Are housing buildings a waste of time in many cases?

[Victoria]

On my fifth new game load on deity yesterday I has a position in jungle by the coast but with a fair amount of hills around but no river. I had heard mention of granaries, aqueducts, sewers (of course) and neighborhoods being of limited value, especially when chopping for food but also re city growth. So I thought OK, no better test than this so I gave it a shot. I ended up with 3 inland cities on rivers but my 3 coastal cities had none and it seemed fine as long as you are aware of it and prioritize land improvement. Yes your cities do not get to 15 in size but then typically you need entertainment districts as well... so by having less population you save building these buildings to a large degree which is a fair amount of production.

I am not saying dogmatically have none. I am saying assessing the real need for them turned out surprising.

For example... in my style of play I like my settlers out ASAP even if it means building them in my capital. Therefore my capital does not get big fast and needs not the housing until builders get benefits. a Big landscaping project when builders get 5 builds with feudalism really seems to help including chopping the cows and wheat and rice to get the pop up. Chopping values seem not affected by housing growth limitations and once you are at max housing you still grow 1/4 fast until you are 5 over your housing limit.

So for example having a central production city with a granary, aqueduct and neighborhood with lots of people sitting on mines services by 7-11 sized cities with none of these things but 3-4 districts servicing the central production city may be a more efficient faster setup for a science victory?

A similar strat certainly seemed to help my culture victory

 

[Rosty K]

I'm yet to build a single aqueduct in Civ 6. Sewers are sometimes required for inland cities with no river or shore, but mostly no housing buildings here before the neighborhoods. I do build granaries though. I never tried to do calculations, but normally I can get enough housing to grow to 7-10 from elsewhere, like farms, some districts (encampment buildings may give less housing, but it's more useful than the aqueduct), that policy card and so on...

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

In my experience, you only need a Granary (possibly a Water Mill too) if your main production city is beside a river. If not, then an Aqueduct might be necessary.

I don't need that many resources in your Spaceport city until near Rocketry. That's when I redirect trade routes to grow that city to 10+ pop and give it enough production for the Spaceport.

 

[DrCron]

Granaries are ok because they are cheap, but everything else is pretty much useless. With enough land improvements (especially on food resources) you should have enough housing every time. With pop 10 you get 4 districts, and you really don't need more than that to win any deity game.

 

[Victoria]

Great... so a general consensus seems to be Granaries are cheap and you can use them and Aqueducts are typically a waste.

We really need a list of general rules somewhere some time

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Until a patch/expansion comes and every general rule goes moot.

 

[gimper42]

With enough production, you can crush the game with a capital that never gets larger than 6 pop. I did it with the Aztecs recently having a coastal capital that had the NW that doubles base yields with some hills adjacent. Honestly, that was pretty broken since I had a 2food/4cog tile and a 2food/5cog (before improvements) tile in my first ring.

 

[sa1vy]

The only time I would ever build an aqueduct is if my capital didn't have fresh water (or playing as Rome). I usually buy a granary in my capital at ~10 pop. At that point I'm usually just entering Renaissance and I'm working on something big, like Forbidden city, so I move all my trade routes back to the capital. I rarely ever build granaries in any other city until modern era or later. The only time I ever do sewers is if I'm swimming in gold and need the inspiration for freedom, though the gold can almost always be spent better elsewhere.

Farms do a good enough job for nearly the whole game at getting housing up to a decent level. By victory time, my capital is usually around 14-15, one other major production city at 12-13, then other secondary cities around 9-10, and the rest between 3-7 (because I build tons of small cities around the map in late game for seaside resort culture victory). I find having these two major cities sufficient for securing a culture victory: Capital builds forbidden city and then christo ridentor, secondary city builds eiffel tower.

 

[joncnunn]

To me;
Granary : Always worth it
Aqueduct: Only worth it when non-Rome if the city doesn't have fresh water. (Unfortunately in most of these cases the city in question could have been one tile from where it was to have fresh water if it weren't for some city state too close.)
However without fresh water, the housing penalty simply from "only" being at +1 housing is brutal which only gets worse when the city reaches it. And even post aqueduct the other main solution (neighborhood) also consumes a tile, so the non fresh water city may as well build the aqueduct after there's no more need for settlers for now. I would agree that farms/plantations/fishing boats would be higher priority over the aqueduct, but with each of these increasing food by at least 1 while only improving housing capacity by .5 it only postpones the need for a city based source of housing rather than eliminate it.
Sewer: Almost never worth it; I guess if the city doesn't have a land tile to spare?
There's also several buildings inside district that as a side effect produce +1 housing. In this case it amounts to is the other thing the building does worth it.
Probably not worth building Midevil walls just for the Monarchy housing bonus either.

 

[Wingednosering]

Granaries always. Anything else is pretty much a waste (unless you're Kongo or Rome). Encampment buildings, farms and policies already deal with housing for you in most cases.

In some very extreme circumstances (a city completely isolated with no farms or fresh water) I'll throw down an aqueduct. This is really rare though. I'd say I typically build 0-1 aqueduct per game.

There is probably a case to be made for some additional housing priority for the Aztecs, since their Amenities allow them to support much larger populations.

 

[alpexplorer]

Great... so a general consensus seems to be Granaries are cheap and you can use them and Aqueducts are typically a waste.

We really need a list of general rules somewhere some time

(Typical Game: Deity, Any Speed, Any Land Type, I always play maximum AI players)

Based on my experience in a typical game described above, I cannot fully agree that "aqueducts are typically a waste" or that "Sewers [are] almost never worth it."

Aqueducts: I belittled them in the past, but recently I have appreciated their usefulness for settled cities on tundra, snow, or desert. With an aqueduct, I find that I can plant an IZ or CH in sub-par terrain faster. The only time when I don't build aqueducts are when 1) I'm the suzerain of Mohenjo-Daro 2) The city is by freshwater.

Sewer: Always worth it. One person above claims that the pre-existing condition is "if the city doesn't have a land tile to spare." Note that the sewer is a city center building, not a tile building.

I'm one of those players that don't enjoy playing for the fastest victory, but for empire building. I like my cities to be big (+20 population), full of infrastructure, full 2-3 tiles out with no overlap, with every workable tile improved upon (I convert all my mines to farms at the end as much as possible to further increase the housing cap). Housing, more than any other factor, is usually the cap to my population growth. For this reason, granaries (+2), aqueducts, sewers (+2), neighborhoods (+6 on good terrain), farms (+0.5/farm), and The New Deal policy (+4) are but assured in my cities. I think city appearance even changes with higher population--needs to be confirmed, but I think I noticed this recently. So why not bump up that housing cap to the sky and play civilization-building more than play the game?

 

[Jarms48]

I feel like aqueducts need some kind of buff. Maybe aqueducts should also "work" the tile they're placed on, or maybe it should just provide tourism per era similar to world wonders (though at a smaller amount).

 

[gimper42]

When I first saw the aqueduct I thought it was weird that it does not add 1 or 2 food to the city. It really is under powered considering that you really don't need that extra population in every city, or even most cities in many games, and that it takes a tile out of play.

 

[Khan]

I build aqueducts because I like big cities, but I agree they are under powered. The idea of a food bonus is a good one.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Especially considering the Granary is much cheaper, the cost doesn't scale and offer +2 housing and +1 food.

A granary in freshwater cities bumps the max pop up to 8, which is enough for 3 districts, and coastal/water-starved cities to 5/4 pop, enough for 2 districts.

 

[Japper007]

I settle my cities as close together as possible, so I find giving up a workable tile, in first ring no less(!), a waste of space. I barely have enough tiles to get all my districts and mines down.
Granaries are always a second or third build though, especially in non-freshwater plants. They're dirt cheap, don't scale in cost and provide an extra "free" food as a bonus.

 

[greygamer]

Useful when you have to settle a city in a poor location to get a key resource

 

[Victoria]

I take the resource and leave the city at 3