Enormous choice of buildings and units

I would love to get good use out of ALL the units in all the eras but from industrial onwards it's just an endless rush of change ... even more so than Civ4.

That has happened with a bunch of military tech in past 100 years. By the time the design is finished, the prototypes have been debugged, and the factories and the tooling have been set up...the equipment is outdated.

Around 1880-1920, naval tech was advancing so fast that ships were being scrapped at launch because they were obsolete before they hit the water.

It might be a improvement in gameplay if Infantry did not upgrade into Mech Inf.
 
Having a Watermill feeds another.
The model wasn't assuming river city.

Also: feeding the size 14 pop isn't enough, you also have to get there, which takes a lot of EXCESS food along the way.

If you have four allied Maritime States, another +12 food
Hardly a reasonable assumption! And, as I think everyone realizes, maritime city states are broken atm.

I believe this is because after Fertilizer, you get +1 Production per tile
?
Fertilizer doesn't affect production, only food.
A non-river farmed plains is 2f1h before fertilizer, 3f1h after.

It still does actually produce net gold through Trade Route yield
14 pop gives ~18 gold.
roads (conservatively 3) + barracks (1) + armory (2) + factory (3) + forge (2) + windmill (2) + arsenal (3) + granary (1) + whatever culture buildings you needed to manage to get sufficient farms and production tiles (minimum 3) > 18.

Also, + some happiness buildings to compensate for your +16 unhappy from this city?

Pre-Industrial, you're going to have the Barracks and the Armory anyway, so it doesn't really cost a lot. In Renaissance when you get Windmills, +15% production on a 30 hammer city (still not size 14 by then), gets you +4 pure hammers for 2 gpt - it's like working a Manufactury instead of a trading post. It's when you get the Factory and the Military Academy that the costs really start ramping up, but I find the economy of large empire capable of supporting such a city while maintaining great income.
You're ignoring the hammer production cost of all these buildings, which you are somehow building while generating enough excess food to reach 14 pop (~1000++ food, from memory?).

I don't have a problem with unit production costs in the game (though I have a problem with tech costs), I just think you're over-optimistic about realistic capacity in terms of what you're actually likely to generate in normal play.
 
brindle:

I find that this is not the case. Let me look more closely at my cities...

Lessee here.

I have this new 7 pop city that I established on a bunch of hills and Forests without any special tiles or resources to speak of (just a natural wonder and a deer) that I intend to alternate between unit production support and trade city. On Production Focus, it has 16 Production including hammers from the Center Tile, various Lumbermills and Mines.

It would take the city 9 to 10 turns to make an Armory, a Crossbowman, a Longswordsman, or a Knight. When in peacetime, I could make a Crossbowman, or I could make an Armory for about the same maintenance and make better Crossbowmen or Riflemen later.

If I had a Workshop there, it would only take me 7 turns to make the Armory.

This is not a particularly powerful site at this point, as it has no special resources to speak of, and Steam Power hasn't kicked in just yet. If I hadn't built a Barracks yet, it would take 5 turns, or 5 with overflow with a Workshop.

My better situated and larger cities have production in the 20's, and they're a little over size 10.
 
Is it just me or are there far too many buildings to choose from and, towards the early industrial era onwards, too many units? I mean who ever bothers to regularly build museums and radio towers, or barracks/military academy/military base etc etc, or the dozens of other exotic items like zoos and stables and all the endless crap? :( As for units - am I the only one who techs more quickly than he can build units so tanks are pretty much obsoleted by mech infantry before you can build any, riflemen are quickly superseded by infantry, artillery are almost right after canons which are hot on the tail of trebuchets, and as for musketmen they are almost completely useless unless you have a Civ that has a musketman-based unique unit?

Oh and then there are the endless other things - like SAM batteries, anti-tank guns, anti-air guns, helicopters - which there is absolutely no question of ever getting round to build.

Oh it's all so depressing ... and as for the social policies, there are many of them that I would never bother with, or ever be able to access, like planned economy or total war, because there isn't enough culture to plough my way through all the prerequisites.

The game reminds me of Civ4 colonization in that there are just so many more things to build than there is possibly time to get round to ... not only that, but my playing style dictates that there are many units, buildings, social policies etc that I will probably never use.

I had many of these problems as well when playing my first several Civ V games. I would HIGHLY recommend looking into THIS THREAD for the mods that have unquestionably changed Civ V into a game I dearly love.

Best of luck!
 
Ahriman:

Ahriman said:
The model wasn't assuming river city.

Also: feeding the size 14 pop isn't enough, you also have to get there, which takes a lot of EXCESS food along the way.

True. You can grow the city with Food Focus, then shift away at the appropriate time and then found a second city to take advantage of the now-unused tiles. This comes fortuitously at a time when you can rake in more happiness from intercontinental luxury trade.

Ahriman said:
Hardly a reasonable assumption! And, as I think everyone realizes, maritime city states are broken atm.

Shrug. I was counting from a game I had saved and brought up. I had 4 Maritimes Allies in that game. Without +12 food, you would need to resort to special tiles to get production up. I was only counting from a bargain-basement, no-resource city.

Ahriman said:
Fertilizer doesn't affect production, only food.
A non-river farmed plains is 2f1h before fertilizer, 3f1h after.

Sorry, that's the way I think of it in my head. Fertilizer allows me to work Plains for food where I would have otherwise have worked Grasslands. Net result is better production in some cities.

Ahriman said:
14 pop gives ~18 gold.
roads (conservatively 3) + barracks (1) + armory (2) + factory (3) + forge (2) + windmill (2) + arsenal (3) + granary (1) + whatever culture buildings you needed to manage to get sufficient farms and production tiles (minimum 3) > 18.

Also, + some happiness buildings to compensate for your +16 unhappy from this city?

Sorry, I meant gross. I misspoke. I generally don't have enough production time to get Monuments and Temples in these cities, so they depend on other cities with massive culture, or I buy the tiles outright, making sure to settle so that I don't have to buy many of the expensive hill and forest tiles.

Later on, yes, I guess.

Ahriman said:
You're ignoring the hammer production cost of all these buildings, which you are somehow building while generating enough excess food to reach 14 pop (~1000++ food, from memory?).

I don't have a problem with unit production costs in the game (though I have a problem with tech costs), I just think you're over-optimistic about realistic capacity in terms of what you're actually likely to generate in normal play.

I'm pulling these numbers by counting tile yields in multiple production cities over many saved games! I'm not particularly skilled at this game, so wouldn't you say that this was normal?

Getting excess food to get to 10 is problematic without Maritimes, Granaries, Farms, or Water Mills. However, it depends on how fast you actually tech to the Modern Era. I don't tech that fast, since I'm not very good, so I get lots of turns to build up my cities.
 
True. You can grow the city with Food Focus, then shift away at the appropriate time and then found a second city to take advantage of the now-unused tiles.
So now you need a second, dud city in order for your scenario to work?

I was only counting from a bargain-basement, no-resource city.
A handful of bonus resources is a much smaller impact than assuming 4(!!) allied maritime city states.

or I buy the tiles outright
So now you also have to add the gold cost of buying the tiles.

I'm not particularly skilled at this game, so wouldn't you say that this was normal?
I definitely wouldnt' say 35 production for a size 14 city was normal, and I wouldn't say that 4 maritime city state alliances was normal (or at least won't be once they're weakened and once AI players get better at contesting city state alliances).

I also wouldnt' say that only looking at a production city optimized only for modern era production is a good way of considering the issue, particularly when this city has spent most of the game as deadweight, concentrating on food production and building unit production buildings.
 
Ahriman:

Ahriman said:
So now you need a second, dud city in order for your scenario to work?

Not at all. This scenario works reasonably well once you've got Forbidden Palace up and running, and Meritocracy combined to put the net happiness of new cities at 0. You grow the production city with farms, and then shift to Production Focus once you need it.

Ahriman said:
A handful of bonus resources is a much smaller impact than assuming 4(!!) allied maritime city states.

Shrug. I've gotten up to six in some games. I'm not assuming them. I loaded up a saved game and counted hammers. I haven't counted it up yet, but I'm thinking that a city with two Iron resources on hills and less maritimes would do competitively.

Ahriman said:
So now you also have to add the gold cost of buying the tiles.

Production is production. It can be expensive to get.

Ahriman said:
I definitely wouldnt' say 35 production for a size 14 city was normal, and I wouldn't say that 4 maritime city state alliances was normal (or at least won't be once they're weakened and once AI players get better at contesting city state alliances).

I also wouldnt' say that only looking at a production city optimized only for modern era production is a good way of considering the issue, particularly when this city has spent most of the game as deadweight, concentrating on food production and building unit production buildings.

The city will have spent much of the game growing and providing Trade Route income. By Modern, you should have explored much of the map and/or liberated as many Maritimes as necessary. Having four around globally is a little bit on the low side, I'd say.

I don't know how the game will be if it's patched or changed. I'm only presenting how it is now.

Having made such a city, I can say from experience that most of the time, it is actually making units in war and buildings at peace. In the earlier eras, Barracks + Armory will soak up maybe 20 turns conservatively - which is only 20% of the first 100 turns. Should be faster.

When Windmills roll up, should have about 15-20ish hammers, so about 9-11 turns for Windmill, boosting general production up by about 2-3 hammers. Factories cost a whopping 300 hammers, so it'd take 10-15 turns normally (including the Windmill bonus here). It's actually probably best to burn a GP for building those empire-wide, which I generally do.

So - takes about 40 turns in a 260+ turn span (time it takes for me to get to Modern) to build Barracks, Armory, Windmill, and Factory.

The rest of the time, it's building units, growing like mad, or building other buildings (granary at mid-size should take 5-ish turns). Only buildings lacking are Military Academy and Arsenal.

When gearing up for Modern production (Production Focus), you get about 55-ish hammers per turn to produce the buildings, assuming you don't have Workshop. Seven turns for Military Academy. Seven turns for Arsenal.

Through all this, Armory+Barracks means that you at least have a handy place to buy units when you want units at the ready, and they'll be quite good for new units.
 
OP and Ahriman:

I've thought about it a little more. Have a confession to make. I don't calculate theoretical benefits when I make cities and buildings. Sure, I look at the tile yields before actually settling, and I could hammers and food and gold in a strictly offhand manner, but I never thought about whether or not Arsenal would actually be good to make.

I saw the building, I thought it was cool, and since my Military City wasn't making anything anyway, I queued it on up.

Same goes for Windmills and such.

So the fact that I have cities that apparently have "extremely fast" production speeds wasn't something I planned or anything. It just happened.

I'm breaking down the numbers from my games to figure out how it did, since the OP apparently was having difficulty achieving the same thing. For that matter, it seems unthinkable to many players in the community that I would actually bluntly produce a Tank or an Anti-Tank Gun rather than rush-buy it.

For what it's worth, I've never actually produced and used an Anti-Tank Gun as such, since I've never seen the AI use a Tank.


In any case, this is how I think about these buildings:

Workshop: I think kindly of this building more than I actually build it. I suppose I should, but I keep forgetting. It's 100 hammers and 2 GPT for +20% hammer production. Even in relatively poor 10 hammer cities, it translates 2 GPT into 2 hammers, which is a favorable deal. Since most cities I have will be building buildings most of the time all game long, I really need to make this building more often.

There's an argument that posits that you need to make the 100 hammers back in hammers before this actually pays off, and then you have to consider the 2 GPT. I don't consider it this way. Experience has shown the Workshop to be very good, and this is probably because you can't actually pre-build Markets and Universities. You can only start building them when the tech comes online, and the Workshop allows you to get the unlocked buildings in your cities in a more timely manner. I suppose you can think it of as stockpiling hammers for future buildings in exchange for 2 GPT. Huh. That actually makes sense. Didn't expect that.

As the game rolls later and your cities gradually build up for 10 HPT to something like 15 and 20 HPTs, Workshops just become better and better.


Now to be fair, the OP does imply that there are too many buildings from the early Industrial onwards, but I don't find that to be the case. If anything, there are too little buildings to build later on, and I find myself having to assign cities to build Wealth or units (and then I sell 'em off).

I build Museums. I find them crucial to winning Culture before the clock ends, if you're not planning on stockpiling Culture and then mass-razing your own cities. If nothing else, they make it actually plausible to get the latter era end-policies without stockpiling policy gains.

Broadcast Towers give you an insane +100% culture in the city they are built in. I definitely build this one.

Hospitals - I don't actually build hospitals all the time because I find it takes too long to make them and then actually grow the cities afterwards. It makes more sense to just mass-buy them empire-wide so you can get on with the upward growth that much sooner. In the larger production centers, it can make sense to build Hospitals, if they don't have better things to make, and if the population gain won't suffer from the delay.

Medical Labs - really only necessary past size 20, but once there, have to build it to gain more in good time.

About the only building that I have never actually built or bought is the Stadium, which I find prohibitively expensive in terms of maintenance. Everything else, I've used in some fashion.


Addendum:

I don't buy buildings or units as a matter of course because I've always found it cheaper to just make the things from scratch with hammers. Now, I went back and actually compared hammer cost to buy-costs and I now see why I think this way. Hammer to gold translations on the Purchase menus are ridiculous! Riflemen, which cost only 200 hammers, cost 680 gold to purchase! Under that paradigm, each hammer I make on the tile is worth more than 3 gold!

Workshops cost 500 gold! They only cost 100 hammers to make. That's a 400% premium.

I think it's plausible that most players are playing Gold Economies - playstyles that value gold more, so they make their tiles make gold, and then get policies and Wonders that make purchasing more cost effective. This is a viable way to go, and I'm glad that it works, but it's not the only way!
 
There's an argument that posits that you need to make the 100 hammers back in hammers before this actually pays off, and then you have to consider the 2 GPT. I don't consider it this way. Experience has shown the Workshop to be very good, and this is probably because you can't actually pre-build Markets and Universities. You can only start building them when the tech comes online, and the Workshop allows you to get the unlocked buildings in your cities in a more timely manner. I suppose you can think it of as stockpiling hammers for future buildings in exchange for 2 GPT. Huh. That actually makes sense. Didn't expect that.

I wholeheartedly agree here, and it is the reason the +% :hammers: buildings are worth it. It is also the reason that stables are pretty much never worth it. You build all your horse units AT the time you get HBR then upgrade them as you get more techs. Very rarely will you get HBR then wait for chiv to build mounted units.

The same problem applies to: Solar plants, Nuclear Power Plants, Hydro Plants. Most of the time, you will build these in the same tech era that you would want to use them to build other things. This greatly devalues them ... thankfully by that stage you should be able to rushbuy all needed items ... which brings me to ...

I don't buy buildings or units as a matter of course because I've always found it cheaper to just make the things from scratch with hammers. Now, I went back and actually compared hammer cost to buy-costs and I now see why I think this way. Hammer to gold translations on the Purchase menus are ridiculous! Riflemen, which cost only 200 hammers, cost 680 gold to purchase! Under that paradigm, each hammer I make on the tile is worth more than 3 gold!

Workshops cost 500 gold! They only cost 100 hammers to make. That's a 400% premium.

I think it's plausible that most players are playing Gold Economies - playstyles that value gold more, so they make their tiles make gold, and then get policies and Wonders that make purchasing more cost effective. This is a viable way to go, and I'm glad that it works, but it's not the only way!

This is somewhat misleading and, quite interestingly, in direct contrast with your previous statement. When you buy something, you get it instantly, this means the gpt you were making before that point all count as "saved hammers" which is the exact benefit you previously presented an argument on behalf of. The real reason buying > producing is the overabundance of gold in the game, and the ability to pool gold throughout your empire.

If you have three cities that produce 100 :science: 10 :science: 10 :science: and each produces the same amount of :hammers: and :commerce: you are forced to choose to either build a university in each in x turns or wait x/n (where n is a representation of the difference in :hammers: cost vs. :commerce: cost of a uni with respect to :commerce: being accrued 3x faster than :hammers:) turns and buy a single university in your 100 :science: city. The math ends up being EXTREMELY in favor of buying a uni in your :science: city. Furthermore, if you JUST researched education, you may have saved up :commerce: for the rush buy, where you would be unable to save up nearly as many actual :hammers:. This framework tends to encompass much of the Civ V world.

Furthermore, it is much easier to acquire :commerce: and gpt than it is to acquire more :hammers: in Civ V because you can sell excess lux resources to other civs and trading posts may be spammed on ANY available tiles while mines / lumber mills require specific circumstances. Also, resource tiles, on average, give much more :commerce: than :hammers:.

All of this adds up to a fairly strong bias for rushbuying over actual production in Civ V!
 
Druin:

I dunno. I have never built the Stable because I felt that I would never build enough units to justify the eternal maintenance costs of Stables, but I do build Horsemen for upgrading into Knights at a substantially later time than when I get HBR. I don't use Horsemen a lot.

Druin said:
Furthermore, it is much easier to acquire and gpt than it is to acquire more in Civ V because you can sell excess lux resources to other civs and trading posts may be spammed on ANY available tiles while mines / lumber mills require specific circumstances. Also, resource tiles, on average, give much more than .

All of this adds up to a fairly strong bias for rushbuying over actual production in Civ V!

I would not say that it is a fairly strong bias. Certainly, if all your cities had bad production, and you're pulling in gold from spamming Trading Posts, then you are biased towards rushbuying, but this was due to a previous decision to prioritize stockpiling gold over getting hammer production.

A large city with a fairly sizable number of hammers could pound out a University in maybe 10 turns with a low net hammer production of 20 (including Workshop +4-ish). In contrast, the University itself, if bought, would cost 780, which could constitute 8 turns of empire-wide gold production.

Better hammer cities should be able to build the Uni in less turns. The Uni is 200 hammers, so the disadvantage is a factor of 3.4x.

You could save up for the rush buy, but every gold you save to rush buildings is gold that isn't going to research treaties, tile purchase, and maintenance of buildings.

The math is only greatly in favor of buying at the higher difficulty settings where the AI gives you hundreds of gold for essentially nothing, or when your cities are so hammer poor that the disadvantage factor isn't large enough to offset the time factor.

In your example, you have three cities with equal amounts of hammer and gold. In the time it takes to accrue the gold to buy the Uni, you could have just built the Uni faster, and still have the gold to show for your troubles.

The only way this is in favor is if the time to build the Uni is prohibitive, and you can stockpile enough gold beforehand without giving up opportunities to use it profitably.
 
Get mint + market + bank. Congratulations, you are rich! (mint only if you have silver/gold)
And, if you have enough production to get "Stock Exchange" quickly, make it. (Bonus is HUGE).
 
I would not say that it is a fairly strong bias. Certainly, if all your cities had bad production, and you're pulling in gold from spamming Trading Posts, then you are biased towards rushbuying, but this was due to a previous decision to prioritize stockpiling gold over getting hammer production.

A large city with a fairly sizable number of hammers could pound out a University in maybe 10 turns with a low net hammer production of 20 (including Workshop +4-ish). In contrast, the University itself, if bought, would cost 780, which could constitute 8 turns of empire-wide gold production.

Better hammer cities should be able to build the Uni in less turns. The Uni is 200 hammers, so the disadvantage is a factor of 3.4x.

You could save up for the rush buy, but every gold you save to rush buildings is gold that isn't going to research treaties, tile purchase, and maintenance of buildings.

The math is only greatly in favor of buying at the higher difficulty settings where the AI gives you hundreds of gold for essentially nothing, or when your cities are so hammer poor that the disadvantage factor isn't large enough to offset the time factor.

In your example, you have three cities with equal amounts of hammer and gold. In the time it takes to accrue the gold to buy the Uni, you could have just built the Uni faster, and still have the gold to show for your troubles.

The only way this is in favor is if the time to build the Uni is prohibitive, and you can stockpile enough gold beforehand without giving up opportunities to use it profitably.

Sorry if I was unclear, I meant the bias that is shown fairly consistently through these forums, not my personal bias. I actually prefer production which is why I choose to play with Thalass' balance mods :)

However, I do get a strong feeling of bias from reading stuff that people generally complain about production times, and generally prefer to rush-buy things with an easy to set-up easy to manage and easy to use gold economy.

I also feel that generally, :commerce: is a more efficient investment of tile yields that :hammers: in vanilla Civ V.

Just my thoughts, and my numbers were my rationale. I have no intention of convincing you to start using a gold economy over a production one. I only wanted to point out that, while it costs more gold to buy something than it costs hammers to build it, the way vanilla Civ V is set up, the gold method ends up being more efficient much of the time, thus leading to an overall bias toward gold economies. :)
 
I think that there are several factors leading to why so many of our forum-goers are biased towards setting up Gold Economies.

1. Cottage Economy was hella strong in Civ IV. This was denigrated as "Cottage Spam" in the early days of Civ IV, but you hear about how it's all fantastic now. In any case, the average Civ IV player has a strong incentive to try out an economy that he believes is feasible, and it is workable in Civ V.

2. Easier. TP spamming means you don't need techs, you don't need to plan certain things, and you don't need tile-sensitive management. Just TP everything and buy the Maritimes. No Maritimes? Restart. Or play on Pangaea, so you're sure to meet them. It makes the game easier and feel more familiar.

3. Lack of experience. When I mentioned that I built Tanks in 7 turns on average, I felt like I was almost called a liar. I was fully expecting demands of screenshots and such. This felt normal to me, but extremely fast to others. In general, I don't think the community has enough experience to really have much familiarity with Hammer Economy, Trade Economy, and Specialist Economy in Civ V. Those are all micro-intensive and require some amount of game knowledge. I just stumbled onto having good production by accident. Doing it on purpose and with a specific win-synergy in mind would take time and effort. I just don't think many players are investing time into thinking up and trying to execute new strategies.
 
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