Why change maintenance?
- Thread starter gladoscc
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
- Messages
- 14,926
Way to go Dusk for linking to the rants thread when this isn't a rant. *insert me rolling my eyes in contempt*
They changed it because they probably thought that was more "simple" than city maintenance. I thought city maintenance was a better idea too since it doesn't punish builders by sending their economy to hell when they're already spending hammers building in the first place but hey, I'm not a developer.
They changed it because they probably thought that was more "simple" than city maintenance. I thought city maintenance was a better idea too since it doesn't punish builders by sending their economy to hell when they're already spending hammers building in the first place but hey, I'm not a developer.
Darkeagle6
Chieftain
Some ideas from someone who hasn't yet played the game (own it, but I don't have a good enough graphics card yet) but who's seen a lot of video walkthroughs and read lots of discussions of the game mechanics:
-giving buildings a monetary cost makes you consider your building choices more carefully
-further restrictions on wide empires: it forces each city to be more specialised (I generally get the feeling that this is the first civ game to at least attempt to make 2-3 city empires viable)
-It makes sense that a city with more infrastructure would cost more: A "city" that only houses a granary vs. a city that has a library, schools, universities, a courthouse etc.? It's pretty obvious which costs more. Although I do feel that cities themselves should have a maintenance cost as well, It sounds (on paper at least) as though the building maintenance would approximately work in a similar way.
Maybe this is completely wrong, of course, but those are some reasons I can think of as to why Firaxis would have made that change.
-giving buildings a monetary cost makes you consider your building choices more carefully
-further restrictions on wide empires: it forces each city to be more specialised (I generally get the feeling that this is the first civ game to at least attempt to make 2-3 city empires viable)
-It makes sense that a city with more infrastructure would cost more: A "city" that only houses a granary vs. a city that has a library, schools, universities, a courthouse etc.? It's pretty obvious which costs more. Although I do feel that cities themselves should have a maintenance cost as well, It sounds (on paper at least) as though the building maintenance would approximately work in a similar way.
Maybe this is completely wrong, of course, but those are some reasons I can think of as to why Firaxis would have made that change.
I find this change also very irritating. Actually I've wondered why this annoys me so much. I've played every Civ game in the series and Civ IV is the only one that does not have building maintenance. So why is it that this change is the second biggest turn off for me in Civ V (the biggest being global happiness)? At first I thought that playing so much Civ IV has made me soft in this respect. After doing some thinking I don't believe that is the issue. I've identified some reasons why I believe building maintenance is different than it was in Civs from I to III. I'm not sure how much these have been discussed elsewhere before, so here goes:
Cost effectiveness of the buildings is lower in Civ V than in earlier releases. This was extremely clear first few months after release. Back then it was actually most of the time counterproductive to build most buildings except for those that give direct happiness, money or science bonus (remember Inifinite City Sprawl). The situation was not quite as bad last time I played (couple of months ago). Still the benefits you get for the buildings seem quite small. Especially the buildings in the later eras have small yield, since most of the time you don't have enough time to get your investment back.
Benefits of the buildings also seem to pale in comparison to what else you can buy with the money: rush building units, research agreements, and city states. Especially RAs and CSs are IMO extremely powerful compared to most of the buildings.
Last but not least money does not have direct interchangeability with research and culture rate anymore. This does not actually directly disencourage building any more than impact maintenance had on research rate in, say Civ III. However, it has indirect impact of me having larger sums of money in my hand and wondering where to invest it on. Most of the time my answer has been something else than more maintenance.
In a nutshell, for a builder like me, it is quite irritating that many times leaving my empire heavily undeveloped is the best way to go.
Cost effectiveness of the buildings is lower in Civ V than in earlier releases. This was extremely clear first few months after release. Back then it was actually most of the time counterproductive to build most buildings except for those that give direct happiness, money or science bonus (remember Inifinite City Sprawl). The situation was not quite as bad last time I played (couple of months ago). Still the benefits you get for the buildings seem quite small. Especially the buildings in the later eras have small yield, since most of the time you don't have enough time to get your investment back.
Benefits of the buildings also seem to pale in comparison to what else you can buy with the money: rush building units, research agreements, and city states. Especially RAs and CSs are IMO extremely powerful compared to most of the buildings.
Last but not least money does not have direct interchangeability with research and culture rate anymore. This does not actually directly disencourage building any more than impact maintenance had on research rate in, say Civ III. However, it has indirect impact of me having larger sums of money in my hand and wondering where to invest it on. Most of the time my answer has been something else than more maintenance.
In a nutshell, for a builder like me, it is quite irritating that many times leaving my empire heavily undeveloped is the best way to go.
Similar threads
- Locked
- Locked
- Poll
- Locked
- Poll
