What's the pro of having resources not shared among cities ?

[Jabulani]

I can't find an answer beside that this news leads to unecessary micromanagement and trade route madness.

Could you please briefly tell me why you see it as a good news ?

Thx

 

[Tomice]

Could you specify? I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Luxuries? Strategic resources?

 

[Jabulani]

Could you specify? I'm not sure what you're talking about.
Luxuries? Strategic resources?

F.i luxuries.

I do not know if strategic reasources behave the same, f.i uranium.

 

[Siptah]

The department of luxuries will take care of the micromanagement. It's not even sure that you can do it yourself. It's explained in the Rome/Kongo live stream. However, I hope you can set priorities which cities should not get amenities (first two pop don't need amenities), and which should always be happy if possible. That way a spread out empire with many small cities does not cripple your core cities.

 

[Big J Money]

Here's my opinion.

1) It's a limitation on expansion. In order to keep your people... "amenified", you need to collect copies of luxes
2) It means multiple copies of a lux are just as valuable as one copy, depending on the size of your empire. If you're going for a small 4 city empire, you can trade away all duplicate copies of a lux, or you don't need to focus on finding extras. If you're going to have a larger empire, you need to work a little harder, but duplicates will help with this

Edit: I see it as a good thing because I think this is a more enjoyable and clear limitation on expansion than the science and culture tax of Civ V. I also like that duplicate luxes are now very valuable. I kinda hated that I constantly would forget to trade away my duplicate luxes if the other civs didn't contact me to make trade agreements.

PS -- Oh and this is slightly easier to calculate (IMO) than the global/local happiness penalties in Civ V. Now it's a simple thing of: every copy of a lux can add 1 amenity to 4 cities.

 

[Jabulani]

Here's my opinion.

1) It's a limitation on expansion. In order to keep your people... "amenified", you need to collect copies of luxes
2) It means multiple copies of a lux are just as valuable as one copy, depending on the size of your empire. If you're going for a small 4 city empire, you can trade away all duplicate copies of a lux, or you don't need to focus on finding extras. If you're going to have a larger empire, you need to work a little harder, but duplicates will help with this

Edit: I see it as a good thing because I think this is a more enjoyable and clear limitation on expansion than the science and culture tax of Civ V. I also like that duplicate luxes are now very valuable. I kinda hated that I constantly would forget to trade away my duplicate luxes if the other civs didn't contact me to make trade agreements.

Your opinions to me sound correct, but they explain the matter as a kind of limitation to the expansion, which imo is correct, but I do not see any playabilty advantage over civ v, there seems to be more tedious tasks to manage each city luxury this way, imo

 

[Big J Money]

What version of Civ was your first one? My experience with 4X games have been that with no limitations on expansion there are some gameplay problems.

- A player that has more territory than another turns into a steamroller that can't be stopped
- Games always boil down to the same goal: expand as rapidly as possible using whatever means, and this becomes the "best" way to play for a win

Civ is a game that has other victory conditions besides expansion (religion, culture) so it does well to balance the mechanics around expansion to keep the above things from happening.

Remember that balancing around expansion doesn't have to mean expansion is inferior, if the devs tweak things properly. Balance means it's an equally feasible method.

 

[Haggbart]

Your opinions to me sound correct, but they explain the matter as a kind of limitation to the expansion, which imo is correct, but I do not see any playabilty advantage over civ v, there seems to be more tedious tasks to manage each city luxury this way, imo

As long as luxuries are distributed automatically and by a simple rule (least happy city first), there is no "tedious task". You just need to remember the rule.

You can argue that keeping track on ammenties/city is more demanding than happiness/civ, but at least you do not run into a stone wall at -1 happiness. And luxuries serving a limited number of cities also create an alternative use for more instances of the same luxury instead of trade being the only right option.

 

[mitsho]

Luxuries (at least in the form of unimproved ones we have so far) also have the benefit of being on the map compared to other road blockers. It enhances trade, diplomacy and infrastructure, but of course it needs the caveat of being simple and not tedious. We will see I guess

 

[Lucius_]

Not sure how it's tedious. I do not think it's meant to be micromanaged at all. Luxuries are pretty much Step 1: Connect luxury with builder. Step 2: There is no step 2.

There are things you can do to go out of your way to try to control how they are distributed, but if that is what someone is going to do, it may just be better to not have more than 4 cities. As long as you have 4 cities or less, you don't even need to think about luxuries, other than maybe diplo trades.

 

[Big J Money]

Yeah, there's no step 2 and that's the nice thing. Maybe it's more like this though.

Step 0: Figure out how many luxes you probably need
Step 1: Connect luxuries with builder

Actually there is one possible downside. Let's say I have 4 unique luxuries (maybe 2 copies of 2 of them). Now let's say I have a city that's only getting 3 amenities from luxes. How do I figure out which of the 2 I need a 2nd copy of? If I get the one that this city is already benefiting from, then it will do me no good there. So here's to hoping the tooltip will point out which luxes the city is using.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Yeah, there's no step 2 and that's the nice thing. Maybe it's more like this though.

Step 0: Figure out how many luxes you probably need
Step 1: Connect luxuries with builder

Actually there is one possible downside. Let's say I have 4 unique luxuries (maybe 2 copies of 2 of them). Now let's say I have a city that's only getting 3 amenities from luxes. How do I figure out which of the 2 I need a 2nd copy of? If I get the one that this city is already benefiting from, then it will do me no good there. So here's to hoping the tooltip will point out which luxes the city is using.

Its reorganized every turn (at least every turn amenities needed/available change)

So (assuming only 1 amenity per copy instead of 4 for simplicity)

1 wine, 1 silver, 1 fur, 1 ivory
Rome needs 3 amenities
Athens needs 2 amenity


Rome- has Wine, Silver, Fur
Athens-has Ivory because I still need 1

Lets say I improve an Ivory source
Rome-gets Ivory*, Wine, Silver
Athens-gets Ivory*, Fur

Lets say I improve a Fur source
Rome-gets Fur*, Ivory, Wine
Athens-gets Fur*, Silver

*Just use the one you have the most of first (after that Random..or alphabetical)

 

[Big J Money]

Right, I forgot they automatically reorganize. So which ones you have shouldn't matter. Just remember that getting a brand new resource will always be useful, and getting a new copy is only useful for helping some cities. If you have enough cities and people it shouldn't matter though.

 

[LDiCesare]

Limiting the effects of each resource is a good idea. In Civ IV, 1 source of anything was just enough unless you went up to corporations.
Are there any special effects for having one kind of amenity in one city, or working with some building or stuff?
I think it would have been cleaner to have a real number, like 0.8 amenity per city if you have 5 cities but only 1 luxury (thus giving 4/5 of an amenity). You wouldn't have any micro and any special effects for having a luxury would just be adjusted based on how many you have globally. Otherwise, you'd have to reogranize by hand if for some reason you wanted a specific amenity in a specific city (I am pretty sure some mods will want that even if the base game does not)

 

[Xur]

It is fairly simple to lock citizens so your city doesn't grow - and thereby indirectly limiting its need for luxuries if you are going wide. I love this happiness system. It is simple, easy and doesn't require a lot of micromanagement - yet more interesting than civ5's happiness system.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It is fairly simple to lock citizens so your city doesn't grow - and thereby indirectly limiting its need for luxuries if you are going wide. I love this happiness system. It is simple, easy and doesn't require a lot of micromanagement - yet more interesting than civ5's happiness system.

Simple? It's the most complex happiness system in the Civ games so far. It was too complex to let players manually distribute amenities so developers had to write a part of AI for it.

 

[Xur]

Simple? It's the most complex happiness system in the Civ games so far. It was too complex to let players manually distribute amenities so developers had to write a part of AI for it.

Yes, simple - I'm talking about the end result. You cant just take out the AI distrubition and then call it complex because the AI isn't there... the auto distribution is there and it seems fairly simple to me.

My car is also an everyday "simple" object that I enjoy, but if you strip away the parts then that is complex too - but I'm just driving it... jesus... dunno why I'm even responding to this drivel...

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yes, simple - I'm talking about the end result. You cant just take out the AI distrubition and then call it complex because the AI isn't there... the auto distribution is there and it seems fairly simple to me.

My car is also an everyday "simple" object that I enjoy, but if you strip away the parts then that is complex too - but I'm just driving it... jesus... dunno why I'm even responding to this drivel...

It's not simple because it's nearly impossible to predict the effect of actions. Let's say you've traded an additional luxury resource. Which cities will gain amenities from it? Probably those with biggest deficit, but if some of them are equal, which ones? Even if ou build some happiness building in a city, this means next turn will be amenity redistribution and you can't tell for sure what you'll get in the end. And the difference in 1 amenity could be as big as 10% of all city yields.

 

[BrokenBokken]

It's not simple because it's nearly impossible to predict the effect of actions. Let's say you've traded an additional luxury resource. Which cities will gain amenities from it? Probably those with biggest deficit, but if some of them are equal, which ones? Even if ou build some happiness building in a city, this means next turn will be amenity redistribution and you can't tell for sure what you'll get in the end. And the difference in 1 amenity could be as big as 10% of all city yields.

I think it will quite obviously go to the four with the lowest Amenity rating and then in ties go to founding or acquisition order. Either way, that's not really complicated.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think it will quite obviously go to the four with the lowest Amenity rating and then in ties go to founding or acquisition order. Either way, that's not really complicated.

I'm pretty sure it's NOT based on founding order, but instead on the city yields as unhappiness in high-outcome city is much more problematic. Also, they likely take into account city growth - if the city has a lot of food, it doesn't need amenities that much for growing, if it doesn't have enough housing, amenities will not help it grow, so it should be lower priority too. Finally, governor setting may affect distribution too.

You wouldn't call some part of functionality "writing a code for the department of happiness" if it's only a couple of code lines.