What factors affect tile purchase cost?

Question

I know there are some wonders that modify the amount, but what I'm really looking for is information on what factors determine how much each tile costs, since they seem to vary per-tile and over time (and/or if you purchase tiles).

Asked by Dan Fego

Answer

In my experience, the factors which effect purchase cost are:

• Current turn/era (the later the costlier)
• Number of tiles the city already has (the larger the costlier)
• Distance from the city (the further away the costlier)
• Whether the tile is one which is considered for expansion - i.e. has a purple border (if it is, it's about half the price)
• I'm also pretty sure, but not convinced, that having a resource on a tile makes it cheaper. It's hard to test because almost always a tile with a resource will be prioritized as the next to expand to, so it's hard to separate it from the previous bullet.

For a more complete reference, below is the section from the game configuration file which deals with "acquiring new plots", as it is called there. Any entry with "culture" applies to culture "cost" only, but I'm not quite sure what the entries with "influence" mean; perhaps this applies to both gold and culture cost.

(the section was originally in XML format, but I've changed it to something friendlier)

Cost of acquiring new PlotsPLOT_BASE_COST = 50
PLOT_ADDITIONAL_COST_PER_PLOT = 5
PLOT_COST_APPEARANCE_DIVISOR = 5
CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT = 15
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER = 10
CULTURE_COST_VISIBLE_DIVISOR = 5
CULTURE_PLOT_COST_MOD_MINIMUM = -85
MINOR_CIV_PLOT_CULTURE_COST_MULTIPLIER = 150
MAXIMUM_BUY_PLOT_DISTANCE = 3
MAXIMUM_ACQUIRE_PLOT_DISTANCE = 5
PLOT_INFLUENCE_DISTANCE_MULTIPLIER = 100
PLOT_INFLUENCE_RING_COST = 100
PLOT_INFLUENCE_WATER_COST = 25
PLOT_INFLUENCE_IMPROVEMENT_COST = -5
PLOT_INFLUENCE_ROUTE_COST = 0
PLOT_INFLUENCE_RESOURCE_COST = -105
PLOT_INFLUENCE_NW_COST = -105
PLOT_BUY_RESOURCE_COST = -100
PLOT_BUY_YIELD_COST = 10
PLOT_INFLUENCE_YIELD_POINT_COST = -1
PLOT_INFLUENCE_NO_ADJACENT_OWNED_COST = 1000

Answered by Oak

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