Is it intentional now for periods of Anarchy to be so expensive?

[jatkinson]

One new change I've noticed since I last played is that Anarchy now costs gold per turn (when before it was just financially neutral). Is this change intentional? If it is I approve of the change but I would like to see some sort of calculation on the Civics Screen/Civics switch popup for the total amount of gold it will cost per turn (the upkeep cost does not cover everything) and whether your Civ can actually afford to go through the anarchy period without going bankrupt.

In my current game I had to have all my cities build Lesser Wealth for a few turns before making the switch to Specialization otherwise it would have been utterly bankrupting!

Is the AI aware of this change? While the AI does tend to hoard gold like it's going out of fashion so it's probably not an issue there could be some edge cases that will catch out and destroy them economically.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Because you are playing on Eternity Game speed your situation is exacerbated. Another reason I keep saying that these Longer game speeds (Snail (12,000 turns) and longer) make balancing nigh impossible. It becomes imhpo more realistic and balanceable With GS faster than Snail.
Perhaps you should consider moving to Marathon (8,000 turns) or even Epic (6,000 turns) for your next game.

The Team actually Needs to put a disclaimer on these 3 longest Games speeds (Snail, Eon, and Eternity) that balance is compromised! And can not be realistically achieved. Play at your Own Risk.

 

[jatkinson]

Got it, nevertheless does my suggestion of the costs of a Civics switch be made more clear have merit?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Got it, nevertheless does my suggestion of the costs of a Civics switch be made more clear have merit?

The python coders like Toffer90 will need to comment on that. Not my area of expertise.

And since Anarchy Shuts Down every building and Wonder during it's range of turns, I Totally disagree with this new "Cost" of anarchy. If this is now the norm then all anarchy from all sources, no matter the GS, should be 1 Turn Only. Or Anarchy Must cease to shut down the Economy of any Empire during it's range of turns.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's probably an oversight in the new unit upkeep mechanism that anarchy doesn't write it off like other upkeeps.

 

[Toffer90]

It's probably an oversight in the new unit upkeep mechanism that anarchy doesn't write it off like other upkeeps.

No, it's probably the treasury upkeep I recently added
Don't think I included an anarchy clause to it, I'll look into that... and double check unit upkeep as well I guess.
Though that expense will always be just a small percentage of the gold you have, so it alone won't make a big dent in your treasury during anarchy unless the anarchy lasts hundreds of turns.

 

[Toffer90]

Ok, looked into it, and it is both the unit upkeep and the treasury upkeep.
City maintenance and civic upkeep are 0 during anarchy

 

[jatkinson]

OK so this was an oversight, good to know then

 

[Toffer90]

I'll have it fixed in a couple hours.

 

[jatkinson]

Thanks, given I've literally just switched to Despotism and Junta in my game I'll take the opportunity to take a break

 

[Joij21]

No, it's probably the treasury upkeep I recently added

Wait! There's treasury upkeep now?!?! How does this work? Is there a way to reduce it?

 

[Toffer90]

Wait! There's treasury upkeep now?!?! How does this work? Is there a way to reduce it?

It's a minuscule expense, a little more than one gold per 1000 gold but it slowly grows bigger than that, and it's scaled by gamespeed as one is expected to have 10 times more gold in the treasury on eternity as compared to normal gamespeed, so this expense has to account for that.

Treasury Upkeep = ( Gold / 1000 + SquareRoot(Gold / 10) ) * GamespeedFactor

Some examples of what GamespeedFactor is:

0.1 on eternity 0.25 on marathon, 0.5 on long, 1 on normal, and 2 on blitz.
​

We may add ways to modify it, e.g. letting the treasury national wonder reduce that expense instead of earning you a huge gold income. Perhaps civics should influence it too at some point.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Though that expense will always be just a small percentage of the gold you have, so it alone won't make a big dent in your treasury during anarchy unless the anarchy lasts hundreds of turns.

See jatkinsons Screenshot and you will see that 9 turns of anarchy and it's new cos

Perhaps civics should influence it too at some point.

Hmmm..........perhaps.....noted

 

[Joij21]

It's a minuscule expense, a little more than one gold per 1000 gold but it slowly grows bigger than that, and it's scaled by gamespeed as one is expected to have 10 times more gold in the treasury on eternity as compared to normal gamespeed, so this expense has to account for that.

Treasury Upkeep = ( Gold / 1000 + SquareRoot(Gold / 10) ) * GamespeedFactor

Some examples of what GamespeedFactor is:

0.1 on eternity 0.25 on marathon, 0.5 on long, 1 on normal, and 2 on blitz.
​

We may add ways to modify it, e.g. letting the treasury national wonder reduce that expense instead of earning you a huge gold income. Perhaps civics should influence it too at some point.

Is it based on the amount of gold in the treasury or gold being earned per turn? If the former than it now makes sense to just spend, spend, spend . Kinda like how in Pawn Stars they don't like things to be kept in inventory for too long because of the cost.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Is it based on the amount of gold in the treasury or gold being earned per turn? If the former than it now makes sense to just spend, spend, spend . Kinda like how in Pawn Stars they don't like things to be kept in inventory for too long because of the cost.

There's a lot of RL parallel in this too because if governments hang on to wealth it's just being wasted really... probably even far worse in RL than this - the more gov's spend on their nations, the more the economy churns but this is only a little different. The point being in both game and RL now, hanging onto wealth is wasteful and that's pretty cool.

 

[Toffer90]

See jatkinsons Screenshot and you will see that 9 turns of anarchy and it's new cos

I saw it in-game before posting my second post in this thread.
Only 2 gold is from treasury upkeep in the cost seen in the screenshot, rest is unit upkeep, so the screenshot doesn't contradict my statement about treasury upkeep being small.

 

[Toffer90]

Is it based on the amount of gold in the treasury or gold being earned per turn? If the former than it now makes sense to just spend, spend, spend . Kinda like how in Pawn Stars they don't like things to be kept in inventory for too long because of the cost.

The amount of gold in the treasury, and yeah, one of the main points of it is to incentivise the player to use gold as it waste away if not invested in anything.
Using gold causes a type of inflation that decays over time, each time you hurry cost of something with gold everything will cost a bit more to hurry the cost of, and the effect builds if you hurry cost more than once in a turn.
So that mechanic will see more action with the treasury upkeep putting players between a rock and a hard place.