Wonder that pays maintenance not working

[modmyciv]

Hello people.

So - I created a Wonder that has the 'pay maintenance for trade installations' flag set. I set a couple of buildings as 'Commercial' and played away. The little images of red coins showing maintenance cost vanish across my kingdom, but I am still actually paying it, there's no bump in gold when it's built, just a reduction due to its own maintenance cost (which is considerable to offset the freebies). Anybody come across this? It works in the main game right?

CML

 

[modmyciv]

Just noticed this is in the wrong forum. Sorry.

 

[tjs282]

Adam Smiths works just fine in the epic-game, but it only has a shield-cost, not an ongoing maintenance-cost, and it pays for a lot of buildings: Harbors, Markets, Banks (all 1 GPT), StockExes (3 GPT), Airports (2 GPT) and CommDocks (2 GPT). So building it could eventually save up to 10 GPT per (core) town, i.e. up to 50 GPT if you just build the minimum Banks + StockExes (5 each) to unlock the WallStreet SW (I generally prefer to convert my commerce to Science-spending; so if I build Banks + StockExes, I don't usually build much more than that), and all five of those towns are also coastal (allowing Harbors + CommDocks), and you don't mind dealing with pollution (CommDocks + Airports).

So if your added Wonder is paying the total support costs for all your Commercial buildings (which it seems to be doing, if the red-coin icons have disappeared from all your towns' building-lists), but its own maintenance-cost is "considerable", is it possible that the Wonder-support-cost is simply outweighing any "savings" you might have made? The question basically boils down to (1) How much does the Wonder cost to run?, and (2) How many Commercial-flagged buildings (and with what maintenance-costs?) are you currently using it to support?

 

[modmyciv]

Thanks - yes I did make it expensive to run - originaly 10 gp/t, now 8.. But in games where I have 20+ of 2gp/t buildings where costs appear to vanish, my income goes down not up when I build it, despite the visual conformation. Can't figure it. It is one of those buildings where you need something to fill a slot - all the tech's have three things in them and each era has 18 techs - so tried this. When you try to use all 256 buildings in one game you soon start running out of things for them to do..I could try reducing its maintanance cost to zero, as in the game, worth a go I guess.

 

[tjs282]

Thanks - yes I did make it expensive to run - originaly 10 gp/t, now 8.. But in games where I have 20+ of 2gp/t buildings where costs appear to vanish, my income goes down not up when I build it, despite the visual conformation.

Other possibilities for "unexplained" net-income decreases are e.g. loss of WLTKD in one or more towns, or the end of a GA.

But if you're seeing this income-drop consistently, in every game, on the turn when you build your "Pays-for-Comm-buildings" GW, then those other possibilities can be ruled out.

When you try to use all 256 buildings in one game you soon start running out of things for them to do.

This (my bolded) kinda jumped out at me, though. So, next question: Are you sure that your .biq contains 256 buildings (or fewer), and not more? Because if you miscounted and accidentally exceeded the 256-building-limit, even by just one building, that could well cause a bug(s) in-game.

The Firaxis Editor won't necessarily prevent you from exceeding the hardcoded limits of the game executable, nor warn you if you try to save a 'broken' .biq (e.g. you can add >8 Lux-resources, even though the Lux-happiness routine can't cope with that, and >8 Luxes won't even fit properly on an unmodded city-screen; and you can assign more than 32 Strat + Lux resources, even though this causes the "ghost-resource" bug in unpatched C3C).

But (IIRC) @Quintillus' Editor will give you such warnings — so maybe you could try opening and then saving your .biq in the QEditor, and see what happens...?

 

[modmyciv]

Cheers. I found out you can't go over 256 builduings the hard way - by planning out a game where each Civ got its own Temples, Castles and so forth only to rapidly run out. I have exactly 256 'buildings' (many are actually just there to represent abilities such as new citizens or resources, which fills out the tech. tree nicely). Everything gets a number for Civpedia so I can keep track. I do however have 11 luxuries, three of them are tied to specific civs and cannot be traded so no one civ can have acess to more than 9, which appears to work, but even if the last of them has no effect that's no bad thing (can't please everybody with luxuries after all). No obvious side-effect so far anyway, bar those 'ghost resources'.

This project has been a work in progress for more years than I care to think. I'll fiddle about a bit more, if sucessful I'll post here. If not I'll turn it into a regional capital or suchlike. I've just downloaded C3X v.15, so I've a few new toys to play with. I like the idea of linking buildings to units for a start. And so it goes on...