What triggers the city demanding a luxury resource?

[vodka]

I can conjecture that a city would never request a resource, for WLtKD to follow, if that resource is within that city's own reach (even while the tile has yet to be improved), is that right? (And, is that fair? )

Why i'm asking: i'm currently playing my second game in Civ5, first having been the tutorial Play-and-learn thing. I was fairly frustrated during the tutorial game because cities only wanted luxuries that weren't on the map at all. (I haven't finished that game because i shouldn't have started it on unpatched version.) So for my second game i've made a tiny competitionless map in Worldbuilder to make sure i'll immediately have all possible resources, allowing me to see what each of them does and how much they're actually needed. All resources i could fit into the grid of a single city so i spontaneously checked 'One city challenge' in WB's scenario settings, maybe that matters. While playing it i waited many turns before improving any luxurious tiles in hopes that eventually the city requests one and i immediately get the WLtKD following the endless/very long series of it, later i gave up and started improving all tiles, now i've many turns into the game (Industrial era on Quick, trying to go for Science victory) but the city is mute.

So far i only know about WLtKD in Civ5 from Civilopedia and want to actually experience my first one but losing hope to achieve that on this very map. Can someone confirm for sure i'll have to wait until my third game for that? And what's the trigger for the earliest request, is it necessary for a city to be provided at least one/some luxuries, to start looking for more?

Now i regret i've started playing before all major updates are out. I like to learn new games when they're already finalized, and stable.

 

[Bezurn]

Hi welcome to CFC.

I believe a city will only request a resource that it doesn't have access to in its own borders. Often times that means you either need to explore to find a site to put a new city to claim that luxury, or if the map is full of other computer player cities, you'll have to check the diplomacy screen every turn and see if someone gets an extra one to trade for one of your extra, or gold.

WLTKD is a nice bonus to city growth, but more often than not you will be hard pressed to keep all of your cities in your empire sated with what they want. Think of them like quests from a city state and not something you have to fulfill 100% of the time. The bonus is nice, but growing too quickly can lead to unhappiness so take that into consideration.

If you are new to the CiV series I would recommend that you keep playing at difficulties you are comfortable with (level 2-4) so you can learn all of the mechanics. The new patch coming out soon changes a lot of balance issues and adds a few more features. But overall the core game play is unchanged and learning to play with the new patch will only adjust the strategies you take at certain points of the game rather than adjusting to whole new mechanics of game play.