For those of you that think they removed the free amenity, they did not

ducksinwar

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 29, 2020
Messages
4
I have seen a lot of posts claiming that the free amenity from new cities are removed. Well, it is not. This is actually a pretty big deal as it will give the developers a false sense that they have fixed the tall vs wide problem. The change to content threshold literally counteracts the removal of the free amenity. If you do not agree with me, try to compute for yourself the exact amount of amenities needed for 10 cities of 4 citizens to remain content before and after the patch and you will see what I mean. The only change to amenity they have accomplished with this patch is:

1) Harsher penalties to cities that drops below the content threshold
2) Make it extremely hard to get a bonus by sharply increase the happy threshold
3) Literally rename 0 (the previous content threshold) as -1
4) Create confusions

1) is a great change as it will slow down the game and make warmongering harder.

2) basically kills the usefulness of amenities above the content threshold. I think making the happy threshold higher is the right idea as we do not need more bonus to early game science output, but the bonus for achieving happy and ecstatic is way too low.

A 10%/30% might be a good idea given how much work you have to do to achieve it and it might give EC/WP with tier 3 buildings a purpose for late game. When we combine this with an ACTUAL removal of the free amenity (i.e. set the content threshold back to 0), tall might actually be a valid strategy after all as % modifiers are more beneficial to big cities. This also "fixes" the value EC as a wide empire will be stressed with amenities (as they should be) and EC will thus act as a "tax" district for them and a tall empire will benefit from breaking the happy/ecstatic threshold to get a big % modifier.

I am really really disappointed in the developers in this. I am not sure if this is intentional to trick us into thinking that the free amenities for new cities are removed. If not, then the developers obviously did not bother to even sit down and do a simple computation on what they have changed. If people really care about tall vs wide balance, we really need to speak up and let them fix this.
 
I would be totally ok with -10% for cities with -1 aminities. IMO it might be good to have more levels for positive aminities. They could be +5%, +10%, +15% and +20%.

Something like this might be better:

Ecstatic at 7+
Amused 5 to 6
Happy at 3 to 4
Pleased at 1 to 2
Content at 0
Displeased at -2 to -1
Unhappy at -4 to -3
Unrest at -6 to -5
Revolt at -7

Ecstatic + 20%
Amused +15%
Happy +10%
Pleased +5%
Content
Displeased -10%
Unhappy -20%
Unrest -30%
Revolt -40%
 
More yields for happiness is not the answer. The game already suffers from intense yield inflation.

I disagree with this. The devs chose to design Amenities this way from the start, so the most straightforward solution is to adjust yields.

But I also strongly disagree with the people above who want even more levels. It's confusing as it is.

Here's what I would like to see:



Edit: Perhaps Happy 1-3, Ecstatic 4+.
 
Last edited:
If people really care about tall vs wide balance, we really need to speak up and let them fix this.

I despise how wide was hobbled in 5, yet I certainly want tall to be more feasible. But I'd change your wording away from balance. I don't think that's either realistic or even wanted.

Neither should be artificially restricted. It would of course be nice to see more district & building yields multiplied by all population in a city so that tall is rewarded in a way that we all find intuitive. But I don't think it is or should be about making both equally valid.
 
Yes, this is a point I was having some difficulty convincing people of in the patch notes thread. Allowing every city one negative amenity without penalty is mathematically equivalent to to giving every city one free amenity.

I still have no idea what the devs were thinking. Perhaps it was an issue of different people making different changes at different times and no one actually sitting down to think about how they interact? Fortunately @lockstep has created a mod that reverts the changes to negative thresholds, so that's a great option if you want to play with the free amenities actually removed.
 
Allowing every city one negative amenity without penalty is mathematically equivalent to to giving every city one free amenity.

There is one difference. Now that annoying low amenities symbol will come up, even when it's not having a negative effect on your economy, and it probably comes up before you amenities become properly part of the game.
 
More yields for happiness is not the answer. The game already suffers from intense yield inflation.

IMHO the only yield that suffers from inflation is gold (which is, eh, technically quite accurate). The percentage-based boosts are all underwhelming in general, especially for tall play. Ecstatic is only +10%, one need to invest in an effective Kilwa for a mere 25% (10+15), and other percentage wonders for a +45% (10+15+20) in just one city. That will result in... about 30-40 more yields. Less than the yields of a developed new city.

Wide play does seem to have a huge yield inflation, but that is mainly due to the metagame of "more cities=more yields". An okay city, 10 pop with +3 campus with all buildings with Rationalism card, will yield about 50-60 science - that's not much - but if you plop down like 20 cities then it will be 1000+ science, surely looks inflated. And this amenity change is probably targeting the wide play.
 
There is one difference. Now that annoying low amenities symbol will come up, even when it's not having a negative effect on your economy, and it probably comes up before you amenities become properly part of the game.

Afaik, this may be intende: increasing penalties for unhappy, (plus increasing the treshold for happy) is the actual change. Maybe they wanted the "warning sing" to appear before the penalties started to kick-in, in order to give you a bit of margin. Yet, the sign is red all time (no amber/yellow warning) so it gets confusing in any case.
 
Let's get this straight. I mapped out the now-famous example of 4 cities of 10 pop vs 10 cities of 4 pop, in both pre-patch and post-patch scenarios taking the changed thresholds into account.

upload_2020-8-29_20-43-7.png


As can be seen, Content, Displeased and Unhappy is all unchanged between pre and post patch. However, tall was hit less hard by the patch when it comes to getting to some of the happy states.

So there you have it. I have attached the excel file if anyone wants to tinker with the values for modding purposes or check my math. I know I will myself when/if I decide NFP is worth my time.
 

Attachments

  • upload_2020-8-29_20-27-4.png
    upload_2020-8-29_20-27-4.png
    18.2 KB · Views: 35
  • amenities calc.xlsx
    10.1 KB · Views: 51
Thanks for putting this together! So they did exactly what they said they are doing: made >content harder to achieve but kept bonuses same; kept <content same to achieve but made penalties harsher
 
I think making the happy threshold higher is the right idea as we do not need more bonus to early game science output, but the bonus for achieving happy and ecstatic is way too low.

I think making the threshold higher and the reward for ecstatic higher will also allow them to make the entertainment complex a more interesting district. For instance, they could introduce adjacency bonuses to it that reward +1 amenity for each adjacent amenity resource. I think this would create a layer of strategic depth as well. Maybe in certain cities it would be worth it to focus on a high amenity entertainment complex for the yield boost of ecstatic and skip out on a district you would normally build. Or perhaps it becomes worthwhile to grow some cities bigger if they have good Entertainment complexes.
 
Let's get this straight. I mapped out the now-famous example of 4 cities of 10 pop vs 10 cities of 4 pop, in both pre-patch and post-patch scenarios taking the changed thresholds into account.

Your minimum thresholds for Unhappy and Displeased cities are incorrect -- before the patch, they were -4/-2, now they are -5/-3.
 
Amenities are still kinda easy once you hit Cultural Heritage.
upload_2020-8-30_2-21-0.png

16 pop city, PLUS EIGHT AMENITIES. :hammer2: without a stadium!!! Yes, it's Scotland + Colosseum but regardless, for a generic civ would be +6 WITH a stadium, which is well into Extactic territory.

The main difference that I see is that it's harder in the early game to get good amenities in your cities, mostly because the Arena is a steaming pile of garbage, which by extention makes ECs garbage except for Scotland, who like them for golf course adjacency and Brazil, who like the Carnival project for more GPs. Zoo's absolutely own however and if you toss in a Water Park with an Aquarium it becomes really, really easy to get extatic cities even if you're playing tall and wide. (I have sixteen cities, ten of which have a population above 10).

So generally, not much has changed, but the time at which your cities can become extatic has been pushed back to an even later date.
 
Amenities are still kinda easy once you hit Cultural Heritage.
16 pop city, PLUS EIGHT AMENITIES. :hammer2: without a stadium!!! Yes, it's Scotland + Colosseum but regardless, for a generic civ would be +6 WITH a stadium, which is well into Extactic territory.
The main difference that I see is that it's harder in the early game to get good amenities in your cities, mostly because the Arena is a steaming pile of garbage, which by extention makes ECs garbage except for Scotland, who like them for golf course adjacency and Brazil, who like the Carnival project for more GPs. Zoo's absolutely own however and if you toss in a Water Park with an Aquarium it becomes really, really easy to get extatic cities even if you're playing tall and wide. (I have sixteen cities, ten of which have a population above 10).
So generally, not much has changed, but the time at which your cities can become ecstatic has been pushed back to an even later date.

Generally agree on this. I played Rome and Khmer after the update, my feeling is similar - it's harder to get amenities early unless you have dedicated bonuses, and ecstatic will only come online late, with strong investments and unimpressive returns.

Also, what do you mean by "amenities are still kinda easy once you hit Cultural Heritage"? To my knowledge Cultural Heritage don't have anything contribute to amenities directly, I always understand Professional Sports (Stadium, Aquatics Center, Ski Resort, etc) as what helps amenities in the late game the most.
 
I despise how wide was hobbled in 5, yet I certainly want tall to be more feasible. But I'd change your wording away from balance. I don't think that's either realistic or even wanted.

Neither should be artificially restricted. It would of course be nice to see more district & building yields multiplied by all population in a city so that tall is rewarded in a way that we all find intuitive. But I don't think it is or should be about making both equally valid.
Most 4X games are inherently friendly to “wide” since players need to expand to play the game as intended. “Tall” is something that generally needs either 1) deliberate design choices or 2) enough content to support it.

Making tall work in civ6 anything similar to what, I suspect, people mean - being able to build up cities in the early-mid game as opposed to building out- would require districts and buildings to simply not work the way the they do. And specialists. You can’t National college rush if the national college just doesn’t exist.
Amenities could sort of fill that role but with the threshold changes, and how plentiful they are, you’d need more than just number tweaks to make that work.

I’m not thrilled with the -1 threshold instead of 0. I mean it makes the concept of the number 0, obsolete and replaces it with -1.
 
Then too bad. The whole 4 city is most optimal thing just takes game variety and puts it in a straight jacket in a very un-immersive way. 6 could've more friendly too tall than it is; but trying to balance the two in a 4X game with wide appeal is just not feasible.

Agree it would have been better to adjust the numbers so 0 was the lowest content.
 
Top Bottom