Aqueducts worth it?

[Haig]

Ok, lately I've been restrained in building aqueducts, granaries I build always and try to grab a maritime CS as an ally, but after that I like to wait for hospitals (industrial era) that grant extra food immediatly.

Am I making a terrible miscalculation?

 

[budweiser]

Yes.

My rule of thumb is an aquaduct by size 10, at least. But, what I usually do is get Civil Service, then the Aquaduct. Not sure if this is optimal.

I usually go Granary > Water Mill > Civil Service > Aquaduct mwhen it comes to growth activities.

 

[Strategist83]

Aqueducts are a necessity for tall empire play. As India, for example, Aqueducts are of prime importance, particularly for the capital.

 

[chazzycat]

Yes. Sometimes I will slightly delay them if no happiness is available, but not for long. Without them, your growth rate in the mid-game will suffer, with very negative implications for your economy.

 

[MadDjinn]

even for a wide 10 pop/city empire, aqueducts can help you get from 6 to 10 pop very quickly.

* you can sell them afterwards if needed.

 

[Fluffball]

even for a wide 10 pop/city empire, aqueducts can help you get from 6 to 10 pop very quickly.

* you can sell them afterwards if needed.

I always build an aquaduct in every city to ensure they get to maximum population as quickly as possible and then sell the ones in cities i stop growing at happiness neutral.

They only cost 1 maintenance and save 40% of food which is hugely more cost effective than buying a maritime CS.

 

[vexing]

it depends. consider it equivalent to gaining 40% of your excess food to put it in perspective.

if your cities are only at +2 excess food, it's significantly less than a granary. if on the other hand you have a few maritime allies and your capital is at +15 excess food, it's equal to a +6 bonus - more than a hospital.

in general prioritize them in high food cities, don't bother in stagnating cities.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

However, if your +2 city can grow into other 2 tiles (grassland marble/stone, sheep on a hill, grassland trade posts), then the aqueduct will drastically speed up the growth onto those 2 tiles, specifically because you have 40% less food to store up for each population point. However, if the city has no other tiles that will feed themselves (read "less than 2 food"), then the city has no use for the aqueduct. This is very rare in my games as most cities that would fit that description would be puppets anyway.

 

[vexing]

However, if your +2 city can grow into other 2 tiles (grassland marble/stone, sheep on a hill, grassland trade posts), then the aqueduct will drastically speed up the growth onto those 2 tiles, specifically because you have 40% less food to store up for each population point.

not really. a +2 food city growing into another +2 food tile still ends up at +2 food.
consider a size 8 city with a consistent +2 excess food:

base it requires about 45 turns to reach size 9, then 50 size 10.
if you rush buy an aqueduct the turn it hits 8, it still takes 45 turns to grow to size 9, 36 food rolls over, then 32 turns later it'll hit size 10.

compare this to a granary for a raw +2 (so +4 excess total, double the amount)
it takes 22 turns to hit size 9, then 25 to hit size 10. cities with small amounts of excess food get more benefit from extra raw excess food than an aqueduct.

on the plus side you only need +5 excess food for the aqueduct to be equivalent to a granary.

 

[Lexicus]

Aren't Aqueducts required for Hospitals?

 

[Cicerosaurus]

That's what I thought Lexicus. And while Vexing makes a good argument with the numbers, (at least with my games), I never build an aqueduct in isolation from a granary. The granary is always one of the first buildings I get so any numbers for my game would need to factor that approach in- I'd be very surprised if I am in the minority with this.

 

[turtlefang]

vexing pointing out that a small food excess won't benefit from an aqueduct whether you have a granary or not. If you have already built the granary and only have +2 extra food, then an aqueduct doesn't really help you much. If you have a choice between building an aqueduct or an improvement granting a flat food amount, go with the flat food amount (granary, watermill) when a city only has a small amount of excess food.

Bottom line is that aqueducts are situational. If you don't have much excess food - and can't shift pop to generate it - then don't build them. They won't help. If you have the excess food, then they can accelerate a city growth for as long as you keep the food coming in and have + happiness.

Or you can play like me - end up with a granary, watermill and aqueduct plus some high end food producing sites. Which can lead to some very unhappy citizens if your not careful. And usually, I'm not careful enough.

 

[Strategist83]

Yes, you should practically always build the Granary prior to the Aqueduct. Even if the Aqueduct will net more food (say, in vexing's +15 food capital example where it will yield +6 food as opposed to the Granary's +2), keep in mind the other factors to consider: Granary costs only half as much production to build, and even if both are -1 in maintenance, the Granary also has the advantage that it creates food whereas the Aqueduct only affects the food you already have. A Granary will in itself feed a specialist, an Aqueduct none.

 

[Carnifaux]

I build them in core cities when initially available but I often hesitate from putting them in fringe cities. Are aqueducts much like granaries and libraries, they belong in every city no matter what?

 

[vexing]

from a pure numbers standpoint, you will in fact benefit more long term by building an aqueduct before a granary if you happen to have more than +10 excess food.

realistically it's not going to be a choice people need to make, except under crazy settings like ICS spamming on settler difficulty going for points alone, where you have all maritimes allied and are plopping new cities... then again in that situation you probably will end up rush buying the aqueduct and building the granary.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

Turtlefang, I understand what you say about if not having much excess food an aqueduct may not be worth it- however.... isn't this a fluid situation? In a few turns you may have some maritime CS as allies, or you may have a different social policy that generates extra food, or have the capacity to build a hospital. Because of this I prefer to have an aqueduct ready to take advantage of what happens.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

not really. a +2 food city growing into another +2 food tile still ends up at +2 food.
consider a size 8 city with a consistent +2 excess food:

base it requires about 45 turns to reach size 9, then 50 size 10.
if you rush buy an aqueduct the turn it hits 8, it still takes 45 turns to grow to size 9, 36 food rolls over, then 32 turns later it'll hit size 10.

compare this to a granary for a raw +2 (so +4 excess total, double the amount)
it takes 22 turns to hit size 9, then 25 to hit size 10. cities with small amounts of excess food get more benefit from extra raw excess food than an aqueduct.

on the plus side you only need +5 excess food for the aqueduct to be equivalent to a granary.

I wasn't comparing Aqueducts to Granaries. Hopefully, if you plan on investing into an aqueduct, you already put in a granary which is both cheaper and obviously necessary if you are only able to grow into 2 tiles. I was simply remarking on the benefit to having an aqueduct in a city with 2 excess as long as you had other 2 tiles to grow into. You already showed an 18 turn difference growing from 9 to 10 population, the benefit only goes up from there.

I'm not sure what the big discussion is with regards to the order of building/buying granaries vs. aqueducts. I mean, granaries come with Pottery (one of the first techs researched and rarely put off for more than 2 or 3 techs in extraneous situations). Not only do you need Engineering to get aqueducts (a significant distance into the tech tree compared to Pottery), but aqueducts are considerably more expensive. In any hungry cities, the granary is a must build, but even in cities with decent food, the granary comes in strong. 1 is a small price for faster early growth and 1 more specialist later on (even more if adopting Freedom's policies).

Any city in which you desire growth which also has excess 2 or more , an aqueduct is a good investment. When it comes to wide empires, individual city growth is less important outside of the capital/NC city in which a granary was probably built before the second city was even founded.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Long story short, Aqueducts and Civil Service farms are how I survive gimping my cities with early Universities. Try to grow one last step right before hitting Education, then go max on the University and the Aqueduct. Once those are done, switch to focus and grow back into your industrial might. This is most effective when you have a bunch of +2, high production tiles (Stone, Sheep, Grassland Marble/Horses/Cows) that you want to grow back into.

From a math standpoint, blitzkrieg is correct that the raw number of turns to grow is most reduced by an Aqueduct when the magnitude of the surplus is small. The problem with the argument is that we don't care about the size of that value; we care about the outputs c5gold://) that citizens give us. When you look at the problem from that perspective, it's pretty clear that Aqueducts are more valuable when they give us more growth steps that we otherwise would not have gotten. That's why vexing (correctly) argues that an Aqueduct is more valuable in a high surplus city than in a low surplus one.

This should be intuitive. If your wages are under $50,000, you would prefer a $5,000 salary bump to a 10% pay increase; above that value you'd prefer the percentage change. The Aqueduct/Granary problem is a mathematically uglier version of that same problem, which introduces a few non-obvious wrinkles to the solution. But the underlying mechanism is the same.

 

[vexing]

Any city in which you desire growth which also has excess 2 or more , an aqueduct is a good investment. When it comes to wide empires, individual city growth is less important outside of the capital/NC city in which a granary was probably built before the second city was even founded.

the comparison with granary is just to show relative worth, since the actual worth is clearly not evident to some people.

with only 2 excess food, you're gaining the equivalent of 0.8 food per turn with an aqueduct. it's really not significant, and you'd probably be better off spending your hammers on something else.

reread the example you quoted above... building an aqueduct with 2 excess food in a size 8 city provides no benefit for 87 turns, at which point the city hits size ten 18 turns early. that's a pretty big investment of hammers for no returns for 87 turns, especially when an optimal game can be done in 200 turns.
compare it to a market; i'd much rather have the 5ish gpt immediately... and that could be invested in a maritime for more growth across the board.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

I never said I would prioritize the aqueduct over another building. Also, I never suggested that an aqueduct is more valuable with low excess cities than with high excess food cities (that's just silly!)

I was simply stating that it would be worth the investment if you plan on growing your city onto other tiles (specifically tiles with 2 2 or 2 3) since the returns on those tiles will be more beneficial to the city and your empire.

Of course, the situation is pretty rare. I haven't experienced many games where a non-puppeted city is hurting for excess food at size 8.