Improvement maintance?

[Stuff2]

In the country i live most "improvements" are 'paying for themselves'. Sure a mass transit system has to be maintained but the money for it is got from the tickets they sell. There is a policy in all public services (like mass transit, banking, posting e.t.c) won't cost money for the government and also not bring in more money to the government.
In civ-terms this means that many improvements should require no maintance.
This gives a dilemma.
Bacouse one single improvement can cost maintance, no maintance or bring money to you it may have different effects depending what you choose.
I'll give an example:
If you have a hospital it will have it's biggest effect when you pay maintance (beacouse poor people now can afford going to the doctor). If you skip paying maintance the hospital will not help so many people (since fewer people can afford going to the doctor).
If you decide to get rich on this hospital it will work even more badly, but you will get money from it.

It is a fact although that some improvements has to cost maintance. But it's also a fact that actual buildings is not the most important things in some areas. FE a small police force don't need a big expensive police station. The scool is not actually needed, only the teachers in it.

Maybe it should work like this.

The tax that you collect can go into different areas like:
- Education xx%
- Police xx%
- Trade xx%
- Health xx%
e.t.c

The percentages is not percentage of the tax money, it's more percentages of how much it's possible to invest in that area.

So for instance education is on 20 %.
A city with no improvements will cost maybe 1 gold per 1000 people. And a school will cost 4 gold and support up to 3000 people with an educationlevel of 100 % but in this case it can support 15000 people.

The city has 14000 people. a educationlevel of 20% will in this city cost 14 gold, but once a school is built it will only cost 4 gold.

The numbers and so on should be balanced but i think you get the picture.

[UltraSonix]

I don't quite understand what you mean by the percentages. But I don't think that many improvements should be free (if that's what's been said) because that'll unbalance the game too much.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Father Beast]

There is a sort of balance to building improvements. once you have around 20 trade arrows, a marketplace will pay for itself. in some cases, the benefits from an improvement aren't worth the maintenance cost. it comes down to just how much is the benefit worth to you? I find the current system quite balanced.
though I wonder why my domestic advisor keeps wanting to build police stations when I'm a commie/fundy. (set to auto build)

[Stuff2]

You are both right. Maintance cost is working well.

About the percentages stuff:
The idea with it is that improvements will make things cheaper, keeping a bunch of teachers walking around teaching children is more expensive than having a school.
You can FE have a 'police force' in field in a city but it will probably cost you less building a police station. The good thing about this is that you don't necessarily need a police station for (whatever a police station will do in civ 3) but it will be expensive to maintain a police force in large populations without police stations.
Improvements have functions, but these functions doesn't always need specific buildings although the specific buildings will make it far more easier and cheaper to provide these functions.
Once again about the percentages. They represent how much you can invest in the area. I mean, there is a limit in how much policing a society can have, everyone cannot become doctors or teachers or policemen or whatever. I'll give another example on how this will affect gameplay.

You have 12 cities and none of them have any improvements that supports science. This will make science very expensive and all you can afford is keeping the science rate on 10 %.
Some turns later you have built some libraries and this has made it much cheaper conducting science (The researcher don't longer need to travel to foreign countries to get books ;-) ) now you can, with the same amount of money, have a science rate of 15 %.
You have probably experienced som economic groth aswell and therefore you can afford a science rate of 20 %.

I hope I have explained it properly even though my english is lousy.

[UltraSonix]

Thanks for the clarification, but I still don't think the system is really needed...

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[phunny pharmer]

This reminds me of what I said under a different topic (with entering civilians in certain buildings to increase production rates). However, I did not get a lot of positive feedback.

I think a better way to reflect tax expenditure would be to have costs for military units. This would require an infrastructure to support large armies, and this would prevent a civ from just producing military units to conquer other civs. The civilization, if it had to pay for military units, would be required to build marketplaces (or the civ 3 equivalent) in order to have an army of any size. This could also delay attacks in multiplayer games. So, instead of paying for infrastructure (and assume that infrastructure supports itself), pay for the army.