hospitals, med labs oh my!

[Necro-]

i was wondering if anyone could explain what they actually do, they say something like they carry over 50% (overflow?) and its cumulative, but im not exactly clear what this means!

 

[Callonia]

Don't build them, you'll lose money in maintenance.

 

[knord]

As I understand it:
When your city gains a level/citizen the food stock is set to zero again for the next level.
The hospital makes it so that the food is set to x% to next level, a little bit like Granary in Civ 4.

 

[Alphaetus_Prime]

Late-coming replacements for civ4's granaries.

 

[Numi]

If you could sell buildings i could see them as a way to help get the pop up quicker in the later parts of the game.

 

[Rellin]

Don't build them, you'll lose money in maintenance.

Why do I feel this way about every building except those which increase revenue?

 

[hecubus]

It seems a bit silly to me that they come so late. By the time I could be building them I'm usually trying to prevent cities from growing much faster, not encourage it.

 

[J-man]

It seems a bit silly to me that they come so late. By the time I could be building them I'm usually trying to prevent cities from growing much faster, not encourage it.

Yeah, in the beginning of my first civ 5 game I thought "I must have a decent amount of large cities". Now I have happiness troubles....

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, growth only works up to a point. Then I stop caring.

 

[Bibor]

I see no reason for building a hospital or medlab, really. Ever.

 

[rune42]

Definitely build them if you're India(and maybe Persia..dunno if any other Civs get bonuses to happiness). Every 1 population = 1 gold from trade(plus modifiers), 1 tech point(plus modifiers), and 1 worked plot/specialist. I had over 35+ population in all 8 of my cities after winning the space victory. I was making so much gold by the end that I bought culture and military buildings in all my cities just for the heck of it.

This was on king, BTW.

 

[Dan Quale]

I have a couple as India on immortal. With the right policies and enough maritime allies they are worth it otherwise build a weapon and hurt something.

 

[Thalassicus]

Yeah, unless you're India they seem to actually hurt you, both in time lost building and a large maintenance fee.

 

[evanbgood]

The maintenance does kill it, but I could see a few advantages in the right (rare) situation. If you could handle the unhappiness from the population, gold-rushing these in a food-heavy city could easily make a trade route income that would offset the maintenance costs. Of course, that would come with the usual over-expansion drawbacks, including a cultural kick-in-the-pants to your social policies. I'd do it with the right liberty-based civ, but I'd NEVER put them in, say, a well-developed capitol... Which is a little strange. You'd think a city of a few million souls would want a hospital!

 

[Aldor]

I find that funny. For Civ 4, one of the standard sentences you will hear from "old timers" is "one of the first things to build is a granary". Of course it also helps some with whipping there, but the main reason is to accelerate growth of your cities.

And its 100% the same in Civ 5. When these buildings become available, it usually takes ages for your cities to gain a population point. So these really help growth in the late game, and are absolute priority buildings for me. ESPECIALLY if you are like me and set your cities to focus on production

If you find maintenance too high, maybe you are doing something wrong. I haven't completed many games yet, but in my very first game already I had 100-200 gold per turn by the mid game, and 500+ in the end. I can't imagine that this will be very much different once I go up the difficulty levels (yes it was on easy mode, settler

You CAN afford building pretty much every building in every city, as long as you have enough cities and population working improved tiles.