A Civ5 Guide for the Civ4 Veteran *Updated 9/24*

[JimT]

Unsure about the uselessness of food producing buildings outside your production city, eg Granary (-1G +2F).
Costs 1 gold to produce 2 food which allows you to scrap a farm for a trading post (-2F +2G). This the benefit of an additional gold and modifier bonus on the original 2 (so with marketplace this would be +1.5G overall).

Also the return is increased before civil service improves farms (-1F +2G), a net benefit of 3G as it allows the removal of 2 farms

The return on the other buildings is minimal and therefore low priority (plus they make it harder to manage your happiness cap).

 

[Trickster7135]

Unsure about the uselessness of food producing buildings outside your production city, eg Granary (-1G +2F).
Costs 1 gold to produce 2 food which allows you to scrap a farm for a trading post (-2F +2G). This the benefit of an additional gold and modifier bonus on the original 2 (so with marketplace this would be +1.5G overall).

Also the return is increased before civil service improves farms (-1F +2G), a net benefit of 3G as it allows the removal of 2 farms

The return on the other buildings is minimal and therefore low priority (plus they make it harder to manage your happiness cap).

I would build a granary in every city if it wasn't for two reasons:

1. The production time to even build a granary, in a non-production city, is very long. While it may still be something I want to build, it has a lower priority than science and gold buildings.

2. If you take advantage of maritime city-states, you get a much better return on your gold investment than the maintenance of a granary, as well as negating the necessity of having to build any farms at all.

 

[Roxlimn]

Trickster7135:

If you don't build Farms and rely on Maritime bonuses only, then your cities won't grow as quickly, and their growth peters out faster. This is true for the Granary and Water Mill as well. This leads to the attendant weakness of not having any production capacity.

The only solution is to balance cities on a case to case basis. Cities that are built on Grasslands TPs won't need farms for food, but they will be bad for production. Best to buy buildings there, including the Granary. Cities built on mainly Plains TPs will have moderate production and can make their own Granaries, but since they lose 1 food per tile worked, they will need Farms to stay even.

 

[Trickster7135]

Trickster7135:

If you don't build Farms and rely on Maritime bonuses only, then your cities won't grow as quickly, and their growth peters out faster. This is true for the Granary and Water Mill as well. This leads to the attendant weakness of not having any production capacity.

The only solution is to balance cities on a case to case basis. Cities that are built on Grasslands TPs won't need farms for food, but they will be bad for production. Best to buy buildings there, including the Granary. Cities built on mainly Plains TPs will have moderate production and can make their own Granaries, but since they lose 1 food per tile worked, they will need Farms to stay even.

There are a lot of variables to consider when it comes to building granaries, but for most cases, they are a low-priority building. I usually am running near the happiness cap from settling cities and population growth from city-states and worked improved food resources, so I usually only bother to build granaries in the mid to late game when I've spread as far as I want to, and need to focus all happiness resources on population growth.

The main exception are cultural victories, where the small empires demand a high population growth, and maritime city-states are not very cost effective.

 

[Roxlimn]

Trickster7135:

If that is the case, then you can't have very good production!

Good production sites are usually laden with Forests and Hills, and these are not only notoriously low on Food Resources, but Hills are also Food negative! You cannot run these cities on Maritimes alone and expect them to get off the ground in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you're trade-posting the Plains around such sites.

If you've never established cities on such sites, then I can only presume that you must be one of those players who labor under the misapprehension that it's impossible to get any production done in Civ V.

 

[Trickster7135]

Trickster7135:

If that is the case, then you can't have very good production!

Good production sites are usually laden with Forests and Hills, and these are not only notoriously low on Food Resources, but Hills are also Food negative! You cannot run these cities on Maritimes alone and expect them to get off the ground in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you're trade-posting the Plains around such sites.

If you've never established cities on such sites, then I can only presume that you must be one of those players who labor under the misapprehension that it's impossible to get any production done in Civ V.

I honestly have no problems balancing gold, production, and food. I spam trade posts and try to settle cities in plains or forests, use all that gold to buy city-states and units, with buildings always building slowly in que. I usually only have one or two 'production' cities, which have nothing but farms, lumber mills, and mines.

The only time I'd plop a farm down in a non-production city would be on a riverside hill. Maximizing golden ages is a very important part of my strategy, as is exploration, so I have numerous maritime city-states in my pocket even early in the game.

 

[Roxlimn]

That is a viable strategy, if you can reliably contact City States that are Maritime before you research Astronomy.

Otherwise, you will need other tricks up your sleeve.

In production cities that have nothing but farms, lumbermills, and mines, surely it would be advisable to quick-build a Granary to grow them faster, or to spare more citizens to work on hammer tiles?

I find having one production city untenable. It can't make Wonders and units at the same time, and I rather like building Wonders, but I also like staying alive. Two is minimum for me, though I usually go with three.

I don't have ridiculous gold outputs, but I also don't have problems producing units and such.


Also: you might want to get some Specialist Cities online for the GS, GE, and GA farming. Such cities tend to need lots of population, and they tend to need farms and Granaries as well.

 

[Trickster7135]

Seems I've hit the word limit in my thread

Looks like these two new sections are going to have to wait til I make a whole new thread with double the reserved posts lol