Granaries worth the bother?

[screwtype]

This is something that I'm always undecided about. Granaries give you quick growth once you've got them but they cost quite a bit in shields and time to build. Are they really worth building early on?

In my last game, I decided not to worry about building them, but just to fit them in whenever it seemed appropriate, and I seemed to do better. Or at least, no worse.

Any opinions?

 

[Bartleby]

I tend to only build them for settler factories. I usually like to get a settler out before starting a granary.

 

[darski]

I always try for (and usually get) the Pyramids so I don't give much thought to individual granaries

 

[Pyrrhos]

I too have found that granaries tend to slow me down and cause those unwanted problems associated with quick pop growth, so I only build them in my settler and worker factories.

 

[RFHolloway]

In my experience they should normally only be built in cities that will mainly be producing settlers and workers.

Even then they work better where there is a surplus of shields over food. you might like to look at how long it takes to build 4 settlers with and without a granery


For example if you have a net 3 food for growth then you would grow in 7 turns without a granery and 4 turns with one. if you have 4 spt you can produce a settler every 8 turns with a granery, but without one you have to build something else for the other 6 turns while the population grows back.

My usual strategy is to build a couple in the highest food producing cities if they have excess shields.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

You should build them for worker / settler factories. That is cities that can have 5 food per turn. If none of your cities can have 5 fpt, you may want to build some granaries in 4fpt towns.

After a while though, most of your towns are gonna grow over size 6 and you really don't want it to take 100 turns before they are size 12. Now it would be nice to have a lot of granaries. Try conquering the pyramids if they are on the same continent.

If they are not, you may want to build a few more granaries, but another thing you should consider is building workers in small towns that can make them in 2 turns or very rarely even in 1 turn and join these into the other cities to get them to size 12 fast.

 

[Sashie VII]

Or perhaps sacrifice a town to become a semi-permanent worker factory for most of the game? Then the other cities can concentrate on other stuff.

 

[screwtype]

Hmm, seems the consensus is, they are worthwhile at least for "settler factories".

Just out of interest, does anyone have a preferred queue for building units early in the game? I usually seem to end up churning out alternating settlers and spearmen, and maybe occasionally fitting in the odd worker or small building when I can afford it or when I'm waiting for the city to get enough pop. But is there an optimum queue you can use?

I've also wondered if it's a good idea to never allow a city to go under 2 pop, because the build time always seems to doube at pop 1. Is it better to wait until pop 4 to churn out a settler, or just march him out as soon as you can, at pop 3?

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Your goal is to grow big and have many citizens. Many citizens provide lots of gold, research and production. In the beginning of your game, growth is your absolute priority.

Growth comes from food. every 20 food in the box makes a citizen. You start out with 1 town and 2 food per turn if you have no bonusses. Now the idea is to expand this 2 food per turn as fast as you can.

Building a granary effectively doubles it to 4 food per turn since you only need half as much in this town for a citizen. Building a settler makes probably 2 extra food per turn as well.
If however your capital has a food bonus, you may start out with 5 food per turn. A granary will now effectively be worth 5 food per turn as well.
If your second city can make more than 2 food per turn, your settler would also be worth that much food per turn.

Therefore, in early game the rule is to make you choises based on that. Do whatever provides the most food per turn and does so fastest. (settlers are build faster than granaries, so if they are worth the same food per turn, a settler is better)

Units are just to fill the gaps in this phase. If you don't have the population to build a settler, maybe you build a warrior first to make it fit.
No buildings are worthy enough to build now.

In this phase workers are important for irrigating food bonusses to increase your food per turn, to mine grasslands and increase production so that your towns can increase their food per turn by building settlers and granaries where those are better than settlers, and to build some roads to get the settlers to their destination as fast as possible. You should not yet have enough workers to have every tile improved.

That is for the first 8 or so cities. After that, you want to increase your investment in workers and you probably need to start preparing a millitary by turning your most productive cities into unit production. While you do this with your most productive cities though, you should still keep building settlers with your other towns until there is no more space to build cities. When there is no more space to build, there is only space to conquer so units are gonna be the new priority. (and growing the population in your existing cities)

Exception is a 20k victory game. In this case you need select one of your first 2 towns to become the 20k city and have that town produce everything that makes culture. The rest of your empire works pretty much as described except that they should probably build some extra workers that you can join into your 20k city.