Pfeffersack
Deity
In advance, I really like that basic design of those resources compared to previous versions: Instead of a tiny local yield boost or (mainly Silver) being an abstract "luxury", both are now much more representative by having a kind of minting purpose. I feel the first time in Civ a really incentive to grab a certain settling slot, because there are precious metals. Thats a good thing...
However, the games UI does its best to confuse you about the effects and to rob you of the feeling of knowing how much coins you save when you purchase something with help of having Gold/Silver resources available:
1. It starts with the game telling you you just that item X costs sum Y Gold, but hiding how the displayed price is calculated. No tooltip about which discounts apply, not even a listing of the "base price" in the Civilopedia. Given that factors affecting price can come from multiple sources, this makes it quite hard to get behind the calculation...or to check if there is maybe a bug. Not a good starting point for Gold/Silver to come in, but it gets worse.
2. The previous point gets further compliacted by the fact that not all purchase boni are factored in the displayed gold price for purchasing - you will notice that when purchasing a factory in a factory town...the displayed price in unaffected, but you just pay less then advertised (and don't ask me how the hidden discount is calculated here...if applying the logic from the next bullet point, it is rather a "+50%"-bonus...maybe some balancing without correcting description):
3. The wording of the effect...I first thought that it is just a rough German translation...but it is indeed "+20% Gold to the construction". And you have to take that quite literally. It is not a flat -20% price oddly worded. No, after some testing I have a theory (if someone can verify this for higher gold resources it would be highly welcomed)...if y is the displayed price, g your number of gold resources and x what you have to actually pay, then the formula looks rougly (there is some kind of rounding happening somewhere) like this:
x = y / (1+0.2*g)
I wrote "roughly" because of some rounding happening somewhere, as e.g. for a building costing 220 Gold the price with one gold resource drops to 180 and with a 2nd to 156:
Don't ask me why the forum software insists to switch the position of the 2nd and 3rd screenshot...just can't get them displaying in the right order
Moderator Action: It should be right now --NZ
4. This also answers the question whether gold ressources stack (I didn't test for Silver, but I assume the same rules applying...again, everyone is welcome to check) - the answer is yes, but with considerably diminishing returns. The first instance of gold brings the purchase price down to ~83% and with a 2nd you roughly end up with 71% gold cost, but having five "only" halves the price and ten will bring it down to 1/3.
5. A final minor complaint is the display on the ressource screen - IMO, it would be better for the empire-wide resources, if the tooltip would give up the summed effect when having multiple resources. Also, gold and silver resources being listed twice in modern age looks odd and further adds to confusion:
Conclusion: Again, I like this under the hood. Not only gets your inner greed rewarded to claim this resources, it was also taken care of balance and bringing in the concept of inflation respectively the historic "Spanish price revolution". If now only the UI would live up to this... The good news is that fixing the UI is possible and announced as being a top priority, so maybe this case will get adressed one day as well.
However, the games UI does its best to confuse you about the effects and to rob you of the feeling of knowing how much coins you save when you purchase something with help of having Gold/Silver resources available:
1. It starts with the game telling you you just that item X costs sum Y Gold, but hiding how the displayed price is calculated. No tooltip about which discounts apply, not even a listing of the "base price" in the Civilopedia. Given that factors affecting price can come from multiple sources, this makes it quite hard to get behind the calculation...or to check if there is maybe a bug. Not a good starting point for Gold/Silver to come in, but it gets worse.
2. The previous point gets further compliacted by the fact that not all purchase boni are factored in the displayed gold price for purchasing - you will notice that when purchasing a factory in a factory town...the displayed price in unaffected, but you just pay less then advertised (and don't ask me how the hidden discount is calculated here...if applying the logic from the next bullet point, it is rather a "+50%"-bonus...maybe some balancing without correcting description):
3. The wording of the effect...I first thought that it is just a rough German translation...but it is indeed "+20% Gold to the construction". And you have to take that quite literally. It is not a flat -20% price oddly worded. No, after some testing I have a theory (if someone can verify this for higher gold resources it would be highly welcomed)...if y is the displayed price, g your number of gold resources and x what you have to actually pay, then the formula looks rougly (there is some kind of rounding happening somewhere) like this:
x = y / (1+0.2*g)
I wrote "roughly" because of some rounding happening somewhere, as e.g. for a building costing 220 Gold the price with one gold resource drops to 180 and with a 2nd to 156:
Don't ask me why the forum software insists to switch the position of the 2nd and 3rd screenshot...just can't get them displaying in the right order
Moderator Action: It should be right now --NZ 4. This also answers the question whether gold ressources stack (I didn't test for Silver, but I assume the same rules applying...again, everyone is welcome to check) - the answer is yes, but with considerably diminishing returns. The first instance of gold brings the purchase price down to ~83% and with a 2nd you roughly end up with 71% gold cost, but having five "only" halves the price and ten will bring it down to 1/3.
5. A final minor complaint is the display on the ressource screen - IMO, it would be better for the empire-wide resources, if the tooltip would give up the summed effect when having multiple resources. Also, gold and silver resources being listed twice in modern age looks odd and further adds to confusion:
Conclusion: Again, I like this under the hood. Not only gets your inner greed rewarded to claim this resources, it was also taken care of balance and bringing in the concept of inflation respectively the historic "Spanish price revolution". If now only the UI would live up to this... The good news is that fixing the UI is possible and announced as being a top priority, so maybe this case will get adressed one day as well.
Last edited by a moderator:
