How ignorable are amenities?

[Reman]

In most of my games I get to a point where most of my cities have -1 to -3 amenities in them. Most of this comes from population growth and the weird way luxuries work. In most games I just let my cities chill in this state until Professional Sports comes around. Should I be doing more to rectify this earlier, or is this seen as OK? How bad is the 5-10% decrease in output and 15-30% decrease in pop growth?

Additional info:

• I'm almost permanently at war after the first 50 turns, but have never seen one of my cities get negative amenities from war exhaustion, so this isn't an issue.
• I'm obviously improving all luxuries available, as well as buying luxuries from every AI that doesn't hate me.
• I'm well aware that going down to -5 is the danger zone where barbs start spawning in your lands, but I've never gotten that low.
• Is the Colosseum worth building?
• Are entertainment districts worth building in the mid game if amenities are negative in most of my cities? I've typically only built them after the 3-4 districts more important to my win condition have been built first.
• Is the Retainers policy (+1 amenity with garrison) worth it?
• I play on Deity.

 

[Victoria]

but have never seen one of my cities get negative amenities from war exhaustion, so this isn't an issue.

Indeed, war weariness is a wet blanket, mainly based on how quickly you can remove it with peace. I did do an investigative thread I can dig out if you want but it’s bland stuff that most affects your large frontier cities.

Is the Colosseum worth building?

oh yes, the culture alone is incredibly handy but The coliseum combined with a little bit better pop control gets you to hover around 0/+1 and the +5% does help a little. More importantly, happiness does help conquests. If at -1 your captured city is at -3 for unhappiness, at +1 it is +3 for unhappiness. That’s 3/4 of a governors difference in loyalty but if you capture fast enough it makes little difference.

the simple answer is no, not needed and it’s damn hard to get to -5. There are political agendas around happiness but you likely do not care about politics. Managing city pop is something that helps and growing above pop 10 is normally pretty pointless. Some civs will benefit from entertainment districts in a varity of ways and there is an inspiration out there for having 3 but Meh.

 

[Bibor]

The Colosseum is hands down the best wonder in the game. The +culture is as important as the amenities, if not more.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

It's largely ignorable. Only when you get to the late game and your yields are very high do you want to go out of your way for amenities. Two of the easiest ways is buying luxes from the AI and slotting in either your legacy card for +1 housing / +1 amenity, or even better, new deal if you choose democracy.

 

[megabearsfan]

Do rebels still spawn if amenities are too low for too long? It's been so long since I've had a city with such low amenity that I've forgotten if that mechanic is even still in the game.
Assuming that rebels do still spawn, having critically low amenity is problematic (especially if you don't have a defensive army in your borders). So you should definitely intervene before a city's amenity gets that low! However, maintaining enough amenity to prevent rebellions is easy enough without having to put much effort into it.
That being said, I want to point out that you shouldn't completely neglect Entertainment Complexes, especially in your border cities. Even if you don't need the amenity, the ability to run the "Bread and Circuses" project can really help with maintaining loyalty in conquered cities, or potentially flipping a neighbor's city. And it can also be instrumental in preventing a leader like Eleanor from flipping your cities.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

I have personally never seen that in GS, but a few times in vanilla.

 

[Victoria]

if amenities are too low for too long?

I tried and failed to naturally get -5