Amazingly bad buildings?

[Thalassicus]

The problem is that you have no alternative to put your hammers into once you build all the buildings you desire. Hammers are only converted 10% into gold or 25% into science. So you might as well build culture buildings to do something useful with your hammers.

[...]

Not all cities should have all buildings. For example I build a city in the middle of the desert to get an oil resource. That city would never grow without a granary. Also in my production cities for units and wonders, I do not want my population in farms but rather in mines. So I build the granary and watermill there to have more free pop at the hammers. The culture is not useless. SP can make a huge difference in science, military and production (Communism for example gives you 5 hammers in every city!). You have to get there somehow and if you have a large empire, it is quite useful to have some cities devoted to culture in order to get the SP you desire. Of course, if you play Civ5 like Civ4 and build everything everywhere, you digg your self a nice and deep grave.

I agree with both your points. If maritime city state bonuses are reduced, granaries might be useful. Free food to every city the moment it's founded somewhat outshadows it right now.


Here's my main thought.

A game is a series of interesting choices, and the choices do not feel interesting. In IV buildings were useful in almost every city, so you had to make valuable build-order choices. Focus on culture for borders, research for cottages, production for later building, or defense from potential conquest? The fundamentals of 4x.

Right now the later science, culture and defense options just don't appear valuable choices for the majority of cities, limiting options to money and happiness spam.

 

[Tarkeel]

the stable is decent. If you start with a small supply of horses and run out, you can build it while waiting to hook up more horses. And, I think it pays for itself after 5 horsemen.

It's a compliacted question really; as overflowing production is now wasted you can't calculated it as a flat 15% increase. I ran a small spreadsheet on it (see picture), and # of units to break even for horsemen is usually over 6. For certain hammer yields (20 and 21 hammers for horsemen); stable actually doesn't do anything at all as all the increased production is lost in overflow.

 

[SevenSpirits]

It's a compliacted question really; as overflowing production is now wasted

That is false. The UI just doesn't show it explicitly.

 

[Thalassicus]

The UI just doesn't show it

True of a lot of things... probably design goal to reduce people getting overwhelmed with info. Would really help to have all information available to those who want it for decision-making.

 

[Tarkeel]

That is false. The UI just doesn't show it explicitly.

That's strange, but no surprise given how "well" the UI shows you stuff.
Will have to do some more testing on it.

 

[dvandyke]

I haven’t played enough games to fully test how balanced buildings are but surely it is better that buildings have a cost that the benefits must be weighed up against. Things like granaries have been absolute no brainers in previous incarnations but now require some strategic thought.

 

[ChristofferC]

I have enough money for unit upgrades even if I build all the science buildings in my high pop cities. I like the science bulidings. But then again, I was always a sucker for science in the civ series.

 

[The_Reckoning]

Agree with list. I think all that is needed is all the buildings in that list are made cheaper in hammers, lowered maintenance costs or both.

 

[ChristofferC]

What do you guys bild in your cities anyway? You only have to build and upgrade less than 10 military units to conquer the whole world so...

 

[mamuz]

To answer about buildings with my 2 games experience of Civ V (2 domination victory, level Prince (Bismarck) and Emperor (Napoleon)) :

I think military building in solo mode are useless because the IA is not able to fight correctly. We don't need to improve our military advantage because, all our units are the automatic "human logic" promotion which is already the very best promotion in this game.
In contrary, in multiplayer, i think build/buy one staple in the city where you build/buy your cavalries are useful. The same is true for Casern in the city (another one) where you buy/built warriors. In multiplayer, promotions could be the key to win battles.

For the others buildings, i don't know. Never really test, but i build only two library in my last game (but all scientists wonders) and i won the technology run and puppet the map with musketeers against long sword knight (for the best of unit i've met)... :/
Problem : it was the emperor level.

Maybe adjustments are needed, BUT i guess something brillant in the general concept of the design. The real issue for me, now, is about how IA makes war (but it's true that i test principally this aspect of the game).

 

[Evalis]

Something has to be seriously tweaked here, else all those buildings are only good for very small 'empires'.

Perhaps that's the point. The idea behind the building costs might be to make less expansion focused empires competitive with empires that try to dot the whole map.

 

[Crimefighter]

Personally, I like the idea that not every building is useful in every city - or indeed every Map.

It seems to change what you think about: Which buildings to build in addition to which order to build them in. Makes you think about what each city really needs in relation to its postion, specialisation, and resources, rather than spamming the same build order for each one.

 

[Jamesds]

Personally, I like the idea that not every building is useful in every city - or indeed every Map.

It seems to change what you think about: Which buildings to build in addition to which order to build them in. Makes you think about what each city really needs in relation to its postion, specialisation, and resources, rather than spamming the same build order for each one.

I like the idea too, but the way it's implemented currently where lots of the buildings are hardly worth being built in many cases due to a combination of them not giving enough bonus for the time it takes to build them means they aren't what they could be. However, the fact I've been staring at the city screen for a large amount of time considering the best option is no bad thing, it's just I think buildings seem much less rewarding and more penalising.

 

[Inspiration]

So some people think that large empires should have cities with only 3-4 buildings in them? That makes no sense at all. In fact large empires need big cities with lots of useful buildings and services in order to stay a large empire and even think about growing. Look at any empire that lasted a while and made (a cultural) impact on history...

 

[Senethro]

Is there some brilliant strategy with these I might be unaware of, or do you ignore them like I've started to?

• Stable
  Must build more than 9 chariot archers or 6 horsemen to just break even in . Hit by game-long maintenance cost, delays unit creation, no benefit to rush-purchasing, and must have horses in an area worth building a military-production city.
  .
• Granary, Watermill
  Large , /turn cost (with no leader traits to speed production), maritime city-states, slower population growth overall in V.
  .
• Castle, Military Base
  Same , /turn as an average unit, yet low damage, cannot move, promote, create great generals, or be disbanded. A single city with all defensive buildings costs 1125 (more than the Taj Mahal) and 10/turn. Might be useful if-when combat AI is improved.
  .
• University, Public School, Research Lab
  Trade /turn for /turn, despite increased usefulness of in CiV, and technological progress already faster than production. This is more due to overall tech vs production ratio than the fault of these individual buildings, however.
  .
• Museum, Opera House, Broadcast Tower
  Huge /turn costs for anything but a cultural victory. Great artists less useful.
  .
• Windmill
  Bonus so small and cost so high the break-even point is 1800, 70 turns for even a highly-productive city in the era these become available. Meanwhile, you delayed production and are incurring maintenance.
  .
• Hospital, Medical Lab
  Steep cost makes purchase the only option for small cities, where the benefit would last longest. Then you're also hit with a large /turn cost. In big cities (20+) growth is so slow that by the time Hospitals/Labs become available, you can only gain perhaps 1-2 extra points of population before the game ends, while incurring a massive maintenance hit.

This is maybe a long shot, but did Kael have some influence on this? These kinds of numbers are reminiscent of city buildings in Fall From Heaven. Even if there wasn't direct discussion among beta testers, perhaps Firaxis found some inspiration in FFH?

I'm also willing to admit my bias as I played the anti-civilization Doviello in FFH and perversely refused to specialize cities, instead running a pillage economy.

 

[quinalla]

I appreciate that I think they were going for a more balanced approach of you not wanting to build every building in every city ala Civ4, but it does seem for some of the buildings that the benefit vs. maintenance should be tweaked somewhat. I think it really encourages city specialization.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This might have helped me put a finger on what has been bothering me about the game so far. Admittedly, I'm a builderciv-player at heart, but the seeming lack of more worthwhile things to do have been pushing me to just war my neighbors instead--it just always seems like the best (or even only) option. Some of the buildings just don't seem worth it, and if you're not building and not warring, what is going on exactly?

I don't have the experience a lot of other people here have, but are the watermill/granary really that bad? The seem to help me work a mine or so for that production--especially before you even have contact with those "maritime" CSes. Again, I haven't crunched the numbers but just built whatever seems like a good idea at the time. Or am I just stuck in the mindset from previous games that granary are must-builds?

And the question's been asked before, but I'd really like to know--what are you doing with your cities if you aren't making buildings?

 

[Zelig]

And the question's been asked before, but I'd really like to know--what are you doing with your cities if you aren't making buildings?

Building units to disband for money.

 

[Tarkeel]

That's strange, but no surprise given how "well" the UI shows you stuff.
Will have to do some more testing on it.

Did some more testing; overflow is definitely carried over, it's just not shown in any way.

My city had 35.1 production listed in the turn before, but actually produced 41.8; with the difference coming from overflow.
In general, it seems that the game has serious issues with showing bonuses; what is it with all building and citystate bonuses just being tacked onto the city tile?

 

[tokala]

This is maybe a long shot, but did Kael have some influence on this? These kinds of numbers are reminiscent of city buildings in Fall From Heaven. Even if there wasn't direct discussion among beta testers, perhaps Firaxis found some inspiration in FFH?

So I'm not the only one who thinks Civ5 feels somehow akin to FFH, and even more so RifE
I don't know since when Kael and the crew were involved in the internal beta, but it looks as if there was some cross-pollination