[NFP] Do you find it weird that Entertainment Complex takes a district slot?

[Lord Lakely]

What's the solution? Is there another game that does this better?

Not sure what other games do, but Civ 4 had a pretty good system for Happiness (and Health). Even Civ 5's system, while demonic in terms of enjoyment, was balanced and intuitive and led to Golden Ages.

The main problem in Civ 6 is a combo of traits, first and foremost being that positive amenities do not matter enough. +5% to all yields is peanuts, +10% is good but hard to get. Where's the We Love The King Day? Where's the Era Score from happy cities? Where is some sort of advantage that matters? Right now only Scotland cares for amenities because their base percentages are double compared to those of other civs. That's not balanced, that's bad design, period.

Another issue is that in Civ 6, you should get Luxuries first and THEN build the entertainment buildings. In reality luxuries were very hard to get by and recreation was the main source of crowd control. Luxuries being stronger than entertainment is ok. Luxuries being easier to get than entertainment is a huge mistake.

and finally as said in this thread, you really have to try hard to drop in low amenities. Bankrupty is rare, War Weariness is irrelevant and Overcrowding ironically helps Amenities because it prevents cities from needing more in the future. In a casual game, you can get away with outright ignoring Amenities and you'll still be fine in most games.

Solutions? Just look at the games that discriminate between amenity types: Splitting up Health and Happiness/Approval would be a start. Giving them different effects would be a start. Adding era score from Happy/Extatic cities is a start. Substracting Era Score from unhappy cities is a start. Making War Weariness worse for Civs with advanced Governments or high Grievance counters is a start. Giving ECs and Arena's extra amenities/effects would be a start. The Amenity Screen is a mess, with many amenity "types" often resting at Zero for an entire game.

There are plenty of solutions. The core problem is that the devs (mistakenly) believe that their mechanics work well, so all they do is implement a few minor adjustments, which are welcome but insufficient.

 

[Timberdoodle]

One thing I would love to see (not that we'll see this in Civ 6, and that's okay ) is to have things set up in a way so that some cities in your empire can be happy while others are not.

In most of my games, all of my cities sit around the same level of happiness. As the main source of amenities are luxury resources, and they are automatically assigned to the least happy cities, it tends to keep happiness evenly spread out across your empire.

If individual cities could become dramatically less happy than others in your empire, and those unhappy cities were hit with stronger negative loyalty, then you could end up with your unhappy cities revolting and becoming free cities.

I've been experimenting with creating a mod based around that idea, but the only way I can see to make that happen is to reduce amenities from luxury resources and increase amenities from fixed sources, like the Entertainment Complex buildings (and possibly to increase amenity's required to 1 per citizen).

That way luxuries are weaker, but provide flexible amenities that go where they are needed. While buildings provide more amenities, but are fixed in place. Something I need to test though to see how it actually plays out.

and finally as said in this thread, you really have to try hard to drop in low amenities.

For sure, I mean take a look at Fez in the screenshot below. They have never been happier.

Spoiler Fez Image :

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

You mean publicly owned? That's not exactly a deterent, given that we have lots of facilities... and governments that are not public. How is a personal menagerie any less valid? The animals are still on display, and people still gawk at them, and that's the whole function of a zoo for our purposes here.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, so if I'm wrong when I say this I apologise: are you confusing personal ownership with personal use? Because even though the zoos are privately owned, the express purpose of the zoo is to be viewed by the public. It's not like nobles can drain exotic birds of some magical essence to live longer.

I meant the first zoos open to the viewing public happened later, in the late 1700s, instead of just the personal collection of animals viewed only by the royals who owned them and their closest aristocratic friends.

 

[Datgingah]

In civ 3 I remember there being entertainers as a citizen position, which would make your other citizens more happy.

Entertainment districts also happen to be one of only two districts (ignoring the water park) that aren’t one per empire and take up citizens, but don’t have specialists (the other being aerodrome).

Straight up we should just have the specialists come back as entertainers and provide amenities. It’s not even a novel idea, but it could fit well with a game and allow you to have cities that are more happy then others, potentially pushing for we love the king day.

 

[hhhhhh]

One thing I would love to see (not that we'll see this in Civ 6, and that's okay ) is to have things set up in a way so that some cities in your empire can be happy while others are not.

I'd like to see this too, but it can be a problem if people can make all amenity go to one city. Maybe it's better to introduce the notion of local amenity and global amenity (Civ V has this notion). So it's harder to manipulate but amenity level can vary from city to city.

For sure, I mean take a look at Fez in the screenshot below. They have never been happier.

Spoiler Fez Image :

Very good point raising the Fez issue. I really wish war weariness are harsher and pillaging, bombard, air bombing, conquest and nuclear attack have some effect on amenity (maybe via war weariness).

 

[King of Prussia]

There's no raisin for zoo's to come so late. There were zoo's for ages before the industrial revolution. Maybe the tourism ought to come later, since tourism doesn't exist until then.

If there are too many amenities then maybe some districts could start emitting pollution of something to make stuff suck. Or maybe happiness should be affected by appeal.



That's kind of the point. Instead of having one use it has two now

I dont mind if they move buildings around and give bonuses to that building later in the tech trees.


Well if they are going to give it another reason to be used, it should be a good one. Giving me another option that may make things worse off after it is done isn't very worthwhile. There would be very few situations if any where it would be worth running it for the growth. If the way food is used is changed, then it could be useful.

 

[Galvatron]

I meant the first zoos open to the viewing public happened later, in the late 1700s, instead of just the personal collection of animals viewed only by the royals who owned them and their closest aristocratic friends.

Sir, you're confusing privately owned with privately used. The zoo's before that were open to the public too. The explicit purpose of those zoos was to be visible to the public.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Sir, you're confusing privately owned with privately used. The zoo's before that were open to the public too. The explicit purpose of those zoos was to be visible to the public.

Either way the menageries are different from zoological gardens, whose other function is also for scientific and educational purposes which is why they produce science. The Industrial Era to me is appropriate for the zoo to appear alongside the aquarium for those reasons.

 

[Galvatron]

...War Weariness is irrelevant...

You've got a lot of good points elsewise, but I keep seeing people say this, and I must dissent: I just finished a fairly lengthy war that was frankly rather one sided in my favour. I lost a lot of good men, but the war was never at a risk of not ending the way I wanted it to, it's the worst case scenario for a good war, and I fought it with a good casus belli, which reduces the war weariness, and at the end I had about forty amenity penalties. That's not irrelevant. I've spent more than a whole age recovering from it, and I still have -9 amenities from the war.

Unless by 'irrelevant' you mean you can manage it with skill, I disagree. The results of this war have been me minding loyalty and amenities for a whole era, and shifting my whole game strategy, and I'm still not enjoying the good amenity bonuses I was before the war. And this is with a good war fought for a reasonable amount of time with a good CB. If the war went on longer, I had no CB, or I fought worse, I'd be crippled from the amenities

and Overcrowding ironically helps Amenities because it prevents cities from needing more in the future.

I know right, what's up with that?

Either way the menageries are different from zoological gardens, whose other function is also for scientific and educational purposes which is why they produce science. The Industrial Era to me is appropriate for the zoo to appear alongside the aquarium for those reasons.

I must disagree on both points:

The scientific function is not the one we're interested in, and we're talking about ENTERTAINMENT which is most certainly provided by menageries for public use. A solution to the scientific capacity you're describing is in the civics tree adding the scientific use later... but I'd point out that people have been studying animals for as long as there've been menageries...

 

[hhhhhh]

You've got a lot of good points elsewise, but I keep seeing people say this, and I must dissent: I just finished a fairly lengthy war that was frankly rather one sided in my favour. I lost a lot of good men, but the war was never at a risk of not ending the way I wanted it to, it's the worst case scenario for a good war, and I fought it with a good casus belli, which reduces the war weariness, and at the end I had about forty amenity penalties. That's not irrelevant. I've spent more than a whole age recovering from it, and I still have -9 amenities from the war.

I wasn't in the conversation above but I thought war weariness didn't matter. However recently I found that attacking with 6-7 units in a renaissance formal war basically gives you -1 amenity per turn. So that can hurt and I agree with you.

 

[Lord Lakely]

You've got a lot of good points elsewise, but I keep seeing people say this, and I must dissent: I just finished a fairly lengthy war that was frankly rather one sided in my favour. I lost a lot of good men, but the war was never at a risk of not ending the way I wanted it to, it's the worst case scenario for a good war, and I fought it with a good casus belli, which reduces the war weariness, and at the end I had about forty amenity penalties. That's not irrelevant. I've spent more than a whole age recovering from it, and I still have -9 amenities from the war.

Wow O__O War Weariness is never that severe for me but I also never stay at war for long - War is too big a distraction from the builder game to really be a point of relevance for me, but it may also be a recent change. I haven't declared a war on months and therefore suffer very little WW the few time I do end up at war.

I know right, what's up with that?

Because Housing as a mechanic sucks? It is very much in the uncanny valley of game mechanics where it almost works and the devs nearly got it right, but came up slightly short.
The problem is that housing affects maximum amount of citizens a city in a way that stops the city from growing. This is a mistake. Many cities in the real world that would lack "housing" have slums instead. Most of these cities are also huge from a population perspective. I have no qualms with overcrowding providing massive penalities to amenities, but by having it also decrease population growth these penalties are rendered moot and irrelevant.

to put it in a chart:

It's not quite like a closed loop, because Housing affects BOTH Amenities and Growth, and Growth has an impact on Amenities, but not the other way around. There is no Amenity for spare housing. Spare amenities do not affect the amount of food needed to gain new citizens. Paradoxically, it makes Housing more important than Amenities, since Amenities only start to matter when your cities have grown. How do cities grow? When they have enough housing to accomdate all the citizens they want. This + the way Amenities from Luxuries are spread between 4 cities with no copies, seemingly at random + the fact that Entertainment amenities fail at crowd control results in a system so counterintuitive and flawed it's best left ignored.

For me the ball was dropped the moment the devs decided to ignore healthcare, but that's a post for another topic.


[/QUOTE]

 

[The googles do nothing]

The problem is that housing affects maximum amount of citizens a city in a way that stops the city from growing.

Reading you post make me wonder if they were trying to put a mechanic for "the more stuff you have in a city the more people it attracts" and pulled the name housing out of the air - with Luxuries being 'what keeps people happy in a city'. But housing doesn't follow my definition either. You don't get 'housing' from Industrial Zones despite that IZ would attract people to a city.

 

[Galvatron]

Wow O__O War Weariness is never that severe for me but I also never stay at war for long - War is too big a distraction from the builder game to really be a point of relevance for me, but it may also be a recent change. I haven't declared a war on months and therefore suffer very little WW the few time I do end up at war.

As it happens I'm in the middle of a blitz right in the same game now. Four turns, no units lost, 24 amenities lost due to war weariness; I have a territorial war casus belli. I need lebensraum.

My first war was in the classical age btw, and this current one is an industrial era war.

Because Housing as a mechanic sucks? It is very much in the uncanny valley of game mechanics where it almost works and the devs nearly got it right, but came up slightly short.

Yeah running low on housing should give you more penalties than bonuses like slowing growth. Eugenics and housing shortages don't make people happy.

But I do think housing should decrease growth, but it the game shouldn't reward you for having a lack of housing by decreasing growth and suffering no penalty.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Reading you post make me wonder if they were trying to put a mechanic for "the more stuff you have in a city the more people it attracts" and pulled the name housing out of the air - with Luxuries being 'what keeps people happy in a city'. But housing doesn't follow my definition either. You don't get 'housing' from Industrial Zones despite that IZ would attract people to a city.

It's a very shallow mechanic, yes. "Amenities" encompass so much more than just Entertainment/Luxuries/Housing. Education, Healthcare, Environmental Beauty, Electricity, Jobs, Food Variety, etc, are all things that make people happy (or healthy) when present or unhappy(/unhealthy) when absent.

The general rule of thumb for Amenities should be the following
> Luxuries provide a major happiness bonus to the citizens benefiting from them, but only one citizen per city benefits from each different luxuries. Spare copies provide extra amenities by default. ( that they don't)
> Entertainment provides a decent happiness bonus, scaling with the amount of citizens living in the city; (so effectively, Arena's should provide +1 Amenity per n citizens in the city)
> Religious buildings provide similar happiness bonii to followers of the city's majority religion, but not to pagans, heathens or heretics.
> Other districts provide a minor happiness bonus to a small amount of citizens living in the city. (Reps public facilities such as Education, Cultural Refinement, Security, Prosperity, etc)

Instead of cities needing 1 amenity/citizen, citizens should consume multiple amenities (at the very least one of each type) and would demand more as you progress through the era's. I'm thinking 0 in the Ancient Era, increasing by +1 in the Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial and Modern Era's. Happiness and Extactic would be defined by the percentage of fully satisfied citizens living in the city (unlocks in the Classical Era, at Public Spectacles)

as for The Housing Conundrum, it's not that hard to fiddle around with the rates. The main issue is that its role in restricting growth is too strict early on. I'd suggest lifting the penalty BEFORE the pop cap is reached, and instead attributing a small penalty AT the cap, which increases exponentially as your city becomes more overcrowded. I would say, every citizen over the population limit should add double of the penalty of the previous one? Some number that encourages building Aqueducts or Entertainment Districts and you know, actually growing your city.

 

[Phrozen]

I don't think it shouldn't be a district but it should become a powerhouse money and tourism enabler in the late game. You have whole cities based around people coming in to be entertained: Las Vegas, Macau, and Monaco for instance.

Look how much the relative medium sized town of Green Bay Wisconsin makes just by having the Packers play there is another instance.