All Civ 4 BTS buildings ranked and explained - Henrik

[Lennier]

The problems with a citadel are that they require you to build walls and they either obsolete quickly or you have to delay free market/economics and forgo their benefits to get extra CR3 siege instead of CR2 siege.

 

[sampsa]

Free market will not get you more cities.

 

[antimony]

Sure but with Barracks + a XP civic you get CR2 out of the gate. Citadels are quite expensive at 100 hammer cost. If no Stone, I honestly may not build it in many cities.

Not a bad building. If C tier is average, it definitely adds something so it's B tier. However OP said it's S tier and I don't see that at all.

It's a bit worse than 100 hammers because you also need the walls, which you wouldn't build otherwise (so 150 total). But if you have stone (which is not that uncommon, and it's cheaper to trade for than horses or iron for example) it's 75 production total for the benefits of 5 XP to siege, 1 trade route (always good and will help keep up with war costs), and marginal benefits to culture and espionage that won't amount to much most games, but it's there. I don't think is S (because in many Spain games you may not use it) but definitely A.

To put it another way, standard Castles (and Notre Dame) are not a bad investment if you have stone, they just come at a wrong point in the tech tree because if you tech Engi you're going to war and not buiding your empire. Citadel fixes that mismatch by giving a massive benefit to exactly the units you teched Engi for.

 

[antimony]

Also the UB tier list is a bit strange because some of those buildings end up in lower tiers than the standard version of the building even if they are a strict upgrade, so presumably the two tier lists are not meant to be compared to each other. Even then there is no way I would rate Madrassa under Hammam unless the metric is "how much an improvement they are over the standard version".

 

[dankok8]

It's a bit worse than 100 hammers because you also need the walls, which you wouldn't build otherwise (so 150 total). But if you have stone (which is not that uncommon, and it's cheaper to trade for than horses or iron for example) it's 75 production total for the benefits of 5 XP to siege, 1 trade route (always good and will help keep up with war costs), and marginal benefits to culture and espionage that won't amount to much most games, but it's there. I don't think is S (because in many Spain games you may not use it) but definitely A.

To put it another way, standard Castles (and Notre Dame) are not a bad investment if you have stone, they just come at a wrong point in the tech tree because if you tech Engi you're going to war and not buiding your empire. Citadel fixes that mismatch by giving a massive benefit to exactly the units you teched Engi for.

Good point on requiring Walls as well which I forgot to mention. Yea it's a big hammer investment.

Massive benefit I think is stretching it. It's one extra promotion (CR3) that you get out of the gate that you couldn't otherwise. The way I see it, for 150 hammers you spent on Walls/Castle you can build almost 2 extra Trebs. Even with one fewer promotion, I'm not sure getting the Citadel first is worth it that often. It probably is in your capital and maybe one more good production city because those cities will build a lot of units. With Stone the tradeoff gets better for sure. Or if playing unrestricted leader as Pro.

 

[sampsa]

The way I see it, for 150 hammers you spent on Walls/Castle you can build almost 2 extra Trebs.

This. It's so easy to overvalue xp. It depends what kind of war you are fighting.

 

[drewisfat]

You'd see more potential in castles if you were open to espionage, which actually works best with engineering attacks.
I wouldn't consider it without stone/pro but that's fairly common and means you shouldn't really assume full price for walls/castles.

Only reason I don't think citadel is the best UB is it's on the worst possible leader for it, akin to Qs with Huayna.

 

[sampsa]

You'd see more potential in castles if you were open to espionage, which actually works best with engineering attacks.

An espionage tutorial/guide would be good content for your YouTube-channel!

 

[prloko]

I dont understand why people hate on markets so much. +25 gold and most starts I have access to fur, ivory and silk either outright or can trade (whale meh). Yeah, fur an ivory go obsolete, but thats later and the early happiness allows for better capitals or more whip tolerance.

 

[AcaMetis]

The main points against it is high cost to build, and the fact that +25% does nothing if you're running 100% on your slider (barring something like a Shrine directly generating commerce). The former especially so when you're running Monarchy, given one market worth of hammers can build you six Archers or +6 even if you can't build Warriors for even cheaper unit garrisons.

 

[sampsa]

I dont understand why people hate on markets so much. +25 gold and

Well, if it was +25 it would be an excellent building! But yeah as it is, it's simply trash, maybe useful sometimes in the capital. 150 is just an insane price for a penny per turn. Happiness can usually be harvested in cheaper ways.

 

[prloko]

The main points against it is high cost to build, and the fact that +25% does nothing if you're running 100% on your slider (barring something like a Shrine directly generating commerce). The former especially so when you're running Monarchy, given one market worth of hammers can build you six Archers or +6 even if you can't build Warriors for even cheaper unit garrisons.

To be fair, units aren’t free, but point taken. In regards to slider, markets with 100% gold is like a library with 100% beaker, albeit libraries are less hammers. And Banks are like academies without wasting a GS.
.

 

[prloko]

Well, if it was +25 it would be an excellent building! But yeah as it is, it's simply trash, maybe useful sometimes in the capital. 150 is just an insane price for a penny per turn. Happiness can usually be harvested in cheaper ways.

LOL. I struggle typing on my tablet.

 

[AcaMetis]

To be fair, units aren’t free, but point taken. In regards to slider, markets with 100% gold is like a library with 100% beaker, albeit libraries are less hammers. And Banks are like academies without wasting a GS.

For typical games it's relatively easy to keep your science slider at 100%, usually by selling techs/failbuilding wonders for gold, trading resources for gold/turn, etc. It has the effect of making +% effects mostly worthless, and it doesn't help that those buildings are only available after most people will have researched/traded for Alphabet, met and set up connected trade networks with the other AIs, etc., so alternative means of keeping the science slider going are on the table. And +% infrastructure to support that already having been build an entire era ago, including the odd Academy from an early GS.

Not to say that there aren't situations that markets/grocers/banks are useful buildings, mind, just that in typical games played on default settings you'd ideally spend as few turns as possible at anything less than 100% slider by the time the gold trio is available. If you want the gold trio building to be significantly more important I'd suggest trying No Tech Trading games - it places a significantly greater emphasis on your own economy, technology, and given you cannot use techs to bribe AIs into or out of wars, either your own military or reserves of gold to do said bribing with. They also tend to be slower paced, for obvious reasons, which gives the gold trio buildings (and many others) more time to pay off their high up front investment.

 

[antimony]

I think in high level games you may struggle to keep the slider high when at war, but even then courthouses are probably a better investment than markets to keep your economy up, they are cheaper and their benefit is slider-independent. It also doesn't help than unlike courthouses and libraries, no leader trait makes markets cheaper.

 

[Core Imposter]

If you want to use the full range of infrastructure and military components included in the game, you have to play in a more civilized manner- limited war and war spoils - with self-imposed rules. Momentum style warfare erases much of the content that was designed into the game. It also allows people to compare the quality of their play with other people and makes for much shorter games. We talk about the cheesy game breaking elements, but nothing compares to the ability to just roll over and raze away all obstacles.

 

[antimony]

So for example, with always peace and no tech trading, you would expect to build a lot more buildings?

 

[Core Imposter]

Does not need to be always peace. Make you own rules: Casus Belli-cannot attack any Civ without "Just Cause"(mostly when they attack you first)-limited war when you do have a Casus Belli (e.g. no more than <6> captured cities)-cannot accept invitation into a war unless you already have a CB against the target-no razing-etcetera.

Combine that with huge multi-continent maps at marathon speed with aggressive civs and barbs, no tech trading or brokering only, and city flipping after conquest. Then add another house rule: Vengeance Mode-requires that any Civ against whom a CB exists must be defeated in battle before you can claim a victory.

Suddenly you have a totally unpredictable game in which one might win playing a variant of the standard momentum rush but might also need to reach for all kinds of tools that never come into play when you have the crutch of simply being an uncivilized clone of Genghis Khan. House rules are a form of modding without modding the game itself. Takes a bit of time to play a game like that though.

 

[antimony]

Games that last longer (so for example most science victories even on the "standard" settings) will lead to more buildings, but I think that doesn't change the fundamental issue with the gold multiplier buildings (outside of niche scenarios like shrines and corporation headquarters): by the time you have enough production to comfortably afford them, you often have enough production to build wealth (with production multiplier buildings) to ensure your slider is at 100% and thus you have no gold to multiply.

 

[Core Imposter]

Games that last longer (so for example most science victories even on the "standard" settings) will lead to more buildings, but I think that doesn't change the fundamental issue with the gold multiplier buildings (outside of niche scenarios like shrines and corporation headquarters): by the time you have enough production to comfortably afford them, you often have enough production to build wealth (with production multiplier buildings) to ensure your slider is at 100% and thus you have no gold to multiply.

From a design standpoint they might have considered capping cottage growth where that infrastructure was lacking. Or adding some efficiency penalty when sliders are run out of, say, a 30-70% range, maybe just set that as the available range. Building wealth, science or culture in a city with no infrastructure is trippy in the first place.