All Civ 4 BTS buildings ranked and explained - Henrik

[prloko]

It's not about binary vs. non binary research, but about what your average slider gold rate is over many turns. If on average you run 25% gold and 75% science on the slider, then the library's bonus applies 3 times as often as the market's as long as we're considering the sources of commerce (rather than sources of raw gold like a shrine). So for example, on a city with 48 base commerce, library bonus science is 9 and market bonus gold is only 3 per turn, and market is 5/3 the cost of lib, so library starts generating a profit in 1/5 the time than market does. This is quite a difference and gets worse if you maintain a higher average slider rate.

But also to reply to the person above saying merchants are worse than scientists, this is not always the case. If you have libraries in all important commerce cities, 1000 gold from a trade mission is worth about 1500 final beakers of research, because it gets multiplied by 1.25 by the libraries and then the beakers applied to the tech are most often 1.2x the beakers generated by the slider because of the prereq bonus. BUT the payoff is long term whereas the GS bulb is immediate, and that's more important at high difficulties when you can gain a momentum advantage, trade a good tech, etc.

But that's only because people choose to play running science high. I can run long periods of expansion because of markets. Again, the hammer argument is a red herring, because library's while 60% of the hammers of a market, are Super expensive when considering the era you build them. If you only build libraries when you have access to build markets, it's a different story, but most people build them early at the cost of hammers when they are not as abundant without chopping trees.

 

[Thrasybulos]

Do we actually know these things, though?

No, we don't.
I never had a private chat with Soren where he told me that, and while it may have been publicly stated by the team, I don't remember it and neither am I going to scour the web for a trace of that.

But Occam's razor.
I do remember many people expressing frustration at failed wonder races, and Failgold was introduced in Civ4.
Seems a tad more likely that it was designed for that purpose, than "hey let's make most Wonders a waste of hammers, but deliberately failing to build them a nice alternative to building Wealth, because of course most of the building options we're putting into the game are just newbie traps."

Soren's good, but not psychic-level good. I doubt the current meta is something that was planned all along.

But you're right, I don't know that.

 

[mycophobia]

I think we can safely say we do indeed know that fail gold was intended to compensate for failing to build a wonder, to make it jive with Civ 4's new system of retaining hammers on individual builds and not allowing the player to transfer them to other builds. I don't think we need strong justification for this assertion lol. The design of it allowing for exploitation just slipped past the otherwise apparently very thorough testing.

On a slightly related topic I read some old Sullla posts on RB that related that Slavery was originally basically useless and only took on its current form very late in the development cycle, which could explain why it's so dominating; not enough time to mess around with it. It was intended to get some early game production potential out of high-food low-hammer cities so you don't spend 45 turns building a library or whatever, and for emergency purposes of course, but in buffing it to those ends so last-minute it ended up being the most significant part of the "meta". You can't catch everything.

 

[Tecumseh1]

But that's only because people choose to play running science high. I can run long periods of expansion because of markets. Again, the hammer argument is a red herring, because library's while 60% of the hammers of a market, are Super expensive when considering the era you build them. If you only build libraries when you have access to build markets, it's a different story, but most people build them early at the cost of hammers when they are not as abundant without chopping trees.

Interesting I haven't heard much discussion of this approach in the forums. Are you doing HA or construction rushes pretty often so your economy dies and you recover via currency/markets until engineering or something?

 

[antimony]

But that's only because people choose to play running science high. I can run long periods of expansion because of markets.

The longest periods of low science % I would run are when at war due to unit maintenance and supply costs, but then the production is devoted to units and there isn't space for a market. Maybe in the bureau capital if I can afford building less units there to maintain the economy during the war.

Also, whether you rapidly expand peacefully or go to war, isn't the long term goal to recover the economy and run a higher %? In new cities (conquered or founded) far from your capital, courthouses are often better return on investment than markets, or you could build libraries if you need to establish your culture.

Again, the hammer argument is a red herring, because library's while 60% of the hammers of a market, are Super expensive when considering the era you build them. If you only build libraries when you have access to build markets, it's a different story, but most people build them early at the cost of hammers when they are not as abundant without chopping trees.

It only takes a 6 pop city to whip a library (or 4 pop with 1 chop), but a 10 pop city to whip a market (8 with 1 chop). This is a big difference, especially given that population growth costs more food as the city gets larger. So in a way it's more than 60% difference if some of the hammer cost is paid via slavery.

 

[antimony]

To be very clear, I don't think markets / banks are "never build". But there is an anti-synergy to it that makes it so you wouldn't build too many of them. Put simply, for a gold multiplier building to be good, the city needs to have good commerce (unless it's a religious shrine or a corporation HQ), but if you have many cities with good commerce at any point in the game, then you should be able to afford your maintenance without having a high % of gold on the slider, especially if you build courthouses that are cheaper than markets and a better ROI in most cities.

 

[Fippy]

Markets are fine buildings with happy bonuses for very common resources, but they cost as much as an Artillery piece..
which is just ridiculous in itself
In times long ago they prolly didn't need resources to be "built"..peoples just gathered somewhere for trade.
In game, building a market feels like constructing a skyscraper.

 

[SittinDown]

i feel like historically, libraries were probably a lot harder to come by than markets.