This video is a good summary. Here are a few extra points to think about. I typically play on epic length deity games on the largest map size, so this may not apply to all games you play. #1 Something I've seen mentioned in the comments: Denying your opponents luxuries keeps them unhappy. This is 100% true and is important to exploit if you have neighbours that you want to gain a lead on. I typically find that gold is fairly easy to come by later in the game, so it can often be beneficial if you are the only Civ with access to a certain luxury resource to prevent other Civ's from ever getting it. Additionally, you can build up smaller civs by trading luxuries to them (even if they offer less money). This will give you allies on the map as well as strengthening them overall so they will be more useful when you drag them into war with their neighbours. #2 If you deny Civs luxury resources, they will trade with each other instead of you. Just as a balance to my first point, Civs that might have wanted to trade with you for your luxuries will find a way to get them from somewhere. If you are on a giant map with tons of civs, chances are they will be able to find them elsewhere. If they do this, they will like you less because you wont trade with them, and will like the other AI's more because they will. This is worth keeping in mind. #3 If you own many luxury resources and refuse to trade them, the AI will build entertainment complexes. This I have found to be huge. First of all, other Civs making entertainment complexes means that those cities aren't making other things that they could be like wonders or units. If you starve especially large civs, they will start building them all over the map and essentially stalling them out. This is especially effective if there are Civ's who you have traded lots of luxuries to for a long time and then suddenly cut them off, making many of their cities unhappy. Not only this, but if you intend to invade that Civ later, the cities come with an entertainment complex already built which can help manage loyalty and happiness problems from capturing enemy cities. #4 Loyalty. Not mentioned in this video at all is that happiness impacts the loyalty in a city. I have never investigated this extremely in depth, but I believe it is +1 loyalty for every happiness in a city. If you are able to amass a glut of luxuries, you can keep your cities very loyal. If you deny your enemies luxuries, their cities may lose loyalty. Loyalty pressure can be a tricky thing to manage against other civs and usually requires multiple angles of attack if you intend to take over their cities this way, but it often comes down to a handful of points and this is certainly one way to achieve this. My overall strategy is usually to trade luxury resources early on when the relationships and gold make a big difference. Then select civs that I eventually want to go to war with, make them reliant on buying my luxuries (also means the AI's tie up their luxuries in trades with other civs so they wont be available to my target), and then suddenly cut them off. Shortly after this as they begin compensating by investing all their production in entertainment complexes and water parks, go to war. Really appreciated the video for a clear and concise explanation, but these are a few points I have noticed in my playthroughs that I felt were worth mentioning.
I never realized that duplicates do literally nothing. I thought they let you spread them to more cities. That makes the “duplicate luxury resources” vote in the World Congress so much more valuable.
There is a reason to not trade extra copies of your amenities, and that's to prevent rival civs from gaining amenities. The smaller the map the more you need to consider this as you're more likely to be the only source of a type of luxury. Very often it can be worth it to leave a rival civ at -15% growth and -5% non food yields in 1-4 cities (for example) than to take 6 gold for yourself, which is about what most neutral civs would give you for a luxury, especially if you're both racing for a luxury or for strategic goals, and especially if the player number is fewer.
If you're playing this like a competitive game then you are technically right, but civ is more like a simulator to play around in. Is it really realistic that a country would deny trade with another in order to make them less good?
I find zen meditation a good religious belief because most of my cities will have at least 2 districts anyway. It's one of my go to's if im going for domination and a free amenity is always welcome
Man, thank you for this. Civ 6 has the most _useless_ civilopedia ever. Type in "amenities" and it tells you every which way to get them, but not what they *do*, or how to know if you have enough . I've lost count of how many other topics I've typed in and rather than explain their function, it goes into a long-winded narrative of it's importance throughout history. BUT HOW DOES IT WORK AND WHAT DOES IT DO!? The question I end up yelling at every civilopedia article.
I know right? I had this with the naturalist. I couldn’t figure out the requirements for a natural park, so I searched the civilopedia. It said nothing about what I wanted to know, but contained like 20 lines of useless drivel about history. I. DON’T. CARE.
@Failure44 Depression If you search “Natural Park” instead of naturalist it will tell you the requirements for one. I just looked at it today, actually.
@@TheSaxyGamer Don't get me wrong I appreciate the work you put into things you do a good job so good production with that said you repeat everything you say at least twice sometimes more your videos can be half as long and a lot more productive per minute but again thank you
Good job, thanks for the videos (and slick background music)! Two more sources of amenities: * Audience Chamber - 1st tier building for the Government Plaza. Adds 1 amenity and 4 housing to cities with a governor. * City Park - One of Liang's promotions allow builders to create this tile improvement which gives 1 amenity if adjacent to water.
I started watching all your videos because my friends always beat me in civ even when I have the best start possible - thank you for making them!!!! Had no idea how to get amenities before this :)
Thank you so much for this video. I just didn't get amenities and by the late game, all my cities were suffering. After watching this, I went into my current game, traded my duplicate luxuries for luxuries from other countries I didn't have and all my cities went from content and displeased to happy. Boom. And now I know why it is important to build entertainment districts. It's a like from me.
By trading you're boosting one competitor and yourself, so in a way you're nerfing everyone else. Unless they hate you and give you unacceptable prices or it's a civ that's already stronger than you and you don't want to help them, it's beneficial to trade. So trade with everyone, but start with weaker civilizations that like you and you'll have a lot more luxury resources and gold than you normally would.
@@1Maklak Good point, I just don't trust anyone. Does trading with someone open up risks? For example you open your borders to them and let them in and they do a sneak attack or some shit?
@@garyhamilton2104 Opening borders or sharing a map lets you scout each other and I generally do it. Since there is no fog of war, you'll see a buildup of troops on the border before they start a war and know a war is coming. I don't remember, but IIRC starting a war moves all the troops outside each other's border. Have a chokepoint city and defensible terrain between you and them and it should buy enough time to switch to military production and kill their army. I'm not sure, but I think the AI is less likely to attack a trading partner, so that helps too. Trading technologies (or was it science treaty in this version of civ?) helps them, but my point still stands. By trading you help yourself and one competitor, so be biased towards trading, unless it's a bad deal or they're already too strong or you plan to go to war with them soon.
Thank you for the clear and easy explanation! Considering I have played the game a couple years and didnt know you cant get benefit from the "extra" luxuries, this video really did come in handy.
Another quality video from the saxy fella! wow i watch a lot of game help videos for a lot of different games an this channel is one of the best as far as, to the point, great production value, an super use full game info on the specific topic he is covering. Thanks SG.
With Gathering Storm, now that we have the world council, there is sometimes a vote for copies of a luxury to provide extra amenities, look out for that!
I was having a hard time understanding this actually! Now I understand why I have so many grapes inside my capital and that changes absolutely nothing, lol. Great explanation! Thanks!
Wow thanks for those tips! I wasn't aware of the downsides of not enough amenities and I often get red messages because of that... I will try to get my people a lot happier from now on!
I’m in a game right now where I set the only win condition as domination. I have been at war for maybe 150 turns. Causing war weariness amenities to go -9 lol. Good thing I’m almost done conquering the whole world
So that's how Amenities work... Between this & Religion; I haven't the foggiest idea of how either works, and the Tutorial's lack of a Save Feature doesn't help. But your Videos certainly help!
Seeing a few comments saying that you shouldn’t trade copies of luxuries to avoid making the ai cities happy in return for 6 gold or so per turn, and yes I get that argument completely. I think personally that the best solution is to trade away copies of luxuries to the least competitive rivals, the ones you absolutely know will not be a threat to you. If you’re in a direct science race with a science based civ then don’t trade them the copy. If it’s Norway, however, trade away!!
In complementing your recommendation, I found that the one possible exception to trade away an excess luxury is that at times, a sadder AI opponent might be better than a few pieces of gold toward your strategy. I had times that few extra bucks were completely irrelevant for me, every other AI but my enemy was already getting all excess luxuries from me, and my plans for the enemy cities was to razed them all tp the ground, thus, until that happened, I figured a sadder enemy was less threatening. In short, your 4th tip there.
Aye, This was so helpful, I didn't even know the copies didn't count. From Day 1, I always struggled to understand Amenities and always found my self trying to conquer many civs because my people weren't satisfied. I'm still going to find it a bit difficult to manage it, since I'm a fairly new player to the Civ world, but since I enjoy this game so much, i'll learn quickly. P.S. Do you have any strategies for building large militaries in a short amount of time, I've seen some AI's build them in about turn 150. Thanks for reading :)
Also missed the builder improvement Li Yang adds on her last promotion, city park. +1 amenity if built next to water. Also one of the holy site buildings you can add to your religion (stupa?) is +3 faith, +1 amenity.
@@JefAlanLong I believe Stupa is Housing, the Amenities one is the Arabic sounding one, Dahr-e-something. Gives +1 for each era since it was built or repaired if I remember correctly
I don't see why you would want to do that. More citizens means more production, science, culture, etc. Once they get low on amenities, they will switch from working farms to working other tiles, so I like to go with as much population as possible.
Matthew Stephens the amenities will usually keep themselves stable aslong as you keep improving, if you want to utilize the mechanic to help you, yeah it’s confusing
You say selling secondary ones is beneficial even if the AI only pay 1 GPT in return? Isn't it bad to supply them for so cheap? The AI gets the happy bonus also, or it should in my mind, so I usually only trade it away if it a fair deal or something close to a fair deal. I'm not charity :)
True true, definitely try to find which AI will buy it for the most, and if they're all pretty crappy deals, sell it to the AI that is the weakest haha.
I'm gonna guess that its just in like civ 5 where you want to sell the luxuries early in the game and on the higher difficulties. In civ 5 the happiness they would get from you would be so miniscule and would only really matter once ideologies came into play but I did play on deity so...
Love the video and your channel so when I make the following criticism, please note that it’s only an observation. Only use the word “less” when the thing you’re talking about can not be counted. Less happiness, less experience, less time. When something can be counted, you should always use the word “fewer”, not less. Fewer resources, fewer amenities, fewer cities, fewer people, fewer bandits. Again, fantastic content.
Amenities really put a soft cap on going wide. Once you're above 4 cities, and especially above 10 cities, those extra cities are really starting to leech luxury resource amenities from where you want them to go. It might even be a good idea to limit housing in less important cities. In addition, each city adds 1 to the threshold for Era Score, so if you go nuts with settlers, you'll be stuck in a permanent dark age.
I don't really think this is true. It depends on how well you use the dedication bonus when you are in a dark/normal age. For instance, a city adds one to era threshhold, but if you build 2 districts with monumentality in that city, you are still gaining 1 threshold to a normal age, and with 3 it's a gain of 1 to a golden age. That might be difficulty earlier in the game, but what about mid game, where completing trade routes gives era score? that's a really easy one to get loads of free points with. I've had games where I've spammed out like 12 - 14 cities as Russia by medieval era, and NEVER once entered a dark age. That being said, Russia has an unusual advantage to gaining era score, so they may be the exception to the rule.
On my 1st Playthrough; on Settler Difficulty, My Cities were Displeased from 4000 BC ~ 1900 AD, (5,000 years), but we got by ok enough. But hey, I got those walls built! Then I realized why I'm not doing so hot... my Cities need Amenities. Time to get those Amenities up... Which is more than what I can say for Civilization on SNES 🤬 Revolts on every turn... How times change.
Nuclear Weapons also decrease amenities, in one game i had like 15 Nuke weapons :D and i noticed that population happiness reduced significantly, so less nukes happier population ( its logical isn't it :D )
Amenities are nearly impossible on Deity difficulty as I'm constantly being overrun by the Barbarians but this definitely helps me understand them much more. So far the civs I used to beat Deity difficulty on are: Macedon, Persia and Nubia.
Hey, been enjoying your series. I haven't had the time to sit down and play with religion extensively yet. Have you got a religion video on the way at all? :)
I know this asking for additional work here, from someone who has helped my game immeasurably already, but I would love it if you uploaded these powerpoints and shared them.
I do build more entertainment districs often certainly going for culture vic...it helps so much with that.... realy tbe often just speckle my wide empires
Never trade your Luxury copies away unless you get a really good deal, there's a very good reason why even the AI is stingy with copies. One is that in an instant the world congress could decide all those copies are now worth that of a unique luxury for 20% of the game and the most important reason is never strengthen your enemies. Even your allies could turn enemies at any moment.
The Coliseum: I don't understand. Is it within 6 tiles of the Coliseum - OR - 6 tiles of the City that has the Coliseum - OR 6 tiles of the border of the City that has the Coliseum? I have gone for the Coliseum many times and always disappointed. I assume it is better on a small map where the cities are closer together, but a standard map or bigger it might be useful only to the city it is built in.
How does Amenity from Great People work? Is it applied to the City that receives the GP or the City District that consumed the GP? If the latter then how are Great Admirals applied when they are used on a ship?
Just played first ever play through. I’m at about turn 300 and doing fantastic except in the next few turns I lose 2 of of my main cities to mass revolts lol. #ThisIsCatastrophe
First time I played I decided to go to war later in the game. All my Cities ended up revolting and every city would spawn 3 tanks and a machine gun unit. Everything spiraled down from there. XD Edit: I forgot to mention I was also bankrupt.
it helps a ton to actually know the definition of civilization words. [dictionary dot com] amenity noun, plural a·men·i·ties. any feature that provides comfort, convenience, or pleasure: The house has a swimming pool, two fireplaces, and other amenities. the quality of being pleasing or agreeable in situation, prospect, disposition, etc.; pleasantness: the amenity of the Caribbean climate.
I did not know luxuries go to certain cities where they are needed at all. I wouldnot have built entertainment center in super unproductive cities and slowly waited for them to go up if I knew. In my previous deity game I just ignored the district for smaller/less productive cities and tried to get luxuries and it just somehow worked out
But wouldn’t the duplicate luxury resources be useful for being distributed to cities to get “amenities from luxury resources”? Wouldn’t that be an instance where keeping duplicate luxury resources be helpful?
