Question regarding luxury slider

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by joncnunn
This whole thread started out with someone on Regent level. The early game 10% luxaries when a city hits pop 2 is much more of an Emperor level+ stategry that's unneeded (and conterproductive) on Regent level.

Of course you're right, but the topic is of interest to players at every level, so I think it's fine to expand the discussion for the benefit of improving players and intermediate players. Back in Civ2 I ended up playing nothing but Deity for a long time, and of course at that level there is very little margin for error. [I haven't wanted to play C3C with quite that intensity!]

Oh, and to help with the micromanagement, I use the "popheads fixed" that Stainless Steel posted in the Files thread "GRAPHICS MOD: Trip's Graphics Set." That puts a small color-coded smiley next to each face, easy enough to read on the F1 screen.

[vulture]

I find the best way to look at the use of the luxury slider is that when a city reaches the largest size it can before going in to disorder, you generally want to let the city grow and use the luxury slider rather than stop the city from growing.

It's never quite that straight forwards though. If the city in question is going to be working undeveloped tiles when it grows (or even worse, is already working undeveloped tiles) you'd probably do better to control its happiness by popping out a worker or two and building some roads and other improvements.

Plus you have to balance producing too many luxuries in some cities vs not enough in other cities. You don't want to have every city in your empire happy if it means that your size 5 capital is producing 10 luxuries, with the slider at 80%, just so one of your outpost towns can live at size 4 (and contributing virtually nothing due to corruption). But neither do you want to only have your capital happy and growing, while all the other cities aren't generating sufficient luxuries and have therefore ground to a halt through the use of specialists. You will almost always have some cities stuck with specialists and unable to grow while others produce more luxuries than they actually need. Temples offer the same effect - one gold for allowing the city to reach one size bigger. Don't be in a hurry to build them where you have an excess of luxuries. Do try and pop rush them in fast growing border towns.

Despotism offers a small advantage here with Military Police. Non-border cities with excess luxuries can get by with no MPs, which can be redeployed to border cities that are too corrupt to generate luxuries, and thus keep them happy as well. This improves your military budget slightly. It's not much though, but it can be used to effectively redistribute the production of luxuries to where it is needed to some extent.

As joncnunn says, ideally you want to have the luxury slider at 0%. You want happiness to be contained by having luxury resources, nautrally content citizens, military police (if allowed) and some improvements and wonders. Temples and colliseums mimic the effect of the luxury slider - one gold for one happy citizen (at the expense of a certain number of shields - and I can't remember the maintenance cost of cathedrals). As such you're often better off using the luxury slider; same effect, but quicker, can be removed when not needed, and costs no shields.

But when you can't have the luxury slider at 0, definitely use it in preference to stopping your cities from growing. There is no 'right' value. There may be typical values for a given style of play, map type, difficulty level. But you shouldn't aim for a particular value. You just do whatever it takes to keep your cities happy, productive and growing.

Of course, having the slider at 50% for a long period of time is a bad thing. Your priority should be acquiring luxuries - they reduce luxury spending in a way that temples and colliseums don't. But even if it is a bad thing, having the slider at 50% is way better than being in the same situation, but having it at 10% and having cities 4 or 5 sizes smaller.

[arnoldvsgooch]

Vulture,

Thank you for your response, I feel I understand alot better the dynamics of luxuries obtained, luxuries allocated by the slider and "happiness structures". Excellent post!

[khoma]

I tend to have mine at 10% througout most of the game, on regent level. Just saves me some trouble with disorder. When I'm at war otoh, I usually end up at around 50%, since allways use republic government and 50% on the lux slider allows for a whole lot of warring without any complaints. Since most wars are over in a very small number of turns anyway, it doesn't really matter that science slows down during war time.

[joncnunn]

At higher levels, 50% luxaries during a war is counter productive to cash rushing the troops and cheap culture buildings.

[kiurkugord]

Originally posted by cousLee
It depends on what your civil disorder problem is. If you only have 1-3,4 cities with problems, it's better to use specialists and build some happiness buildings imo. I tend to use the lux slider more for maintaining WLTKD. If you have a genuine disorder problem, then get some goods asap. Every % on the lux slider is handicapping your science/gold production, esp is you have science and gold buildings in place.

What does asap mean?

[Krill]

As Soon As Possbile