The value of +1 Amenity

[nrh]

What would you objectively value +1 amenity in a trade, excluding all other factors? Please poll.

What reasoning do you base it off of? Please comment.

I'm doing research now but I'm having a hard time concluding. I've already concluded 1 food = 1 production = 2 gold. I added "OR" in case someone disagrees with that analysis. So find something you agree with in the polling choices and select it.

I really need help with this because I'm a numbers guy.

please note that in an objective standpoint, the general cost of producing something is 1/4 the price in gold. which makes gold half as valued as I calculate. but this is probably because gold is a currency and is probably more abundant but the overall basis calculated from resources places me at 1 prod = 1 food = 2 gold.

I'll be back to poll my choice once I do some research or if you good people come up with a convincing calculation

 

[Sostratus]

please note that in an objective standpoint, the general cost of producing something is 1/4 the price in gold. which makes gold half as valued as I calculate. but this is probably because gold is a currency and is probably more abundant but the overall basis calculated from resources places me at 1 prod = 1 food = 2 gold.

The tile/resource system is almost perfect in how 1 science=1 culture =1 faith =3 gold; 1 food=1 prod =2 gold. Except citrus which gives +2 food when it should be +1.5. Arbitrage, lads!
Gold buying, of course, allows you to unlock the time value of having something right here right now and I think they set rush buys to 1:4 as essentially a 50% penalty to account for the "time value of money."

On amenities:
The problem is it varies so much depending on how many cities you have.
1 amenity satisfies 2 pops; if they an extra amenity they become happy and give you +5% non food yields.
+1 more amenity after that is another +5% non food yields.
+1 more amenity after that doesn't grant extra yields.
negative amenities affects loyalty but doesn't touch yields unless people really get pissed, I don't think. Not sure.

But if you abstract, an empire with X population and Y amenities, will be able to support 2 more pops at the same productivity level it is at now, ceteris paribus.
What are 2 pops' of output worth? 8 food/prod yield together or so for most of the game if they are working an improved tile. (2 base for the tile, 2 for the improvement. Early game more worked tiles are bonus/lux resources, late game improvements give more but by then amenities aren't so big a deal.) Less the 4 food and 2 housing to support both of them, maybe a net of 2 yield each? So... 4 gold equivalent?

Okay, well, what's the cost of providing amenities the hard way - entertainment complexes?
Early game 1 EC is worth 2 amenities w/ arena. You could have built another district instead. What could that district have given you?
There's an important point I want to make: I am 99% sure the original CH buildings gave 4/6/8, and they nerfed it to 3/5/7 before release.
I also think campuses were 2/3/4 but they buffed Uni and Labs. My point is I think the original plan was 2/3/4 yields for district buildings with gold at 2:1, and then they tweaked it because of game realities.

Anyways, using the t1 building yield as being worth 4 gold, and the district adj as being worth 4 gold (2ish adjacency yield for most stuff) then that's 8 total gold equivalent you could have gotten instead of that EC+arena. Making 1 amenity 4 gold or so.
Late game an EC is worth 6 amenities if powered (tricky because of auras but hey.) A fully built powered other district provides: 4 gold equiv for adj, buildings 4/6/8 in RF, but in GS that t3 is more like (4+8) gold equivalent. So, what's that- 26 gold? Still about 4 gold per amenity.

So I would say about 4 gold in most situations. Like any yield, if you really lack it, it becomes more valuable, and the contrapositive.

 

[Victoria]

negative amenities affects loyalty but doesn't touch yields unless people really get pissed, I don't think. Not sure.

As if by magic, the noble @Sostratus questions life and gains insight.

 

[Sostratus]

As if by magic,

Now this table is interesting. I thought for sure Ecstatic was +2. Look at that Unrest/Revolt Penalty. Ouch!
The fact that the levels are 2 amenities wide, though, makes this much more static when dealing with a +1 amenity situation.
+1 amenity per city is like +2.5% yield if you're between -4 and +2 to start with. I have no clue how to value that properly.*

*Well, we could attempt to draw comparisons to policy cards or wonders but those aren't balanced so it's a crapshoot. If it saves you from empire wide revolt then it's worth all the dollars.

 

[Infixo]

You can't compare it to 3 yields at the same time because you assume that their relation in value is known, which is only technically true. I say technically because in Yields table all yields have Value = 1.0, except Gold which is 0.5.
But everyone knows that their actual values from gameplay perspective are not the same (i.e. 1 food in fact is not worth the same as 1 prod or 1 science, etc.) and changes depending on your needs and game situation.

 

[Sostratus]

You can't compare it to 3 yields at the same time

That's where you're wrong, kiddo
/end bad meme attempt

I suspect @nrh is attempting do what many of us try to do - try to express all the yields in terms of a common denominator, first with food and prod and gold, and inevitably take a stab and housing and amenities.
We can go further and try to determine what the designers intended the ratios to be so we can better understand the game. Obviously whoever did resource yields and whoever did building yields... didn't coordinate as much as they should have.
I think the resource yields are a better representation of the game design than the district building yields, though. It's like the combat units. If we can understand the principles they probably designed around, even if the implementation wasn't so good, it's a great starting point to figure out what would be easiest to change to make things work better.
Let's say we realize science is worth more than production unit for unit. Does that mean we should buff the output of the IZ? Nerf the campus? What was used as the axiom for setting the system down originally?
Etc.

 

[Infixo]

@Sostratus I didn’t say that other yields are bad representauon, etc. I clearly said that you can’t compare to 3 at the same time because it implies that 1 food = 1 prod = 2 gold.
Ofc, you may truly believe that 1 food = 1 prod, but then... my opinion is different.

 

[nrh]

that's why i put OR instead of =.
Pick a baseline and choose it in the polling options. no = is in the topic so none is assumed.

 

[UWHabs]

The value of "1 amenity" to me varies too much to give it a definite value. If you take a mid-average point of the game and 1 city. Say the city gets the following yields:
-15 production per turn
-12 science per turn (ie. 4 from pop, +2 campus, +2 library, +4 uni)
-8 culture per turn (ie. 2-3 from pop, +2 monument, then either TS/amphi, or a great work, or some tile improvements)
-30 gold per turn (CH, Harbor, tile improvements, etc...)
Ignore food and faith for now. Basically, if that +1 amenity takes you from -1 to 0, from 0 to +1, or from +2 to +3, then it's worth:
0.75 production
0.6 science
0.4 culture
1.5 gold

Given that I would say 90%+ of the time I'm between -1 and +3 amenities per city, it means that 3/4 of the time this extra amenity gives me the above (and if I am at +4 or higher, then I can often trade a luxury resource away for 6-12 gpt anyways). To me, I would clearly rather have the above bonus rather than a flat yield, so to me, for example, I should rather choose a Stupa as holy site building over any other choice (save perhaps the ones that give separate bonuses).

Now, when talking trade, if I deal for a luxury, then based on the above, it gives me 4 amenities to use, of which most likely 3 will help a city out. So that means that on average, trading for a luxury is giving me:
2.5 production
2 science
1.5 culture
5 gold
give or take. So in theory, I should probably be willing to pay about 15 gpt for a luxury if I really need it. Now, in reality, I often won't pay that because most of the time I would rather opt for a more permanent solution to my amenity issues, and plus because of the algorithms, I can't guarantee that this luxury is going to hit the 4 cities that need it. If all it does is move 4 tundra cities from +1 to +2, then it's worth almost nothing to me. Plus, giving 15 gpt to someone else you have to factor in the net gain on their end, does that give them more that they can use for something else, etc... Plus, the simple fact that I hate to trade for a luxury and then half the time realize I already get it from a city-state, or have it just outside my territory.

 

[Sostratus]

I didn’t say that other yields are bad representauon, etc. I clearly said that you can’t compare to 3 at the same time because it implies that 1 food = 1 prod = 2 gold.

I know what you mean, I was just joshing with you

So in theory, I should probably be willing to pay about 15 gpt for a luxury if I really need it.

Interesting... not too far off the 4gpt figure I was hypothesizing. If the game was very well balanced, then multiple methods should lead to the same or similar outcome.

 

[Victoria]

A % of a city is turn dependent. So an amenity at turn 50 is likely worth 0,5 production while at T200 it is likely worth 2 production but ... it depends so much on the city as well. If you have 25 pop 6 citties it is unlikely to make much difference as they will likely be happy. Also if it does make a diffrerence it will be minor. A pop 25 city on the other hand could benefit somewhat.
You cannot choose where you place that amenity. It is likley to make a 5% difference but could make a 0% difference. One thing is known, it will affect a low happiness city as it is a global amenity.
So it is a sliding value based on turn time and city size and also your play style. If you like to play with all happy cities then thats quite different to wavering on the edge of 0
Also a lux cannot be valued as a single prod value because it is not a one time unit but a construct that provides X per turn. So the value has to be multiplied by the turns.

At the beginning of the game you should be selling your luxes and at the end of the game you should not be selling your last of a lux.
At the start of the game an amenity is worth less than 1 which is the combined values of all of the 5%'s. Selling a lux at the beginning of the game seems to have dropped from 6GPT to 5GPT +10... so 1 lux is now worth roughly 40 gold over 30 turns which is not even 1 prod ... so I would say at the start of the game it is fair to say a lux is at most 1 prod or 3 gold.
The end of the game is another matter but if we used the straight x4 scaling then 4 prod or 12 gold... you will not get this in a trade deal late but on the flip side there is value in buying luxes you do not have late.
But once again size of city and personality of player are variables in this.
It is the best I can surmize with some random thoughts and a glass of wine in my hand.

 

[Aristos]

Has anyone here ever had a rebellion?

 

[nrh]

A % of a city is turn dependent. So an amenity at turn 50 is likely worth 0,5 production while at T200 it is likely worth 2 production but ... it depends so much on the city as well. If you have 25 pop 6 citties it is unlikely to make much difference as they will likely be happy. Also if it does make a diffrerence it will be minor. A pop 25 city on the other hand could benefit somewhat.
You cannot choose where you place that amenity. It is likley to make a 5% difference but could make a 0% difference. One thing is known, it will affect a low happiness city as it is a global amenity.
So it is a sliding value based on turn time and city size and also your play style. If you like to play with all happy cities then thats quite different to wavering on the edge of 0
Also a lux cannot be valued as a single prod value because it is not a one time unit but a construct that provides X per turn. So the value has to be multiplied by the turns.

At the beginning of the game you should be selling your luxes and at the end of the game you should not be selling your last of a lux.
At the start of the game an amenity is worth less than 1 which is the combined values of all of the 5%'s. Selling a lux at the beginning of the game seems to have dropped from 6GPT to 5GPT +10... so 1 lux is now worth roughly 40 gold over 30 turns which is not even 1 prod ... so I would say at the start of the game it is fair to say a lux is at most 1 prod or 3 gold.
The end of the game is another matter but if we used the straight x4 scaling then 4 prod or 12 gold... you will not get this in a trade deal late but on the flip side there is value in buying luxes you do not have late.
But once again size of city and personality of player are variables in this.
It is the best I can surmize with some random thoughts and a glass of wine in my hand.

Thanks, using some of your theory I think I'm going to conclude that for longterm investors making permanent trades for 1 amenity (which is what this thread is about) the Amenity is worth about 10-12 gold. Excellent, that is really helpful. I think it's a very close approximation, also. So about 6 food per turn or 12 gold per turn if you want to be liberal about your trades. I'll think about it some more but that's got to be extremely close. I cast my vote for 10!

 

[Elhoim]

Has anyone here ever had a rebellion?

Something negative happening to the player in Civ VI? Preposterous!

No, I don't think I was even close the that. My cities are always Happy or ecstatic. It's extremely easy to do so. At really, really worse, displeased. I don't there are even enough negative modifiers to reach -7.

 

[Victoria]

I don't there are even enough negative modifiers to reach -7.

A 17 pop city with all amenities gone.
WW only affects you as much as amenities could so just stop your cities at 10.

 

[Stilgar08]

Has anyone here ever had a rebellion?

In my first or second ever
ever CiVI vanilla game I had it once... 2 years ago...

 

[Victoria]

My cities are always Happy or ecstatic.

TBH I really only care with regard to loyalty when on the March. If I lose Coliseum it is the culture I really miss.

 

[Pietato]

Other - it cannot be rated so easily.

Firaxis really need to make positive and negative amenities have a greater impact.

 

[Victoria]

Other - it cannot be rated so easily.

Firaxis really need to make positive and negative amenities have a greater impact.

What do you mean by negative amenities?
If your city has negative amenities it is disloyal and stops producing so much.
In this table Happiness table They should not have pushed revolt down to -6/7 it is way too low. There should be a chance of revolt at -3/4

 

[Pietato]

What do you mean by negative amenities?
If your city has negative amenities it is disloyal and stops producing so much.
In this table Happiness table They should not have pushed revolt down to -6/7 it is way too low

'Greater impact'.

Oh, it quoted your edit. Crazy. Yeah, negative amenities need to do more.