Granary - How much bonus food is needed to make it a priority?

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

Lately, in my games I've been delaying the building of the granary especially if I don't have much bonus food to gain from building it. For that reason, I tend to like cows better. I think building a granary delays my expansion and other timings too much. I feel like effort should simply be focused on other things knowing that maritime CSs give 3 food to start + lux.

However, I know that for some spawns, it can be very powerful to build it early. The question is, "How many sugar/wheat/etc. tiles around one's city makes it very much an important building early on, especially for civs that are not necessarily strong going for a tall empire?" I know some civs with almost default tall empire strategy want to build it early, but for those whose strategy is more flexible in that aspect, how many tiles?

Trickster7135 · Jul 21, 2011

If you're on plains and there's at least one wheat, its a good building to build/buy if its early and that city is going to be doing something more than trade posts. Grasslands you can skip it if you're going wide.

Antarion · Jul 21, 2011

depends first on your policies. if your focusing on liberyt dont build them early on, just go for workers and settlers in your capital. if your playing tradition/india/egypt grab them after your first worker.

its all situational, if you go vertical they are often my first building.

w a i n y · Jul 21, 2011

Antarion said:
depends first on your policies. if your focusing on liberyt dont build them early on, just go for workers and settlers in your capital. if your playing tradition/india/egypt grab them after your first worker.

its all situational, if you go vertical they are often my first building.

It really depends on your starting strategy. Even with no bonus food, it can be worth it if, say, you've just finished cranking out units in your capital for an early rush and have lots of high-production, moderate-food tiles (like sheep, stone, marble, horse) which you'd like to work while still growing quickly to get your economy into shape. In this situation it's more cost-effective to build a granary in 3-4 turns rather than spending 500 gold on a maritime that you could better use to upgrade to knights/crossbows/LS.
Or not, it is rather situational.

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

Antarion said:
depends first on your policies. if your focusing on liberyt dont build them early on, just go for workers and settlers in your capital. if your playing tradition/india/egypt grab them after your first worker.

its all situational, if you go vertical they are often my first building.

So, your suggestion is to build them late for non-tall empires regardless of any bonus food?

What about maritime states? +2 food alone I feel doesn't justify -1 gold and the spent hammers, unless I get more than 2 food. I think building it late diminishes its use significantly especially because aqueduct scales better to late game.

I think warmongering civs can skip it and defer it much much later if it's 2 food only. I'm looking for a more meaningful answer. More specifically, how many tiles...?

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

Trickster7135 said:
If you're on plains and there's at least one wheat, its a good building to build/buy if its early and that city is going to be doing something more than trade posts. Grasslands you can skip it if you're going wide.

I think buying it early on is quite a waste given maritime states.

Antarion · Jul 21, 2011

blightmoon said:
So, your suggestion is to build them late for non-tall empires regardless of any bonus food?

What about maritime states? +2 food alone I feel doesn't justify -1 gold and the spent hammers, unless I get more than 2 food. I think building it late diminishes its use significantly especially because aqueduct scales better to late game.

I think warmongering civs can skip it and defer it much much later if it's 2 food only. I'm looking for a more meaningful answer. More specifically, how many tiles...?

aqueduct is really mid game, but still at this time a granary can be better if the city has 3 or less rawr food plus. if you found in mid game a new city which should first get a certain amount of hammers a granary is often much better then everything else, except maybe a water mill.

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

w a i n y said:
It really depends on your starting strategy. Even with no bonus food, it can be worth it if, say, you've just finished cranking out units in your capital for an early rush and have lots of high-production, moderate-food tiles (like sheep, stone, marble, horse) which you'd like to work while still growing quickly to get your economy into shape. In this situation it's more cost-effective to build a granary in 3-4 turns rather than spending 500 gold on a maritime that you could better use to upgrade to knights/crossbows/LS.
Or not, it is rather situational.

So, it is good to build later on when it costs 3-4 turns on standard. But what could make it quite advantageous to build early on (when building it takes some 15++ turns on epic)? I think a 3-4 wheat/other bonus tile just calls for granary to be built, but I'm not really sure.

I think the timing of building it (and a lot of other things) being situational comes later in the game.

To make a reference point, what would make you build a granary before a library for example? What could make it part of a not-tall empire's opening moves?

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

Antarion said:
aqueduct is really mid game, but still at this time a granary can be better if the city has 3 or less rawr food plus. if you found in mid game a new city which should first get a certain amount of hammers a granary is often much better then everything else, except maybe a water mill.

I agree buying it in expansion cities helps. For maybe a 3 to 5 cities + puppets empire, the boost helps in setting the machine up, I think.

How about in the starting city? What makes it part of the opening moves?

RealHuhn · Jul 21, 2011

For me, it's a no brainer in cities with two or more granary ressources and a few hills/forests nearby. +4 :c5food:

is the best early production (!) bonus you can get and it's usually my first building in those cities.

Everything else depends on the situation. If you go Tradition + Finisher, it should be a priority. If you want to stay at ~4 cities, it's a good (early) choice, too.
If you expand like crazy, some fast happiness buildings and units/workers are probably more important.

vexing · Jul 21, 2011

just to clarify it's +1 food to wheat, deer, banana. if there are two of those tiles i'll definitely go for an early granary.

Strategist83 · Jul 21, 2011

The Granary is one of the 'best' buildings in the game for how much it offers at such little production cost. It sounds to me like you may not be utilizing it optimally: It isn't just for growing a city faster but can also be used to increase production greatly when used in conjunction with a hill tile and as such should almost always be one of the first buildings to go up in a newly founded city. The base +2 food alone is good enough to feed a citizen working a hill tile rather than a food tile. The default city governor is extremely food-focused (often much more than what is reasonable) and you'll be required to manually assign a citizen to work the hill tile. You are in this way essentially converting the +2 food into +2 production (or more). Typically, the production invested into the Granary 'pays for itself' much faster than any other production building.

So, Granaries are useful even if you're building a wide empire.

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

vexing said:
just to clarify it's +1 food to wheat, deer, banana. if there are two of those tiles i'll definitely go for an early granary.

Thanks for that. I'm playing with TBC so that's wheat, bananas, sugar and spice for me.

Antarion · Jul 21, 2011

the problem with wide empires is the maintance and the time it takes to build a granary. i rather manage my small cities (just pop 1-2 per city max 4 with circus) with more workers. often you will get 5-6 production from one hill with mine and base tile with republic no need to growth even bigger, rather build a colosseum (if playing pure liberty rexing)

MadDjinn · Jul 21, 2011

w a i n y said:
, stone,

random aside: Stone is the best production tile in the game. (on grass) 2 food, 4 hammers vs mined hill at 4 hammers. (at Chemistry. Before chemistry, you need the Stoneworks to make them even, but then you also get +1 happy.)

vexing said:
just to clarify it's +1 food to wheat, deer, banana. if there are two of those tiles i'll definitely go for an early granary.

this. two or more of any of the types is enough to make me want to build a granary.

Deer on a forest hill is the best - chop the forest and build the granary. You drop to 2 food there, but gain +1 production. So the tile at least pays for itself. (almost literally as you chop the forest for the granary)

blightmoon said:
Thanks for that. I'm playing with TBC so that's wheat, bananas, sugar and spice for me.

Well, that's your problem right there.

blightmoon · Jul 21, 2011

Strategist83 said:
The Granary is one of the 'best' buildings in the game for how much it offers at such little production cost. It sounds to me like you may not be utilizing it optimally: It isn't just for growing a city faster but can also be used to increase production greatly when used in conjunction with a hill tile and as such should almost always be one of the first buildings to go up in a newly founded city. The base +2 food alone is good enough to feed a citizen working a hill tile rather than a food tile. The default city governor is extremely food-focused (often much more than what is reasonable) and you'll be required to manually assign a citizen to work the hill tile. You are in this way essentially converting the +2 food into +2 production (or more). Typically, the production invested into the Granary 'pays for itself' much faster than any other production building.

So, Granaries are useful even if you're building a wide empire. They should almost always be one of the first buildings built in any city.

I definitely agree that it is quite useful for new cities, but I think for the very first city, I feel like there's just too many more alternatives that ought to take priority.

Yes, its true that it frees up a lot of hammers once it's built. However, I feel like for the initial city, I'd rather spend those earlier hammers on a worker, warrior, a library (for NC), or on a settler. Then get a maritime CS, maybe two. Then take the granary when it takes quite just a few turns to make. Unless, I have 3 bonus food.

Or maybe I should try even at 2 bonus food as vexing suggests.

Martin Alvito · Jul 21, 2011

blightmoon said:
I think a 3-4 wheat/other bonus tile just calls for granary to be built, but I'm not really sure.

A start like that more or less demands building a Granary and going somewhat vertical initially, irrespective of other considerations.

The problem with the early Granary always was that it was worthless if you went horizontal and spammed Settlers. Since the game refuses to let you quickly go horizontal on Deity due to the DoW dogpile, the Granary is now a much more attractive build. If you have a single Wheat/Deer/Banana, you have to at least think about building it. At two or more, you should go Pottery first and immediately build a Granary after the initial Scout series (ruins on) or Monument (ruins off).

This can be somewhat frustrating when playing Catherine as she gets a lot of Granary starts but would prefer to go Animal Husbandry first. In my experience, Pottery -> AH is the better play if you hit the jackpot on tiles buffed by a Granary.

Lichgate · Jul 21, 2011

I would always build a Granary if 2 or more tiles benefit it, regardless of whatever strategy I'm going for. +4 or more food is just too good to pass up.

As for your protests against building it early, instead of making a warrior, or even a worker, building a granary will pay for itself in no time by significantly increasing the amount of workable tiles in your city. Within 10-15 turns after you finish a granary, you'll be able to save several turns on either a wonder (NC/GL), or on building your library, warrior, worker, etc. Here is an instance where I would build a Granary early (Diety Difficulty)...

If I had multiple wheat in a city, I would build the following (most of the time):

Scout
Worker
Granary (foregoing Monument until after NC)
Warrior
GL
Warrior
Settler
Warrior
Library if no GL after Settler
NC (buying Library in second city)

Generally, I would go pottery, writing, mining, AH or Masonry (depending on stone/marble)

Tradition + Wonder bonus policy should give you a good chance of getting the GL, even on Diety.

lilnev · Jul 21, 2011

The value of the granary depends on the amount of food it'll produce, and how badly you need food (with other strong food tiles providing a good surplus, the granary is less important). I'll always build it early for two or more resources, often for one. If it's just the base 2 food, it's still a reasonable investment if I've got the time/hammers, but a much lower priority.

In the capital, I often build it before the library, after some units (I often go to Writing ~4th, after a couple of luxury techs). Scout-scout-worker-warrior/monument-granary-... might be a typical build order; obviously it varies a lot depending on the map, hut-luck, SP choices, dangerous neighbors, etc.

Deau · Jul 21, 2011

vexing said:
just to clarify it's +1 food to wheat, deer, banana. if there are two of those tiles i'll definitely go for an early granary.

Petition signed for the any 2 of these involves an early granary. While some people seem to think of it as only "food", the food gain can be turned into production as well so in many cases where you have 2+ wheat/deer/bananas mixed, the granary allows to work 2 mines...it then pays it's own cost in turns very quickly...

I rarely build it in the late game as I want the extra growth when the cities are small, not when they're already big and +2 per turn is a marginal gain in your cities' next growth.

It is a godly building for Iawatha due to his UB & starting bias (often deers, also often lacks heavy food tiles, allows to work a bunch of boosted forests)

Granary - How much bonus food is needed to make it a priority?

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