Guilds

Could someone give me a quick briefing on how guilds work? I can't seem to be able to found one, even though the AI doesn't seem to have problems doing it. I can't find the Victualliers/Crafts/Servants Guild buildings in the civilopedia, although they're linked to in the guild info tab... I should be able to found blacksmith's guild, I have a great engineer and the required forges, guilds civic is active etc.., what am I supposed to do?

I have the "Realistic Corporations" option on, does that present problems?

46852 said:

Could someone give me a quick briefing on how guilds work? I can't seem to be able to found one, even though the AI doesn't seem to have problems doing it. I can't find the Victualliers/Crafts/Servants Guild buildings in the civilopedia, although they're linked to in the guild info tab... I should be able to found blacksmith's guild, I have a great engineer and the required forges, guilds civic is active etc.., what am I supposed to do?

I have the "Realistic Corporations" option on, does that present problems?

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I have never played with Realistic Corporations, but without that the point that you may be missing is that you need to build one of the national wonders (Victualliers/Crafts/Servants Guild buildings) first, and then you can build the world wonder for the actual guild. So you would need to build the Crafts Master Guild building, then you can build the Master Blacksmiths. You do not need the great engineer, both can be built by hand, and you do not need the guilds civic. You will need at least one of the consumed reasorce, and it counts as a wonder so you need to have a slot available.

Samson said:

I have never played with Realistic Corporations, but without that the point that you may be missing is that you need to build one of the national wonders (Victualliers/Crafts/Servants Guild buildings) first, and then you can build the world wonder for the actual guild. So you would need to build the Crafts Master Guild building, then you can build the Master Blacksmiths. You do not need the great engineer, both can be built by hand, and you do not need the guilds civic. You will need at least one of the consumed reasorce, and it counts as a wonder so you need to have a slot available.

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What is the requirement to build Victualliers/Crafts/Servants Guild buildings? I can see them in specific guilds' requirements, but when I click the link from the guild civilopedia entry, it doesn't lead anywhere, it just changes the view to national wonders civilopedia list but there are no entrys for Victualliers/Crafts/Servants Guild hall. There's actually only one building called "Guild Hall", but that doesn't seem to affect anything gives some bonus hammers and science.

EDIT:

Ok I found this from SGUILDHALL XML entry:

<NotGameOption>GAMEOPTION_REALISTIC_CORPORATIONS</NotGameOption>

So I guess guild halls don't work with realistic corps.

The nomenclature is a bit confusing.

• Guild Hall without adjectives is the Guilds civic building.
• The three National Wonder Guild Halls (Clerks', Servants, Victuallers) are turned off if the Realistic Corporations option is on. That is exactly what <NotGameOption> does.
• The World Wonder Guild Halls and Corporation Headquarters will spawn randomly if Realistic Corporations is on. The whole Realistic Corporations mechanic is buried in the Sources files. It looks to me like the spawning is random, but it definitely only checks every so many turns and it requires a certain number of players with the guild or corporation's founding tech before the corporation can appear.

Hi, apologies, but I couldn't find a more recent Guilds-related thread for my question.

I find Guilds overly complicated (and I'm not alone, see below) and I previously always turned them off with the game option at game start. Since I recently upgraded my ROM:AND version after a break, I couldn't see the Guilds option anymore. Has it been removed or am I just going blind?

Afforess said:

Guilds are complicated. Right now, you have to build one of the 3 "master" guild halls, then each of those unlock 4 of the actual guild halls, which will found a guild. Then you can use those to build the guild executives and spread the guild.

It's overly complicated and requires a lot of micromanagement. I have a thread where I've discussed ideas to streamline the guild & corporation management: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=533618

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Also; did the neat ideas in this thread ever go anywhere?

Cheers, A.

aggri1 said:

Hi, apologies, but I couldn't find a more recent Guilds-related thread for my question.

I find Guilds overly complicated (and I'm not alone, see below) and I previously always turned them off with the game option at game start. Since I recently upgraded my ROM:AND version after a break, I couldn't see the Guilds option anymore. Has it been removed or am I just going blind?

Click to expand...

Guilds option is made default on and hidden, because the game is meant to be played with it.

Also; did the neat ideas in this thread ever go anywhere?

Cheers, A.

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As far as I remember no, none of those.

BTW:
I am thinking about Guilds mechanism for some time: Is it good that guilds work the same as corporations? I mean having a a HQ, that can even be traded? I think guilds should have no headquarter.

Zeta Nexus said:

Guilds option is made default on and hidden, because the game is meant to be played with it.

Click to expand...

Is there a way to un-hide this option? I don't like Guilds and don't feel they really add much to the game. I haven't noticed any destabilising balance problems resulting from the unavailability of Guilds (unlike, e.g. Great Commanders, which make it far too easy, so I turn them off also).

Cheers, A.

aggri1 said:

Is there a way to un-hide this option? I don't like Guilds and don't feel they really add much to the game. I haven't noticed any destabilising balance problems resulting from the unavailability of Guilds (unlike, e.g. Great Commanders, which make it far too easy, so I turn them off also).

Cheers, A.

Click to expand...

Yes, in gameoptions.xml, IIRC.

How do others feel about the balance of guilds? It seems to me (just from the vague impression) that the cost per resource for guilds is constant across the guilds, but the benefit if very different. This means that the bakers, butchers and blacksmiths (which give 1 or 1.5 per resource) are highly valuable, but fishmongers (?) which gives only 0.5 food per resource can be negative to your economy.

It seems there is a similar thing with corporations (with sids sushi being spectacularly expensive if you have a lot of seafood), but it is a bit different as the corporation building is so powerful. It seems the issue here is different, in that what you want is one each of the corporations resources, with each duplicate costing far more than the benefit is gives. I do not know if this is intensional.

Also, is it me or the Clerks' Guild is useless?

Turning off the Guilds option will not do anything. All the XML that pointed at this option has been deleted. You would have to manually disable the buildings in the XML.

I agree that Clerks Guild is inferior, especially being directly inferior to Apothecaries Guild. I think increasing Clerks Guild to +6 science per city would be a good first thing we can do.

Vokarya said:

Turning off the Guilds option will not do anything. All the XML that pointed at this option has been deleted. You would have to manually disable the buildings in the XML.

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Oh drats. I guess I'll look at disabling the buildings if I can be bothered. Might not make much difference in the end since almost no Civilisations in my current game have the 8 cities required to build the 8 forges or carpenters or whatever in order to actually found a Guild. I only have 5 cities and am in the top third of the score list. I presume the number 8 of required buildings scales with map size; in my game there must have been many barbarian minor Civilisations.

Ah well.

And yes I find the cost-benefit ratio varies wildly amongst the different Guilds.