When to Build Money Buildings

I find myself neglecting money buildings (markets, banks, etc) in my games and making buildings which give me food, science, or production first. Sometimes in quick games they won't be built until fairly late. When do you typically build these? Do they significantly affect whether other civs send trade routes to you? How important is the East India trading company wonder?

get markets when you can so you can get EIC when you feel like it. then banks stock exchanges can be built when you feel like it, and usually just in the city with trade routes. I think EIC is fairly important if there's a city that significantly benefits from trade routes (i.e. good resource diversity). otherwise gold is still fairly important, otherwise how are you going to pay for at least building maintenance?

Market places in your cities became much more important in BNW than before.
Number one is that it greatly increases the value you as a city owner get from trade routes initiated by the AI to you.

Food & Universities though are much more important than Marketplaces and so is the Workshop.

In early game deity they're worth prioritizing over other mandatory builds if the city borders multiple civs, IMO.

My priorities are:

Production
then Food
then Science
then Gold
then Culture
then others

For example: If my building queue is University>Market>Opera House>Garden and then Workshop becomes available, I put the Workshop on the top of the queue, so I save a few turns on those same buildings.

Ah... In the early game I prioritize Shrine and Temple to get a chance of getting decent beliefs.

That's fine for a rule of thumb, but there are always different opportunity costs to consider. The granary is a less mandatory early build if you're doing a lot of early expansion, i.e. 4 city liberty with 2 post NC expansions, or if you're crunched for happiness, or if there is no bananas/wheat/deer. If you had the mental capacity you could calculate a precise conversion rate of hammers to food to gold to beaker and always make the highest expected value decision. Food is more important than hammers in early game but you should still generally work a 1F/3H horse plains or a 1F/1H/3G luxury plains over a 2F/0H/0G unimproved grassland.

The more unclear conversions like the +25% gpp from garden or the FPT from the temple/shrine with no strong religion (investing in FPT for industrial era GP) are much harder for me to prioritize, but clearly belong in the build order somewhere.

renton555 said:

That's fine for a rule of thumb, but there are always different opportunity costs to consider. The granary is a less mandatory early build if you're doing a lot of early expansion, i.e. 4 city liberty with 2 post NC expansions, or if you're crunched for happiness, or if there is no bananas/wheat/deer. If you had the mental capacity you could calculate a precise conversion rate of hammers to food to gold to beaker and always make the highest expected value decision. Food is more important than hammers in early game but you should still generally work a 1F/3H horse plains or a 1F/1H/3G luxury plains over a 2F/0H/0G unimproved grassland.

The more unclear conversions like the +25% gpp from garden or the FPT from the temple/shrine with no strong religion (investing in FPT for industrial era GP) are much harder for me to prioritize, but clearly belong in the build order somewhere.

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Sometimes I try to do this math, but honestly, if I calculate every single decision during a game, turns last much more and the game begins to be boring.

With experience comes knowledge and today I follow main simple principles game through.

Of course I make some mistakes, but I think that's a bit of fun on that too.

Build them asap in commerce cities(for example, i wait until cities have 6-7 gpt before building a market). Can wait for others until you build up everything else more inportant.

But tilewhise (that's not a word, I know), doing math is essencial. And easy too.

Early on build them in cities that have gold output. If you're playing tradition with monarchy you'll definetely want one in the cap and then it depends on what luxs are available, jungle trade posts etc...

Later in the game if you play freedom and or Korea you will want to make them everywhere if you go for peaceful victories.

I usually build them early on myself because I have either alot of troops to support or I have alot of buildings to support. I never do the math on anything really. I shoot from the hip most of the time in this game. I play by feel rather than math which is why my game suffers from longer turn times and just all around poor play but it works for me lol. On a side note about the math, I never even calculate when to bulb a GS after Public Schools or Labs even though I have read many times that it is stronger to wait 8 turns after researching this tech. So you have to kinda decide how you want to play the game. Do you want to just wing it or do you want to be a cool calm calculating machine! Either way markets are pretty much a must build eventually but I have had many games where I just couldn't build hardly any of the Nat Wonders because it would take 16 turns to complete and I find I need other things like another archer or pike or something . However... I do not think I have ever played one game without building markets in all my cities.

I'm sure it varies based on your game focus, but would you generally build them before or after faith generating buildings?

Depends ofcourse if you want a religion or you think you can even get it or not. Alot of my games I don't even try for faith till later because it can be a pain to get on Deity without some CS help or Desert or Nat Wonder. Also if I am warmongering I don't worry too much about faith buildings but if Im playing peaceful I might try for an early shrine. Id say that I build markets more than shrines first in about 75% of my games.

Frequently I'm gunning for Reformation, and that means piety opener and organized religion. So yes, faith buildings first. Besides, temples ARE money generating buildings.

I always find myself building markets in BNW later than I did in G&K, because of the lack of gold from terrain. Of course more gold from incoming trade routes is always very useful, although I find that is only important in cities that are good for trade; the bonus from routes is useless if nobody sends routes to that city after all.

I am new to BNW from lots of GnK and am frequently facing gold problems, despite running the most profitable trade routes I can. I have had a few games where I had to go back 50 turns or more because the No Science! penalty was killing me. I have not exactly figured out the pattern, so I don't know the right questions to ask this forum. I will say that building roads later and money buildings sooner both help, but most games still seem to have a couple spots where income is a real issue for long sequences of turns. Even late game the only thing keeping me net positive is trade routes. I rarely had this kind of severe cash flow issue when playing GnK.

Building cities closer together has a significant impact on early gold, working luxuries at the expense of growth is usually necessary. Selling off your excess happiness and strategic resources at all time is key to early game solvency. This means even selling luxuries you only have one of if your happiness is >6-8.

beetle said:

I am new to BNW from lots of GnK and am frequently facing gold problems, despite running the most profitable trade routes I can. I have had a few games where I had to go back 50 turns or more because the No Science! penalty was killing me. I have not exactly figured out the pattern, so I don't know the right questions to ask this forum. I will say that building roads later and money buildings sooner both help, but most games still seem to have a couple spots where income is a real issue for long sequences of turns. Even late game the only thing keeping me net positive is trade routes. I rarely had this kind of severe cash flow issue when playing GnK.

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Gold issuses on Deity should not be a problem. Try to settle on a mining lux and research mining asap to sell it off for 7gpt in the very early game. Sometimes I settle on a mining lux right at the start and research mining first and sell it right off to the ai even if its for only 3-5gpt for the first trade. However if your playing on something lower than Deity than you won't get gold like this but you don't have to worry so much about getting gold on anything lower because you can do so many other things... almost anything you choose really! Once you learn some basic do's and dont's you'll see that anything lower than Deity is a cake walk with some exceptions on Immortal. However gold is not really as important when playing Immortal or below.

If you get into warmongering you can bully CS's that are unprotected or protected if you don't care about the diplo with that Civ. If you really need gold in a pinch... work your gold only hexes for a few turns till you get a trade or route or building. (Don't build any roads till you can afford them)

1. Work Gold Hexes/Tiles
2. Trade with a Civ
3. Trade Routes
4. Gold Buildings
5. Delete a unit ... sometimes I execute a worker but that is extreme.

Just my thoughts and not exactly the best overall plan. You have to find what works best for you and how you like to play the game!

^^ It is on Immortal that I am having gold problems. The first time is pretty early, but after first round of luxes. Delaying roads delays the crisis, but does not avoid it. I get in a real panic, and I find I have to delete one unit (gifts from CS first, but often workers) every turn to forestall the crash. So I am already doing the 5 things you list -- and still running into problems.

I have not much bullied CS, so that might help -- but it would be rare for me to have enough units for this when I first have the income problem.

I definitely have money problems deity early game, but I head that off by pillaging the heck out of my neighbors. That gets me by until my gpt goes positive.