Thoughts on luxuries, marketplaces, and happiness: feedback wanted

[korn469]

I've been troubled by this for quite some time now, but lately it has taken on much more of a definitive form. Is it just me or are marketplaces the most valuable happiness structure in the entire game? They are cheap, they increase your tax money, and they have the power to increase your happiness by 0-12 citizens (depending on the number of luxuries you have). So with even a small number of luxuries (3 or 4) marketplaces are one of your best happiness structures. Does this make the game too easy? What I've thought about is moving this particular marketplace ability (the doubles luxury output) to stock exchanges so that the industrial age will finally have a happiness structure, and so that other earlier happiness structures will be more important. I'd like to hear all of your thoughts on this.

[Stuie]

And the extra happiness triggers WLT* thus reducing corruption.

Interesting idea about moving the functionality to a later point in the tech tree. I might even beeline to The Corporation to get those stock exchanges set up ASAP.

It would definitely slow down the early game (for me, anway). Maintaining a Republic government would not be as easy (this might be a good thing, seeing as Republic currently is the Uber-government IMO).

[Jaybe]

I just started playing DyP mod (version 1.50) to tide me over until C3C arrives. There the equivalent of marketplaces takes place in the late industrial/early modern age (shopping malls(?)).

DEFINITELY a different dynamic, but they have so many other improvements that affect the happiness/contentedness equation.

Go for it!!

[Theseus]

NOOOOOO!!!!!!

Do NOT mess with Marketplaces!!!!

[korn469]

stuie,

i hadn't even thought about the wlt* corruption bonus, which is evn more reason to move it back

Jaybe,

so they completely removed the effect from market places? I need to check out the DyP mod

thesus,

do you have a reason?
if not your opinion is still all cool

[alexman]

I can think of two side effects of your marketplace idea, which you may or may not desire:

1) The AI will suffer more than the human player, as it will have to use even more entertainers. As you know, the AI doesn't use the luxury slider.

2) The Religious trait will become more powerful, as Monarchy will more often become the early government of choice.

[Jaybe]

korn,
BEWARE of DyP! It is SO massively different it is difficult to have a handle on what the bleep is going on.

[vmxa1]

Moving markets would be painful for many playing Emp and Deity and as Alexman says, it would be worse for the AI.
I would not be hurt so much in the ancient age, but after that it would cost. In my last game at Deity, I was only starting to get markets in my core cities at new age. With Construction in hand and aquadects available, that is when it starts being useful.
The few cities founded on a river are probably most needy.

[korn469]

I have already thought of the ramifications on the AI and I intend on giving them a slight boost of either 3 or 4 happy citizens compared to a humans 1 to 0 happy citizens (depending on what level the human plays on), but how does it improve the religious trait? It seems like getting out of Despotism ASAP is already a priority. Though I intend on despotism allowing more MPs than monarchy.

So here it some things it will do

*make the game harder
*possibly hurt the AI
*make getting WLT* days harder
*make republic/democracy weaker
*make stock exchanges/the corporation more important
*possibly make the religious trait stronger

anything i've missed?

[GhengisFarb™]

Yes marketplaces are powerful but they require a substantial level of income/variety of luxuries to be powerful and typically those levels aren't attained till later in the game.

[Aeson]

I think it may have some unintended effects.

Faced with no Marketplaces for happiness, I'd tend to keep my cities smaller in size and focus more on warfare than building up infrastructure. It would seem to make early warmongering and tighter city spacing even more attractive than it already is.

I think the Religious point is that the cheaper Temples/Cathedrals would now be more likely to be built.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by alexman
I can think of two side effects of your marketplace idea, which you may or may not desire:

1) The AI will suffer more than the human player, as it will have to use even more entertainers. As you know, the AI doesn't use the luxury slider.

2) The Religious trait will become more powerful, as Monarchy will more often become the early government of choice.

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

[Dominae]

Marketplaces are appropriately-costed.

The real problem is how much Happiness they generate as you acquire more and more Luxuries. Early warmongering (for more Luxuries) plus Marketplaces is too efficient a Happiness generator.

To remedy this, the # of Happy Faces increments from Marketplaces could be slightly less generous such that, at the time of Monotheism, there would be a real choice between Marketplaces and Cathedrals (for non-Religious civs).

I believe this change would have only a minor effect on the AI, as it's very rare for it to acquire lots of land through conquest before Chivalry.


Dominae

[alexman]

Besides the benefit of Temples and Cathedrals, I think you would change governments more often.

Instead of the usual Despotism-Republic, with more happiness problems you would be tempted to select Monarchy as an intermediate choice, even when playing as a builder. I'm guessing Despotism-Monarchy-Democracy, or Despotism-Monarchy-Republic will be a typical builder's choice, unless you manage to secure access to almost all the luxuries early.

[Theseus]

Interesting theme developing among the human players...

/me bangs head on wall

"Marketplaces CALM ME DOWN!!"

/me bangs head on wall

"Marketplaces CALM ME DOWN!!"

/me bangs head on wall

"Marketplaces CALM ME DOWN!!"

Aeson is right... take away Markets, and I'm gonna be bangin' my head on something else.

Too big a change pour moi... although we'll see (Tomorrow!!) what C3C brings.

[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.