A Few "Not To" for Building Addicts.

Cheers, lilnev! That's just the kind of thing I was talking about.

But, if I can be cheeky and ask for a little more...

How do you decide which cities get a library? Do you have a standard formula, or do you just play it as it comes?

Are there any cases in which a hammer-poor city will get a forge?

Do you build the NE and HE as soon as they become available? And how do you decide where to put them?
 
^^IMHO it's being able to move away from usual solutions in unusual situations that makes all the difference between an experimented player and a good player.
I'm a good monarch level player, meaning that I can find unusual ways to solve the specific difficulties of a specific game at monarch level.
Above this level I'm an excentric player, not weighting well my decisions (since I don't know when the situation is usual, and when it isn't).

That's why I love the "trash game" series. You get very unusual situations that you wouldn't put yourself into...
 
Also, having the forge allows you to hire an engineer specialist, which gives you a couple hammers in a city that can use it.
 
yes!
- food rich is better than hammer rich :). The forge's production bonus applies to whipping too.
- happiness issues (whipping the forge may be the only way to get the pop a few points higher)
- Need one more forge for IW

Okay, so when (if ever) would you leave a city without a forge?

Edit: You mentioned before that they're not worth building in slow growing cities. Do you mean cities with a food surplus of, say, two or less? Or would a surplus of three or even four qualify? I'm just trying to get a more precise idea of the thresholds below which certain builds are pointless or counterproductive.
 
Libraries have four uses (in approximate order):

Beaker multiplier. The capital will almost always get one early, as the Palace provides a disproportionate share of early research. Likewise any city that will eventually support cottages (most of them, the way I play) wants one. The usual caveat applies: it may have to wait in line behind a lot of axemen if that seems more profitable.

Ability to hire scientists. I like to run scientists in one or two cities for those powerful early GSs. A city with a single good food resource (Fish, Pigs, etc) might build a library to fill this role, even if it won't get cottages later. My capital almost always has good food, so I might run scientists there, too.

Culture. If a city wants a library anyway, I might skip the monument and prioritize a library ahead of a granary. This depends somewhat on the quality of the initial 9 tiles and/or the availability of forests. Post-Calendar but pre-Drama, a library is about the only option (I don't usually have missionaries available).

Pre-req for GL, NE, Uni. Mostly this comes up when I want to put the GL/NE in a recently captured city, and the library has to come first.

peace,
lilnev
 

Ancient Era



Barracks



For certain, appropriate for cities dedicated to generating units. In practice, many cities create quite a few units because units tend to hit the sweetspot when you can pop two population and get lots of overflow, and even if you aren't at war Hereditary Rule makes military police a useful thing.

Also, there's a happiness bonus available when you are parked in Nationalism.

My games don't often feature Nationalism (I tend to jump from Bureaucracy to Free Speech) so the happy bonus isn't relevant. The troop promotions are important for troops that are going to be used, but not so much those who stand around looking pretty.

In builder mode, a lot of the troops I generate aren't going to be used, so I'd rather invest the barracks hammers into commercial infrastructure (40 hammers is another happy in HR, after all).

Aggressive leaders who leave their troops standing around looking pretty are wasting a trait, so they should be rolling barracks into every city.

Granary



As noted previously, it's really hard to come up with a scenario where granaries are a bad thing, especially so if the slavery civic is being run. These go everywhere - the only question is whether there is some more pressing immediate need.

More pressing immediate need is fairly common in captured cities, where you need to deal with cultural pressure or maintenance costs in a hurry. The granary is on the to do list, but since it only begins to offer benefit when the city is growing, I don't fret about it when I'm whipping the angry citizens away, only when I'm growing them back.

Library



Lilnev hits the main points. The capital normally has food surplus that I'll want to leverage into a Science Academy fairly quickly.

The cities that are currently generating a lot of research are candidates for libraries. That normally doesn't include cities 2-5 in my list, because the they aren't generating a lot of commerce yet, and the gold slider eats into that for a while. As a result, I've been trying to get out of the habit of rushing libraries.

Basically, this means that cities which are going to be running science specialists, and cities that are going to be specialized for commerce, typically get a library eventually, but the urgency generally isn't there. In particular, I'm trying to lose the habit of rushing libraries for the border pop.

Lighthouse



The value of a lighthouse is determined by the number of water tiles you expect to work.

I used to make a lighthouse a top priority in a coast city, but have not been doing so recently. An early coastal city is normally placed to (a) give me a good shipyard (so I'm going to be working a lot of production tiles) or (b) collect a bunch of yummy resources, which I'll be working. Coastal tiles just don't generate enough commerce to be really interesting.

Exceptions are those cities that don't have enough interesting land tiles. Archipelago calls for a lots of lighthouses, as are those cities that you drop into the tundra to bring you silver, furs, etc.

But in land based maps, lighthouses are now an "eventually" build.

Monastery



The main benefit of Monasteries is building missionaries, which can be accomplished for free with Organized Religion. So that's not such a big deal.

The research bonus is nice, but it's only a 1 beaker boost for every 10 base beakers you feed into it. Again, the capital can make nice use of that early, but for other cities it takes a while for that bonus to matter.

As a result, Monasteries are pushed far enough down the priority list that I may not ever get them built, because Sci Method is going to make them obsolete anyway. So I'll get one done for each religion that I'll need to throw around in the late game, so that I can continue generating missionaries after the swap to Free Religion.

Monument



Cultural boost. You don't need it if you are creative, or if you have a religion to spread around, or if you build Stonehenge instead, or if you can afford to wait before worrying about expanding into the second ring. Or if you can run an artist specialist briefly, or if you can run a Sistine enhanced specialist of any kind, or if you are about to found a religion and you are fairly confident where it will land, or if you are about to drop a Science Academy into the city, or you have a more efficient way to invest hammers in culture....

I'm actually building more of these than I used to. The boost for Charismatic is part of that, but I'm coming to the conclusion that 30 hammers wasted on the monument, and 60 hammers invested in something useful, are a better deal than a 90 hammers prematurely invested in a library.

So when I do build them, they tend to show up higher in the priority queue than the granary, because I want whatever is in ring two NOW.

Besides forcing the pop to the fat cross, the extra culture can be useful in a culture battle, or offers a trickle of value in one of the legendary cities when shooting for a cultural win. In practice, I don't see these cases too often.

Temples



Culture, happy, a priest slot, and fraction of a coupon redeemable for a cathedral.

The happy is usually the big part of the puzzle here. 80 hammers for a temple may not be a good deal compared to two military police at 40 hammers each. But temples come sooner, and I'm a big fan of early growth.

Also, temples are the key to getting Great Prophets in a hurry, a key element to doing well in a religiously themed game.

Like other happy inducing buildings, whipping temples is "free" as far as cruel oppression is concerned.

Walls



Almost useless. The main issue being that if you need walls, you don't have the troops to adequately defend your tile improvements, so the city is about to be in a world of hurt economically anyway. The only time I find myself building these are in games that I expect to lose: immortal, raging barbarians, always war sorts of things.

Otherwise, I would consider them only within the context of being a pre-requisite for castle, adding them into that calculation, and backdating the start of them from when I wanted castle construction to begin.
 
Good post, VoU.

I'd forgotten about lighthouses, which usually get built eventually in any city working a seafood tile, but aren't a high priority. I don't care much for random coastal tiles. Even with a Financial leader or Colossus, they're only decent.

The decision between monument and library is not always an easy one. I, too, have shifted towards monuments more frequently, but there are still times when I go straight to the library.

peace,
lilnev
 

Classical Era



Aquaduct



An aquaduct provides two health, and serves as the prereq for the Hanging Gardens. I'll build one to make a run at the Gardens, and one eventually in the GP Farm, but otherwise health tends not to be that big a deal, assuming a healthy rate of expansion on a land based map.

If health multipliers are scarce, then an aquaduct may turn into a longer term solution. Keep in mind that the 2 health from the aquaduct is essentially one more grain in every city with a granary. It's probably more profitable to build gold, and trade the gold for grain than it is to build the water slide.

Coastal cities can normally hold out for harbors to kick in the health bonus for seafood.

One situation where health does tend to be a problem is OCC, where your cultural influence is so tightly limited that only great fortune will give you the variety of food resources you really need to forsake the aquaduct

Colosseum



One happy on its own, plus a 50% multiplier on the culture slider.

In terms of payoff, it is basically a temple that's really handy when you are battling war weariness, and as a cheap way to get happy if you are throwing the culture switch in a race to that victory.

I often forget to build these - when construction comes, I'm usually focused on disposalpults, later on, it seems that other buildings have gotten a higher priority. But my games don't normally include the long protracted wars that call for slider abuse.

Also, if your economy is based more on specialists than commerce, the opportunity cost of using the culture slider to boost happiness civ wide drops considerably.

I wish the Firaxians had decided to use the same spelling in the game as they do in the documentation.

Courthouse



The problem with distance: your remote cities are bleeding money, so you have to redirect the commerce in your core cities from research (with all of your lovely libraries, academies, and monasteries to multiply it) to wealth. Bummer.

Courthouses offer to halve that cost for you. You are going to get a better payoff when the city is far away from your center(s) of government, not nearly so much in the late game if you are running State Property.

Clearly the urgency of a courthouse is going to be a function of the relative impact of the city maintenance on your economy. My general feeling is that the early settlements will want it, because you don't have that much total commerce to play with yet, and in captured cities it tends to become a big priority (so that the war doesn't bankrupt you before your goals are attained), but any fishing villages and so forth that you drop into your core late can probably ignore it.

Forge



25% production boost, happy from luxury rocks, engineering slot. Pre-requisite for a number of goodies.

OK, production math first. A forge gives you 15 extra hammers every time you whip two pop. So it takes 8 whips to pay for the forge in hammers, which is 80 turns or so to pay for itself, sooner than that if you don't mind stacking the penalties (some of which will be offset by the happy rocks). In true production centers, the payoff is even faster.

Forges come after Granaries in almost all cases - the exception being the case where you are going to do a lot of whipping before you allow the city to regrow. For example, in a newly captured city with lots of angry citizens, you might first construct the forge, then whip the rest of the city right down to the ground generating the rest of your infrastructure, dropping in the granary at the end when the growth phase begins.

But in terms of the usual math, the forges are giving a 25% boost to production, where the granary is giving a 50% boost - a consequence of the faster growth rate.

In cities where you aren't whipping - typically cottage cities where you prioritize running cottages over developing infrastructure - the upside of the forge is only the happy boost, so count the pretty rocks. The forge is a much better bargain at 2 or 3 happy than it is at one.

Harbor



Harbors give your costal cities health, and a boost to traderoutes. Traderoute calculations are kind of weird, but for the purposes of this discussion is that they are sensitive to the sizes of the cities involved. In other words, harbors are a much bigger deal later in the game when the happy cap allows you to grow the city.

Distance is a big part of trade route income as well, which means that the value of a harbor is going to be sensitive to ocean trading (post Astronomy) and open boarders with civs in a faraway land.

Market



25% boost in income, happy from luxury animals, merchant slots. Therefore a must have in your gold cities, and a decent alternative in commerce centers when the gold income justifies it.

In your core cities, when markets become available you'll probably be in a hurry to get them up, but in smaller cities this is a build that can probably wait until you need it to lift the happiness (by then either the commerce will be enough to justify the construction, or you will have tweaked the slider up enough that you intend to forgo the building of it altogether.

One discussion I came across suggested that it is effective during medieval and later expansions to run merchant specialists in the developing communities, and run the commerce slider higher in the core to take advantage of the science multipliers there. Not an experiment I've looked into, but maybe someone else can respond to this point.

Stable



A one trick pony: +2XP on mounted units. Useless except in military cities supporting mounted campaigns. How many horse archers do you need to promote to get more value than building one more? I have no idea.

Theatre



Culture, happy multiplier for culture + dyes, artist slots.

Often rushed into border towns to fight the culture battle, and newly captured cities to gain control of the fat cross. A must for war weariness management in long engagements, but it is theatres are cheap enough that you can build them on demand.
 
I really look at Markets/Grocers as happy/health buildings, not money multipliers. I'm seldom bringing in enough gold to make +25% meaningful. Maybe if I capture a large shrine. But I'm able to run the slider at 100% for large portions of the game due to war profits and (especially) tech sales. I think the last Bank I built might have been for the Million Dollar Monty challenge?

When I decide that a city needs more happiness, and I can't trade for or conquer a resource, I do a rough cost/benefit. If I have Dye, the theatre is likely to come out on top. Markets are variable, but sometimes great. If I have to stoop to temples or (shudder) colosseums, it's time to ask myself hard questions about whether I'm being aggressive enough. And if it's WW that's bringing me down, I need either a "phased redeployment" or a short-term "surge" to force a favorable peace, but not "stay the course" while trying to prop up sinking approval ratings with diverted hammers.

Likewise Grocer and Aquaduct. These are generally eventually worth it if I'm going for a late peaceful win, but not until the fighting's done.

Harbors and forges are special cases, as their economic/production effects and health/happiness effects are of roughly equal magnitude, on average.

peace,
lilnev
 
There's a cool article in the NYT about what goes on in your brain when you decide to buy (or not buy) something. One area (nucleus accumbens, activated by pleasure or the anticipation of pleasure) is activated when you see something you want. Another (the insula, responds to bad smells and anticipation of pain) reacts to prices you don't want to pay. It would be interesting to put a bunch of buildaholics and warmongers into MRI machines and watch their brains as they added that Monastery to the build queue. Suggests that we're not as rational about these decisions as we'd like to think.

peace,
lilnev

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/science/16tier.html?em&ex=1169182800&en=a880704b47b04dde&ei=5087
 
The main benefit of Monasteries is building missionaries, which can be accomplished for free with Organized Religion. So that's not such a big deal.

But, being in Organized religion means you can't be in Pacifism (100% gp bonus, where I am most of the time) or Free Religion (happiness and science boost).

The research bonus is nice, but it's only a 1 beaker boost for every 10 base beakers you feed into it. Again, the capital can make nice use of that early, but for other cities it takes a while for that bonus to matter.

I agree, the science bonus isn't very useful, except maybe in your main science/great library city

As a result, Monasteries are pushed far enough down the priority list that I may not ever get them built, because Sci Method is going to make them obsolete anyway. So I'll get one done for each religion that I'll need to throw around in the late game, so that I can continue generating missionaries after the swap to Free Religion.

Scientific method gets rid of the monestaries' science bonus, and your ability to build them, but it doesn't get rid of their ability to churn out missionaries. Because the ability to build monestaries will be forever lost after Scientific Method, I'll try to make sure I build a few on time - even for religions that the enemy owns (but I hope to own later).

BTW, you can build monestaries so long as they get started before Scientific Method - discovering the tech doesn't prevent you from finishing them.
 
...But on the sixteenth day a Voice came unto the people of Builderdom. And unto them did the Voice speak, bringing great joy to the assembled masses, and relief to the afflicted amongst them.

Lo, spake the Voice, listen ye well to my words, for your curse is great and your burden is heavy. Build ye not of the stables, but that thou wouldst smite thine enemies with a multitude of beasts. But build ye always of the granary, though it might be left unto a later time if thou hav'st more pressing needs. And consider ye well the fruits of the water before thou buildest of the lighthouse, for the fruits of the land will often bring thee unto greater joy.

And the people did cast aside their unholy ways and said unto themselves, truly we have been blessed with the gift of unreason.

(Civiticus, 2.08)

:worship:
 
Suggests that we're not as rational about these decisions as we'd like to think.

Now that's a strange coincidence. I spent this evening discussing rational choice theory with a close friend. Given the implications of that particular piece of research, I had better hope she doesn't find out about it, or I'm going to suffer a whole lot of "See, I was right!".

ps. Has anyone out there got access to an MRI scanner we can use for civ-related experiments? :D
 
[deleted - wrong thread]
 
just to get this discussion back on track. :crazyeye:

There's two ideas here:

1. Civ4 adds so many buildings which are really so specialized in benefit that there is now Building-addiction. Similar to Wonder-addiction (from Civ3 and even more present in Civ4). Basically, building everything is junk, because it's not all needed everywhere and takes resources that could be used for more profitable strategies.

2. Building is bad, because in the short-term, those resources have a pay-off elsewhere.

I just want to totally support RIcs and everyone on point #1.

But point #2 is sometimes false. The reason.....there's a whole lot of game turns left sometimes. So a cost analysis has to consider that, and also what your overall game strategy is. If that building supports the overall game strategy, and the pay-off will continue for a long long time, then it's a good investment. A good investment can include to mass-produce lots unpromoted units in a short time, work commerce tiles over hammer tiles, or build a building that adds commerce/research/promotion benefits to the city, since that city will be doing that for a long time.


A good analysis would be to compare the commerce benefit of building say a bank using two non-commerce, non-bonus hill mines, vs. working 2 cottage tiles, and the cost/benefit ratio as looked at over 10, 20, 30, etc.. turns.
 
just to get this discussion back on track. :crazyeye:

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. :rolleyes:

Your point on #2 is a good one; the idea is to cure buildoholics, not to create crazed buildophobic warmongers; and one major part of that is to consider how long it will take before a build effectively pays for itself.

Unfortunately, to come up with a formula for each building that could apply in any given situation would require a colossal amount of work (you could probably write a whole series of books on the subject), so the kind of advice offered above by VoU and lilnev is about as detailed as we're likely to get (hence my burst of bible-inspired :crazyeye: :goodjob: :crazyeye: ).
 
^^ took me a long time to read all (and skip some) ...

for #2 Objections or related cost/benefits over time, (and probably the whole point trying to say, most pp got it, some don't.)

You can always built it later, when its time come. So what you missed out is just that gap between "sooner" or "later". ("later" to it's extreme that is, "never")

we thought, "sooner" is better than "later" ?? especially for pp like built a lot.
But when looked into the Marginal Profit (ummm.. simplify as the benefits-added on the first turn after you built it.).
I felt the Marginal Profit for market is terrible low, under 2 conditions: cotton just started, no excess pop for merchant sp (or even you don't intend to use one).
Which, it implies the benefits in that GAP ("sooner" minus "later"), is very low. In long term CostBenefitsAnalysis, you lost very little benefits in that sense, but Cost you some Opportunity Costs (simply as best alternative things you built instead).
So, it's priority gets lower. (plus a possibility of "never")

And it's happiness?
Whale... if optics arrive faster than Currency.
Fur.. far in the tundra (unlucky if you had that resources).
Ivory... tricky one, built elephant if you only after the happiness.
Silk... the only valid one for ASAP market-happiness aim.
If you got only one of the above resources, and hoping others will come over time, it's not a valid reason to built it sooner. (ever think about trade silk away for gold, which you have lots of forge? or dye by having more theaters ?)

Market over Courthouse is in a high chance within 15 tiles from capital perhaps. (in general guess... more conditions calculations... of coures, if you are able to look within all the conditions to value this statment, you have no troubles at all, as I concern.)

Isn't this game about:
"what if I built that, or that? " "what if I built that instead?"
It's not about how great each building as they are,
but how good are they compare to each other (under conditions, circumstances, calculation, goals, emotions, readiness, fuzziness, micro-management.... and go on never stops, hate long sentences to make sure it's "accurate" which leads to so hard to understand.). ^^

and Winston says: " to consider how long it will take before a build effectively pays for itself. ", Right on spot. ^^
 
one thing i learned from reading high-level threads is that you really want:

For Happiness:

1) Forges
2) Markets
3) Theatres

For Military:

1) Barracks
2) Granary (for whipping)

For Culture and Science (incl. scientists):

1) Library

To stop the bleeding:

1) Courthouse

Beyond that, your building priorities should often be limited. And even these you only build as you need them...
 
Your point on #2 is a good one; the idea is to cure buildoholics, not to create crazed buildophobic warmongers; ).

:hammer: You poor misguided fools. There is no such thing as buildoholism. That which you describe is not a symptom of a building disease. It is a sign of one attaining a higher sense of self. In knowing that we create that which will survive for many thousands of years we feel an inner warmth from the thought of the betterment to our peoples lives. Isn't it better to build with one's own hand rather than to fill that hand with steel and take from our neighbor? Unless that neighbor is a psychotic circus clown named Monty.
Build shedding the blood of others for their buildings, you are in fact admitting to a desire for them. Cast down your swords and pick up your hammers and build. :hammer: Build until the world marvels at your cities. First they will open their mouths to cheer what you have built. Then they will open their mouths to scream as the modern armor rolls out. For once you have built the buildings and there are no more to be built, you need more cities to build within. :hammer:

Build long and prosper :hammer:
 
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