Buying a courthouse

[Qoojo]

I finally got to play my first game on Sat. When I took over a city, I immediately picked courthouse in the production queue. When I tried to purchase it, I could not figure out how, or see it in a list. How do you purchase what a city is currently working on?

 

[AriochIV]

You can't "rush" what you're working on, you can only buy something from scratch. And you're not allowed to buy Wonders or Courthouses.

 

[paradigmx]

Courthouse has to be built, otherwise a rich civ could just annex every city and buy the courthouse on the same turn.

 

[shinkicker]

I don't think you can. This is the way it was designed.

 

[jjkrause84]

You cannot purchase courthouses. They are made of special bricks of lawgiving which must be moulded individually by hand by the Great Lawgiver (this is why courthouses take 57 turns to build.....)

 

[SuperJay]

I don't think you can. This is the way it was designed.

Yep. The one building you really want to buy the most out of all other buildings, and that's the one that's prohibited.

Why? Because Schafer said so, that's why.

 

[jjkrause84]

Courthouse has to be built, otherwise a rich civ could just annex every city and buy the courthouse on the same turn.

A) So?

B) Buildings are expensive and you would have to be VERY rich to do this....mind-blowingly rich. Now, if a player DID manage to store up that much gold, hey....why limit them! Let them buy up courthouses and reap their rewards!

 

[Qoojo]

Thanks all. I kind of suspected that.

 

[Frosty_AUT]

It's a lazy and annoying approach to game design. It feels artificial and it's inconsistent with the rest of the rushbuying feature to boot.

 

[Silvis]

It's a lazy and annoying approach to game design. It feels artificial and it's inconsistent with the rest of the rushbuying feature to boot.

I don't know about that though. The general synopsis of the game I thought was that it was designed more for smaller empires instead of like how Civ IV was. You could have tons of cities in Civ IV with pretty much no issues. I think it was for balancing.

 

[andrewlt]

It's your first game. I made this mistake too in my first game. Don't worry, though. By your second game, you will have learned to raze everything to the ground.

 

[LL_LordOmega]

It's your first game. I made this mistake too in my first game. Don't worry, though. By your second game, you will have learned to raze everything to the ground.

and then you can use that money to rush buy happiness buildings in newly settled cities

 

[DuseCutter]

You really should be allowed to buy a courthouse. It can always be balanced by making it cost prohibitive to do it instead of completely leaving it out. It reeks of quick fix to a play testing balance issue.

 

[CaptainBinky]

I don't mind the building of courthouses - it's a bit like simulating the "x turns of anarchy" but in a way incorporated into existing mechanics. Would be a bit odd to take a city, annex it, buy a courthouse and then all the oppressed population suddenly be completely over-the-moon for some reason

edit: If you had so much money that buying courthouses everywhere was practical, you could just buy a circus and other happiness buildings in every city instead

 

[Frosty_AUT]

I don't know about that though. The general synopsis of the game I thought was that it was designed more for smaller empires instead of like how Civ IV was. You could have tons of cities in Civ IV with pretty much no issues. I think it was for balancing.

Even if Civ 5 aims to make small empires more competitive, should annexing never be an option then? Because the way it is now, unless your puppet the city, it's almost always the better option to raze it and build a new one on top of it. This way, you don't suffer the added unhappiness for the duration of the courthouse's ridiculous build time and you don't need to pay 5g maintenance for the courthouse either.

THAT's what I call broken game mechanics: A penalty that is a nuisance for people who "honestly" play the game while others with a little more knowledge of the game know how to easily exploit their way around it.

What makes all of this even more ridiculous is the fact that occupying a foreign city has lasting negative consequences for the happiness and economy of your empire, while razing a city, intentionally killing thousands of innocent people in the process, doesn't.

Would be a bit odd to take a city, annex it, buy a courthouse and then all the oppressed population suddenly be completely over-the-moon for some reason

It would make a lot more sense if it took courthouses a couple of turns to neutralize the unhappiness instead of removing it all at once.

 

[Silvis]

Even if Civ 5 aims to make small empires more competitive, should annexing never be an option then? Because the way it is now, unless your puppet the city, it's almost always the better option to raze it and build a new one on top of it. This way, you don't suffer the added unhappiness for the duration of the courthouse's ridiculous build time and you don't need to pay 5g maintenance for the courthouse either.

THAT's what I call broken game mechanics: A penalty that is a nuisance for people who "honestly" play the game while others with a little more knowledge of the game know how to easily exploit their way around it.

What makes all of this even more ridiculous is the fact that occupying a foreign city has lasting negative consequences for the happiness and economy of your empire, while razing a city, intentionally killing thousands of innocent people in the process, doesn't.

Good Point... I can't argue with your logic

 

[CaptainBinky]

It would make a lot more sense if it took courthouses a couple of turns to neutralize the unhappiness instead of removing it all at once.

I agree - to be honest I would prefer it if the courthouse was a fairly cheap building to build but upon completion the unhappiness dropped off turn-by-turn but I prefer what we have than insta-happiness which is what you'd get if you could rush it.

For what it's worth, I also sometimes raze the city entirely when I want to move the city a tile or so - or if I really couldn't cope with the happiness hit. But the cost of re-building all the stuff you need and getting the population of the city back up (not to mention if there's a wonder in there) makes razing an occasional thing rather than the norm.

The thing is, the puppets normally build quite a few sensible buildings - monument, library, marketplace, etc - before they start on the useless stuff like barracks and armouries. So my strategy is usually to puppet the city first, and as soon as it starts to build something useless, annex it, take a look inside, see if there's a bunch of expensive useless buildings inside - if so, raze, otherwise build courthouse.

 

[Cincinnatus C.]

The courthouse is symbolic of governmental propaganda and community-building efforts - it's a project rather than a building.

See, everything makes sense if you abstract it sufficiently.

 

[SuperJay]

What makes all of this even more ridiculous is the fact that occupying a foreign city has lasting negative consequences for the happiness and economy of your empire, while razing a city, intentionally killing thousands of innocent people in the process, doesn't.

Agreed completely.

The "raze and rebuild" workaround for conquering is just like the "build and disband" workaround for making money (instead of building Wealth) - it's just smarter to do an end-around the intended game mechanics because the results are far more favorable for the player. Which kind of seems like a problem with the design or implementation, to me.

 

[Louis XXIV]

You cannot purchase courthouses. They are made of special bricks of lawgiving which must be moulded individually by hand by the Great Lawgiver (this is why courthouses take 57 turns to build.....)

lol

It's a lazy and annoying approach to game design. It feels artificial and it's inconsistent with the rest of the rushbuying feature to boot.

I don't know about that. Can't buy World Wonders (or small wonders), can't buy Space Ship parts. Courthouses are just one of those balance things. They used to piss me off. Now I think they're fairly well balanced. They're slow to build, but the benefits are worth it.