Courthouses

[akillias]

In what city should I build them and are they superior to marketplaces or banks and why is it so?

 

[grandad1982]

Build them in all your cities.

In answer to the second part. Sometimes.

Will the 50% cut in maitainence be better than the 25% boost to gold of the marketplace or whatever?

Of course there are other benifits beside the gold effects of each building. Do you need happiness, and have Ivory etc? A market will be what you want. Do you want to build the Forbiden Palace? Build enouth Courthouses!

 

[Negator_UK]

Your maintenance in each city increases based on distance from capital and how many other cities you have. If you acquire a new city the maintenence in all your other cities goes up. So when you only have a few cities near the capital (how many depends on the level you play at) then courthouses can wait. But before you start expanding beyond that figure you need to have built courthouses in all your cities (except the capital) or maintenance costs will destroy your economy.

 

[Sashimi917]

Of cause in all of your cities including capitol city. City maintainence is the main source of your expense in the early game. Over expansion can drastically increase your city maintainence. Having courthouse in every of your city can ease your burden and allows you to expand again much sooner than not having them.

 

[Iranon]

In pure money/research cities, multiplier buildings are usually a higher priority but courthouses save you money independent of commerce and such are useful everywhere, including production cities.

They are particularly important if you plan to neglect your economy, for example when cranking out troops for a long war or churning out settlers/workers for a frantic land grab.

 

[Kerran]

Dont forget courthouses also give a passive +2 EPs, in addition to letting you run Spy specialists; it's what I use to (somewhat) keep up in EPs with the AI.

 

[Celebithil]

Don't forget that courthouses reduce city maintenance, which is afterwards multiplied by the inflation percentage. So the actual benefits are higher than what can be seen from the city screen. Moreover capitols get as much city number maintenance as other cities, so building a courthouse there, while probably the least important place to do so, can still give a significant benefit.

Finally: Always build courthouses in cities with corporations, preferable before they have corporations, as they halve corporation costs. Without courthouses corporation costs can get out of hand very quickly.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The lower you run your gold slider (as in, the higher other sliders are), the weaker gold multipliers are. Usually, if it's just money you're after you'll be wanting the courthouse first.

Example: 100% (!) gold, you'd still need to output 20 commerce to make a market more effective than a courthouse after you've captured or settled a lot of cities on a reasonable difficulty (perhaps an exaggeration, but not much of one). Courthouses are MUCH more favorable if you're putting any commerce into espionage, culture, or science, especially 50% plus.

I will not compare banks to courthouses. It's not reasonable. Banks are much later and cost a lot more hammers. Put them in cities with shrines and whatnot, and make enough for wall street. Under normal circumstances you won't want more than that.

 

[akillias]

Ok so I should build a courthouse first in all my cities before a marketplace and build a bank in cities with cottages and in all of them in late game?

 

[akillias]

Maintenance cost can be half as much as total commerce in a city? How much cities do you need in order for that to be true??????????????????

 

[akillias]

Does maintenance cost includes maintenance cost of units?

 

[Iranon]

Courthouses just halve the maintenance you see in the top left of the city screen. Mousing over the details there should give you all the info you need comparing courthouses to gold multiplier buildings (I think... played BUG for so long that I can't recall details of the regular interface). In the late game, don't forget to adjust the maintenance for inflation (check your economic advisor).

On higher difficulties, maintenance can cost a pretty penny, and in a pure production city just working farms and mines that can well exceed half the total commerce.

There are few 'always do xyz' in civ, and it would be a worse game if there were more... but building a courthouse early is rarely a flaw unless you obviously have something more important to do.
If your approach to new cities is 'build infrastructure first, worry about money later', courthouses should be a high priority because they save money even in your building phase. If you don't take the time to build infrastructure before ('screw hammers and long-term benefits, there's always a crucial research to be done/bills to be paid NOW'), courthouses lose a lot of their appeal, but I'm not sure how competitive this approach is on the higher levels.

Celebithil made a good point about corporations - if you rely on them, courthouses are your most important buildings.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Maintenance cost can be half as much as total commerce in a city? How much cities do you need in order for that to be true??????????????????

You ask a LOT of questions that are answered both in this forum and the manual .

Maintenance doesn't have to be anywhere NEAR half total commerce in the city before the courthouse starts being more effective.

If you're running the science slider at, say, 70%, then only 30% of your commerce is going into gold. Say your maintenance is 10 without the courthouse (not unrealistic at all). Building it saves you five gold. To get a market to make you five gold, you'd need just under 17 commerce. Early in the game, you'll be getting 2, maybe 3 or 4 total from trade routes. The rest must come from cottages and other tiles. You'd practically have to be working 2 gold/gem/silver mines or several MATURE cottages to have that kind of commerce in the early game.

Does this sound like most of your cities pre-1 AD, or even 500 AD? Of course by 500 AD the # of cities maintenance is likely higher, which means you'll need more commerce to match the cost reduction of the courthouse.

As you run the science slider higher or have more cities (that are further away), courthouses are better. In practice, courthouses are superior to markets for economy in most of your cities for a large chunk of the game, if not all of it (state property reduces their use quite a bit, while corps make them NECESSARY).

 

[Winston Hughes]

If you're going for a full-on warmongering approach, Courthouses are crucial. Generally, the only things you might want in a captured city before building a Courthouse are a Granary and some source of culture.

This is one reason why Organised is a fantastic trait for a warmonger, even though it confers no direct military advantage. Cheap courthouses are awesome.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you're going for a full-on warmongering approach, Courthouses are crucial. Generally, the only things you might want in a captured city before building a Courthouse are a Granary and some source of culture.

This is one reason why Organised is a fantastic trait for a warmonger, even though it confers no direct military advantage. Cheap courthouses are awesome.

Well, that and the fact that warmonger civics are expensive, but ORG cuts them in half without any special effort . You can be a lot greedier early and get away with it...very nice when paired up with a direct warmonger trait.