Amenities are a very important mechanic in stellaris. Having ample amenities keeps your planet's production running smoothly. It's a tricky thing to optimize exactly what proportion of your workforce should be working amenity-related jobs to maximize your output. It's great!
But the underlying math has some subtle problems that need to be looked at closely.
But the underlying math has some subtle problems that need to be looked at closely.
Some citizenship types have more access to amenities than others. Full Citizenship is the citizenship type that offers the most amenities; so, logically, Full Citizens are the ones who enjoy the happiness bonus granted by excess amenities. It's like the excess amenities are reserved for them, right?
Well... No. If you look at the math, that's not the story the mechanics are telling.
The happiness bonus from surplus amenities – and the malus from an amenity deficit – is proportional to the ratio between amenities available and amenities used. It doesn't matter how the amenities are used, just how many. Let's look at a couple examples to really see why this doesn't make sense:
Case 1: A planet has 10 pops, of which 4 are residents and 6 are citizens – this adds up to 14 amenities used. (5 base, 3 from residents, 6 from citizens). There are 21 amenities to go around – 7 surplus amenities, which is 50% of amenities used, so the 6 citizen pops get a 10% happiness bonus.
Case 2: A planet has 15 pops, of which 12 are residents and 3 are citizens – this adds up to 17 amenities used. (5 base, 9 from residents, 3 from citizens). There are 25 amenities to go around – 8 surplus amenities, which is 47% of amenities used, so the 2 citizen pops get a 9.4% happiness bonus.
In case 2, there's more surplus amenities to go around, with fewer citizen pops to split them between – and yet the happiness bonus is smaller than in case 1! The only explanation is that the extra resident pops in case 2 are using some of that excess, leaving less for the citizen pops. And yet the non-citizens get no happiness bonus from the excess amenities? What sense does that make?
Making this make flavor sense just by tweaking the "excess amenities" formula alone would make the formula much messier and possibly more computationally expensive. "Happiness bonus based on the ratio between amenities available and amenities used, to a maximum of +20% happiness at a 2:1 ratio" is quite straightforward. Making the ratio be between surplus amenities and citizen amenity usage is quite a bit more involved. And I acknowledge the reason it was changed from "all pops benefit from excess amenities", since it made it too easy to please pops with scant rights. So I propose a compromise: In addition to "up to +20% citizen happiness", also make excess amenities to give up to a 15% happiness bonus to Residents and Slaves, as well as a 10% bonus to synths under Servitude. That way citizenship types that use 75% as many amenities are eligible for 75% of the happiness bonus, and the Servitude citizenship type that uses 50% as many amenities is eligible for 50% of the happiness bonus.
Well... No. If you look at the math, that's not the story the mechanics are telling.
The happiness bonus from surplus amenities – and the malus from an amenity deficit – is proportional to the ratio between amenities available and amenities used. It doesn't matter how the amenities are used, just how many. Let's look at a couple examples to really see why this doesn't make sense:
Case 1: A planet has 10 pops, of which 4 are residents and 6 are citizens – this adds up to 14 amenities used. (5 base, 3 from residents, 6 from citizens). There are 21 amenities to go around – 7 surplus amenities, which is 50% of amenities used, so the 6 citizen pops get a 10% happiness bonus.
Case 2: A planet has 15 pops, of which 12 are residents and 3 are citizens – this adds up to 17 amenities used. (5 base, 9 from residents, 3 from citizens). There are 25 amenities to go around – 8 surplus amenities, which is 47% of amenities used, so the 2 citizen pops get a 9.4% happiness bonus.
In case 2, there's more surplus amenities to go around, with fewer citizen pops to split them between – and yet the happiness bonus is smaller than in case 1! The only explanation is that the extra resident pops in case 2 are using some of that excess, leaving less for the citizen pops. And yet the non-citizens get no happiness bonus from the excess amenities? What sense does that make?
Making this make flavor sense just by tweaking the "excess amenities" formula alone would make the formula much messier and possibly more computationally expensive. "Happiness bonus based on the ratio between amenities available and amenities used, to a maximum of +20% happiness at a 2:1 ratio" is quite straightforward. Making the ratio be between surplus amenities and citizen amenity usage is quite a bit more involved. And I acknowledge the reason it was changed from "all pops benefit from excess amenities", since it made it too easy to please pops with scant rights. So I propose a compromise: In addition to "up to +20% citizen happiness", also make excess amenities to give up to a 15% happiness bonus to Residents and Slaves, as well as a 10% bonus to synths under Servitude. That way citizenship types that use 75% as many amenities are eligible for 75% of the happiness bonus, and the Servitude citizenship type that uses 50% as many amenities is eligible for 50% of the happiness bonus.
Gestalt amenities are mechanically completely unbalanced. There's just no other way to describe it.
Since Gestalt pops aren't subject to Happiness, their Amenities boost Stability instead, which translates into a bonus to resources from jobs. Seemingly, the idea is you're supposed to have some fraction of your pops work as Maintenance Drones to keep the rest of them running smoothly. (Gestalts don't have any other way to get Amenities besides housing buildings and their version of culture workers.) Thing is, in practice, maintenance drones are pretty much NEVER worth it. I did the math, and here's the inequality that determines whether it's worth employing maintenance drones:
1.5 * popAmenityUsage ≤ amenitiesFromJobsModifier / resourcesFromJobsModifier
If this inequality doesn't hold – which it almost always doesn't because resources from jobs bonuses are FAR more plentiful than amenities from jobs bonuses – then the correct play is to let your stability drop to 26% at all times, because the penalty from low stability is less of a loss than setting aside pops as maintenance drones would be. That's both flavorfully weird and mechanically disappointing – the best way to use this mechanic is to ignore it and eat the penalties! Yikes!
(And if trying to tread water with amenities wasn't inefficient enough, the bonus from excess amenities is only 18% as impactful as that. (You need to go from 100% amenities to 200% to get the full bonus while treading water only requires going from 25% to 100%, so excess amenities are only 75% as good. You only get 20 stability from full excess amenities while a deficit can cost you as many as 50, so excess amenities are only 40% as good. Excess stability only gives you up to a 30% production bonus while stability deficit can take up to 50% productivity away, so excess stability is only 60% as good, and therefore excess amenities are only 60% as good. 75% * 40% * 60% = 18%.) Absolutely pathetic!
Amenities need to matter more for Gestalts, especially excess amenities. It needs to be a meaningful decision whether or not to bother with maintenance drones. Right now, it isn't. To fix amenities in general, one solution could be to give Gestalts more access to pop amenity use reductions (since when pops use fewer amenities, each amenity is more impactful). To fix excess amenities, excess amenities could give a full 50 stability at a 2:1 amenity ratio and it still wouldn't be broken, since excess amenities would still only be 75% * 60% = 45% as impactful as non-excess amenities.
Since Gestalt pops aren't subject to Happiness, their Amenities boost Stability instead, which translates into a bonus to resources from jobs. Seemingly, the idea is you're supposed to have some fraction of your pops work as Maintenance Drones to keep the rest of them running smoothly. (Gestalts don't have any other way to get Amenities besides housing buildings and their version of culture workers.) Thing is, in practice, maintenance drones are pretty much NEVER worth it. I did the math, and here's the inequality that determines whether it's worth employing maintenance drones:
1.5 * popAmenityUsage ≤ amenitiesFromJobsModifier / resourcesFromJobsModifier
If this inequality doesn't hold – which it almost always doesn't because resources from jobs bonuses are FAR more plentiful than amenities from jobs bonuses – then the correct play is to let your stability drop to 26% at all times, because the penalty from low stability is less of a loss than setting aside pops as maintenance drones would be. That's both flavorfully weird and mechanically disappointing – the best way to use this mechanic is to ignore it and eat the penalties! Yikes!
(And if trying to tread water with amenities wasn't inefficient enough, the bonus from excess amenities is only 18% as impactful as that. (You need to go from 100% amenities to 200% to get the full bonus while treading water only requires going from 25% to 100%, so excess amenities are only 75% as good. You only get 20 stability from full excess amenities while a deficit can cost you as many as 50, so excess amenities are only 40% as good. Excess stability only gives you up to a 30% production bonus while stability deficit can take up to 50% productivity away, so excess stability is only 60% as good, and therefore excess amenities are only 60% as good. 75% * 40% * 60% = 18%.) Absolutely pathetic!
Amenities need to matter more for Gestalts, especially excess amenities. It needs to be a meaningful decision whether or not to bother with maintenance drones. Right now, it isn't. To fix amenities in general, one solution could be to give Gestalts more access to pop amenity use reductions (since when pops use fewer amenities, each amenity is more impactful). To fix excess amenities, excess amenities could give a full 50 stability at a 2:1 amenity ratio and it still wouldn't be broken, since excess amenities would still only be 75% * 60% = 45% as impactful as non-excess amenities.
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