Workshop and Caravansary

[Gokudo01]

I've got an issue with production buildings : they are better with super productive city than with production starved city. If you are working 2 copper mines, 1 iron mine and 2 normal mine, Forge is super efficient and pays for itself really fast. If your city is kind of struggling, you better invest your hammer in culture to get those progress/authority policy running, baby


1-Workshop :
Even If you kept some forest and you have the population to work an extra-specialist, the building takes a long time before giving some fruits.

at medieval, if you are working 3 forest tiles and the engineer slot, the building brings 3 + 3(5 if you have already got machinery ) + 2.
You will get 8(10) productions per turn from it.
Problem : it costs 350 hammers which means that it will take 43(35) turns to pay for himself.

The building is only worth if you crave for those 3 engineer points and/or you can't already trade production and want to do it.
If you are able to export lots of hammer with many internal trade routes, the building can be almost fine but it can only be useful in one or two cities.

So unless you've got maya/brazil and cities with fur/Truffles and deer everywhere, workshop is always not worth the investment outside of your capital/holy city.


2 - Caravansary :

I don't even think I need to explain what is wrong with caravansary.
I think it should be changed to be national wonder which requires market and make it affect every city.
Migrate the luxury bonus to market and arena.


3 - Stable :

Like the three musketeers, there is one more which isn't in the title.
It's not a secret, stable has been been a terrible building for a long time. extremely inefficient, super super super super niche. Get semi useless around modern era.
I think the yields should be slightly tweaked and the bonus should affect MELEE and MOUNTED.


So what do you think about those 3 buildings ?
And thanks so much for reading it to the end

 

[Enginseer]

2 - Caravansary :

I don't even think I need to explain what is wrong with caravansary.
I think it should be changed to be national wonder which requires market and make it affect every city.
Migrate the luxury bonus to market and arena.

Yes you do, it's a god tier building in getting a cultural victory. Not to mention it's a decent building that solves poverty which is the usual #1-#2 unhappiness in everyone's game.

All these buildings are fine really. The Workshop and Stable seems underrated because Vox Populi emphasize on Production is King. There's also a mentality that players of this community have in which they need to build EVERYTHING. This is ironic considering BNW players never had to build everything because some were used to be focused. "I'll make my science city focused on science and neglect gold and culture because these jungles are too important to chop down for trading posts!" This is the same concept here. You don't need to build everything. Build when needed.

Of course this doesn't mean that you should not strive for cities to be building everything. It means that not every city is going to build everything in time before the next lines of building gets unlocked. This is a part of reality and an important concept in capturing the realistic aspect of trying to improve infrastructure within a city. You can't be exactly Venice and just use moneybags to act as your infrastructure anymore.

Build when needed.

• You don't build the Workshop to "pay it off" in production. You build the Workshop because you want to keep improving your lumbermill-improved forest into giving you more incentive to keep on production-heavy at those forests along with your herbalist rather than just urbanizing somewhere else.
• If you don't want some good tourism levels on this civilization to take advantage of additional trade bonuses, don't build caravansaries.
• If you're not interested in purchasing mounted units and increasing your unit supply, then don't build the stable. If you don't have a mounted UU, no one is forcing you to build the stable.

 

[Funak]

The only real problem I see with any of these buildings is that you're sometimes 'forced' to build a workshop just to get a factory, despite the workshop being extremely meh in terms of effect in some cities.

 

[tu_79]

They are truly not the most useful buildings around.

Caravanseries are theoretically good for extending trade routes farther, but I rarely use this function, not knowing by the eye how many trade routes would open with the extra range. They'll get eventually more range and most my traders go by the sea anyways. The extra gold just lets the building pay maintenance for itself, so I may build this as Progress when too tight on budget. I don't care about poverty, my net happiness is usually good enough. The influence I almost never need it. You need to have a decent tourism output for this to even mean something. So I just build caravansaries when I have a trading city, or when I want to help spreading my religion (but it doesn't work well). Or, with old Piety police, for the extra hammers and beakers.

Stables I only find them useful when there are at least 3 horses/sheep/cattle around, or in my land units production city, to help making more lancers. That's two stables at most.

Workshops are reasonably good for tradition, since your secondary cities are struggling with production and you can spare the specialist. But the extra hammers on forest don't come that useful to me, since most forests are already chopped, except some deer or jungles. Iroquois may appreciate it. I can see wide players hating the building.

As Funak says, being niche at least the first ones can be left unbuilt if there are no good reasons to build them.

Since the most problematic is the workshop and it cannot be avoided, why don't let it improve another terrain type that isn't already chopped, like marshes or plain tundra?

 

[Gokudo01]

The only real problem I see with any of these buildings is that you're sometimes 'forced' to build a workshop just to get a factory, despite the workshop being extremely meh in terms of effect in some cities.

which is another issue : if i built forge i usually dont want to build workshop because I ve alrady chopped a big part of my forest tiles. I ve got no issue not getting some building: i rarelt get windmill or constabuary or minefield on my cities but there are times where it s the good call

Caransary is useless in many cities because poverty is like crime : you can deal with it easily in small and average cities. Moreover not spreading trade routes reduces the need of customhouse everywhere.
Furthermore harbor brings the same effect but with useful bonus and sea routes usually allows me to get more gold and reach more civs
ps : engineer thx to explain to a two years immortal vp player how to play the game.

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

I've got an issue with production buildings : they are better with super productive city than with production starved city. If you are working 2 copper mines, 1 iron mine and 2 normal mine, Forge is super efficient and pays for itself really fast. If your city is kind of struggling, you better invest your hammer in culture to get those progress/authority policy running, baby


1-Workshop :
Even If you kept some forest and you have the population to work an extra-specialist, the building takes a long time before giving some fruits.

at medieval, if you are working 3 forest tiles and the engineer slot, the building brings 3 + 3(5 if you have already got machinery ) + 2.
You will get 8(10) productions per turn from it.
Problem : it costs 350 hammers which means that it will take 43(35) turns to pay for himself.

The building is only worth if you crave for those 3 engineer points and/or you can't already trade production and want to do it.
If you are able to export lots of hammer with many internal trade routes, the building can be almost fine but it can only be useful in one or two cities.

So unless you've got maya/brazil and cities with fur/Truffles and deer everywhere, workshop is always not worth the investment outside of your capital/holy city.


2 - Caravansary :

I don't even think I need to explain what is wrong with caravansary.
I think it should be changed to be national wonder which requires market and make it affect every city.
Migrate the luxury bonus to market and arena.


3 - Stable :

Like the three musketeers, there is one more which isn't in the title.
It's not a secret, stable has been been a terrible building for a long time. extremely inefficient, super super super super niche. Get semi useless around modern era.
I think the yields should be slightly tweaked and the bonus should affect MELEE and MOUNTED.


So what do you think about those 3 buildings ?
And thanks so much for reading it to the end

I agree about all three. Stable is often good but should at least cost no maintenance or even add +1Gold (selling horse breeds), Caravansary for wide was only carried by Piety's policy which will be gone and ocassionally by its resources, Workshop is also underwhelming and could use base +2 Production or something.

Caravansary's +1 Gold does almost nothing to Poverty by the way, it didn't even wholly disappear back in the day when Thrift was worth picking and I was taking it so +1 is too miniscule. It's like using a flyswatter when you need a machine gun, it weakens the target but doesn't put a hole in it.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I never build caravansaries, except one in my capital/holy city, they're just too weak.

Workshops I agree, could use a base 3 or 4 production, or at least switch factory prerequisite from workshop to windmill.

Stable - agreed, no maintenance at the very least. It's still be a marginal building, but at least a bit more palatable.

 

[Gokudo01]

About stable, it brings +2 production per each cattle/sheep/horse worked by the city and +1 base production
+20% production while building mounted units.
It costs 300 hammers.

If you take it in a city with 1 cattle and 1 horse and you plan to spam mounted units non stop ( which is impossible because horse resources are limited but for the sake of maths, i will ignore it)

you get 5 base production and 20% more hammer from the city. A good medieval city should be 50 production which allows you to get most medieval buildings in 6 turns (5 if you picked progress)
you get 5 + 11 while building full building mounted units, so you will get an benefit after 19 turns.
But I don't remember if I've ever pumped out mounted units for 19 turns.

now here my questions : if your city has already got 50 production, you get knight in 4 turn right ? why do you bother building stable and getting extra maintenance, just get the knight out ? unless you are planning to build 7 knight/skirmisher straight but won't you buy out one or two ? won't you run out of horses ?

 

[CrazyG]

I think the issue with workshops is just that they are a factory prerequisite. Its not right for a very niche building to be a prerequisite for a very important building

I'm fine with caravansary being a niche building. I'd like more buildings to be niche

Stable comes late for what it does (and its high price is because its on a medieval tech). Its weaker than the stoneworks, but comes much later

 

[ElliotS]

I've never understood why stables come after the golden age of horses is in full swing. I want the bonus building horsemen, not when I've got zealotry and don't even build knights anymore.

I personally think it should either be nerfed, cost reduced and put in animal husbandry, or buffed to something like +50% hammers when building mounted units.

 

[Dawnpromise]

I've never understood why stables come after the golden age of horses is in full swing. I want the bonus building horsemen, not when I've got zealotry and don't even build knights anymore.

I personally think it should either be nerfed, cost reduced and put in animal husbandry, or buffed to something like +50% hammers when building mounted units.

Yeah I kinda feel stables come rather late as well considering their function. Moving them to Animal Husbandry may be interesting since it would but it on a similar note as stone works in that they'd get unlocked at the same time as the improvement for their resource.

 

[CrazyG]

I'd put a weaker stable in military theory, not animal husbandry.

Just want to point out that if you do, jungle starts get even worse

 

[Gazebo]

I think a light touch of balance on them is fine. The rationale for moving the stable to medieval is two-fold:

1.) The ancient/classical period has a ton of core buildings you need. Throwing a niche building into the mix leaves it either OP (and mandatory, thus no longer niche) or worthless when it unlocks. By medieval, your production queue has opened up a bit, and niche buildings can come into play.
2.) A % bonus to production doesn't account for much when horsemen are 90 hammers and your city has 10 hammers. A later % modifier is more useful, and the cost of mounted units spikes in medieval.

G

 

[ElliotS]

The ancient/classical period has a ton of core buildings you need. Throwing a niche building into the mix leaves it either OP (and mandatory, thus no longer niche) or worthless when it unlocks. By medieval, your production queue has opened up a bit, and niche buildings can come into play.

I think there's a middle-ground you're missing.

+2 production on the various resources and +15% production on mounted units with 2 maintenance for 90 production would make it worth building in the cities you'll build mounted units in and ones with a lot of resources. 2 gold maintenance early is a lot that early, so even if you had a lot of cities for it most cities wouldn't be able to afford it.

 

[CrazyG]

1.) The ancient/classical period has a ton of core buildings you need. Throwing a niche building into the mix leaves it either OP (and mandatory, thus no longer niche) or worthless when it unlocks. By medieval, your production queue has opened up a bit, and niche buildings can come into play.

Sounds like we should move the stoneworks to medieval then

 

[Gazebo]

Sounds like we should move the stoneworks to medieval then

I would if it wasn't such a boon for Desert starts. Lots of rock on deserts.

G