Balance Issue: Unit-boosting buildings are all but useless

[Airion]

I too have not built many barracks and the like because I just don't feel the benefits justify the cost. But unlike some people here, I don't see why that's a problem. The option is there to build it or not.

If you want to get the most of these buildings, the obvious strategy is to specialize your cities. One builds land units, the other mounted, the other naval. One building to improve those units in each city.

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by skallben

I'm curious if map-size affects how people use these buildings. I can see them being more useful when more units are in play and the scale in general is larger.

I played a long drawn-out domination on a huge map, and after taking out my neighbours, didn't build any more units in my cities, it was far more effective to just purchase units in captured cities before razing them.

[Venereus]

I just build wonders because they don't require maintance, and give better bonuses than regular buildings, while still keeping cities busy. Also, I don't even need many units. And if I do, there are militaristic City-states for that.

[Becephalus]

Well I am 160 horus in and have won with IDK 10 civs in every way possible.

The stables are an atrocious building, no possible scenario where I could imagine building one.
The barracks is ok and I sometimes build them, though never until the middle ages.
I think I built an armory once, don't think it was worth it.

Other than that the rest of the unit buildings just seem insane.

[stealth_nsk]

I think OP forgets the following:
1. You could build these buildings before gaining some cool new unit's tech. If you build units instead, they'll become obsolete.
2. Resource limitations. Yes, horses are abundant, but iron, for example, usually don't.

I build barracks in military-oriented cities very often. Armory sometimes.

[Slimthrull]

My thought was to get rid of the exp bonuses (units get exp so quickly as it is and they don't die) and instead replace it with a production fairly hefty production bonus for units. Not sure what a good percent would be, but of the top of my head 30 to 40 percent seems justified.

[Namel]

They should halve production cost and upkeep of all military units and properly show how much upkeep each unit costs.

Currently game encourages as small army as possible bit too much.

[JEELEN]

Luckily we already got several mods to fix the issue in different ways. Check the mod hub.

[Haiku]

Originally Posted by Evalis

Just fyi the factory does not require a workshop. That's just what the civilopedia says. The xml does not include anything about the factory requiring a workshop, and I've certainly built them without it.

This civilopedia is just a waste ... You can't rely on it. Half of the entries are inaccurate or false. Not to mention that half the information is not even there anyway...

[drachasor]

Originally Posted by Haiku

This civilopedia is just a waste ... You can't rely on it. Half of the entries are inaccurate or false. Not to mention that half the information is not even there anyway...

Yeah. I have to concede that despite how I like many of the changed mechanics, the game does seem to have been rushed.

[skallben]

Originally Posted by stealth_nsk

I think OP forgets the following:
1. You could build these buildings before gaining some cool new unit's tech. If you build units instead, they'll become obsolete.

Or you could just build the obsolete unit and upgrade it dirt cheap once new tech is available. Heck, you could even continue doing it after.

[r_rolo1]

Originally Posted by stealth_nsk

I think OP forgets the following:
1. You could build these buildings before gaining some cool new unit's tech. If you build units instead, they'll become obsolete.
2. Resource limitations. Yes, horses are abundant, but iron, for example, usually don't.

I build barracks in military-oriented cities very often. Armory sometimes.

Neither 1 or 2 has anything that makes the OP reasoning false ... he is not saying that a barracks or any other of the XP giving buildings are not usable or that they shouldn't be built ever ... he is just saying that in what he considers normal circumstances they simply don't pay up. OFC we can discuss if his "normal" circumstances are so normal or not, but he is absolutely right in the situation he describes.

Think on the more close example of civ IV, the West point. It was surely a good boost for a city building military , but , due to it's high cost, it was normally not worth to stop building military to make it ( someone calculated that you would need to save 4800 hammers in units due to XP given by it to consider it paid compared with the option of keeping building units ) . In here the thing gets worse because the buildings themselfes pay maintenance ....

[Drawmeus]

I think the OP is right about this one. If they had no maintenance cost, you could conceivably build them up during peacetime so that you can more quickly build an effective military when you see a war coming (sparing the maintenance costs of maintaining that military), but since they're quite expensive to maintain, you're pretty much just better off maintaining that military throughout instead of putting yourself in a position where you need to build units faster later on.

Basically, when you're in the position of building enough military that the military buildings are worth the production cost, you're taking on too much unit maintenance to want to deal with their maintenance costs. If you're not building so many units that the maintenance cost is going to be an actual problem, you're not building enough units that the production savings on the units outweighs the production cost of the buildings.

For the experience buildings, you are trading off more units (the units you would have if you had taken the production time to build them instead of the barracks/etc) for better units... except this isn't really a net benefit, because the maintenance costs of the barracks/etc themselves end up offsetting the main benefit of going better instead of more, the cost savings for supporting a smaller military.

The simple mod answer is cut the maintenance on them and in some cases the build times. The more elaborate answer is to figure out what the player should be getting out of them and redesign them from scratch to fit those needs. I may tackle that at some point.

[gwarf]

What if the barracks gave like 1xp per turn for a unit garrisoned in the city?

With like a limit at 2 or 3 promotions?

Then it would be worth it and you could train your armies slowly during peacetime instead of always just declaring war on a city state and leaving your units under the city to slowly gain exp from being bombarded:-)

This would also make barracks worth more in smaller cities, because they don't produce tons of units but can hep train them. Might make a good balance?

[Lord Parkin]

Originally Posted by gwarf

What if the barracks gave like 1xp per turn for a unit garrisoned in the city?

With like a limit at 2 or 3 promotions?

Then it would be worth it and you could train your armies slowly during peacetime instead of always just declaring war on a city state and leaving your units under the city to slowly gain exp from being bombarded:-)

This would also make barracks worth more in smaller cities, because they don't produce tons of units but can hep train them. Might make a good balance?

Now that's an interesting idea. I think it could work quite well... although with only 1 unit able to enter a city at a time, maybe the effect could spread to the surrounding tiles as well?

In any event, it's a very intriguing thought, so good on you for thinking of it. It'd also mean that units built before the Barracks wouldn't be forever at a disadvantage, and could slowly be "trained up" if you desired. It would actually make the Barracks a very worthwhile building over time.

[Maxor127]

Originally Posted by jjkrause84

Buildings need to be cheaper period. I almost always build wonders if I can because many of them take the same time as building a building IF NOT LESS!

(I've intentionally avoided the Egyptians for this purpose. If it's bad with everyoen else it must be downright stupid with the Egyptians)

Me too. I pretty much just build gold science, and production buildings.

[DalekDavros]

Any building that has an engineer specialist slot is worth it for that alone, in my book. Great Engineers are the hardest GP to produce and also the best.

Water Mill is one of the worst buildings, but its replacement (Floating Gardens) is absolutely fantastic in the right city.

[Malkaviel]

Originally Posted by DalekDavros

Any building that has an engineer specialist slot is worth it for that alone, in my book. Great Engineers are the hardest GP to produce and also the best.

Water Mill is one of the worst buildings, but its replacement (Floating Gardens) is absolutely fantastic in the right city.

water mill is a "must" in early heavy-production cities, granted not so important if the city is mostly grassland.

great engineers are ok for culture victories (snag sistine, redentor) but domination and science victories will have you idling (stocking) 4-6 great scientists until after either replaceable parts or rocketry, respectively.

[QES]

I agree with the initial post, but i would not advocate making buildings cheaper - I like the idea that a civilization chooses to invest in EITHER expansion OR in infrastructure. In this, small nations ought to be competitive.

Instead of making buildings cheaper, I'd argue for the "greater benefits". Every building should be a hefty investment, but in-so doing, one should benefit enormously. Larger nations/warmongers should go very building light. But a small nation that went building heavy SHOULD BE ABLE to compete with the large warmonger, each has their risks. The warmonger should risk inefficiency and unhappiness (and really, riots and civil war, but they took that out ) and the smaller nation should risk being outproduced or invaded by those who did invest time in units.

I argue for the "better benefits" rather than cheaper buildings. Because if one makes the buildings cheaper - warmongers will be able to do both.

[Thormodr]

Originally Posted by gwarf

What if the barracks gave like 1xp per turn for a unit garrisoned in the city?

With like a limit at 2 or 3 promotions?

Then it would be worth it and you could train your armies slowly during peacetime instead of always just declaring war on a city state and leaving your units under the city to slowly gain exp from being bombarded:-)

This would also make barracks worth more in smaller cities, because they don't produce tons of units but can hep train them. Might make a good balance?

They actually did this in the Fall from Heaven mod mod Fall Further Plus. It definitely made them very useful. It's a pretty good idea.