When Do You Build Windmills?
- Thread starter stoz
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Kintara
Warlord
Getting it early is nice so that you can effectively discount the cost of building it in the first place as you produce more buildings, but the real selling point for me is the specialist slot. There are plenty of wonders I might like to rush, and this gives me more great person points. The +2 Production adds up. Assuming you play to the modern eras, the +2 and buildings discount should eventually add up to a production advantage. I consider production well worth a gold maintenance cost, but I usually find uses for an engineer slot.
Deau
Emperor
Almost only for OCC or extremely rarely coastal 3-4 city setup where I can outgrow my tiles to the point where I want the hammers & beakers (secularism) and often the additional hammer from freedom SoL in such a small and tall setup.
Other than that...pmuch never. It takes a loooooong time to pay its own cost and sadly, it comes into the game at a point in time when there is already a huge stress on all other infrastructure and some key wonder to about every VC (minimally PT, typically Pisa and since I play a lot of CV, basically every single good wonder in the game is in mid renaissance-early industrial). They'd need to drop its cost in half to make it worthwhile (or give it some additional +2 or +3 hammers).
Other than that...pmuch never. It takes a loooooong time to pay its own cost and sadly, it comes into the game at a point in time when there is already a huge stress on all other infrastructure and some key wonder to about every VC (minimally PT, typically Pisa and since I play a lot of CV, basically every single good wonder in the game is in mid renaissance-early industrial). They'd need to drop its cost in half to make it worthwhile (or give it some additional +2 or +3 hammers).
Kintara
Warlord
I do sometimes build them before Industrialization in the city I think will lag most in getting its Factory in. I can't always save gold for that lagging city, and sometimes rushing to a certain tenet can be very useful.
Lord Yanaek
Emperor
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- Aug 15, 2003
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- 1,501
Most of the time, i won't build them because either i settled on hill, or i have more important stuff to produce in my big cities anyway, or the city is not a big producer and the windmill is useless.
I will however, buy them if i have lots of excess gold or some policy / wonder that reduces cost of purshasing, but most of the time only in industrial/modern, and only after the better factories. Even a small +2 bonus production does help when it receives plenty % bonus from religion, policies, other buildings and you are producing expensive late game units/wonders. However Windmills are never a priority for me.
I will however, buy them if i have lots of excess gold or some policy / wonder that reduces cost of purshasing, but most of the time only in industrial/modern, and only after the better factories. Even a small +2 bonus production does help when it receives plenty % bonus from religion, policies, other buildings and you are producing expensive late game units/wonders. However Windmills are never a priority for me.
justanotherturn
Warlord
I was always building them, before i start to learn to play.
now i almost never build them.
most of my city are on hills, and if not, always more important stuff to build.
now i almost never build them.
most of my city are on hills, and if not, always more important stuff to build.
Kingjester1
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2006
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- 78
They can be useful if you build them in a city you know is going to be making tons of buildings. If I can fit it, I will usually put one in my capital.
JeSuisNapoleon
Prince
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- Aug 12, 2013
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- 348
Rarely, if ever. remember to sell them if you can, after you built everything else you need, unles you need that production / slot.
Sometimes I need a city with maxed production and I will rush buy a windmill. It never seems like the best use of that gold...
watermills, way better because of the food, early build timeframe.
I do see my puppets building windmills, which boggles the mind since they are gold focused and this building doesnt help much in that regard, and costs to maintain. I would rather they build walls (which they do, eventualy).
Sometimes I need a city with maxed production and I will rush buy a windmill. It never seems like the best use of that gold...
watermills, way better because of the food, early build timeframe.
I do see my puppets building windmills, which boggles the mind since they are gold focused and this building doesnt help much in that regard, and costs to maintain. I would rather they build walls (which they do, eventualy).
I build them if i don't have anything else to build 
Can be ok near the end if you want to push secularism bonus a bit more and allwo capital to build the last spaceship part a bit faster. So yeah but only in capital and only near the end when i need to maximize beakers and hammers and try to save a little turn...
Can be ok near the end if you want to push secularism bonus a bit more and allwo capital to build the last spaceship part a bit faster. So yeah but only in capital and only near the end when i need to maximize beakers and hammers and try to save a little turn...I build them if i don't have anything else to build
Building "science" will produce way more beakers than building a Windmill and working the specialist slot ever would. I'd also be completely shocked if a few hammers was somehow the difference with respect to getting a spaceship part out a turn faster. In practice I legitimately don't see how it could ever speed up your win. Your last part should hopefully be rushed with gold or an Engineer anyways and your cities are going to be producing science, not constructing buildings, for the last stretch of the game.
They're worthless as far as I can tell. They cost way too much gold (I don't believe for a second that you couldn't find something better to do with 660-1000g) and they don't provide nearly enough of a return to justify the hammer investment. They're just bad buildings.
People are way too afraid to have their cities produce science when going for SVs. It's better than it seems.
Nick Carpathia
Unleash the HAARP
I don't like this, because my most common Oxford tech is Industrialism (it's on a straight path from Economics), meaning that I'm going to immediately have Factories available instead of Windmills. Of course, sometimes that's not the case, you might need to settle for Coal, or worse case scenario your coal might be a jungled, and then you'd have time to get Windmills down before Factories. But even then I'd rather build something else.
Kintara
Warlord
Yes, its a good point. Its usually not necessary. That said, My luck with starting Coal has been kind of crap in the past, so its come up in my games. Not all situations are ideal.
Anyway, the Windmill isnt something I build everywhere under most circumstances. But I am a bit surprised people dont use them for Great Engineer generation, sometimes. I focus on scientists, but having a city with an engineer developing can be very useful.
Nick Carpathia
Unleash the HAARP
I dunno, are late-game GEs really worth it? This is the period of time where you're starting to pull ahead in tech over the AI, and so you can usually outtech the AIs to the cool wonders. Plus there aren't very many cool wonders at at that point in the game left.
You can bulb Hubble and your last spaceship part if you open Order /shrug.
Cromagnus
Deity
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- Sep 11, 2012
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- 2,272
The problem is the 10% towards buildings. What buildings, exactly, that late in the game, am I building that take 10x as long as a windmill to build? That's the only way to break even. (Save as much as you spend) By the time I can build windmills, I might need research labs, and *maybe* factories, but I'm going to rush-buy as many of these as I can. Rush-buying a windmill right before building factories and research labs *might* break even... but why do it just to break even?
I dunno, I feel like they're under-powered. They should come at the same time as water mills, as an alternative to water mills, and be roughly the same hammers, just like solar plants are an alternative to nuclear plants.
I dunno, I feel like they're under-powered. They should come at the same time as water mills, as an alternative to water mills, and be roughly the same hammers, just like solar plants are an alternative to nuclear plants.
The consensus seems to be that they aren't worth building all the time, they mostly useful for their specialist slot, but there are so many more things that are worth building / rushing before them.
One interesting piece of math is that the 10% building bonus pays off after constructing buildings that would take (roughly) 9 times as long as the windmill. So if the windmill took 8 turns to construct and you spend the next 72 turns after that constructing buildings then you will have covered the initial cost of the windmill with the 10% bonus, leaving everything else as profit.
Note that this does not factor in the static hammer bonus that the windmill gives or that the 10% bonus will be providing more hammers as the number of tiles worked by the city increased (both of which would lower the number of turns required to turn a profit). It also doesn't factor in any benefit you might gain from the specialist slot and does not factor in the cost of the ongoing maintenance on the windmill.
TL;DR: Due to the 10% production bonus the number of turns until a hard-build windmill or workshop pays for itself are somewhat proportional to the number of turns it took to construct it. The multiple of turns is x9 assuming no city growth and ignoring the static hammers provided by the building, making the actual ratio certainly under x8 but probably not less than x5.
One interesting piece of math is that the 10% building bonus pays off after constructing buildings that would take (roughly) 9 times as long as the windmill. So if the windmill took 8 turns to construct and you spend the next 72 turns after that constructing buildings then you will have covered the initial cost of the windmill with the 10% bonus, leaving everything else as profit.
Note that this does not factor in the static hammer bonus that the windmill gives or that the 10% bonus will be providing more hammers as the number of tiles worked by the city increased (both of which would lower the number of turns required to turn a profit). It also doesn't factor in any benefit you might gain from the specialist slot and does not factor in the cost of the ongoing maintenance on the windmill.
TL;DR: Due to the 10% production bonus the number of turns until a hard-build windmill or workshop pays for itself are somewhat proportional to the number of turns it took to construct it. The multiple of turns is x9 assuming no city growth and ignoring the static hammers provided by the building, making the actual ratio certainly under x8 but probably not less than x5.
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