Build queue priorities

[jedibob5]

Many times when I start to play a game, I will tend to mismanage my build queue and as it goes on one or more aspects of my civ are well-developed, usually infrastructure, etc. while others I can't seem to find enough time to work on until it's woefully underdeveloped, usually military or ESPECIALLY settlers. Can someone give me some tips on how to develop in a balanced way?

And on another somewhat-related note: How much of a peacetime military should I maintain? I know some is necessary in case of a sudden war, but what is a good amount?

 

[shyuhe]

Diplomacy > any army unless you're on the cusp of domination/conquest.

Granary is almost always the first build in any city. After that, it depends on what you're going to do with the city. Don't build a forge unless a city has more than 4 base hammers (preferably more than that). AP religion buildings are good (go monastery -- temple unless you're spiritual).

Don't build settlers/workers in small cities unless there is no other option. You want to build them quickly in large cities to minimize the number of turns you miss out on city growth.

 

[Brosee]

Diplomacy > any army unless you're on the cusp of domination/conquest.

Granary is almost always the first build in any city. After that, it depends on what you're going to do with the city. Don't build a forge unless a city has more than 4 base hammers (preferably more than that). AP religion buildings are good (go monastery -- temple unless you're spiritual).

Don't build settlers/workers in small cities unless there is no other option. You want to build them quickly in large cities to minimize the number of turns you miss out on city growth.

What is the benefit to the granary early game on your cap if you have at least 2 food resource? Your cap grows so fast that happy cap is the issue. And if you choose to whip, granaries will let you hit the happy cap immediately due to whip unhappiness. I find myself having to stagnate growth actually.

Especially when you are building your 1st 1-2 warriors or archers, you will hit your happy cap really soon.

 

[DaveMcW]

If your research rate goes above 50%, it's time to build more settlers.

 

[Sincro]

Forgive me for sounding stupid, but *why* is granary the first building you build in a city? It saves half the food stores, making your city grow faster, and bumps up the healthy cap given the right resources. Am I missing something? Neither of those things screams to me: I am the most important building in the game.

For me it is often no earlier then the third building I construct, after a monument and a courthouse. My typical build pattern: Found city, begin construction of courthouse. The turn prior to growth to size 2, insert a monument, whip monument next turn, continue building courthouse, usually whipping it when the city hits size 4, then building the granary. If I am playing a creative leader, I skip the monument.

A note, I've been playing a *lot* of charismatic leaders lately, and monuments are not giant piles of useless to those leaders.

But, since the way I'm doing things is obviously 'wrong' according to the majority here, how do you recommend the initial build order of your cities? And if it in some way involves skipping courthouses, please explain to me how you generate any research with more then 7 or 8 cities.

 

[OJimiJam]

Granary or monument as a first build, depending on whether you need the border pop yet (for blocking or to acess the food).

As for granary in the capital that normally comes a bit later when i need to start whipping out some production.

EDIT (for above post):

As a rule courthouses dont save THAT much money (have a look in the city screen), and the granary makes whipping it later a lot more efficent. Food is the most important thing in the early game and getting a lot of it for free (half a food bin every time you grow or whip) is massively important. If you are running out of gold in the early game growing fast and whipping a market in a commerce city generates more gold, or whipping a library and running scientists generates more beakers.

 

[MkLh]

Forgive me for sounding stupid, but *why* is granary the first building you build in a city? It saves half the food stores, making your city grow faster, and bumps up the healthy cap given the right resources. Am I missing something? Neither of those things screams to me: I am the most important building in the game.

Because it doubles the city growth rate. You need at least one happy source though. In early game with a happy cap of 4, Granary isn't worth it imo.

But, since the way I'm doing things is obviously 'wrong' according to the majority here, how do you recommend the initial build order of your cities? And if it in some way involves skipping courthouses, please explain to me how you generate any research with more then 7 or 8 cities.

By a big Bureaucracy capital with lots of cottages and a GP-farm, begging and selling old techs for money. It's probably not worth it to build courthouses with 7 cities (in Immortal/normal size, even less so in lower levels), even with 8 it's questionable. Courthouses are really expensive, how much gold will you create if you put your cities to build wealth instead?

 

[Bostock]

Forgive me for sounding stupid, but *why* is granary the first building you build in a city? It saves half the food stores, making your city grow faster, and bumps up the healthy cap given the right resources. Am I missing something? Neither of those things screams to me: I am the most important building in the game.

Food is the most important thing in the game. I'll go out on a limb here and parrot the old quick and dirty estimate: 2 food are worth 3 hammers are worth 5 commerce. (And converting food to hammers or to commerce/beakers/gold is easier than the other way around.)

A granary costs 60 and doubles food. That's the best multiplier per hammer in the game. For comparison a Library costs, uh, 2/3 of 135 ;-) while increasing science -- not even commerce, just science -- by 25 percent. It has more powerful side effects than the granary, but still.

 

[michmbk]

I find the capital often doesn't need a granary for quite awhile, as it grows quickly with the food sources.

But for any other city, I almost always start monument (if needed for border pops) then granary.

From there, it depends on the city. If I see it contributing to my research, a library might follow. If my city is going to produce units, barracks might be next. On higher levels, building research or wealth can be beneficial to keep getting me toward the key midgame economic techs (currency/col).

I usually plan for one city to spit out settlers/workers. Sometimes it's the cap, sometimes it's another high food city. Once that city gets to size 4-5, it can get settlers and workers out constantly to keep growing the empire. I'm by no means great at micro in the game, but in my first 4-5 cities, I always try to have one that's producing units, one producing workers/settlers, and one that's fueling beakers. The rest are generally situational.

 

[Baldyr]

Thinking about it, I actually can only think of one building that really makes sense in a newly founded city. And thats the Theater - given that you don't play a Creative leader, of course. Other buildings can often wait until the city's yields actually make them worth while (like or multipliers). A Forge might also be the first thing I build if isn't a priority, as it might make an immediate impact on output.

Later on, with a higher happy cap from resources, a Granary is another great first build though. (Even if a Courthouse might have higher priority by then.) But with a happy cap around 5 I tend grow fast enough by building improvements (on resources, mainly) and before I get around to build a Granary I've pretty much reached it already.

Whipping requires a Granary, though, but its not the same thing as it being the first building in the city. (It might as well be the first thing to whip.)

 

[shyuhe]

Forgive me for sounding stupid, but *why* is granary the first building you build in a city? It saves half the food stores, making your city grow faster, and bumps up the healthy cap given the right resources. Am I missing something? Neither of those things screams to me: I am the most important building in the game.

For me it is often no earlier then the third building I construct, after a monument and a courthouse. My typical build pattern: Found city, begin construction of courthouse. The turn prior to growth to size 2, insert a monument, whip monument next turn, continue building courthouse, usually whipping it when the city hits size 4, then building the granary. If I am playing a creative leader, I skip the monument.

Courthouses are crap for about half the game. Unless your city costs ~10 gpt in maintenance, it just doesn't save enough hammers for its cost. Markets are about the same price unless you're organized and have better properties. It's also pretty easy to come by cash by selling techs to AI so courthouses and markets just aren't so good in the early game.

Monuments may come before granaries if the good tiles are outside the BFC but once you get access to religion, caste system, and music (culture build), they lose their luster for non-charismatic leaders. There's also something to be said about managing your settling pattern so that there are good tiles within the first 9 tiles instead of the first 21.

Granaries are awesome because they make whipping much more effective. Until the mid-late game when you actually have a reasonably high cap and big cities, the granary powered whips win.

 

[Baldyr]

And on another somewhat-related note: How much of a peacetime military should I maintain? I know some is necessary in case of a sudden war, but what is a good amount?

I suppose that would depend on the session you're playing. Having an army period would be a start, though. If you're not entertaining any options of going on the offense yourself, you probably shouldn't have more units than you can afford.

You could neglect your army if you run Slavery or Universal Suffrage, as then you would be able to rush build any units you need. And you wouldn't need as many purely defensive units if you're running Nationhood and have left Hereditary Rule.

You could try to have a city or two build units continuously just to make sure you get those units out. Disband older units once he upkeep starts to mount. Halt production when all units are up to date.

You could also focus on having an updated offensive force for counter attacks, and not bother about updating your defensive units (other than in vulnerable border areas). This requires that you keep some in your treasure so that you can update these units when you get attacked. (You should have some money laying around anyways, as opportunities might come-a-knocking. Events, mostly.)

Other than that, you don't really need more than one unit per city (except in those troublesome border areas) once you've left Hereditary Rule. Then you can afford to have more offensive units. Those are more versatile and thus more useful than purely "defensive" ones. A good defense has elements of offense - for dealing collateral damage and flanking enemy siege units. And for counterattacking in order to wipe out the enemy once they've suicided themselves against your own forces. And they will if you have a good mixture of units so than you can counter anything the AI throws at you.

I wish there was an easy formula for how large an army one should have, but someone might be able to give you (and me) some guidelines? Like what is a reasonable peace time military budget as to upkeep costs?

 

[jedibob5]

Those are some interesting thoughts.. I suppose successful strategies can vary from person to person and from game to game, as well as city to city. The main situation I'm tired of winding up in is with only 3 or 4 cities built by the A.D. era whilst the AI almost doubles that.

I also noticed that nobody even mentioned barracks, which I usually build pretty quickly after I get essential things like city defense or workers out of the way... I don't know if that's just ingrained in me from when I played Civ II, although I often suffered similar issues in that game as well.

 

[UWHabs]

Peacetime army should be anywhere from 1 warrior per city to a full-time defense staff.

If you know who can or can't declare war on you, that helps. I'd had a game where all my neighbours were pleased/friendly, and I knew (100% odds) that none could declare war on me. Thus, that game, my army was nothing.

Other games, I keep a minimal army, but when I see a big stack of units from someone who might declare on me, or I see them go into war mode (thank you BUG mod!), then I switch to war mode and whip walls and units.

Main points to prevent stalling is if you can afford it, you should be expanding. I know early on there's so much choice what to build, but force yourself. Sort of like in life - if you force yourself, when you have some cash, to put some away in savings, in the long run, you'll be better off.

 

[Sincro]

Courthouses are crap for about half the game. Unless your city costs ~10 gpt in maintenance, it just doesn't save enough hammers for its cost. Markets are about the same price unless you're organized and have better properties. It's also pretty easy to come by cash by selling techs to AI so courthouses and markets just aren't so good in the early game.

Eh, I wrote out an entire whiny post, but I can sum it up better by saying: I don't believe you. Specifically, the portion of your post that I bolded cannot be true unless you are using some sort of mechanic that I am not aware of to cover up those costs.

Would you care to enlighten me on what that mechanic is?

As for the last sentence in the above quote, you cannot use that strategy until and unless you have currency. I agree that markets are far too costly for what they do, and I never build em except for my shrine cities or a bureau capital.

-Sinc

 

[shyuhe]

Eh, I wrote out an entire whiny post, but I can sum it up better by saying: I don't believe you. Specifically, the portion of your post that I bolded cannot be true unless you are using some sort of mechanic that I am not aware of to cover up those costs.

Would you care to enlighten me on what that mechanic is?

As for the last sentence in the above quote, you cannot use that strategy until and unless you have currency. I agree that markets are far too costly for what they do, and I never build em except for my shrine cities or a bureau capital.

-Sinc

I tech currency before code of laws in most of my games (unless the religion is still open). So markets are available first, as is building wealth. Backselling techs is my primary source of gold in the early game for me. So it's not that I don't pay the maintenance, but I try to find alternative sources of gold to carry me over at 100% slider for as long as possible. Binary research helps add a couple hundred gold to that pool as well.

Try looking at kossin's games. I suspect he doesn't build courthouses in the early game given his strategies for fundraising.

 

[Sincro]

Ok, that's a fair answer, and given that I play at a lower level then you, the religion is almost *always* available from CoL, which makes it far more attractive of a target.

 

[ChrisH]

@sincro

do you not find that you need (eventually anyway) the happiness increases from the marketplace? +3 if you've the necesary resources IIRC?

 

[lymond]

I'd say two things have helped me move up and win at higher levels:

1) Realizing the importance of the granary and food in general
2) Running binary research/power of gold

I'm adamant about the granary being the most important building in the game. I do agree that it isn't as urgent in the capital unless the food resources suck, and well it usually takes a bit to get pottery anyway, But all my new cities getting it first thing or after monuments if necessary, and my cap gets it as soon as it is feasible.

Besides whip and draft recovery though, it just simply helps your cities grow faster to work more tiles. The quicker you work more tiles the quicker you have that more production an and commerce. And as far as happy/health caps you generally figure at a certain point you are going to have factors like civics and resources to help mitigate some of that, and as far as health you can deal with a greenie or two for a bit anyway.

One thing I see now when looking at some of the newbie posts on the forum is their lack of realization as to the power of food in this game. I was guilty of this as well starting out. I was all about the hammers. Granary takes that food power and multiplies it.

 

[Sincro]

@sincro

do you not find that you need (eventually anyway) the happiness increases from the marketplace? +3 if you've the necesary resources IIRC?

Sometimes but certainly not all the time. One of the weaknesses in my game is not letting cities grow all the way up to the happy/health caps anyways, so often the difference a market makes to me is a city at size 10 with 3 to spare on the happy cap vs a city with 5 to spare on the happy cap. I tend to stay in HR for the vast majority of the game until I finally tech constitution, so if I find myself truly needing more happy cap, I usually take care of it by spitting out another cheap unit. Not always, but usually.

But again, my personal management of the happy/health caps is a definite weakness in my game, so I highly recommend not following my lead on it.