Forge or Courthouse, which first?

[UncleJJ]

My last 3 games (over 125,000 score) I had about 14 cities in the beginning AD years and I'd say 4 of them were VERY far from the capital. They were bringing in about 5 while costing me 14 in maintenance. Courthouses made these cities much less painful to hold onto. In my last game, one was the Buddhist holy city with shrine, I wasn't getting rid of them .

I will try currency first in my next game (which should prove to be my last Prince game) with a similar rush (map providing) and see how it works out. Since you guys are all higher level players, I trust I will be happily surprised.

The 14 cities early on is probably why I needed courthouses, though. I never used to expand so much so early, but I've been getting such ridiculous scores this way. It may not work so well like this on Monarch

Don't listen to those other players, you're right; courthouses are better than markets at paying for a REX. But be careful to distinguish between Currency and actually building markets, they are different things. The tech Currency is better than CoL at solving economic woes, but courthouses are better than markets at doing that. You need a courthouse in every city and they help every turn regardless of the sliders, a market only helps significantly when it is in a city with plenty of commerce and if the slider is low or if you run merchants. The Currency tech does allow markets but much more importantly it allows you to: build wealth, to trade techs for gold or in part exchange, to demand gold from a weak AI or beg gold from a Pleased AI, to sell resources for gold per turn. These other methods of raising gold are more important than building markets plus there is an extra trade route per city worth 1 gold at least. That is why they say Currency is superior to CoL, not for markets. The best use of an early market is usually to give an extra 2 happiness when you have ivory and fur, the extra gold is nice but not important.

Once you have 14 cities you have to consider getting a courthouse in all cities including the capital. On Emperor and above the number of city component of maintenance is capped at 7 and the capital is likely to get that quickly as soon as you have HR and it grows in size. Saving 3.5 gold and getting 2 EPs for 120 hammers will be worthwhile in some situations, particularly if you have OR and Bureacracy to boost production. As you suggest the most distant cities of your 14 are costing 14 and that gets worse on emperor or immortal, they would probably cost 18 . A courthouse will cut costs in half but the city will still be costing more than it yields even with the courthouse That is when you know you've over expanded. Usually these distant cities can be made to pay for themselves by building wealth for a while until cottages grow up.

 

[UncleJJ]

DaveMCW would say that working cottages in these types of low-hammer commerce cities is more important than putting up infrastructure anyway (he makes an exception only for the granary ).

I don't know though. When I follow that advice I don't get much infrastructure in those cities (other than my capitol) until democracy, which doesn't seem to hurt much on immortal actually. Deity though? But then, is whipping away cottages actually better? Probably only if the building offers more benefit than the pop killed, right?

But I struggle with that, because caste is good for GPP generation, too, and that can overcome whipping benefits...sometimes .

It's a little easier with GPP and in strict hammer cities, and especially the latter gets a forge ASAP anyway.

Dave is a good player and as far as I can see doesn't often take his own advice. His advice about economic multipliers is a gross over simplification. Sometimes it is better to develop the cottages and build infrastructure later but as you observe that puts heavy demands on the economy later on. A full set of science (LUO) and gold (MGB) multipliers costs 940 hammers or nearly 3000 gold if US is used to buy them. So it's obvious that a city with some production or extra food that can build some of this infrastructure before Democracy is at a huge advantage and much better than a low food, low hammer one that needs the full investment. I question his assertion that a city with 10 cottages is a "good cottage city", rather a city with less cottages but better production and / or surplus food. Dave never states how his assumptions about food and hammers interacts with the way a cottage city is developed and yet in my opinion that is the most important consideration. Hence, I say his advice is poor.

The market isn't the only benefit of currency, but it's a good point because you would need to build MANY courthouses in cities that are likely to have other build priorities to match the 7-8 gold. But, especially if you are close to 10 cities, you're getting at least as many extra trade routes as you have cities, and those are all at least 1 commerce.

Sorry, I have to agree with Dirk, this is plain wrong in my experience. As I outlined above in answer to blitzkrieg, Currency is not really about markets at all, that is the least useful benefit in the early game.

Concerning the "MANY courthouses" you seem to say are required to equal one market I would suggest that a mere two courthouses in your two worst cities would beat a market in your best city in terms of helping the economy, assuming you have say 12 cities and some of these are a long way from the palace. On emperor it is not at all hard to have a captured enemy capital that costs 16 gold per turn if he's been running HR. A single courthouse whipped in there would save 8 gold immediately, but that's exceptional. Markets are just not that good, they only give +25% gold. So to get +8 gold from the market you need 32 base gold. Even with the slider at 0% the capital will need a lot of cottages, hamlets and villages to be worth that much, a riverside village is only giving 4 commerce (= gold). Unless you have the GLH, a shrine or a settled prophet, then 32 gold is a stretch before Bureaucracy but possible afterwards.

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[blitzkrieg1980]

Ah! I understand the Currency > CoL for economic recovery now. I thought it was about the available buildings. If the tech itself is worth economic recovery, then I will definitely prioritize Currency first, then CoL for courthouses. Of course I'll build/whip a market in my best economy cities (after all, what else are they supposed to build besides emergency units ) and will "build" wealth in a few cities to offset maintenance until courthouses can be built as well as utilize trade gold for income a lot earlier.

Awesome, thanks UncleJJ, TMIT, Dirk, and anyone else who contributed to answering my questions about market vs. courthouse. Hey, at least half of this tangent was on topic

 

[CLST]

Pottery -> Writing -> Alphabet -> Currency -> Code of Laws

Good stuff...

 

[JammerUno]

Isn't this situational city to city and not game to game?

There's three relevant groupings for cities;
High or low production (HP & LP)
High or low commerce (HC & LC)
Close to or far from capital (CC & FC)
(maybe a point could be made for high food and low food)

That gives you 8 types of cities, each has an optimal choice for the building of a market/forge/courthouse, and the order to build them in.

 

[JonathanStrange]

Simple,
- forges give you 15 hammers extra with every 2 pop whip
- forges give you 2H/t when working 8 H which could be around average for a city.
- If you work 7 H/t you only get one H due to round down of the 25% bonus. So look for output of 4,8,12, ... H when having a forge.

I argued that this is (much) better than the ~2 gpt you save when building the courthouse first (there are the spy points of course but well..., don't use these much early game). I consider courthouse first when maintenance >= ~ 8gpt. But even then if i have much pop to whip away or lots of chops coming in i'd build the forge first for the extra 15 hammers when whipping/chopping the courthouse subsequently.

btw, output from building research/wealth is also enhanced by 25% with forge.

Ahh, I see said the blind man. Thanks.