Game mechanic question

[JPetroski]

Hi,

Does anyone know how the amount of money taken per city capture is calculated? Are there any improvements or conditions that reduce or increase the amount captured per city?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I haven't been able to find a reference, but I'm pretty sure that the formula is:

plunder = treasury*populationCapturedCity/(populationOfCiv+1)

Where both populations are in terms of citizens. I think that the population of the civ is only computed at the start of the turn, so on the first turn of the scenario, populationOfCiv is 0, and capturing a city results in plundering the entire treasury.

In Catfish's Saved Game Reference there is a 'Sum of the city sizes' pair of 2 bytes. If you want to hex edit a correct population for the first turn of a scenario, that is probably where you would have to do it.

EDIT: Updated link.

 

[JPetroski]

Thanks!

 

[Prof. Garfield]

I recently provided some sample code in a PM for overriding the standard plunder computation:

local treasuries = {[0]=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,}

discreteEvents.onActivateUnit(function(unit,source,repeatMove)
    for id=0,7 do
        treasuries[id] = civ.getTribe(id).money
    end
end)

discreteEvents.onCityTaken(function (city, defender)
    city.owner.money = treasuries[city.owner.id]
    defender.money = treasuries[defender.id]
    local plunderValue = 50
    local transferAmount = math.min(defender.money, plunderValue)
    city.owner.money = city.owner.money + transferAmount
    defender.money = defender.money - transferAmount
end)

This code uses a fixed value of 50 gold, but you could use an arbitrary calculation.

Note that it would probably be wise to change the @CITYCAPTURE section in game.txt if you want to use an alternate plunder calculation.