Community Feature: Gold!

[The_J]

I want to add the guess here, that maybe all UBs don't have any maintenance cost...but that's only a guess.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

Its not a hidden maintenance, you obviously don't know what that means, it would be a pointless maintenance if it was in putted, so it is not. This is not hidden, it does not exist at all.

The benefit of "not in putting a pointless maintenance" is just that, the removal of a useless feature.

The buildings will just be designed from the start to not be overpowering and need choice simply because maintenance would be pointless on the building. So requiring maintenance in the first place would be a pointless decision for the building.

No, I understand "hidden maintenance" perfectly, and I'd appreciate it if you would stop being so condescending.

Arioch mentioned the idea of hidden maintenance. I asked if it was in the game. You responded with an explanation of what it means. I said that I was asking if it was indeed in the game as you did not answer that. Then after that we came to different conclusions on what "makes sense" on how to handle it, and again I asked if it was involved since again I got no answer.

So, that brings us up to date. My point is, I don't see why they should be without maintenance. Even if they net a positive growth it makes sense for it to be a factor. It's not "pointless" for a building to have to exceed its own cost for it to be useful. Not in the least.

 

[12agnar0k]

Your still not grasping why it would be pointless,

As for are their any hidden costs, no reason to think their is, nothing shown so far suggests anything of the sort, all maintenance costs are clearly displayed on buildings that have them.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

No, I grasp it, but I disagree. Maybe you don't grasp why it isn't pointless? There's a difference between pointless and a lack of a major effect. It's not pointless to display a cost, even if the result is not a cost itself. Just because you're in the black doesn't mean you don't show the red.

 

[12agnar0k]

No it is pointless, because they decide what bonuses buildings should give, to design a bonus to be too powerful specifically insert a maintenance cost, as its not on every building only ones which provide benefits that are too powerful, so to design it this way to purposefully incur a maintenance cost just too have the maintenance cost immediately removed by the overpowering which was designed to demand it is an utterly pointless procedure, this is very different to accurately showing profit calculations in business.
This is logic in motion, I mean disagree with it all you like, you can also disagree with me when I say "the moon is not made of blue cheese" it won't make your opinion any more correct. Where as I am using a logical argument in my decision.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

You're inserting opinions about power and calling them facts, bud. Your argument was that gold-yielding buildings should not require maintenance since they produce a net income. Now, it's that maintenance is only on buildings that are "too powerful" and therefore require something to compensate. There's nothing factual about what you're saying, and my opinion is perfectly valid and nowhere argues against logic. How is a Library or Granary "too powerful" without a maintenance cost but yet +25% Gold isn't?

You're greatly overcomplicating what I am saying. I think all buildings (or nearly all) should have maintenance since anything would require some upkeep. And, all buildings should be built ONLY where the the benefits would outweigh the cost, regardless of function. That includes Banks, Mints, Stock Exchanges, etc. If a city is only producing one gold, a Stock Exchange should not be a "free building" as it wouldn't yield any real value. An economy that small cannot and should not be able to support a Stock Exchange. Sometime down the line? Sure.

What I am saying is perfectly logical.

 

[The_J]

...not completely.

e.g. buildings with a fixed income (+X gold) should not have a mainenance cost, because it doesn't make sense.
Buildings with a relative income (+X %) could, because then you first have to think about, if the net output will be higher than the maintenance.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

...not completely.

e.g. buildings with a fixed income (+X gold) should not have a mainenance cost, because it doesn't make sense.
Buildings with a relative income (+X %) could, because then you first have to think about, if the net output will be higher than the maintenance.

Hmm, that makes more sense. I still think fixed income buildings should have maintenance regardless, if only to keep with the model. It's still possible to balance it so that the final outcome is what you want, but that would indeed be a redundant process.

Edit: Second thoughts, there could be an additional reason to have maintenance costs on fixed income buildings. The Mint, for example produces +3 gold per Silver and Gold tile worked by the city. A Maintenance of 1 isn't a bad idea, because worst-case you get only two gold instead of three, but you can still get a decent amount of gold if you have more resources. If there is a building that just plain gives you +4 gold, then of course you can make it +5 with a -1 maint. Now, the reason this could be wise and less redundant, is that there could be Social Policy or something else reducing maintenance costs. It still could be a bit redundant, but would have value with such a mechanism somewhere in the game.

 

[Jaybe]

Whether the gold buildings have maintenance is up to Firaxis (unless modded otherwise). But if a bank provides +25% gold, a maintenance cost of 0 might be different at another difficulty level. It may be premature to assume the zero maint. cost for such buildings.

 

[WillowBrook]

IIRC, in Civ III, markets, banks, and stock exchanges all cost maintenance, and all increased revenue by a certain percentage. So you had to do the calculation to decide if it was worth building (and to make it more complicated, you had to predict where you'd have the revenue/science/happiness slider). Given that I'm a micro-manager, I liked that aspect.

It seems to me that for a fixed-revenue building, you can view it as actually having more revenue but some is used for maintenance (that doesn't have to actually be in the game). But for a % increase building, a calculation of whether it is worth building should come into play. Just my 2-cents.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

Plus, if a Marketplace had, say, +8 gold (static) with a -2 maintenance you'd look and say, "Well, that's only +6 (and this is a pointless calculation)." But, add the Stock Exchange and your Market is yielding +10 gold -2 maintenance. So I'm back to thinking that Maintenance should be included regardless. Its benefits should outweigh its costs.

 

[Schuesseled]

It doesn't make sense that the cost of the building is just subtracted out of the gold it generates?

I realize that these are +% bonuses, and the costs are in whole units, but Civ V has shown thus far to be the kind of game that doesn't ask you to do math in your head to figure out whether something is worthwhile or not.

i agree, its a needless complications, its easy enough to tell if a non-gold building can be affored, do i have more than 1 gold per turn, oh yes i do. But percentage gold buildings would be needlessly tricky, best to just have no maintenance. They would pay for themselves in the long-run anyway.

 

[the343danny]

i agree, its a needless complications, its easy enough to tell if a non-gold building can be affored, do i have more than 1 gold per turn, oh yes i do. But percentage gold buildings would be needlessly tricky, best to just have no maintenance. They would pay for themselves in the long-run anyway.

It wont be tricky if the UI is actually as good as they advertise it to be. Some mods in Civ4 told you how much you would save if you built a courthouse or how much you would gain by building something else, and that really helped. Especially now because gold doesnt seem to have a slider, it would be really helpful if they added something like that. Then, it would be really simple to figure out the benefits of a multiplier of gold building.

And to that guy kept on stressing that it was "really obvious", it is "really obvious" that multiplier buildings should have maintenance, and even static bonuses should have maintenance too, simply to be consistent. If 3-1 is so complicated and too time consuming, maybe they should add the profits of the building, and the maintenance cost, as well as profit - maintenance.

 

[PinkHammurabi]

And to that guy kept on stressing that it was "really obvious", it is "really obvious" that multiplier buildings should have maintenance, and even static bonuses should have maintenance too, simply to be consistent. If 3-1 is so complicated and too time consuming, maybe they should add the profits of the building, and the maintenance cost, as well as profit - maintenance.

Thank. You.

 

[Wimsey]

I'm with PinkHammurabi on this one, there's plenty of reasons why +gold buildings should also have upkeep. Consistency for one. The possibility of some social policies or improvements to reduce upkeep is another. Also, these buildings don't give a flat gld bonus, but a multiplier, or a bonus dependent on resources. As such, it should be possible to build a bak running at a net loss, and it should be the player's job to avoid this. These buildings also gives other benefits than gold, namely the ability to get specialists and great person points (and the value of that is again dependent on social policies).

I think it's silly to argue that it's to much for the player to calculate the net effect of a gold building manually, as they have to do so for libraries and universities too. And the calculation with those are much more complicated, as they have to take into account what they percieve to vbe the relative value of gold versus beakers.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I'd prefer banks and the like to have maintenance costs just like any other building would.

To those saying buildings that produce gold should "obviously" not have maintenance, perhaps you'd also argue roads shouldn't cost maintenance because they create traderoutes which produce gold as well. Honestly that is something I've been wondering about - how the cost of maintaining roads is going to compare to the value of the trade routes they create. Roads have other uses like boosting movement speed, so perhaps we should just get rid of trade routes and adjust the maintenance costs of roads accordingly.

 

[Tomice]

If we made a poll here, how many players actually enjoy needing a pocket calculator next to their PC to play a game effectively - what results would you guys expect?

While paying gold to get culture (e.g. in a theatre) is a strategic decision, this is not the case for gold being turned into more (or less) gold.

A maintenance for banks would mean that when you (or the AI) change the tiles being currently worked, the bank could have a negative effect and you maybe wouldn't even realize. It would be ok if it's constant, but a cities output is shifting. You could also build a bank during a golden age and think it's helpful

I bet less than 5% of civ players (probably the monarch+ guys) manually check their citizen allocation every few turns.

 

[Schuesseled]

i like to leave a lot of stuff on automation, i want the comp to do the work for me, getting rid of micromanagement. And then i can truly be the emperor, and not a gopher for game's mechanics.

 

[Celevin]

If we made a poll here, how many players actually enjoy needing a pocket calculator next to their PC to play a game effectively - what results would you guys expect?

While paying gold to get culture (e.g. in a theatre) is a strategic decision, this is not the case for gold being turned into more (or less) gold.

A maintenance for banks would mean that when you (or the AI) change the tiles being currently worked, the bank could have a negative effect and you maybe wouldn't even realize. It would be ok if it's constant, but a cities output is shifting. You could also build a bank during a golden age and think it's helpful

I bet less than 5% of civ players (probably the monarch+ guys) manually check their citizen allocation every few turns.

Maintenance to markets and banks is needed for them to be a strategic decision. If it didn't exist, then even cities with 2 gold output should build both buildings. It isn't a big deal either, and no calculator is needed. Your city has 2+ trading posts? Build a bank. If it's too close to tell if the bank's going to be making any decent cash? It's probably better just to produce wealth for the same number of turns.

If you want to talk about having to "take out a pocket calculator", Civ4 takes this to an extreme. Try calculating an optimal "whip/draft city" or other food calculations, or look into the optimization of the slider by producing wealth just to put it to 100%, or the percentage chance of winning a 40 on 40 battle, or the pros and cons of cottage spamming VS representation empires, which is greatly based on land, city size, and empire size. A lot of these things require university level calculus and Excel, and I would say that one or two of them might not be able to be computed in polynomial time.

But the beauty of the human mind is we don't need to graph an exponential function just to make a decision. It's the same reason that the best computer in the world still can't beat us at a simple game of Go. We can get close values for big, complex strategic decisions in a few seconds merely by eyeballing it.

So the next time you think calculating "mx+b" to be positive or negative is too hard for a game, think of what else you're doing and how that compares. I guarantee that within a month of release of Civ5, experts will find just as many complex calculations as there are in Civ4.

 

[Schuesseled]

Maintenance to markets and banks is needed for them to be a strategic decision. If it didn't exist, then even cities with 2 gold output should build both buildings. It isn't a big deal either, and no calculator is needed....

Incorrect, the law of oppurtunity cost comes into play here, getting 1 extra gold in a city is no where near as useful as spending your valuable hammers and game time constructing other more useful buildings and troops.

In the long run when all other worthwhile buildings and troops and etc etc have been built then maybe you'll want to build a market and bank, but by then you'll probably be generating more gold so then the market and bank will become worthwhile again

p.s. what is the simple game of Go?