Speculation on Amenity: quantity, and indirect control.

Yeah it would have to do a pretty terrible job at assigning luxes for me to want to do it all myself by hand. Like I said, maybe a simple option to set target happiness in each city with 1 or 2 clicks would be the most I'd want to see.
 
Yeah it would have to do a pretty terrible job at assigning luxes for me to want to do it all myself by hand. Like I said, maybe a simple option to set target happiness in each city with 1 or 2 clicks would be the most I'd want to see.

There's four major cases here:

1. The player owns four (or fewer) cities : Trivial : assign all luxuries to all cities.

The rest of the cases are for a 5+ city empire

2. It's possible for all cities in the empire to have at least plus one amenity compared to what is needed. This is by far the easy case; get every city to +1 and any remaining surplus doesn't matter.

3. It's not possible for every single city in the empire to have plus one amenity, but there's still a few extra ones after making every city content.
In this case, the player's dispute with the manager will be over which city(ies) to give the +10% food yield / +5% non-food yield to and which to leave at standard yield.

4. It's not possible for every single city in the empire to be content. Here the players dispute with the manager would be over which city to get the penalty.
The player will have a bigger dispute with the manager if 2+ short as a human would likely pick a sacrificial city to give nothing at all to ensure all other cities are at least content while the manager by "evening out" everything would cause multiple cities to be discontent.
 
3. It's not possible for every single city in the empire to have plus one amenity, but there's still a few extra ones after making every city content.
In this case, the player's dispute with the manager will be over which city(ies) to give the +10% food yield / +5% non-food yield to and which to leave at standard yield.

4. It's not possible for every single city in the empire to be content. Here the players dispute with the manager would be over which city to get the penalty.
The player will have a bigger dispute with the manager if 2+ short as a human would likely pick a sacrificial city to give nothing at all to ensure all other cities are at least content while the manager by "evening out" everything would cause multiple cities to be discontent.
If it was possible to assign amenities freely, I'm sure it would often be optimal to assign +3 (or whatever it takes to get the max bonus) to some cities, while leaving other cities discontent. Because of this, I doubt they will ever give full control over amenities. I guess the automated assignment of amenities is just something we have to learn to live with, and find other means to manipulate how they are distributed.

Historically there has been empires where the capital is bathing in luxuries while other cities are left suffering, so they could have a social policy that always aims to max out amenities in the capital. I doubt there is one, but there should be one. :)
 
If it was possible to assign amenities freely, I'm sure it would often be optimal to assign +3 (or whatever it takes to get the max bonus) to some cities, while leaving other cities discontent.

From the videos and screen shots I've seen so far the bonuses appear to max out at +1 and similarly penalties appear to max out at -1.
 
Are we 100% certain that second copies of luxuries provide amenities? In the Rome video, while I may have misheard/misunderstood, I took the comment to mean extra copies of amenities are useless and are only for trading, not because they only had 3 cities. Did I miss something? Did he specifically say "because we only have 3 cities"?

This is a big deal because I worry if copies of amenities do not work for additional cities (citiy number 5+), this definitely would affect wide play and possibly create an optimal number of cities or weird strategies like being discussed above, purposely avoiding building housing etc.
 
I wondered this too and, to my surprise, specifically remember hearing something that to me confirmed all but explicitly that multiple copies of the same resource would provide usable amenities. I wish I remembered exactly where and when, I'll have to review the video, if I find anything I'll post it.
 
I wondered this too and, to my surprise, specifically remember hearing something that to me confirmed all but explicitly that multiple copies of the same resource would provide usable amenities. I wish I remembered exactly where and when, I'll have to review the video, if I find anything I'll post it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=14449935#post14449935
I listed the times in that post if you want to check (there were three separate discussions) - during the stream I go the impression that multiple copies will affect cities in groups of four, but listening back I'm not so sure..
 
One of the videos showed them able to sell two copies of the same luxury to the AI.

I doubt the interface would have allowed that if it were impossible for the second copy to benefit the AI.
 
One of the videos showed them able to sell two copies of the same luxury to the AI.

I doubt the interface would have allowed that if it were impossible for the second copy to benefit the AI.


Good catch. This is kind of key.
 
One of the videos showed them able to sell two copies of the same luxury to the AI.

I doubt the interface would have allowed that if it were impossible for the second copy to benefit the AI.
I agree with your conclusion, and that was also the answer I got when I asked here in one of the other threads the other day, but it would be nice with some indisputable confirmation. After asking about it, I realized that having two copies of the same resource count will be a major deviation from the Civ5 approach where the +4 flat global bonus is very much equivalent to +1 in four cities. Of course, they might well have decided to deviate from the Civ5 mechanism (it does seem like the more logical design and you still have a cap on benefits from each resource in that it can't exceed your number of cities), but it would be nice with a confirmation.

Meanwhile, I would bet a fair amount of money that it will only be a short while before people start complaining about the automatic allocation. Some sort of ability to prioritize cities would probably be a handy tool. I do agree that putting one city at +3 while others are at -1 or -2 would be a bit abusive (albeit not necessarily unrealistic - and it could be balanced by applying extra penalties in the cities being snuffed). But one could put a priority to which cities one wants to be happy/content first in case of an uneven distribution, and system could make it so that difference was never more than one.
 
The way I see it, each resource benefits only 4 cities. So if you have 8 cities, then you need 2 luxury resources to ensure that all 8 cities recieve amenities from that resource.
 
The way I see it, each resource benefits only 4 cities. So if you have 8 cities, then you need 2 luxury resources to ensure that all 8 cities recieve amenities from that resource.

I like how different threads reach different conclusions. In this thread most people assume additional copies of luxury resource give additional amenities, while in strategic resources thread, most later post agree what it's likely the additional copies don't provide more amenities and could be sold freely :)

While I strongly belief the latter, I understand the wording used by developers isn't very clear and we have to wait for let's play videos to close the question.
 
After asking about it, I realized that having two copies of the same resource count will be a major deviation from the Civ5 approach where the +4 flat global bonus is very much equivalent to +1 in four cities. Of course, they might well have decided to deviate from the Civ5 mechanism

I note that the exact benefit of luxuries hasn't exactly constant in the series:

Various models here:
Civ I / II : Each luxury type provides a bonus of one to every single city in the empire.

Civ III: Each luxury type provides a bonus of one to cities without market places in the empire. To cities with market places, the bonus increased the more unique luxuries were already present.

Civ IV: Each luxury type directly provided a bonus of one to every city in the empire. But cities that had the correct building got an additional bonus.

Civ V: Each luxury type increased global happiness by 5 (CD release) / 4 (after one of the early balance patches.)

Also keep in mind that a major design goal for Civ VI is to eliminate the 4 city turtle while not returning to the massive REX of Civ III.

In my opinion, Ed Beach was talking about this CURRENT situation; he only had 3 cities; and even at the end of the video post conquest of the Greek city that was his primary objective he was still at 4 cities. In addition the main thing he wanted was that Germany not DOW him until after the successful conclusion of his planned war with Greece and apparently having an active trade helps.
 
Jon, you mention in this thread a video where they were able to trade multiple copies of a luxury on the trade screen - do you happen to remember which video and what time that was? I want to believe you are correct about luxury copies so badly.
 
I imagine the automated luxury distribution will just give the luxury to the four cities with the lowest amenities with the order of when they were founded breaking ties.
 
Jon, you mention in this thread a video where they were able to trade multiple copies of a luxury on the trade screen - do you happen to remember which video and what time that was? I want to believe you are correct about luxury copies so badly.

In this Marbozir video, you can see when he clicks the 2 ivory on the trade screen, it puts both into the trade window and he had to adjust it back down to 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6doJ5mXXfuE&t=19m40s

I don't think there is an example of an actual trade of two luxuries. This just shows the interface allows it, at least in that build.
 
Back
Top Bottom