Do extra luxury copies help additional cities?

[Sansa_Stark]

This system is actually better than previous games. You just lack the knowledge of why, and well, exposed yourself.

Well said MadDjinn.

And I am not sure what are some of you guys talking about. I don't know why they did decide like this, but it is minor thing and overall happiness system is much better than one used in Civ5. And if you have 2nd copy of lux, all you need to do is find a business partner.

 

[MadDjinn]

It means you can go wide or tall, but it'll be hard to go wide and tall.

Nah, you can do both, though 'tall' is a different term in this game vs previous. What you need to do is not rely on only luxuries for amenities.

I think it's a missed opportunity to make extra copies valuable. I think everyone was on board with that. But it doesn't ruin the game, and it's not idiotic.

you can trade them to the AI for other luxuries and boom, just as valuable again.

But if you take the idea that you can just keep getting amenities from each copy of a luxury, then you are effectively never prevented from expanding. just get more copies and more uniques. so 2 uniques with 3 copies each is 2 amenities in 12 cities? 3 uniques = 3 amenities in 12 cities? Where's the slowdown? What's making you think about is expanding worth it? where's the strategy?

 

[Frank327]

But if you take the idea that you can just keep getting amenities from each copy of a luxury, then you are effectively never prevented from expanding. just get more copies and more uniques. so 2 uniques with 3 copies each is 2 amenities in 12 cities? 3 uniques = 3 amenities in 12 cities? Where's the slowdown? What's making you think about is expanding worth it? where's the strategy?

I think the principle of more luxuries = amenities for a bigger empire was fine but the balance for it was not. Maps are created in such a way that a luxury usually has multiple copies in the same area which means it's too easy to get multiples of a luxury. If either luxuries were more common as a "one of" in an area or a luxury only gave amenities to two cities then the system could work in a different way.

That said the system as it is now does promote resource trading which is nice.

 

[Palantir30]

This system is actually better than previous games. You just lack the knowledge of why, and well, exposed yourself.

Okay, I'll just go return my masters degree in economics of video games and stop consulting for game companies because clearly, someone with 4200 posts on a message board just put me in my place.

 

[Frank327]

Okay, I'll just go return my masters degree in economics of video games and stop consulting for game companies because clearly, someone with 4200 posts on a message board just put me in my place.

Just remember to trade away your second copy of salt.

 

[Big J Money]

But if you take the idea that you can just keep getting amenities from each copy of a luxury, then you are effectively never prevented from expanding. just get more copies and more uniques. so 2 uniques with 3 copies each is 2 amenities in 12 cities? 3 uniques = 3 amenities in 12 cities? Where's the slowdown? What's making you think about is expanding worth it? where's the strategy?

Districts. You still can't build districts everywhere, so you choose which cities will benefit from them and which won't. Also in your example 2 amenities in each city is still just 2 amenities. That's 2 pop cities, which would hardly be game breaking. But there's really no point to continue discussing a mechanic that doesn't exist. I just think a lot of people were eager for it.

 

[MadDjinn]

Districts. You still can't build districts everywhere, so you choose which cities will benefit from them and which won't. Also in your example 2 amenities in each city is still just 2 amenities. That's 2 pop cities, which would hardly be game breaking. But there's really no point to continue discussing a mechanic that doesn't exist. I just think a lot of people were eager for it.

that's actually more than 2 pop cities. 1 amenity = 2 pop, but that doesn't start at 1 pop. which would give you more than enough amenities to spam out multiple districts in every city without thought. And then there's the other sources of amenities.

what it means is that other sources of amenities, such as Entertainment districts, are needed to continue the expansions.

Okay, I'll just go return my masters degree in economics of video games and stop consulting for game companies because clearly, someone with 4200 posts on a message board just put me in my place.

Probably a good idea since you chimed in without even knowing the economy of the game let alone who I am.

 

[ddd123]

you can trade them to the AI for other luxuries and boom, just as valuable again.

But if you take the idea that you can just keep getting amenities from each copy of a luxury, then you are effectively never prevented from expanding. just get more copies and more uniques. so 2 uniques with 3 copies each is 2 amenities in 12 cities? 3 uniques = 3 amenities in 12 cities? Where's the slowdown? What's making you think about is expanding worth it? where's the strategy?

Thats not the point, the point is that civ has always had this very stupid and shallow system of resources, both for luxury and strategic, sure you could do something, like you can now, but in the end it is just ABUSING TRADES.
You cant really call it strategy, you learn the best rate at which sell something worth nothing or nearly to you and get the best you can from AI. Thats not strategy.

What the game missed is a meaningful way to make multiple resource really strategic and deep, while the system in the end is left in the status of "get as many as you can trying to get as many uniques as you can", and since you ABUSE trades with AI this is also anti strategic cause you get away to a bad city position by trading useless couples of your resources with a AI always willing to satisfy the bad player.

Also in general the resource system is the less changed in every version and feels really old, if i am not mistaken there are also much less buildings tied to resources than in civ5...

So yeah, it is definitely a missed chance, but hopefully there will be something huge about it in one of the expansions !

 

[Haggbart]

Lol, it's not like it's a big deal anyway. I was actually happy to see this, even though I appreciate wide play. And there are lots of amenity sources in the game outside luxuries. If anyone refrain from buying the game because of this, that's just weird.

 

[Magil]

I'd be fine with this, if I could get the AI to accept luxury-for-luxury trades. They all seem "unfriendly" to me and refuse to give a square deal, even though our relationship modifiers are positive! As is it's a bit rough.

 

[MadDjinn]

Thats not the point, the point is that civ has always had this very stupid and shallow system of resources, both for luxury and strategic, sure you could do something, like you can now, but in the end it is just ABUSING TRADES.
You cant really call it strategy, you learn the best rate at which sell something worth nothing or nearly to you and get the best you can from AI. Thats not strategy.

What the game missed is a meaningful way to make multiple resource really strategic and deep, while the system in the end is left in the status of "get as many as you can trying to get as many uniques as you can", and since you ABUSE trades with AI this is also anti strategic cause you get away to a bad city position by trading useless couples of your resources with a AI always willing to satisfy the bad player.

Also in general the resource system is the less changed in every version and feels really old, if i am not mistaken there are also much less buildings tied to resources than in civ5...

So yeah, it is definitely a missed chance, but hopefully there will be something huge about it in one of the expansions !

Actually, the "point" is that luxuries are not the end all be all of the amenities system. Depending on how wide you go, policy choices, district choices, you'll end up with more from other sources than luxuries. Luxuries aren't meant to be the thing that lets you mass expand, they're the gap fillers.

trades with AI (not sure diplo trades is where it could be), aren't quite the abuse that they were in civV. Though, still has some bad things like trading for gold without friend/ally status. But that isn't related to the amenities system.

and yeah, it's sort of that there weren't more terrain/resource based building choices given the thrust of the game system setup for civvi.

 

[skyclad]

Hmm, i am disappointed that multiple copies dont affect 4 cities each but simply 4 cities period.
In the end there is very little difference to "global happiness". Just that in some edge cases only some cities will be unhappy instead of all. Of course the consequence of being " unhappy" is much less severe now but still a bit disappointing to me.

 

[Shadole]

https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/58vmu8/extra_luxury_resources_dont_give_amenities_to/

I haven't gotten the opportunity to test his, but the guy gives screenshots of everything and explains it well. I'll copy and paste his post here:

"Since we learned how amenities work in a livestream, people started saying that extra copies of the same luxury give amenities to more cities (1 copy = 4 cities. 2 copies = 8 cities and so on), but I never found where this info came from, since that's not what they said in the livestream. They say that the second copy is only for trade (like in Civ V), which later the manual confirmed (you can find it on steam, page 50, probably on the civilopedia too but I didn't check):

"Luxury resources provide a small bonus to the hex’s output and increase your civilization’s happiness by providing them amenities when improved. Only one source of a specific luxury provides amenities, shared with the four neediest cities in your empire. For example, if you have 2 Citrus resources improved around your capital, only the first will be providing amenities to your empire. You can choose to trade the second Citrus with another civilization for something else you need, like Gold, or another resource."

Since even FilthyRobot said that the extra copy give amenities to more cities, I wasn't sure on what to believe, since it's not impossible that developers/manual are wrong (it can happen, games change a lot in production), but it's also not impossible that FilthyRobot learned how this mechanic supposedly work from someone and took it for granted, never actually testing it. So now that I have access to the game, I finally got to test it myself and sadly the extra copies is only for trade, like in Civ V. Prove:

I have:

2 teas, 1 Fur from improvements

• 1 Wine from Geneva

If the extra tea copy is only for trade, I should have a total of 12 amenities form luxury resources spread among my 8 cities. If the extra copy give amenities, I should get 8 only from tea (one in each city) plus 8 from fur and wine, total 16. Lets take a look in my cities (don't mind the bad city and district positioning):

My Cities

Each city is getting:

• 2 Paris
• 3 Lyon
• 1 Rouen
• 2 La Rochelle
• 2 Bordeaux
• 1 Amboise
• 1 Nantes
• 0 Toulouse

Total: 12 amenities. 4 from tea, 4 from fur, 4 from wine and none from the second tea copy. I tested in more than one turn since the amenities are calculated at the end of the turn, still 12.

If anyone else want to test to see if I messed up and there's something affecting the result, I would appreciate that."

Sigh...come on Firaxis...

 

[markoivezic]

watch from 31:00 minutes and then Ed Beach gives explanation.

At first I understood it too that one luxury gives you 4 amenities, and 2 luxuries gives amenities for 8 cities, but after playing it for two days now and checking once more this video you might be right. It's almost the main and probably only true mechanic of blocking super wide empires. If you go super wide you're gonna have more barbarians and revolution units around your own cities than what AI has spawn over time. (BTW AI does not upgrade units at all?!)

 

[Shadole]

This is pretty unfortunate. I wonder if this can be modded.

 

[Browd]

Sigh...come on Firaxis...

Not sure what you mean by this. The community got this one very wrong, using wishful thinking and tortured readings to try to reach the conclusion that multiple copies of luxuries could be used to fuel expansion without concerns for amenities ("That's my 6th copy of Diamonds? Great! Now I can plant cities 21 through 24"). Luxuries should not be a crutch for unlimited expansion. You should have to develop other amenity sources, and not just string together multiple copies of luxuries.

In any event, this is old news (if anything a day and a half after release can be called "old news").

Moderator Action: Merged with existing "Extra luxuries" thread.

 

[Stalker0]

Honestly even with this I'm finding on King that happiness is not an issue at all. I don't even bother with Entertainment districts, don't really need them. I'd much rather get an economic hub for more trade!

 

[Ryika]

I'm happy you can't use multiple copies of the same resource. That way trading Resources stays relevant, and it seems like that this time around the AI is actually not that keen on trading away most of their copies before you ever have a chance to offer a trade yourself, so trading Resources 1:1 is a very good way to increase your happiness without any "real" investment.

If you somehow manage to get an AI to like you enough to offer fair deals that is. (;

 

[juanpavo]

I'm happy you can't use multiple copies of the same resource. That way trading Resources stays relevant

It also simplifies the decision making, i.e. if I have more than one of any resource, I can trade it away. No need to do any further calculations.

 

[dturtle1]

Well.. that is disappointing, my issue was with abstraction more than balance issue's and such, you have a massive Tea empire but only four cities can benefit from tea ? . Luckily you cant actually tell what resource affects which city but it is a missed opportunity if you asked me. Expansion limitation and other "problems" with this implementation is not a problem with the mechanic itself, just balancing. I loathed luxuries in 5 because of the 1 and done nature of them as well. Every game ended up where i couldnt get anything of value from the extra copies and just gave them away simply so the A.I would stop harassing me. The problem with this one and done implementation is that their are far more copies of the resource than there are actually Civs to benefit from the luxe which ends up making it worthless to trade anyway. Decision making could be simplified by just simply doing the calculation in game so it only shows what is not being used rather than total amount of luxe(with total in brackets or whatever). There is no reason it couldnt of been implemented as copies affecting multiple groups of cities, just as this current implementation is not the end of the world either. I still believe it is a missed opportunity.