Amenity Formula

[ftl]

Excellent find and discussion, King Jason!

So that seems like another wide-vs-tall balancing decision. Adding more cities won't screw up the amenities of your existing cities, but the more you have the harder it is to keep the new cities happy. If you're going to have a wide empire, you're gonna really have to work to crank up your numbers of amenities to keep the far-flung cities useful. On the other hand, if you're just picking up lots of cities you don't care about, you can just let them be useless and they won't mess up the production of your core cities or the combat of your units.

 

[rastak]

Nice work King Jason! Very interesting indeed.

 

[Lucius_]

I think I remember extreme unhappiness causes revolts of some sort. I don't know if that means rebel spawns or city flipping or what, but at some point it will start affecting your empire to some extent at least. So that means you have to really focus on amenities in far flung cities with entertainment districts being a high priority and possibly could result in something on a soft cap of how wide you can go.

For example, if you have 8 amenities, after 16 cities or whatever, your cities will actually start in negative happiness and even more cities will start in even worse shape.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Very interesting.

King Jason, is the example explained just as well if luxuries only affect the nearest 4 cities in your Empire to them? From a cursory examination of the example you give, that should work, and the Aztec UA makes a great deal more sense there.

Also, if it's true that normal Luxuries are 1:1 Amenities, that one CS that offers unique luxuries worth 6(!) Amenities looks... a trifle OP?

 

[Atlas627]

Interesting. So the earlier you found a city (in the order of your city foundings), the easier it is to keep happy, so the more it will grow and produce? This is a nice way to encourage settling core cities first but still allow colonization later. The colonies, by finding new luxuries, may help out all of your core cities, but the colonies themselves will remain small and unproductive, relatively.

 

[King Jason]

For example, if you have 8 amenities, after 16 cities or whatever, your cities will actually start in negative happiness and even more cities will start in even worse shape.

Not true. I can see how you got there but the cities are not incurring a penalty to their amenities. They're simply recieving no benefit from certain luxuries in the empire. So even though Quill's empire has 4 luxuries, Manchester and Leeds are recieving +3 amenities from luxuries. There is no amenity penalty so even after X cities all of the cities will start like normal, regular cities - but instead they'll get 0 amenities from luxuries.

King Jason, is the example explained just as well if luxuries only affect the nearest 4 cities in your Empire to them? From a cursory examination of the example you give, that should work, and the Aztec UA makes a great deal more sense there.

This was absolutely the first thing I tried to tackled but if you look at the layout of Quill's empire it just doesn't add up for every city.

Spoiler :

Leeds and Manchester are both only receiving +3 from the 4 luxuries in the empire. Distance doesn't add up when you look at the layout. Specifically because if it's distance related, then Bristol should not be able to recieve crabs. If it's just "the first 4 cities" then Leeds and Manchester should also be +4.

Also you make a fair point about the 1:1 claim that I made. As, across all videos I probably looked at maybe 6-8 luxuries in total? salt, chocolate, gems, jade, ivory, crabs, wine, dye are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It's suppose it's entirely possible that there are tiers, but I figured chocolate and gems wouldn't give the same amount.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

Aha! So in addition to Settlers becoming incrementally more expensive, Civ V has another way to limit growth--cities benefit less and less from luxury happiness. I wonder if other sources of amenities--civics, great people, etc--will also affect older cities more and later cities less, like luxuries do. Interesting.

I'm really, really glad, however, that this system does not seem to be nearly as crippling to wide as Civ V's was. Your 13th city might suck and be unhappy, perhaps not worth the hammers invested in founding it, but at least its presence won't stop your capital's functioning. That's a welcome change.

However, I find it very strange and unintuitive that multiple luxuries don't add to the luxury cap. That part doesn't seem logical.

 

[King Jason]

However, I find it very strange and unintuitive that multiple luxuries don't add to the luxury cap. That part doesn't seem logical.

While I agree it reminds me of civ4, honestly. But again, my analysis may not be perfect. For example, while I could match this theory across about 5 or 6 different videos. Marbozir's video had a few moments where the theory added up perfectly, a few where it didn't. I specifically noted some oddities with the city of Belem.

That said, in some form or another, the more cities an empire has, the less they benefit from the luxuries you have at your disposal.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Leeds and Manchester are both only receiving +3 from the 4 luxuries in the empire. Distance doesn't add up when you look at the layout. Specifically because if it's distance related, then Bristol should not be able to recieve crabs. If it's just "the first 4 cities" then Leeds and Manchester should also be +4.

Fair enough. I thought that maybe it was because those two are smaller (i.e., +Amenity score was capped at your population), but they don't even have the same population.

Seems like you've hit upon the right idea, but it makes the Aztec UA's wording hella awkward.

Also you make a fair point about the 1:1 claim that I made. As, across all videos I probably looked at maybe 6-8 luxuries in total? salt, chocolate, gems, jade, ivory, crabs, wine, dye are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. It's suppose it's entirely possible that there are tiers, but I figured chocolate and gems wouldn't give the same amount.

Likely. I'm surprised that there aren't luxuries that are 'discovered' later than the others, like strategic resources. 'Later luxuries' would make sense that they would be worth more.

Any possibility that there are techs or more likely civics in the game to impact the Amenity system? Such as duplicating the Aztec UA or making Luxuries worth more Amenities?

 

[King Jason]

Well we know there are policies that will add to amenities. I believe there's one that does +1 amenity for every 2 districts in that city.


So in terms of the the U.I. you'd be recieving the amenity in the "civics" section and that would affect any city that meets the requirements. In terms of increasing amenities from luxuries specifically, I'd say it's certainly possible.

 

[King Jason]

First Step to debunking my own theory;

In quill's video, at least, the discrepancy is explained by Classical Republic.

Further, Crab is not a luxury, so that was my mistake in this particular case. So his empire of 4 cities is recieving +3 amenities from all 3 unique luxuries in the empire.

governments don't solve the discrepancy of luxuries in other videos, however. The video I just finished, the player picked oligarchy.

 

[tedhebert]

However, I find it very strange and unintuitive that multiple luxuries don't add to the luxury cap. That part doesn't seem logical.

I would think that the goal would be to encourage luxury trading ? If multiple luxuries counted as amenities, no one would ever trade them, right ?

 

[isau]

Excellent detective work King Jason.

I'm a little disappointed that we're back to "unique luxuries" but holding out hope on more info. There is a really cool feature in the Civ V Vox Populi mod that gives you a "monopoly bonus" if you control more than 50% of a particular luxury on the map. You get a different unique bonus for each luxury your dominate. I love that feature and really want to see it in Civ VI because it gives you incentive not just to grab unique luxuries, but to also try to dominate the market on particular ones.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Great work, King Jason! Although I believe we need more information. Probably more recent builds will give us something.

Unique luxuries mechanics is good, because it fuels resource trade. I don't think any other mechanics could realistically replace it.

 

[skyclad]

I am on my phone right now so have to way to even start verifying this, but here I got an idea. Could it possibly be based on continents? (remember ratio, about 2 players for every continent).
Like chocolate in Australia does't work in Africa. So if you have cities across different continents (even if its the same landmass as per new continent rules) you would need chocolate on each continent to get the bonus. Maybe with Aztecs special UA, they get a little "spill over" to cities on a different continent, allowing them to work on captured enemy cities for example
Again with example, if Monty has chocolate in Australia and captures 2 cities in Africa, now those get chocolate too.
Possibly you could even trade these between continents you have. So if you have 2 chocolates in Australia you could send one to the African part of your empire.

I guess somebody would have figured it out by now if this was the truth but its just an idea I got.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It would be good to have screenshots with all amenities popups we've seen (including luxury resources on top). Any brave soul?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Great work, King Jason! Although I believe we need more information. Probably more recent builds will give us something.

Unique luxuries mechanics is good, because it fuels resource trade. I don't think any other mechanics could realistically replace it.

Unique luxuries per city instead of per civ would be better. (So 4 city civ benefits from 4 copies of a lux...not the 5th+, but a 20 city civ needs 20 copies for full benefit)

 

[stealth_nsk]

Unique luxuries per city instead of per civ would be better. (So 4 city civ benefits from 4 copies of a lux...not the 5th+, but a 20 city civ needs 20 copies for full benefit)

This means no reasonable resource trading between civs. It's quite sad, because resource trading is the biggest part of diplomacy.

 

[Cyon]

I thought that the idea of each lux hives amenities to six cities was good, so a seven city Empire would have a benefit to have two copy of tja same lux.

Even better system: first copy = six cities, second copy = four, third two and fourth fifth only one. So there is still a benefit to have many copy of a luxury but only for wide empires and trading for different luxes are still better.

 

[ExtremeGardens]

I thought that the idea of each lux hives amenities to six cities was good, so a seven city Empire would have a benefit to have two copy of tja same lux.

Even better system: first copy = six cities, second copy = four, third two and fourth fifth only one. So there is still a benefit to have many copy of a luxury but only for wide empires and trading for different luxes are still better.

I think you're on to something. This would explain how you can trade for luxury you already have, or sell multiple copies of your luxury (I think at many points in his play through, Marbozir had the option to sell multiple copies of Ivory to the AI).


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