Don't forget that not everyone builds every building, not every city needs every building. For example, Town Wells only get built in cities with no fresh water (and sometimes not even then since they are
neutral, so their real advantage is to allow nearby farming).
Plus some civics like Patrician give you lots of gold. I would look for a 'best case' scenario, where a player specializes in gold production, but still only break even when at 100%
. So if you build crime buildings but forgo justice ones, avoid
/
buildings until necessary, etc. and still can only keep your head above water at 100%
, then a player with a more well-rounded strategy would need to keep 10-20%
.
From my experience:
When you did just the water buildings at high -
my late-medieval game at 10%
slider went from +1000 to +500. With the next update and all the fire/law buildings it went down to +0, and with this low -
change it's back to +800.
Maybe as a rule of thumb, Prehistoric / Ancient / Classical buildings cost -1
, Medieval / Renaisance / Industrial buildings cost -2
, Modern -> Future Era buildings cost -3
. I think any higher -
and the AI will avoid that building like the plague, I cant see it building a -10
/ turn sewer even if it's a prereq for the good housing.