Full city maintenance formulae?

[Strategist83]

Does anybody know it?

[Strategist83]

Look, what I am trying to find out is just how careful you need to be with expanding - and more importantly, over-expanding. Basically, I want to know whether it is possible to win a domination victory on a huge Pangaea map without going bankrupt due to maintenance costs?

Does the 'number of cities' cost rise linearly or exponentially, ie. is the cost difference between your third and ninth city the same as between your 302th and 310th? Or does the cost decrease with the number of cities so your 56th city costs the same as your 80th?

In other words: How much should one expand? I notice the AI builds cities everywhere - even on useless ice tiles - is this a good thing to do?

Thanks in advance.

[sovietwaffle]

Well, it depends on your situation. If you're expanding heavily and have very little invested in the economy, your normally low science won't be able to support the growing empire. Also, the earlier you grow the more trouble you'll have supporting yourself. (I tend to go for heavy conquest after getting calvary and directing research to get state property ASAP)

Price doesn't rise in a lineral fashion, and is also affected by palace distance. I wouldn't recommend building on useless tiles unless you need it to secure your continent (Don't want someone sneaking a settler in), or there's a resource.

[Blake]

The "number of cities" cost does indeed increase at a greater than linear rate - this is complex because the added cost can actually appear in other cities, so when you found a new city and see "4" upkeep it could have added 8 extra upkeep.

Distance upkeep is based simply on distance.

BOTH types of upkeep are increased with city size, even the capital can easily have 5 upkeep/turn once it's grown fairly large. This also makes large babarian cities on terra maps very expensive, they can cost easily like 15 gold/turn, while a new colony might be only at 7.
Note that this increased upkeep from city size can cause a city originally costing 0 upkeep to start costing upkeep, like if you build a 2nd city nearby it'll usually cost 0 upkeep, but then if it grows like a weed it'll start costing upkeep even if you don't build new cities.

The final city upkeep can be halved by courthouses.

There is also another type of upkeep, civic upkeep. This is increased by city count and total population. The city-count component is particullary severe when it comes to low-upkeep civics, if you have mass of cities then low upkeep civics are nearly as expensive as high upkeep civics. No upkeep civics are very good for this situation.
The Organized trait halves civic upkeep.

Summary:
Upkeep from city-count: Reduced by courthouses and organized.
Upkeep from population: Reduced by courthouses and organized.
Upkeep from city-distance: Reduced by courthouses, eliminated by State Property. (and obviously reduced by a nearby center of of goverment)


You can find all the gory details on civ fanatics.
City Upkeep:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=138473

Civic Upkeep:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148840

Note that they are very technical and may not actually be that useful, I just play by feel and do fine.

[Martinus]

Organized does not reduce upkeep from cities at all - all it does is reducing the civic upkeep by half and allow for cheaper courthouses.

[Blake]

Civic Upkeep is based entirely or nearly entirely on city count and size. Organized halves that upkeep. Ergo, Organized reduces upkeep from cities. Even though it's called Civic Upkeep, it's still based on cities!

What Organized DOESN'T reduce in any way is unit upkeep and distance upkeep, altough you can reduce the latter more quickly thanks to cheap courthouses.

[Martinus]

It doesn't reduce either the City Count Upkeep or the City Distance Upkeep. It reduces the Civic Upkeep, which while based on the number of cities, is not the same as the City Count Upkeep.

[Blake]

I say it's a petty distinction.

Organized reduces upkeep from city count. (since city count is a component of civic upkeep)
Organized reduces upkeep from population. (since population is a component of civic upkeep)

Every time you found a new city, it adds upkeep in five areas:
1) Distance upkeep in the city itself (increased by population).
2) City-count upkeep in the city itself (increased by population).
3) City-count upkeep in other cities.
4) City-count component of civic upkeep.
5) Population component of civic upkeep.

Building a courthouse in the city reduces 1 & 2.
Building courthouses in OTHER cities reduces 3.
Organized reduces 4 and 5.

The mindset that a city only adds expenses equal to it's own upkeep is a bad one, since it also adds upkeep to other cities, and to the civic upkeep. You look at a city and it says 6 upkeep. Does that mean it costs 6? No. It might actually cost 12, prehaps more.

[Arrian]

I love that trait. It's not the best, but just like CivIII's commercial trait, I love it anyway.

-Arrian

[Blake]

Organized is awesome, no two ways about it. Thanks to rounding oddities it's greater than 50% reduction.

Take emperor+ level.
non-organized leaders start with 2 civic upkeep.
organized leaders start with 0 civic upkeep.

That's somewhere between +22%-28% research in the early turns.

In this scenario Financial can at best break even with Organized, if both the city tile and 2nd worked tile produces 2 commerce then the city will get +2 commerce which equals the organized bonus. This is a very rare start, wine on river type thing. Organized is guaranteed.

Organized. Is. Not. Weak.

[gentle]

ah...rounding oddities. that answers my question (i posted in the culture thread.).

thx

[Strategist83]

Thanks. I guess in the end, the calculations are - contrary to what one thinks at first glance when playing the game - too complex for the layman who just wants to sit down and have some fun without turning the game into math class. By the way, I found that graph at Fanatics myself yesterday. It appears that it is indeed possible to win a domination victory on a giant pangaea map - although one will run into financial trouble before reaching 'the conqueror's plateau'. I have to say I think this is *bad* game design - I am refering to what an enormous difference there is between 28-29 and 30 cities. Why confuse the player by shrouding the numbers in mystery, scattering upkeep cost over multiple cities? At the very least implement some sort of financial advisor who will let you know just how much that next city will cost you overall! One is almost scared of going bankrupt in the pursuit of conquest and domination victories.

So, what is left standing on the bottom line? Is the answer to build max ten cities to begin with and turn them into money-making machines before moving onto conquering the world? And what of far away ressources - does it pay off erecting a city just to supply one's empire with bananas?

[Blake]

Eh?

If you want to conquer, just play an Organized Leader and/or run State Property. I can often maintain 90% science while going for domination, mainly from the income from taking more holy shrines.

As an Organized leader there's no such thing as too many cities. You might end up running 40-50% science, but with an empire 3x larger that's still more science. Just make sure to build or chop those cheap courthouses.

[joncnunn]

A lot depends upon the timing of your conquest.

Your core territory full of court houses, your best religious shrine with Wall Street and all of them with money improving structures and your commerce cities full of science structues can support a lot of conquered cities.

Not to mention capturing other religious shrines that you had the forsight to build a monstary for and adding that religion to your cities