Building Usefuless? or Letting a city sit idle

[Dess]

My overall question is which buildings do you all feel are NOT worth building, and what do you do if you no longer have decent buildings to build, and are not immediately building an army (the warlike nature of this vs Civ 4 may render my question moot, so feel free to express that as well)

In civ 4, I felt producing buildings was always a good decision, but not as much in this civ. With building wealth being a sick joke, I am much more concerned with maintenance costs. I feel that as long as I have a good supply of lux resources, I would rather have the 3 GPT than a happiness building. Things like gardens seem very niche, and hospitals are near worthless by the time I get them.

Thoughts?

 

[AriochIV]

Some people say they build cheap units and then disband them for the 20g. Tedious, but probably more profitable than the pathetic Wealth in many situations.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Just make a cheap unit that you're going to want to upgrade later. You'll make more money in the long run by saving either your Gold or your Hammers unless the upgrade tech is dozens and dozens of turns away, even after accounting for upkeep.

Civ 4 was at least as heavy on the warfare. You had to fight early on. Later it became optional, but frequently profitable.

 

[Jerrymander]

Some people say they build cheap units and then disband them for the 20g. Tedious, but probably more profitable than the pathetic Wealth in many situations.

Yeah. Spending 3 turns building a worker = 6.7 gold per turn.

Running wealth with 25 hammers = 2 gold per turn.

?????

 

[Hutch00]

So far, I've finished only one game (domination victory). Mainly because I get partway through a game, and then realize that I want to try a different approach. But in no game so far have I gotten past the Renaissance era in tech. Just putting that out there for context.

I build a Monument in every city. It's only one gold maintenance, and I like having cities expand their borders with a minimum of micromanagement (and cash) from me.

I also build a Market, once I've researched Currency, because it has no maint cost, and adds to my gold income. Same story for the Mint, if the city is eligible.

So far, those are the only buildings that I consider must-have. But again, I've also found that military/domination is the playstyle that seems to flow the most naturally as I've been playing the game, so if I'm not making one of those buildings, or a wonder, I'm typically building a war unit or a settler.

 

[delra]

I typically go quite high in money, happiness and science buildings. I don't go overly crazy about cultural ones even though I like to have an Opera or two. I typically don't build defensive, production and food buildings.

My typical city will have a Bank in it, a University and sometimes an Opera. It won't have Walls, a Granary nor Workshop unless it's my main production hub. I'm not overly crazy about Barracks even in a troop production centre - I can train my units on AI spam and I'd rather have 3 inexperienced Knights fighting than Barracks and 2 Knights with first level of rough terrain upgrade. Maybe that last part is a mistake on my part.

 

[AtriumComplex]

After I finished my first army, I make sure all my cities are building the science/gold/happiness buildings +monument. I always build production buildings in a city close to marble with enough production to make wonders. Since I only build a couple wonders a game, the rest of the time it's building replacement units or buildings.

 

[delra]

Production buildings don't boost wonder production.

Also, why is marble bonus not displayed anywhere in the game like civilopedia or whatever.

 

[stii]

Production buildings don't boost wonder production.

Also, why is marble bonus not displayed anywhere in the game like civilopedia or whatever.

I'm pretty sure windmill does.

 

[thwump]

If you can't afford to build more buildings because of maintenance, you can always go for wonder failure gold. Much better return rate than the other choices.

It can also be good to switch tile focus from production to gold if you can and slow build units since you will probably need some eventually.

 

[Dess]

Ah ok, disbanding. Brilliant! Silly, but brilliant. On those lines how long is a good time for unit building? I still have the "if I can't get it in 5 turns, I don't have enough production" mentality. How many hammers should I aim for in a production vs non production city? How should military buildings factor into this?

 

[RobertTheBruce]

I typically go quite high in money, happiness and science buildings. I don't go overly crazy about cultural ones even though I like to have an Opera or two. I typically don't build defensive, production and food buildings.

My typical city will have a Bank in it, a University and sometimes an Opera. It won't have Walls, a Granary nor Workshop unless it's my main production hub. I'm not overly crazy about Barracks even in a troop production centre - I can train my units on AI spam and I'd rather have 3 inexperienced Knights fighting than Barracks and 2 Knights with first level of rough terrain upgrade. Maybe that last part is a mistake on my part.

I find the troop buildings as usually not worth it either. I usually build a stack of warriors/horsemen to rush the AI early. They continue to be the core of my army so I'll need at most one barracks.

Happiness building are always worth the build since science and gold are roughly proportional to population (assuming similar multipliers in most cities).

I do tend to build granaries so I can run max scientists and trading posts in all cities. I find the combination of a few research agreements, hand researching cheap techs and a steady stream of scientists for lightbulbing gets up the tech tree quickly.

Production buildings aren't worth the effort in most cases. Its just too hard to get a high base production in this game so the multiplier will pay off in a reasonable time. I guess I'm too used to the workshop/watermill combination in cIV. A city founded in civ V on a swath of grassland river tiles will have to purchase every building.

 

[King Jason]

The only buildings I don't build are military buildings and gardens... everything else goes in every city at some point or another.

 

[Jerrymander]

I'm pretty sure windmill does.

Windmill gives a flat 15% bonus to production, no matter what you build. Well, that is what it claims to do.

 

[Zhahz]

In Civ IV a lot of people advocated specializing cities but it was very easy to just build everything.

In Civ 5, it's a much better idea to specialize cities and/or limit your building to what you actually need.

Buildings often take a while to build and the maintenance stacks up so building just to build isn't the greatest idea.

I like Civ 5 system since building has more meaning and decision making beyond just "in what order will I build every single building that can built."

I don't think there are any totally useless buildings. There are just some buidings that are situational. And I like this. It gives you options and decisions to make, again, instead of just spamming everything in every city.

So, IMO, it's very situational what you build and could depend on a lot of factors - empire size, goal (how do you plan to win), map, difficulty, aggression of you and neighbors, and so on.

 

[Gath]

I find its more efficient to specialize almost all of my cities to gold, and one or two to wonder building. With gold and the right policies and wonders, you can purchase anything you want for more effectively than you can build it.

 

[King Jason]

I like Civ 5 system since building has more meaning and decision making beyond just "in what order will I build every single building that can built."

~

So, IMO, it's very situational what you build and could depend on a lot of factors - empire size, goal (how do you plan to win), map, difficulty, aggression of you and neighbors, and so on.

I guess, but in the end there's really no reason not to have every building in every city. The exceptions being military ones, the gardens, and if the city isn't on a river, gold producing buildings.

Also, if you don't really care about getting that many policies. But in the course of a game since I have specialized military production cities, I almost never run out of something to build because every city benefits from everything. It just takes a while to build everything, so I find it is simply about the order... and not much else.

 

[Collic]

If I genuinely have nothing whatsoever to build (fairly rare really), I'll just build wealth. It may be a poor hammer trade off, but I'm certainly not going to tank my economy with building maintenance, or spend time building and disbanding scouts.

 

[uberfish]

I stick cities on some wonder I don't want rather than build wealth, at least I get some gold back when the AI builds it

 

[King Jason]

I'd rather build science than wealth, the return is better.