1. I have to say the best is Mansa Muna and his Mint(forge). I aint a big Mansa fan but I do like the Financial Triat, it is great to keep up in sci, and his special building give you 10% gold production to go along with the forge benifits.

2. The Incan terrace(granary) is great, i build granarys anyway so the plus 2 culture bonus lets me just skip the building a monument in the city

3. The english Stock Exchange (bank), goes back to the 1st one, anything that gives you an economic boost helps not only with money but science too

I'll take the Sacrificial Altar. Discount courthouse plus more frequent whipping... what's not to like?

Others I think are especially useful:
Terrace
Obelisk
Hammam

Howsabout the German Assembly plant? An extra 50% production right off the bat with coal, and an extra 50% with power? That's +125% production from two buildings! Let us not forget that you can assign tons of engineers with the assembly plant, 2 more than a normal factory. Quite a good unique building.

Most of the unique buildings are pretty handy, actually. I like the Greek Odeon for a good all-around happiness-producing/culture providing building. The Egyptian and Arabian special buildings are both excellent, as they're early-game buildings that can allow priest specialists without need for a religion, which really helps with generating an early great prophet for a religious catch-up or shrine production.

Howsabout the German Assembly plant? An extra 50% production right off the bat with coal, and an extra 50% with power? That's +125% production from two buildings! Let us not forget that you can assign tons of engineers with the assembly plant, 2 more than a normal factory. Quite a good unique building.

It doesn't work that way. German Assembly plants are built 50% faster with coal. They do not provide additional production.

Ah, that changes things a little. Still, the traditional lag period you experience while building factories all over your empire once you get industrialization could be greatly reduced. I was planning on playing the Germans soon, so I'll let you know how it goes then.

My favorite is the Ottoman hammam. Easy happiness at a time in the game where it really helps.

Just trying the French Salon right now in a Prince-level fractal game as Napoleon, and finding it very helpful. Anything that gives free specialists, much less free specialists that generate +4 culture/round, is a good deal. Combined with free speech, representation, and anything that boosts GPP production, and you'll find yourself with a good boost in culture, science, and great artists, all of which is fine by me.

my guess is the altar is the best by a lot. lucky monty aint organized.

I like the apothecary. Works well with cryus's charismatic trait. Allows your cities to grow extra large.

The Madrassa looks like it might work well in certain situations, but I haven't tried Saladin since I got warlords.

I'd have to agree the mint is very nice. It is a building that everyone builds in pretty much every city. Add that to the fact it is pretty early in the game and it can make things game changing. In my current game I'm getting most of my first few built with 787 turns left. Even if you figure it only brings in like 1 gold per turn more per city, that is 787 gold per city. As for the rest, I haven't really messed with the rest of the civs.

Research Institute is great for speeding up Peter's SE research when it starts to slow down in comparison with CE in the end game.

Just trying the French Salon right now in a Prince-level fractal game as Napoleon, and finding it very helpful. Anything that gives free specialists, much less free specialists that generate +4 culture/round, is a good deal. Combined with free speech, representation, and anything that boosts GPP production, and you'll find yourself with a good boost in culture, science, and great artists, all of which is fine by me.


Works even better going for a Culture win with Louis XIV

Shaka's special barracks fits very nicely with him. An early "mini-courthouse" that gets built at double speed (since Shaka is Aggressive). It allows you to keep more of the cities from a pre-CoL war, making it easier to build a larger army and economy to take/keep more cities in the post-CoL war.

I think Shaka is the only one who builds his UB at +100% production, right?

sigmakan, my current game is as Saladin, and the Madrassa really gives you an early leg up on Great People production, especially in your GP farm. They also let you run a kind of restricted Caste System without actually using the Civic. The downside is that if you manage your GP points well (I don't), you may get a disproportionate number of Prophets and Scientists, but that's not a huge downside in the early game, eh? Definitely a very powerful UB, especially if you want to run a specialist economy.