Is granary much less useful?

[Bast]

That's one lesson that I'm learning. In Civ3, a granary was almost always the automatic first building in a new city. In 4, I'm finding myself leaning more towards a forge, a lighthouse, barracks, or a temple first, depending on the situation. A granary comes up later, if at all, especially because (in my experience, anyway) happiness is a bigger issue than health.

ME TOO! I've only realized this now as well. In my first game, I was building granaries everywhere and at first but now I know better.

 

[Shillen]

I still think granaries are great. On the easier difficulties your cities can grow really big without happy/health issues anyway. On harder difficulties you really need the +health that the granary can give you, the increased growth is a bonus. Keep in mind the granary is there the entire game. Every time you get more health/happiness and can grow your city again the granary is helping speed that up.

 

[Dragonlord]

The great thing about this game is that there is no longer the one best strategy - it always depends on the specific situation.

I seldom build granaries in the early game, when my cities are growing like weeds anyway and the limiting factor is usually happiness.
They become much more useful with developing cities, when you have some luxuries and are trading for more - now you want your city to be growing quickly to the new maximum happiness size, so building a granary has a high priority!
I also often build them in slow-growing production cities- when you only have 2 or 3 surplus food and growth is taking 15-20 turns w/o a granary, you'll definitely want to halve that!

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Granaries are only good in a city with lots of 2 food only tiles (little surplus) or if you are a fan of pop-rushing. What one has to remember is that they also give +1 health, might be important for first big cities when they hit 6-7, although even then happiness is more an issue.

 

[Akela Forrester]

I always build granaries in my cities early in the game,but as soon as I can build theaters they take priority. What I want most with a new city is to expand its borders ASAP. Culture does that.

 

[Heroes]

I always build granaries in my cities early in the game,but as soon as I can build theaters they take priority. What I want most with a new city is to expand its borders ASAP. Culture does that.

Use a missionary to spread state religion to the new city, then it will have 1 cuture per turn.

 

[Heroes]

I have found the function of granary very hard to understand. Sometimes I see a newly growed city gets like 17/36 food, while sometimes it's 1/30. How much food should it store after all?

 

[eotinb]

Heroes, the granary only starts saving food the turn it is finished. Your 17/36 example means it had the granary through all of the previous turn, while in the 1/30 example, the granary was finished the turn before the city grew. This is one of the improvements from Civ3 to CIV, IMHO.