General noob question grab bag

Landing boats are flat-bottomed and will not work well in heavy seas.

traius said:

1. building every building: Most buildings suck.
If it's not an AP building that gets free hammers, and you're not going cultural victory, all religious buildings suck. If not going cultural, all other culture things suck. Custom houses REALLY suck. Harbours are good if you have the great lighthouse and the city trades with foreign cities, but otherwise suck. Universities kind of suck, though for a space game, getting enough to build oxford in the capital is okay. Markets and grocers suck, because you don't need that health or happiness most of the time if you trade for resources effectively, and their 25% gold is all-but-worthless (ignore if in a major shrine city though, as that can be very useful). Courthouses are okay if organized, but otherwise suck. Most late-game buildings other than factories and power buildings suck, and even then, only the coal plant is actually good, as the others come too late (and nuclear plants can blow up your cities).
What is good? Granaries, forges, barracks, and key wonders (mids, the great lighthouse, the great library, mausoleum of Mausolus, the parthenon maybe, and the Taj Mahal).
In other cases, using those hammers on wealth or research or failgold wonders is superior.

Click to expand...

OK, but if you're going for Domination won't you be needing Libraries or Theaters for border expansion sooner or later? Unless of course you're going for Conquest which I'd think (never done it myself) would take longer.

Libraries are indeed good in many games, not because of their culture (though that can be helpful) but because early Great Scientists are often crucial (Academy, bulb Philosophy etc.).

As for getting culture to increase your land area - unless we're talking VERY early, your cities will usually have a combination of religions, the ability to build Culture (comes with the Music tech), and/or the ability to run Artist specialists for a couple of turns. All of those things are better for cultural expansion than building a Library or Theater. I build the occasional Theater when a newly conquered city is getting dominated by AI culture, and I'll have to whip down the city anyway because its unhappy - but usually I'd rather whip out more units to conquer the city

Besides culture one needs to deal with city maintenance in a sprawling continental empire before Communism and State Property. In a recent game some distant settlements were costing well over 10 gold per turn. Courthouses and a Forbidden Palace were practically indispensable to avoid a crippled economy. Additionally Courthouses are a healthy boost to espionage.

The conventional wisdom is that courthouses are only worth it in cities that are paying 6 gpt in maintenance or more.

Agreed, although I wouldn't say "only." More like essential, especially when you've got a dozen or more high-maintenance settlements.

Lennier said:

The conventional wisdom is that courthouses are only worth it in cities that are paying 6 gpt in maintenance or more.

Click to expand...

Such conventional wisdoms should be forgotten. 6 gpt is peanuts and a courthouse (120) that gives 32pt is rarely going to be the best build choice. If you are going for space, you should be going for a quick communism anyway (corps obviously make courthouses necessary) and a courthouse won't help you win conquest. Easily the most overrated building on this forum.

Yup i would set costs much higher than 6gpt, maybe 9-10 i start thinking about them.
More food = better CHs, for example a large captured city with a forge could easily spare 3 pop for a CH whip, while smaller cities should have better things to do.

As Sampsa wrote, milking AIs for gold (trading away older techs or resources for gpt) has much higher priority for an eceonomy.
Different game in mp where you have only your own income, here all those buildings like CHs, markets or banks have large value increases.

This Monarch player concedes the point, although after watching Grimith whipping CHs while almost going into revolt gives one a different perspective at least. But yeah, you're right for most situations. Thanks for the advice.

Happy New Year everybody!

Jivilov said:

This Monarch player concedes the point, although after watching Grimith whipping CHs while almost going into revolt gives one a different perspective at least. But yeah, you're right for most situations. Thanks for the advice.

Click to expand...

Well, at least in that game the leader is ORG so courthouses are 60, making it almost a different building. The main issue in that game was not lack of courthouses though, it was lack of happiness due to poor tech path. Much earlier monarchy would allow the player to run HR (and improve masses of wine...). As played, cities are horribly small and not working cottages. If you are into watching playthroughs, I'd recommend Lain (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBiPHqnZ3mwIqtraltox6jg).

Org CHs are certainly good buildings, esp after rushes like in the video.
AIs will always trade Monarchy, so getting it for CoL can be very good there.

Overall, CHs help against urgent gpt loss..but being in such a situation hints towards other gameplay flaws.

Default game settings, Courthouses are kind of crappy. You're better off building Wealth most of the time.

On big maps and Epic/Marathon, they get useful fast when you're running 15+ maintenance per turn per city. But that's almost a different game, and if you change enough settings, you can make a lot of suboptimal approaches more viable.

I'm right now in a game where I have just transitioned to building courthouses all over the place.

Have done a engineering based conquest and economy is hurting badly, breakeven at 10% research if I'm running wealth in most cities.
The two key techs I was after are almost in (MilSci+Steel) and I have started a golden age to do the last teching.
I'll be in org religion for at most 8 turns. I don't need to build wealth to reach the tech I need and after that I'll just build units everywhere, likely for the rest of the game, which is looking like it can be quite long, so CHs have long time to pay off.

They are a very good building but they are situational and timing is everything.

Worth mentioning that in many of the situations where you need courthouses, banks/grocers/markets might also be the superior choice.

Banks if the city is worth it. Grocers/markets only for your highest commerce cities, unless you have all the resources needed for the 3 extra hap or health.
I only build CH at the very end of quick conquest while waiting for communism. In far away conquered cities, whip the forge, and then the courthouse.
That takes care of most of the happiness and cost problems. At least till state property.
On smaller worlds they're not really needed.

sampsa said:

If you are into watching playthroughs, I'd recommend Lain (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBiPHqnZ3mwIqtraltox6jg).

Click to expand...

Less than an hour into Lain's Tokugawa Deity video noticed he mined a Pig (later pastured it) and traded his only Copper for a Cow (he doesn't have Iron). Doesn't the first action waste worker turns while the second seems almost suicidal, no? Plus researching Mysticism goes against conventional wisdom to avoid religious techs early on. To a mere Emperor player (now at last, after ten years!) such arcane operations are baffling to say the least.

Edit: At 1:22 he's chopping Confucian Missionaries out of one town and before that he'd built a Confucian Monastery in another (although he'd switched to Org Rel before it was completed). He's trying to convert his looming neighbor Gilgamesh. Deity is a different kettle of fish which may not always have useful advice for intermediate players.

Haven't watched it, but mining pigs is a very standard idea pre animal husbandry. Loses worker turns yes, but makes great use of the tile (24 is a 6-yield tile and those don't grow on trees). Trading copper away - well, did it kill him? There can be several reasons to give metal away: diplomacy and probably more importantly the ability to build warriors for cheap fog busters and military police. Religious tech line is not useless at all, depends on the specific needs of the position.

edit: Oh and in general, I'd recommend you to forget all the "rules" you heard many years ago.

Jivilov said:

Less than an hour into Lain's Tokugawa Deity video noticed he mined a Pig (later pastured it) and traded his only source of Copper for a Cow. Doesn't the first action waste worker turns while the second, depriving him of the ability to build Spears or Axes, seems almost suicidal, no? Plus researching Mysticism goes against conventional wisdom to avoid religious techs early on. To a mere Emperor player (now at last, after ten years!) such arcane operations are baffling to say the least.

Click to expand...

Very common to mine hill pigs early. Gives you a power tile for a while regardless of whether you go AH later. Strong tile for worker/settler building. Definitely not a waste of turns, especially relative to other things a worker can or cannot do at the time. His logic on Mysticism was for possibly going for Code of Laws. I don't necessarily consider Myst itself a religious tech but more of a gateway tech. It is often avoided if you don't need it, but at the point he teched it he already had all his worker techs and was basically making strategic decisions about which way he wanted to go in the tech tree. The long standing advice you are referring to is not to immediately pursue early religions in lieu of worker techs.

The copper trade decision was three fold. First, Lain was cognizant that he was not in immediate danger - at least within 10 turns or so, at which time he could cancel the trade. He was not going to be building Spears or Axes anytime soon - it was not a priority. Second, it allows him the ability to build warriors for cheap MP..including the one he had in process which would have converted to a Spear, which he did not want. Lastly, copper was another resource he could trade to GK early to speed up diplo boosts. These little things become very important on Deity.

edit: sampsa

Thanks for your detailed replies. Much appreciated.

BTW sorry to be difficult but at around 2:13:20 in his Tokugawa Deity Part 2 Lain starts talking about switching back to Org Rel in order to put Courthouses in his cities. Then he proceeds to whip them out Imagine that!

Yes, I looked through the game swiftly yesterday skipping most of the technical phase in the end. The usefulness of courthouses depends on a few factors, probably the most important being "when will the game end?". I gather Lain built courthouses mainly for Forbidden palace which acts as a "second capital" in distance maintenance calculation. This makes sense, since his empire was stretched. My hatred towards ch:s is so deep that I wouldn't have done that, but I don't think it's a big deal either way really. Game was already completely won at that point. As a sidenote, those -points were not useful in any fashion.

You can learn most from Lain's early game play (say until T100), as unfortunately especially pangaeaish maps rarely offer any real challenges beyond that, assuming the early parts are played as precisely as in the game in question.