Thoughts on luxuries, marketplaces, and happiness: feedback wanted

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by skywalker


Wouldn't religious be less powerful? You would have fewer (or the same) government switches.

More useful, therefore more powerful. As Axleman said, you will be more inclined to chose REL trait so you can switch as terms dictate instead of jumping on REP.
It also becomes more useful as you get cheap Temples and later Cathedrals. You will build them sooner or more urgently with no marketplace to aid the cause.

[korn469]

By moving the market place happiness effect to stock exchanges (3 industrial techs) this would have little impact on metros which require hosptials (2 industrial techs). So our basic consideration should focus on cities and towns sizes 1-12.

Marketplaces cost 100 shields and 1 maintence, they add 50% to taxes and they have this luxury trade effect.

Temples cost 60 shields and 1 maintence, they add 1 happiness and 2 culture.

Cathedrals cost 160 shields and 2 maintence, they add 3 happiness and 3 culture. They require temples.

Colosseums cost 120 shields and 2 maintence, they add 2 happiness and 2 culture.

So if you build a temple, cathedral, and colosseum it costs 340 shields and 5 maintence, they add 6 happiness and 7 culture.

For a marketplace to provide 6 additional happiness you need six luxuries.

one luxury -> +0 (1 total luxury happiness)
two luxuries -> +0 (2 total luxury happiness)
three luxuries -> +1 (4 total luxury happiness)
four luxuries -> +2 (6 total luxury happiness)
five luxuries -> +4 (9 total luxury happiness)
six luxuries -> +6 (12 total luxury happiness)
seven luxuries -> +9 (16 total luxury happiness)
eight luxuries -> +12 (20 total luxury happiness)

So at 3 luxuries it's like a free temple, at 4 it's like a free colosseum, and at 5 it's like a free temple and cathedral. So in most circumstances moving this from marketplaces to temples won't change things that drastically until the early middle ages and the overall effect will be more unhappiness for civs that have an abundance of luxuries which would most likely be:

*ones that got an exceptional starting location
*ones that annexed a neighbor or two during the ancient age
*ones that are successful traders

Besides good starts, I'm thinking that the last two traits describe human players far more than it does AIs. So the basic gameplay effect will be that powerful civs will have less of an oppertunity to outpace their rivals. It also works to make religious more attractive because of cheap temples and cathedrals. It would have a double edged effect on warfare. In some circumstances (ones where you have lots of luxuries) it would make warfare more appealing than it was before the change, because it would be "harder" to keep your cities happy. However, it would decrease the spoils of war thereby making warefare less appealing.

It looks like something to try imo.

[Arrian]

I like marketplaces.

-Arrian

[vulture]

One other possible modification would be to have a cap on the number of bonus happy faces marketplaces provide. For example, you could have no more than 2 happy faces per luxury when they are first built (so you get 1,1,2,2,2,2,2,2 rather than 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4). Some later tech (economics), could lift the cap to three (1,1,2,2,3,3,3,3) and another tech could lift the cap back up to 4. This probably wouldn't have a big effect to be honest - it's not that common in my experience to have much more than 4 luxuries before economics comes around (since inter-continental trade becomes possible around the same time).

Of course, it is just as feasible to have other patterns for markets that change with tech (start with 1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2 for example).

[Dominae]

vulture, that might work well, but is probably rather confusing for most readers (it would take a lot of space to explain in the Civilopedia).

How about, instead of:

Originally posted by korn469
one luxury -> +0 (1 total luxury happiness)
two luxuries -> +0 (2 total luxury happiness)
three luxuries -> +1 (4 total luxury happiness)
four luxuries -> +2 (6 total luxury happiness)
five luxuries -> +4 (9 total luxury happiness)
six luxuries -> +6 (12 total luxury happiness)
seven luxuries -> +9 (16 total luxury happiness)
eight luxuries -> +12 (20 total luxury happiness)

We have:

1 Lux: +0 (Happy Faces from Marketplaces)
2 Luxes: +0
3 Luxes: +1
4 Luxes: +1
5 Luxes: +2
6 Luxes: +4
7 Luxes: +6
8 Luxes: +9

This makes Marketplaces slightly weaker at just the time when there's a choice between them and Cathedrals, Colosseums and whatnot. Later on in the game they would still be very useful, but definitely not the solution to all Happiness problems (or almost) for a city under size 12.


Dominae

[zorbop]

But this all changes with conquests... The new trading limits will deffinitely slow down the trade of luxery recources. The effects will not really be that useful until you know a low of the civs, that is education, right? and that is assuming the trading routs are set up without map trading. So really, the true effects of marketplaces will not take place until the late midievil age. That is not long before hospitals, which is when marketplaces are required for any decent city.

[Catt]

May not warrant as much tweaking as you presently believe.

Luxury Scarcity

Catt

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Catt
May not warrant as much tweaking as you presently believe.

Luxury Scarcity

Catt

Yup, it's already hurting me. I can't get all eight luxuries in my current game because of the new scarcity. I'm actually building Coloseums to compensate - I haven't built Coloseums in ages.

I'm still a Republic in the early Industrial Age, but I'm not sure I can ride it out to the end of the game if I get into any major conflicts. I might actually have to change governments!! Argghh!!!

This is all good, of course.