AspiringScholar
Prince
Hello forum!
Surprisingly, I did not find a thread asking this specific question already (though it's entirely possible I've simply missed it, as it's surely been discussed many times) and the War Academy article doesn't seem to answer it, so apologies if this is in the wrong place and/or is redundant, but here goes:
Is there a formal, specific and known mechanic which determines maintenance costs for number of cities?
Distance from capital (or forbidden palace, assuming that works the same way...) seems to fit this category, with that being the distance from the palace in a straight axis divided by 4.5. However (in my experience at least) distance maintenance tends to be the lessor of the two in terms of significance, as its modifiers which reduce it such as State Property and the Forbidden Palace can be quite significant with the just the former, and totally eliminated with the latter, while the courthouse alone is capped at -50%, and number of cities simply tends to be valued higher in general anyway.
So, I'm aware of the ICN of about 10 on standard maps, the high slope in marginal cost past that, until a "conqueror's paradise" at about 30 and have kept that as a good rule of thumb, but it bothers me slightly that this seems to be entirely inductive. I mean, do we know exactly how this mechanic functions? City placement, timing and amount are crucial elements of strategy, and it can really make or break a winning situation to know in advance how much maintenance an additional city will end up costing me, but it still feels like a raffle from an educated guess. I'd like to be able to get into the specifics like being able to calculate the sufficiency of specific tile working shifts in advance so as to determine when or when not to settle to break even at my same research rate, and so forth, rather than simply knowing that in general I will need more commerce and then finding out after the fact whether or not my tech rate is going to suffer.
So, is there a specific mechanic which can be referenced here, or is it spaghetti code and all we can go off of is the inductively derived rule of thumb?
Thanks to any and all who answer for your time.
Surprisingly, I did not find a thread asking this specific question already (though it's entirely possible I've simply missed it, as it's surely been discussed many times) and the War Academy article doesn't seem to answer it, so apologies if this is in the wrong place and/or is redundant, but here goes:
Is there a formal, specific and known mechanic which determines maintenance costs for number of cities?
Distance from capital (or forbidden palace, assuming that works the same way...) seems to fit this category, with that being the distance from the palace in a straight axis divided by 4.5. However (in my experience at least) distance maintenance tends to be the lessor of the two in terms of significance, as its modifiers which reduce it such as State Property and the Forbidden Palace can be quite significant with the just the former, and totally eliminated with the latter, while the courthouse alone is capped at -50%, and number of cities simply tends to be valued higher in general anyway.
So, I'm aware of the ICN of about 10 on standard maps, the high slope in marginal cost past that, until a "conqueror's paradise" at about 30 and have kept that as a good rule of thumb, but it bothers me slightly that this seems to be entirely inductive. I mean, do we know exactly how this mechanic functions? City placement, timing and amount are crucial elements of strategy, and it can really make or break a winning situation to know in advance how much maintenance an additional city will end up costing me, but it still feels like a raffle from an educated guess. I'd like to be able to get into the specifics like being able to calculate the sufficiency of specific tile working shifts in advance so as to determine when or when not to settle to break even at my same research rate, and so forth, rather than simply knowing that in general I will need more commerce and then finding out after the fact whether or not my tech rate is going to suffer.
So, is there a specific mechanic which can be referenced here, or is it spaghetti code and all we can go off of is the inductively derived rule of thumb?
Thanks to any and all who answer for your time.
