Does anyone build lots of buildings in their cities?

[GeneralMayhem]

I was wondering if anyone builds most of the buildings in their cities?

For one, the costs of most buildings rend them useless over many turns. for example barracks. in civ 4 i would build 3 to 5 barracks because those were my unit producing cities. In civ 5 the limit on the number of units renders a barracks almost useless. it's far easier and economical to just build units and get xp in the field.

Another example. I don't build banks but will build markets. with ICS usually 4 to 5 pop cap, i don't have enough pop to utilize banks and they are useless. My games almost all consist of 1. monument, 2. library, 3. Market, 4. and a harbor (if sea based), and maybe a 5. a wall (near borders) and 6. a coliseum in cities if i need the happyness, and a wonder here and there. and that's pretty much it.

with that said, with increasing maintenance costs, most buildings become totally useless.

list of useless buildings i've never or don't build anymore: windmill, watermill, workshop, theatre, lighthouse, granary, bank, garden, temple, barracks, armory, factory, forge, museum, public school, hospital, seaport, stable, university,

 

[Tylerryan79]

I build every science build, every gold building, every happiness
Building, most production buildings in my cities. I build about 6 -8 of my own cities and then have double that in puppets.

I had 1800+ science(over 2000 if I focused on science), 1500+gpt in a golden age, and 900gpt normal. My production was through the roof. All my cities, including puppets, were from size 13-20. I was buying every building, buying every unit, and building wonders left an right. I worked a lot of specialists, and used all my GP for golden ages and techs. Best game I've had so far.

I also bought all those useless buildings you named, except for the +1-2 food ones. With hospitals and medical labs I was growing very fast, all the Cs I had helped a lot too. I build the seaport of I have atleast two fish or pearls. Public schools are great to stack with every other science building. Everytime one completed my science would rise a lot. Same goes with a university, especially if you have jungle/trading post on it.

 

[King_Course]

I was wondering if anyone builds most of the buildings in their cities?

For one, the costs of most buildings rend them useless over many turns. for example barracks. in civ 4 i would build 3 to 5 barracks because those were my unit producing cities. In civ 5 the limit on the number of units renders a barracks almost useless. it's far easier and economical to just build units and get xp in the field.

Another example. I don't build banks but will build markets. with ICS usually 4 to 5 pop cap, i don't have enough pop to utilize banks and they are useless. My games almost all consist of 1. monument, 2. library, 3. Market, 4. and a harbor (if sea based), and maybe a 5. a wall (near borders) and 6. a coliseum in cities if i need the happyness, and a wonder here and there. and that's pretty much it.

with that said, with increasing maintenance costs, most buildings become totally useless.

list of useless buildings i've never or don't build anymore: windmill, watermill, workshop, theatre, lighthouse, granary, bank, garden, temple, barracks, armory, factory, forge, museum, public school, hospital, seaport, stable, university,

You are playing ICS. It is a strategy that does not resemble a more common approach. If I play one city achievement, should I make a complaining post saying; I build too many buildings?

yes no maybe?

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I played a fun game as Rome where I built Workshop in every town first and could crank out buildings pretty quickly.

Otherwise I don't bother much with workshop or many of the other ones. It doesn't seem right that the additional happy buildings (for example) above the first level coliseum get so costly. Buildings like seaport, though can be powerful in the right city.

 

[DaveGold]

list of useless buildings i've never or don't build anymore: windmill, watermill, workshop, theatre, lighthouse, granary, bank, garden, temple, barracks, armory, factory, forge, museum, public school, hospital, seaport, stable, university,

I wouldn't say they were useless but I'd certainly start with an assumption that I wasn't going to build them and then look for a specific reason to build one in the right location. Some buildings also become much better in eras after you first develop them. A forge can recover its cost very quickly if you're building modern armour in the city.

 

[TheBlackHole]

I was wondering if anyone builds most of the buildings in their cities?

For one, the costs of most buildings rend them useless over many turns. for example barracks. in civ 4 i would build 3 to 5 barracks because those were my unit producing cities. In civ 5 the limit on the number of units renders a barracks almost useless. it's far easier and economical to just build units and get xp in the field.

Another example. I don't build banks but will build markets. with ICS usually 4 to 5 pop cap, i don't have enough pop to utilize banks and they are useless. My games almost all consist of 1. monument, 2. library, 3. Market, 4. and a harbor (if sea based), and maybe a 5. a wall (near borders) and 6. a coliseum in cities if i need the happyness, and a wonder here and there. and that's pretty much it.

with that said, with increasing maintenance costs, most buildings become totally useless.

list of useless buildings i've never or don't build anymore: windmill, watermill, workshop, theatre, lighthouse, granary, bank, garden, temple, barracks, armory, factory, forge, museum, public school, hospital, seaport, stable, university,

Not everyone uses ICS. ICS is a strategy revolving around NOT making powerhouse cities, so it should come as no surprise that you're not going to build a lot of the buildings. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that at all, but just saying that it's BECAUSE of your strategy that the buildings are useless. If you play a different way, plenty of those buildings are extremely useful.

There have been a few threads with mathematical analysis of the worth of some buildings (mostly the earlier ones, e.g. forge, granary, etc.) and some of them are more useful than you might think. Certainly the ones you listed are the ones you definitely want in every city, but beyond that some of the buildings come out to be quite worth it in the end. But again, that's only useful if you actually play in a way that makes them useful. If I was a... say, peaceful "culture-monger" and (somehow) my entire strategy focused around getting social policies, me complaining that military buildings are useless simply don't hold a lot of weight.

With all that said, I actually do build most of the buildings some place in my empire. Not all of them everywhere, but choice ones in specialized cities when it makes sense and provides the greatest value. The exceptions are buildings in the modern era on, as they come way too late and cost way too many hammers to produce.... for me, those buildings truly are worthless, as the game is usually over by then for me to even use them. Nevertheless, on occasion I do purchase one or two of these late buildings sometimes if it really helps me out.

And FYI, I do go all-out ICS sometimes just to vary my game style up and yes, in those cases I build very very few buildings, but of course that's exactly what the strategy revolves around. However, that's not the only way to play the game.

 

[stormerne]

With some specialist strategies, the philosophy is very often build the wonders but buy the buildings. You'll find examples of this in the first Civ HOF Gauntlet for the fastest possible cultural victory.

Of course the choice of buildings is selective and tailored to your target victory condition. For example, if you target a diplomatic victory or a space victory, you may tend toward happy and science buildings. If you're set on a cultural victory, you go for/miss out different sets. With both of those you may be spamming trading posts and relying on maritime city states for your food. For domination victories, you may build or buy very few buildings at all if you're going for horseman rush!

I do notice, however, that some buildings don't get built by many people at all nowadays, no matter what the target victory conditions. For example, how many people build barracks anymore?

 

[Bandit17]

monument-library-colliseum-market-circus-bank-theatre-temple-factory in pretty much that order and in every city when I use my large city steady expansion stragedy. I later on add the rest of the culture buildings and the stadium and stock exchange. I also have a science specialized city and a military city. Harbor or two where applicable. Spaceship factory if needed. With this stragedy I have awesome production from having several large cities. I only add the longhouse but typically don't use the workshop due to it's price at that stage of the game. Maritime cs's make the food buildings look very silly imo. Might build hospitals if time permits but normally not. After playing Gandhi and seeing how useless defenses are in general I typically never build them unless using a turtle strategy. That's how I use buildings. Not saying it's the best or the most efficient but it works for me.

 

[DaveGold]

I do notice, however, that some buildings don't get built by many people at all nowadays, no matter what the target victory conditions. For example, how many people build barracks anymore?

Barracks are easily worth it if you concentrate military production in one city. You're adding maybe 1% of the cost of each unit to make it at least 10% better.You then also get efficiency from maintaining fewer units with higher quality (experience).

 

[TPQ]

I tend to focus on happiness buildings first, then production buildings, then money and finally science. This leads me to be a little behind the other Civs in Science (on Prince anyway) but it doesn't matter much as long as happiness is high, units are plentiful and money is good enough to support everything and make a decent profit.

 

[raisthlin]

i build most of the building in almost all my city. The only exeption is for a city i settled to acquire a specific ressource or some other strategy stuff. otherwise i build almost everything. Been serving me well.

 

[whomybuddy]

Production buildings are pretty insane. If you play american idian with a city covering a large size forest, you will have +1hammer to every work forest. With all those +% production. You build everybuilding so so so fast.
.............I build school/university too if I can afford it. 50% science increase for 2-3gold/turn is a good trade.

 

[TheBlackHole]

Production buildings are pretty insane. If you play american idian with a city covering a large size forest, you will have +1hammer to every work forest. With all those +% production. You build everybuilding so so so fast.
.............I build school/university too if I can afford it. 50% science increase for 2-3gold/turn is a good trade.

Playing as Rome is pretty great as well for builder-fanatics. If your Rome has hills around, build an early workshop and pump out just about every building in the game. For fun (though not optimal), you can also have workshops in every other city as well. Workshop + 25% faster builds for Rome's UA means buildings galore.