If you are not allow to build certain buidings...

If you are not allow to build certain buidings...


  • Total voters
    72
No granary is like the kiss of death, it's kind of surprising ANYONE picked that option. It's like choosing to do worse (of selecting the worst possible option) on purpose.

The granary is the #1 economic building in the game. Most of your power will still come from worked tiles of some kind, and you want to get on them quickly. It is also the easiest health boost.

Losing forge/CH/rax hurts a lot but it easily the least devastating of the options.
 
No granary is probably the worst of the options- my vote goes for the Courthouse/Forge/Rax. Courthouses are probably the hardest to give up, but you can survive economically through other means until you can get SP, when you'll recover. Having less promoted military out of the gates isn't ideal, but it's not the end of the world either. Forges help with production, but you can still make military without them, and once you get Nationalism, you can still draft an army for some musket/rifle wars.

Losing Libraries, Markets, Banks can set back your research, but you can survive without them- espionage or religious economies would still work, and you can still tech through caste/specialists for research and bulbs, combined with buying/stealing techs from the AI.

Losing the granary hurts everywhere- your cities are less productive due to fewer citizens, lower health cap, and less effectiveness of the whip and draft. Slower growth means less citizens working tiles, reducing your commerce and hammers significantly. Once you got all your cities up to size, and if you avoid using slavery or drafting, you'd probably be better off than the other options, but you'll be far behind by the time you get to that point. Though, whenever you raise your happy/healthy caps, it'll be twice as long before you can grow the pop up to your new caps, so it'll continue to hurt throughout the game.
 
I assume that grocer is part of that list (which means supermarket and would also be prevented)? How about observatory and research lab?

No Wall Street or Oxford either.

NPM

You can build grocer and observatory, but no Wall Street or Oxford. Oh, and don't forget National Epic requires library as well. Also like to remind you guys that in option 3, you can't build Heroic Epic.

You can choose leaders to your likings. I think if I play August Caesar and have a hammer heavy capital, I will choose no granary.
 
As Davemcw pointed out, you can get pretty far with just worker/settler/military (WSM). When you're REXing, barracks aren't helpful, and granaries will slow down your expansion compared to another worker/settler.

But if you recall from one of his earlier posts where he qualifies his cottage-mania, if you have the military to take cities, that's the best choice, better than waiting for cottages.

Especially in a pangea map, sticking to the basics and building nothing but Military, Granaries, and Barracks (MGB) will get you the most military, and you can snowball over the map. Running a few extra cottages will do more for your economy than a small % bonus from buildings. That's why in many Rome Pangea games you'll see mostly MGB.

Alternatively, the Incans can go pure Quechua. You can even skip the granaries and barracks, just build quechua quechua... Then choke/kill/worker steal to victory.

So in a conquest game, all you need is spam MGB, or if you're Inca, just Alt QQ.
 
As Davemcw pointed out, you can get pretty far with just worker/settler/military (WSM). When you're REXing, barracks aren't helpful, and granaries will slow down your expansion compared to another worker/settler.

But if you recall from one of his earlier posts where he qualifies his cottage-mania, if you have the military to take cities, that's the best choice, better than waiting for cottages.

Especially in a pangea map, sticking to the basics and building nothing but Military, Granaries, and Barracks (MGB) will get you the most military, and you can snowball over the map. Running a few extra cottages will do more for your economy than a small % bonus from buildings. That's why in many Rome Pangea games you'll see mostly MGB.

Alternatively, the Incans can go pure Quechua. You can even skip the granaries and barracks, just build quechua quechua... Then choke/kill/worker steal to victory.

So in a conquest game, all you need is spam MGB, or if you're Inca, just Alt QQ.

You can also win on deity by only using settlers dosnt mean its a good way or that the other buildings arent needed:)
 
Since the granary is so important, it makes me wonder why they included it in the game as a building? If its a must build for every city, then why not have it built into each city? Having it in the game adds little to strategy.
 
Since the granary is so important, it makes me wonder why they included it in the game as a building? If its a must build for every city, then why not have it built into each city? Having it in the game adds little to strategy.

I tend to think the granary adds a lot of strategy, because you have to decide whether a granary or a monument (and later theatre) is the best to build first. Do I need to push out those borders for a resource or press a city? Or is the city safe for a while and I can go ahead and build the granary so it does not waste food?

And I chose option number 3, because granaries I refuse to do without, and libraries, universities are also very important buildings to me.
 
map dependant overall; but my gut says drop the lib, market, bank.

An early shot at CoL off the Oracle can get out courthouses and start up a nice EE. Whip/draft your way to a large military and crush your enemies. Once you hit chemistry/communism/demo most of your inputs will be :hammers: and EP which you can can hit with a full set of multipliers.

Losing the Rax/Forge/CH is a bit harsh in that it hits your ecomoy with the CH (science, EP, culture, or cash); your happiness and production with the forge, and your military with the rax. That is a steep penalty to suck up for the whole game; early on, sure this likely the best bet, but late game I think this will be hurting hard.

Graineries are just too useful to skip, definate last choice.
 
If I absolutely had to pick, I'd pick going without the granary. I still disagree that it's the most powerful building in the game. Your cities will grow a little slower, but it won't impact whipping nearly as much as some would lead you to believe, since any civ that lacks the sacrificial altar simply cannot whip endlessly, you have to stop once the unhappiness gets out of control, unless you truly enjoy having cities that are size 2 and at the happy cap due to whipping.

In my experience, when your cities are at the prime size range for whipping, it's pretty hard for them to not grow the population back in 10 turns. In fact, for low pop cities with a good food resource, they will still grow so fast without a granary that they can be used as endless unit whip locations. Same goes for drafting, with the caveat that the min pop size for a draftable city does factor into it somewhat. Unless you habitually found cities with no food resources, in which case they are going to grow slow no matter what you do.

Sure, some people are going to counter my argument saying: I whip as often as possible, and the granary lets me do that even faster. Eh, fine. Unless that thing you whipped was a new settler (and your granary isn't helping your city grow while you build settlers/workers), or that extra military unit you needed to guarantee a victory, your granary did not help you acquire more *land* any faster. And the single most important thing in the game is land. The more of it you have, the less the AI can use against you.

Do I build granaries as a matter of priority? Of course I do. It's a darn useful early building. But could I live without them? Yup. Far more easily then I could live without courthouses or libraries.
 
I voted 2. Go full hammer economy and build wealth/research while vassaling the world. Every city would be farms/windmills/shops/mills powerhouses, add a good GP farm and you would be set.

Now I certainly wouldn't want to do this every game but for a one of challenge I think I would go that way.
 
You'll get more production by running forest tiles than whipping without a granary. You won't even make up the production lost due to having one less workable tile due to unhappiness.

I can't believe this is an issue. You could grow twice as fast, thereby working a little less than twice the number of tiles in the short run, or you could get a 25% bonus, which is further reduced by your slider ratio. And doesn't affect hammers. And the granary is cheaper.

---

There's only way to settle this definitively. We need to have a contest where people choose one of the options, and tries to win from the same map, a la the legendary Madscientist vs DaveMcW battle, where DaveMcW ended all controversy. With one hand he showed the superiority of cottages, with the other he offer an olive branch to his vanquished foes, offering them a place in his kingdom as "hybrids" and commanding his supporters not to discriminate.
 
You'll get more production by running forest tiles than whipping without a granary. You won't even make up the production lost due to having one less workable tile due to unhappiness.

I can't believe this is an issue. You could grow twice as fast, thereby working a little less than twice the number of tiles in the short run, or you could get a 25% bonus, which is further reduced by your slider ratio. And doesn't affect hammers. And the granary is cheaper.

I am not going to debate whether or not the granary is a good building, because it is. Nor am I going to debate whether it lets your cities grow faster, because it does. What I am going to debate is exactly how much of an improvement it makes your whip strategies. Also, your statement which I have bolded has no bearing whatsoever on the usefulness of the granary. Whether or not players choose to be smart about their tile improvements and which tiles they assign their citizens to work is a completely separate issue.

First, lets assume you are not playing the civ that gets the sacrificial altar. For that civ, the granary's usefulness is greatly enhanced, but the granary is not the most important building in the city, the Sacrificial Altar is. For everyone else, this means that each time you whip, you get an unhappy point that lasts for 10 turns.

If you whip only when you have no whip unhappiness, then a granary is not needed to keep regrowing, because in 10 turns, virtually any city with a food resource will have regrown it's population. Granary benefit provided to whipping = none. However I suspect that this isn't how the 'granary is god' cadre employs the whip.

If you whip more often then that, for instance whipping every single time you can, presumably for military units since most of the biggest whip advocators are also extreme non-builders, in addition to there's only so many buildings you can whip whereas units can be built ad infinitum, then your city in question enters a death cycle for unhappiness, eventually forcing you to stop whipping due to massive unhappiness. The more often you whip, the quicker your city hits the brick wall. Whipping at this rate is only useful if you need a large army RIGHT NOW, and further, it's only useful in the early part of the game where the unit hammer costs are low enough to allow a new unit to be whipped every 2-3 turns, assuming that with a granary your city regrows that fast.

Then lets look at drafting, where the granary is even less impactful. Each use of the draft button costs you 3 unhappiness points, and by this stage of the game most cities will (or should) be at or near the happy cap. Very few cities can sustain more then 1 or possibly 2 draft cycles in a 10 turn period without pulling additional citizens off tiles. Which is why you rotate the draft around multiple cities. Your limiter isn't the regrowth provided by your granary, it's the unhappiness generated by the draft itself.

In your Globe Theater City, these unhappiness problems are eliminated, but even in that city, the granary isn't the most important building. The Globe Theater is.

Unless your style of play keeps you perpetually at war, or preparing for war, you will have long stretches with your cities capped out, working max possible tiles and running specialists. And during those times, your granary provides a health benefit, and that's it.
 
Tricky question, this.
I'd say 1. Granaries. They are like the Creative trait. The more you move into the game, the less effective they get. I obviously understand that on some levels they are absolutely neccessary.
 
I am not going to debate whether or not the granary is a good building, because it is. Nor am I going to debate whether it lets your cities grow faster, because it does. What I am going to debate is exactly how much of an improvement it makes your whip strategies. Also, your statement which I have bolded has no bearing whatsoever on the usefulness of the granary. Whether or not players choose to be smart about their tile improvements and which tiles they assign their citizens to work is a completely separate issue.

First, lets assume you are not playing the civ that gets the sacrificial altar. For that civ, the granary's usefulness is greatly enhanced, but the granary is not the most important building in the city, the Sacrificial Altar is. For everyone else, this means that each time you whip, you get an unhappy point that lasts for 10 turns.

If you whip only when you have no whip unhappiness, then a granary is not needed to keep regrowing, because in 10 turns, virtually any city with a food resource will have regrown it's population. Granary benefit provided to whipping = none. However I suspect that this isn't how the 'granary is god' cadre employs the whip.

If you whip more often then that, for instance whipping every single time you can, presumably for military units since most of the biggest whip advocators are also extreme non-builders, in addition to there's only so many buildings you can whip whereas units can be built ad infinitum, then your city in question enters a death cycle for unhappiness, eventually forcing you to stop whipping due to massive unhappiness. The more often you whip, the quicker your city hits the brick wall. Whipping at this rate is only useful if you need a large army RIGHT NOW, and further, it's only useful in the early part of the game where the unit hammer costs are low enough to allow a new unit to be whipped every 2-3 turns, assuming that with a granary your city regrows that fast.

Then lets look at drafting, where the granary is even less impactful. Each use of the draft button costs you 3 unhappiness points, and by this stage of the game most cities will (or should) be at or near the happy cap. Very few cities can sustain more then 1 or possibly 2 draft cycles in a 10 turn period without pulling additional citizens off tiles. Which is why you rotate the draft around multiple cities. Your limiter isn't the regrowth provided by your granary, it's the unhappiness generated by the draft itself.

In your Globe Theater City, these unhappiness problems are eliminated, but even in that city, the granary isn't the most important building. The Globe Theater is.

Unless your style of play keeps you perpetually at war, or preparing for war, you will have long stretches with your cities capped out, working max possible tiles and running specialists. And during those times, your granary provides a health benefit, and that's it.


Umm, do you not understand how wipping works? Most whip heavy folks don't advocate whipping below the happy cap, they set up 10 turn cycles to maximize the value of the whip, normally a 2 pop whip. Growing 2 pop without a grainery stretches things beyond the 10 turn cycle. By using two pop whips we can get 2 axes per whip event with overflow (just a few hammers shy). Only where the benefits are extreme do we ever get off the 10 turn cycle. Graineries allow you to stop working say that rice you are using and instead spend a few more turns working a green mine (or two) or run some specs. Graineries cut down the actual amount of time spent working :food: tiles so you can do something better for half the whip cycle instead. This gets even more powerful if you can jockey your high :food: tiles between multiple cities. Let city A work the irrigated corn for 5 turns & whip, then let city B work it for 5 & whip, the let A work it for 5 & whip, and so on.

Even if we ignore the whip, getting more pop sooner is a pretty snazzy multiplier all its own. The sheer amount of time it takes to grow to pop 10+ makes graineries often your best "multiplier"; working more tiles sooner often gives superior returns to getting multipliers sooner.

At drafting, you should either be big enough to have many cities to spread the draft anger over or have enough filler cities (e.g. cities working only a fish and coast) which have lots of unused happiness. Running around with a few 6 pop cities solely dedicated to whipping and drafting is quite common (and for it's timeframe the highest production you can manage outside of Kremlin abuse). If you are running a specialist heavy economy, then you can just abuse the culture slider for the entire draft age.

Frankly, late game whipping if you build or take the Kremlin is more powerful than early game whipping. Biofarms makes every tile into an early game rice, as a bonus you get multipliers like SP, Factories, Forges, Power, maybe even the odd mil academy, and PS (without the mids).

Given the exponential nature of your economy, I just can't see how the grainery can lose in the long run.
 
Mirthadir, no I did not know exactly how the whip advocates ran their whip cycles. However, the level of micromanagement involved in maximising that strategy, heck even the little bit that you explained in your post, would drive me batty. I play Civ to have fun. I've already played and gotten done playing a game where I was the type of micromanagement pay attention to tenth of percent increases in efficiency to maximise my playstyle to the nth degree. I'm not interested in being that person any more.

I'm certainly not interested in playing Civ at a level which requires the player to engage in such strategies in order to have a prayer of survival. Which is going to probably limit me to monarch level, at best.

And for the record, I am not saying, and have never said, that the granary isn't a great building. It most certainly is. If I have somehow given people the impression that I think granaries suck, please allow me to state for the record that I don't think they suck. They are one of the first 2 or 3 buildings any new city of mine builds, unless it's already there upon capture. The other buildings that vie for that honor in my games are libraries, monuments (prior to religion or being able to build culture), and courthouses. If I had to pick the single most important building from that list of 4, I would say the library is the most important. Fairly cheap, does a monument's job of pushing culture at twice the rate, boosts science output, and most importantly, allows you to run a pair of science specs no matter what civics you are running allowing a person to continue teching while recovering from overexpansion economy crashes in addition to simultaneously generating those all-important great scientist points for tech bulbing.
 
Whipping with granary are overrated.

at normal speed with happy cap 6, at 10 turns interval.

1)Difference between whip and no no whip, assuming there are mines to work on, and no excessive food at 6 pop.:

Whip 2 populations, you get 30*2=60 :hammers:. But you lose 1 :), which would be working a mine, you lose 4*10= 40 :hammers: but gain 20:food:. you also need to grow back 2 population, which would be around 30 :food:.

So if you whip, you get 20 :hammers:, but lose 10 :food:, roughly, you gain about 1:hammers: per turn


2)Difference between granary and no granary. This is the case where you have too much excessive food, and have to whip military, instead of building wokers.
Without granary, you need 60 :food: to grow back 2 pop.
With granary, you need 30 :food:
So with granary, you save 3 :food: per turn.
 
Whipping with granary are overrated.

at normal speed with happy cap 6, at 10 turns interval.

1)Difference between whip and no no whip, assuming there are mines to work on, and no excessive food at 6 pop.:

Whip 2 populations, you get 30*2=60 :hammers:. But you lose 1 :), which would be working a mine, you lose 4*10= 40 :hammers:, you also need to grow back 2 population, which would be around 30 :food:.

So if you whip, you get 20 :hammers:, but lose 30 :food:, better off no whip.


2)Difference between granary and no granary. This is the case where you have too much excessive food, and have to whip military, instead of building wokers.
Without granary, you need 60 :food: to grow back 2 pop.
With granary, you need 30 :food:
So with granary, you save 3 :food: per turn.

I agree. My point was trying to go in this direction. Whipping with a granary isn't as amazing as people think, and my focus is on those those heavy micromanagement, heavy calculations benefits for a minor benefit (often it works about to be <2 hammers per turn). Whipping without a granary is even worse and can't even earn back that small benefit.

If you don't have a granary, instead of whipping try mines, forested hills/-1F+2H workshops, you'll get more hammers in the long run.
 
Whipping with a granary is actually pretty amazing. In the early game, whipping with a granary "converts" food to hammers at about a one:two ratio. That makes a grassland farm like a plains/hill/copper. The only problem is the city grows so fast it can make the unhappiness difficult to manage.
 
Whipping with a granary is actually pretty amazing. In the early game, whipping with a granary "converts" food to hammers at about a one:two ratio. That makes a grassland farm like a plains/hill/copper. The only problem is the city grows so fast it can make the unhappiness difficult to manage.

The ratio is further enhanced by the fact that hammers are conisdered the most valuable tile yield by many (save for food for specialists and whipping!). Specialists, by the way, are your solution for managing growth, once you get libraries and markets.
 
Top Bottom