks for taking the time to analyze this issue and load some save files.

I loaded the 1854 save file and confirm your observations about the change in Gold. However, after looking at this further, I'm going to say "not a bug." When you open a city screen, the gold income changes only if the Citizen Allocation Focus has been left at Default. For example, Paris has the focus set to Gold and nothing changes if you enter Paris' City Screen. Also, it's not just the Gold that changes. Other items, such as Science, Crop Yield and GNP also change. This is consistent with your theory that the governor changes allocation when you enter the city screen.

I'm going to tag this as not a bug, but of course would welcome more discussion and other viewpoints.

P.S. - See my sig for how to see what patch version you have.

Petek, I would like to disagree:
I have made similar observations during my games and although they are not so much annoying, I still face some problems to accept such behaviour as being "intended".

a) There is no reason why the governor should make changes when entering the city screen.
b) it is highly confusing for the player to have to observe changes in gold, happiness and whatnotever if nothing else has changed
c) under the assumption that the governor changes when entering the city, this raises a question:
c1) was it intended that the change should not be noticed?
c2) what is going to happen if the cities are not examined?

This behaviour is highly obscure and should NOT happen.

I regard this as a bug.

Thanks for your comments. Let's discuss this situation. I didn't mention it in my last post, but if you don't click on any of the cities in question and you advance to the next turn, the gold production changes to exactly the same as if you did click on them. I think what is happening is that when the default production focus is selected, each city governor checks once a turn and, if necessary, changes the production to what it considers best. Assuming this is the case, what do you think should be changed? To me, it seems to be useful to see what the governor will do if left on its own. The played could then decide to change to a specific focus or even manage production manually. What would be the consequences if clicking on a city didn't result in such changes? The changes will be made whether or not you click, I think.

You have a point here.

Yet, I still think that in the one and same turn clicking into a city should not cause any change. If the governor decides to perform changes in the NEXT turn, then you still can open the city and see what is going on.

I understand this behaviour as some kind of "forecast" of next turn's action, but I really think it is very confusing. The more, since there doesn't seem to be any explanation.

lschnarch said:

You have a point here.

Yet, I still think that in the one and same turn clicking into a city should not cause any change. If the governor decides to perform changes in the NEXT turn, then you still can open the city and see what is going on.

I understand this behaviour as some kind of "forecast" of next turn's action, but I really think it is very confusing. The more, since there doesn't seem to be any explanation.

Click to expand...

I think the question is whether clicking on a city, having the governor change production, and not making any changes to the governor's choices is different than not clicking on the city at all. In both cases I think (but haven't tested) that the new choices made by the governor will take effect at the beginning of the next turn and that any subsequent changes won't take effect until the next turn after that. If so, then there's an advantage in seeing the governor's choices before they take effect and giving the player the opportunity to make a change that will take effect on the next turn. That would give a one turn advantage compared with waiting until the next turn to make a change. I've been dealing with the consequences of the new patch all day, but will try to test this tomorrow. In any case, I agree that this behavior is confusing!

I tested the first save game from the original post. I now think there's a bug, but for a different reason than given above. Note: The save was created in 1.0.0.20, but tested in 1.0.0.62.

As was already observed, if you enter the city screens for either Marseille or Chartres, the governor will change production. Both cities are set to Default Focus. I hypothesized that the game was displaying what the governor planned to do at the end of the turn, allowing the player to override the choices if something better was available. It turns out that the governor is not displaying what will take effect at the beginning of the next turn. See the attached thumbnail screenshots:

(1) Econ Overview Beginning Turn 297 shows each city's production at the beginning of turn 297, before clicking on any cities.
(2) Econ Overview End Turn 297 shows the same information after clicking on Marseille and Chartres. Note the values for the two cities have changed.
(3) Econ Overview Beginning Turn 298 shows the same information right at the beginning of turn 298. I expected this to be the same for the two cities as the preceding screenshot, but that's not the case.

Therefore, when you open the city screen, the governor may not be showing you what changes will actually be made for the next turn. I suggest that this behavior (making changes to certain city production) be stopped (since it's confusing and of little value). It probably wouldn't be possible to display what will actually happen next turn because other events could occur after leaving the city screen.

One other comment: Any changes, either by the governor or the player, take effect the following turn.

I'm going to list this as a bug. Any more comments?

Moderator Action: Moved to the Confirmed Bugs forum.