To few strategic resources?

[dturtle1]

Okay.... So i just rewatched the parts of the video to do with the amenities and no, they didnt outright say multiple copies of the same luxe will give amenities to more than 4 cities. Though i feel it was implied, especially when you consider the original conversation happened after Frederick asked to buy this extra luxe. Maybe if they had 5-8 cities the answer would have be no. It seems incredibly illogical to say that one amenity can only be used in four cities and if you have an extra copy and 8 cities those other 4 cities can't benefit at all. So if you have 10 cotton farms only 4 cities can benefit at any one time...because reasons. Where is the Logic in that ?

It is easy to recognise implication when the alternative is preposterous. The system, as i have outlined, works beautifully. Each copy of Luxe can affect up to 4 Cities, you have more cities you need more copies of that luxe. I apologise if i came across as a little bit rude and condescending, i dont deal with illogical premises very well and breaking luxes into discrete pieces but not being able to build on these pieces with copies is illogical. If it is as you describe, Ed Beech is gonna cop soo much flack for this.

"Hey man check out my Cotton Shirt, you should get one"
"Thats Lit man, though i cant , Cotton is not available in my city"
"What!!, Dont we have the biggest Cotton Industry in the World?"
"Yeah but it is only allowed in 4 Cities, the rest need to be traded for a couple of pieces of gold and an umbrella because.......reasons"
"that is just stoopid"

 

[rastak]

"Our immortal leader said he's working on getting new stuff"

I actually do agree that it would be good to simply be able to hang on to multiple copies for that. As always, if not it's simply an abstracted system.

 

[Oleary]

Okay.... So i just rewatched the parts of the video to do with the amenities and no, they didnt outright say multiple copies of the same luxe will give amenities to more than 4 cities. Though i feel it was implied, especially when you consider the original conversation happened after Frederick asked to buy this extra luxe. Maybe if they had 5-8 cities the answer would have be no. It seems incredibly illogical to say that one amenity can only be used in four cities and if you have an extra copy and 8 cities those other 4 cities can't benefit at all. So if you have 10 cotton farms only 4 cities can benefit at any one time...because reasons. Where is the Logic in that ?

It is easy to recognise implication when the alternative is preposterous. The system, as i have outlined, works beautifully. Each copy of Luxe can affect up to 4 Cities, you have more cities you need more copies of that luxe. I apologise if i came across as a little bit rude and condescending, i dont deal with illogical premises very well and breaking luxes into discrete pieces but not being able to build on these pieces with copies is illogical. If it is as you describe, Ed Beech is gonna cop soo much flack for this.

"Hey man check out my Cotton Shirt, you should get one"
"Thats Lit man, though i cant , Cotton is not available in my city"
"What!!, Dont we have the biggest Cotton Industry in the World?"
"Yeah but it is only allowed in 4 Cities, the rest need to be traded for a couple of pieces of gold and an umbrella because.......reasons"
"that is just stoopid"

While I agree your system is more logical, my impression was that Stealth is correct. If that's the case, it's going to take a (major?) retune to change it to your system. I hope we're wrong and you're right though. It just makes more sense...

 

[homan1983]

If they only limit you to 1 lux per civ, it might be considered a warmonger penalty, since you would be able to trade your extra luxes with other civs if they likes you and you weren't conquering the world but you'd be stuck with them if everyone was at war with you or hated you.

 

[Stilgar08]

I'm with you on this one, dturtle1.
I watched the vid twice and I understand it exactly as you did. And the "ministry of Luxury" or whatever decides on every turn, which cities get the benefits of the amenities available based on certain priorities (size and necessity being at least two).
To me any other form of distribution makes no sense. So if you have 4 or less cities one ressource is enough if you have 5 or more cities you might need two of the ressources to get the amenity-bonus for city 5,6,7 and so on.
To me this is an awesome system because there's another heavy decision to make; since it all takes place on the local city-level you might have more cities but won't need your 2nd tea-resource for amenities, because you have enough amenities without luxury-bonus everywhere. Makes much more sense and gameplaywise is much easier! So you gotta decide do I keep it in case my cities grow "too fast" to have a buffer or do I trade them. Cool.

In general I love the housing and amenities-system after the playthrough yesterday. So many possible ways to get the needes figures and so many possible implications to take into account!

 

[Paramecium]

I seriously hope not that one luxury can only support four cities and some extra copies of it are useless for yourself. It would be the same BS like in CiV so you just get more disadvantages with a wider playstyle because you have less possibilities to get a bigger population in your cities.

Sure it is fine with a tall play style, but the other way around would support that playstyle as well. If you just have four cities you want to have a bigger variety of luxuries, but if you go wider, you want to have as much as possible of the same type.

F.E: You have 3 tea ressources. If you play tall with just 4 cities you can have without some other amenities sources 4 cities with 5 pop plus 6 possible pop if you trade those extra copies for other luxuries. But if you go wider you can support up to 12 cities with 5 pop.
If only one luxury is useable for 4 cities you have to trade the others and hope that your department of luxuries will do a fine job.

Im quite unsure if I like that ...


But back to the original topic of strategic ressources. The fact that UU dont need any ressources might make those way more important for civs which have no UU at the time a neighbor has its UU. Especially in the case of the swordmen. If the AI on higher difficulties will spam you with f.e. legions, you need a big amount of iron for yourself to defend you quite decent or you need a tech advantage in science to getter better units or civics to get your corps earlier.

Btw, will a corp or an army need 2 or 3 (4 or 6) units of ressources to be created if you build them directly? Should be the case, if you normally fuse two units together. Or maybe you get a refund of the used ressources?

And it is all depending on the case, if every more modern unit need some kind of strategy ressources. The musketmen need niter, but what about the pikemen and their higher unit line upgrades? So you might be forced to still use totally outdated units because you dont have (enough) ressources to get the better ones?

It is already interesting that the line of Heavy Chariot -> Knight -> Tank will switch from No Ressources needed -> Iron needed -> Oil needed. Same seems to be the case of Warrior (No ressource) -> Swordman (iron) -> Musketman (niter) -> Infrantry (No ressource).

This might get a huge advantage to those civs which have a UU in those lines for a Unit which needs strategic ressources to be build compared to other civs which dont have any in those lines or just a replacement for unit which doesnt need a ressource at all. F.e. if you have a UU which replaces the musketman you can mass produce them and upgrade them all at once (if you have enough money) compared to others who can just upgrade one or two units at once through this lines.

Maybe this might be the reason why the AI can still have ancient/classical era units when the game itself already reached the industrial/modern era like in the Kongo show case. (But seriously I still hope that that was on a very easy difficulty ...).

But I think we might get the answers to it next week when the next round of LPs is starting ...

 

[stealth_nsk]

I've sent question to Ed and Pete in Twitter. Waiting...

 

[Seek]

I went back and listened to all three discussions regarding luxuries, at 22:00, 31:15 and 41:50, and I'm starting to think Stealth might be right (though it pains me to say so). Particularly the bit at 31:15 seems to imply that additional luxuries don't get allocated to cities when >4.

 

[Tomice]

I went back and listened to all three discussions regarding luxuries, at 22:00, 31:15 and 41:50, and I'm starting to think Stealth might be right (though it pains me to say so). Particularly the bit at 31:15 seems to imply that additional luxuries don't get allocated to cities when >4.

Right, they say it would be hard to provide amenities for 20 cities, because your luxuries get spread thin. They probably would have mentioned additional copies at this point if it was a solution.

I really don't like this but I can understand the advantages:

- It helps to make tall empires viable
- It counters ICS strategies (infinite city spam)
- makes trading less of a hassle (you don't have to keep track of the ever-changing number of copies you need - just keep one)

Still, it's tough to swallow for a realism lover like me...

"Hey man check out my Cotton Shirt, you should get one"
"Thats Lit man, though i cant , Cotton is not available in my city"
"What!!, Dont we have the biggest Cotton Industry in the World?"
"Yeah but it is only allowed in 4 Cities, the rest need to be traded for a couple of pieces of gold and an umbrella because.......reasons"
"that is just stoopid"

Exactly

____________________________________________


Back to the initial topic of strategic resources:
I also believe that 2 copies of iron provide all the iron you need, any additional copy would only be useful for trading.

First of all, the tooltip with either 1 or 2 strategic ressources (depending on whether the city has an encampment) would not make sense otherwise.
If the additional iron would be permanently consumed, no one would ever want to build swordsmen in non-encampment cities - it would feel like a huge mistake, making you want to delete the miscreated unit ASAP (considering how scarce iron seems to be).
Secondly, the gameplay vids suggest that the average civ will only be able to grab 1-3 sources of iron with just 1 iron per source. This makes it even less likely that we'll need up to two iron per unit.

I firmly believe that this system applies:

- No iron, no special units.
- 1 source: you may produce them, but only in cities with encampment (representing rare elite units)
- 2 sources: you have a strong iron industry and can afford to equip large parts of your army with it.
- 3+ sources: your iron industry is so strong that you may even trade it away while still fielding lots of well-armed units.

This would make the bonus some civs get (UU's don't need a strategic resource) more reasonable balance-wise.
It would also help making trade simpler to understand (keep one of each luxury and two of each strategic resource, the rest is for trading).

 

[dturtle1]

Ahh , Tomice but there is good news...

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.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=575534

Giving us faith that logic may still prevail
Also, that saying could be interpreted as the number of your copies get spread thin, implying that number of City size is reliant on Copies, whilst population size is reliant on uniques
and no, there is no advantages it is silly and impossible to abstract realism out of... Okay you got me on the Trading part but how hard is it to divide your number of cities by 4 , maybe we get a nice color change on the text letting us know if it is okay to sell.

 

[Josephias]

Normally, logic should prevail. They are trying to avoid overcomplicating things (thus, the automatic distribution too).

It's an easy rule to follow if:

- Max luxury ammenities you can get in a single city is the number of different luxuries you have.
- Max luxury ammenities you (well, the luxury department) can distribute around your empire is 4*[number of luxury resources worked and traded in], unless first rule is contradicted.

Then, for the tea case, the max luxury ammenities you can use in your cities is 1 (only tea). Therefore, if you have already 1 copy worked (4) and 3 cities, you have more luxury ammenities that you can use. Working a second tea resource will not help with more ammenities, as all cities are to the max level you can get, if you don't find a second luxury resource.

 

[Paramecium]

Hm, I have watched those 3 scences where they are talking about the luxuries again and I have to admit, that it really sounds like, 1 luxury - 4 amenities, that's it. So it is back to lux brokering like in CiV.

That is a bit disappointing for me to be honest. But with that, they will hold your empires smaller then necessary. But it is far more "fair" then in CiV, where 1 lux gave 4 happiness, which was completly eaten by every new found city. Now you can found cities "for free" if they dont get to pop 3.

Just a small question, can you build your first district directly or does your city need to be grown to pop 3? Im quite unsure atm.

But never the less, I think it is still exploitable. England for example can just found a lot of little coast cities, just let them be at 2 pop and build everywhere the harbor districts. So it can assume a big number of trade routes (plus additional gold from royal dockyards on other continents) and use those trade routes to push it's core city to huge numbers.

Same might go for Germany to pump out of lot of hanses and commercial hubs, so they get a lot of little cities which are so lala in terms of production to rail up a big number of units after a couple of turns. Or use the free production to pump it in district projects ...

Brazil can do the same with the carneval district, it can spam a lot of little cities, which all can get to pop 4. In addition with their amazonas bonus, it can be very potent. You found a good jungle spot which can support a couple of max +6 yields, found cities around it, build your campus/theatre/holy/commercial district and your free carneval district and get those awesome yields for quite free. Maybe those cities can get even bigger, depending on how entertainment districts support other cities.

So in fact, with that 4 amenities only per 1 type of lux, it is a limiter for wide playstyle. You still can use your extra copies to trade it, so you it would be in fact no difference where the amenites for the 5th, 6th ... cities is coming from.
But in my opinion, that doesnt solve the issue with the city spam and prefers highly those civs with free districts.

But the most annoying part in CiV was always when you had an extra copy of a lux and you wanted to trade it with the AI, but because of unfortune trade durations, it could be the case, that an AI which hasnt improved its lux in time when you already sold one copy traded it to someone else and you needed to look almost every round which AI had a second copy of sth you didnt have. That was very annoying.

Sure, if you focus on a tall empire, it is easier to do. But with a wider empire the turn time is increasing and if you miss your chance to trade an extra copy to get the same effect like it would to if the second copy would support the cities 5-8, that can be annoying.


But there is still hope. They said that Civ 6 will be the easiest to mod so far and those two points, the extra copies of amenities and the distribution might come with a mod. The only question would be, would it that drastically changed the gameplay ...


EDIT:

Just gave it a second thought. The fact that 1 lux only gives 4 amenities in total for your civ is cribbling wider playstyle in that case, that you cant have bigger "core" cities (your first 4 f.e.) and little to medium additional cities. If you have 3 lux ressources of one type and 8 cities, only 4 will get the amenity and 2 copies are unused. You can sell both to the AI to get 4 cities 2 amenities and 4 just one (in case all of them are growing). But the problem comes in, if you cant trade your luxuries for others, it is a limiter for further cities. For example you expanded to 12 cities, still have your 3 lux of one type, but you can only trade one, 4 cities will have no benefit.

Worst case is, when you have 8 cities, still your 3 lux of one type, but you just can trade one of it, all your cities just get 1 amenity. Would every city can use 1 amenity from every luxury ressource available, all your 8 cities would get 1 amenity and 4 of it an additional one ...

So it is really hurting city founding/conquering and on the other side, very pushing the Montezuma's LUA...

 

[rastak]

I believe you need 3 pop for your first district unless you have a special ability.

 

[skyclad]

They would just make the 4-city mega-empire a no brainer if thats what they meant. I don't interpret it that way when watching and I dont think they would make such a strange choice. They don't clarify it enough to be sure but until they explicitly say so I don't think its correct that luxes only work in 4 cities period.

I also noticed the lack of strategic resources. I really never considered it might be like one poster said above that 1 (or 2 without the appropriate district) copy might be enough for an entire army. It would be interesting but a bit strange decision, this is one way civ5 actually did it right.
Also worth noting is that none of the unique units require a strategic resource.

 

[eso12por8]

Pardon my confusion, however is there not a difference between strategic resources & luxury resources, or are they counted as one in the same? The lines are getting blurred in the conversation, as I'm unsure if I've ever seen a city beg for cattle or iron. I may be wrong though.

Luxury resources I could understand an advantage of having more to maintain happiness & to trade with neighborhoods. Some nations are known for particular resources, & it makes no sense to me why those would be limited to only 4 cities.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Pardon my confusion, however is there not a difference between strategic resources & luxury resources, or are they counted as one in the same? The lines are getting blurred in the conversation, as I'm unsure if I've ever seen a city beg for cattle or iron. I may be wrong though.

Luxury resources I could understand an advantage of having more to maintain happiness & to trade with neighborhoods. Some nations are known for particular resources, & it makes no sense to me why those would be limited to only 4 cities.

There's a difference. Luxury resources provide amenities while strategic resources allow building specific units. But we don't know some details.

 

[Silverdawn]

And cattle is a "Bonus" resource so neither a luxury or strategic resource.

 

[eso12por8]

There's a difference. Luxury resources provide amenities while strategic resources allow building specific units. But we don't know some details.

That's what I thought. To speak to the original intent, if one iron mine produces only one iron unit, it's gonna take a lot of tiles to get a sizable army out. I think they should have quantities like in previous games. If they felt the need to specify unique units don't require resources, it indicates to me that the strategic resources themselves are being saved for those units which require it. I don't see how civs with later special units benefit from having only one or two swordsmen.

 

[gunnergoz]

Less than one month out and still so many mysteries about actual game mechanics. Either they are still balancing & writing code (rules) or they just want to torment the fan base.

 

[Olleus]

Less than one month out and still so many mysteries about actual game mechanics. Either they are still balancing & writing code (rules) or they just want to torment the fan base.

Or the marketing team and gaming journalist (rightly) believe that almost nobody cares about stuff like that, and wont base their decision to buy the game or not on it.