New interview with Ed Beach [new info!]

[LDiCesare]

From what he says, amenities = civ IV happiness, housing = civ IV health.

And if I hear well, he says most buidings have an upkeep cost

 

[stealth_nsk]

From what he says, amenities = civ IV happiness, housing = civ IV health.

Amenities somehow limit expansion, so they aren't equal to Civ4 happiness.

 

[Seek]

So, two things in particular i take from this:

1 Akihabara Blues has the absolute worst gaming interviewer i've ever encountered.

Eh, he asked better, more thoughtful questions than 90% of the other E3 interviewers.

 

[LDiCesare]

Amenities somehow limit expansion, so they aren't equal to Civ4 happiness.

I'm not so sure. Civ 4 happiness limits your growth: When you have unhappy citizens, they don't produce food, to they prevent you from expanding your city. The mechanics haven't been explained yet, but it seems pretty similar to me.

 

[ShahJahanII]

2 An exclusive interview with an unheard of spanish gaming journalism outfit? My bet is on a Spain first look vid on tuesday

The video is dated July 21st, and Ed talks about the American civ as if they hadn't released the First Look America video yet, so I wouldn't bet on this

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The video is dated July 21st, and Ed talks about the American civ as if they hadn't released the First Look America video yet, so I wouldn't bet on this

Indeed. This is leftovers from E3.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It is mentioned that while there are global and regional effects, amenities are still local to each city so it is not a return of global happines system.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I'm not so sure. Civ 4 happiness limits your growth: When you have unhappy citizens, they don't produce food, to they prevent you from expanding your city. The mechanics haven't been explained yet, but it seems pretty similar to me.

The Civ 4 (per my own observations) doesn't limit it directly, but indirectly.

Maybe there's a standard Amentiies per pop requirement. If that number falls below the thereshold you start getting angry citizens, in Civ 4, they refused to work, meaning despite having 12 pop, only about say 10 would actually be working.

We could have a similiar effect here.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

As I understand it:
Citizens will not consume much food if any food at all to maintain but they need food to grow. This mean farms are good for growing cities but not as needed to maintain current pop levels like they have been in previous civ games.

Instead each pop you go over your housing capacity will cost a huge amount of food each turn. This mean housing capacity is more important then food if you want to grow a large city. It have been mentioned that you are likely to replace farms with neighbourhoods in the mid game which make it sound like food is not important to maintain citizens.

Amenities effects growth in some way (maybe each 2 amenities add an extra housing capacity). It also effects things like tourism.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm not so sure. Civ 4 happiness limits your growth: When you have unhappy citizens, they don't produce food, to they prevent you from expanding your city. The mechanics haven't been explained yet, but it seems pretty similar to me.

In Aztec video it was said Aztecs could expand more due to their bonus amenities. That's nothing like Civ4 happiness, which was totally local.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Civ IV resources can be said to be global although only if you could connect all your cities togther. Amenities are local to each city but there are some global and regional influences. Civ IV happines is the same in that way. Religion and civs increase happines globaly in Civ IV.

Likely each city you have give a malues to the amenities of all your cities which is a global effect to a local resource.

Amenities are pretty similar to happines in Civ IV but we do not know what it really does which is more important.

 

[Magil]

And if I hear well, he says most buidings have an upkeep cost

This makes me sad too.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Cities and citizens have upkeep costs as well so why not buildings?

 

[chaosprophet]

Based on what was said in this video, one way I think it could work that would be both local and global:

Luxuries gives amenities to cities that have them improved on it's radius. In addition to that, it would give you a number of that resource, like strategic ones, that can either be traded with others, or distributed as the player wishes between their own cities.

That way amenities would be a global resource that you could choose between giving a bit to many cities to expand and grow overall, or focus them on a few important cities so they grown more.

In this case the main difference would be the player choice. You could build a city in the middle of nowhere for a resource or defensive position, and it won't affect your global pool of amenities if you decide to not send any amenities there, but that city also is unlikely to grown much. Different from 5 that by building a small city somewhere you always will be taking a hit on your global happiness.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Beach said while there is global and regional effects, amenities are a local to each city.

Im not sure how resources work. Likely each resources give amenities to the city who control them as well as a global amenity boost to each of your cities. If they work like strategic resources or you just need a single copy for all your cities I do not know.

To counteract this I assume each city give a global malues to amenities, this way expanding without catching unqiue resources will greatly hurt your empire.

Amenities are maybe more important for tourism then it is for expanding your empire. Maybe the goal are to make large empires poor a tourism and make mid sized empires optimal at tourism.

 

[Magil]

Cities and citizens have upkeep costs as well so why not buildings?

It was a more interesting dynamic when a city's maintenance was based more on population (and # of cities) than buildings, because it meant a highly developed city with a large population would be very profitable but also high-maintenance, while a city with almost no buildings but high population was just a drain. It encouraged development of cities without directly punishing the player for developing them.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

It don't punish players, just make it so that you need to develop the whole economy. You need production to build stuff, gold to maintain stuff and culture/science to unlock stuff.

If you focus to much on one area, your development will suffer.

 

[Haggbart]

As I understand it:
Citizens will not consume much food if any food at all to maintain but they need food to grow. This mean farms are good for growing cities but not as needed to maintain current pop levels like they have been in previous civ games.

Instead each pop you go over your housing capacity will cost a huge amount of food each turn. This mean housing capacity is more important then food if you want to grow a large city. It have been mentioned that you are likely to replace farms with neighbourhoods in the mid game which make it sound like food is not important to maintain citizens.

Amenities effects growth in some way (maybe each 2 amenities add an extra housing capacity). It also effects things like tourism.

It could also be that later in the game farms will give bigger yields (one mentioned possibility is that maybe several citizens can work the same tile, who knows?) or that mid/late game buildings give more food. Probably you will have to balance excess food and housing capacity for optimized growth.

The way food works in terms of maintaining citizens is quite possibly the same as previous Civs, at least there is no info that suggest otherwise.

 

[Magil]

It don't punish players, just make it so that you need to develop the whole economy. You need production to build stuff, gold to maintain stuff and culture/science to unlock stuff.

If you focus to much on one area your development will suffer.

Actually it's the opposite, you end up having higher costs if you build every building. In an ideal world, even with building maintenance, it'd be better to specialize cities towards specific purposes, but it doesn't really work with Civ V's system because the game encourages having very few cities.

It's not a terrible model but I think buildings costing no maintenance while cities have a flat scaling cost based on number/distance is more interesting. It just feels better when buildings are maintenance free, because building them always feels like a net win, which it should be. I just like the model "undeveloped city costs you, developed city profits". While this is somewhat true with both models, it's more true with no maintenance on buildings.

 

[Haggbart]

It don't punish players, just make it so that you need to develop the whole economy. You need production to build stuff, gold to maintain stuff and culture/science to unlock stuff.

If you focus to much on one area, your development will suffer.

In Civ4 maintenence pr. new city worked as an effective way of limiting REX. I think it was way more elegant than global happiness in CiV. Also it makes more sense to me that you were punished for settling cities too fast and in bad spots (Civ 4), rather than every city being free and being punished for developing them (vanilla CiV).

Now it's been said that they want wide empires to succeed, that's cool, but I do hope they have some way of limiting REX. That's why I'm initially disappointed they tied maintenance to buildings/districts rather than cities, because it really did the trick in Civ4.