Let's Talk About Underwhelming Buildings!

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I have never built a sewer, and I doubt that I ever will. Likewise I very rarely build neighborhoods. I suffer amenity shortages much more often than housing -- I build wide, with lots of workers to improve the land. By the time housing starts to limit, I've largely grown onto all of my land tiles anyway. Adding pop would just mean working a terrible tile (unimproved coast, desert hill, I might even have to run specialists). I tried shopping malls once for a cultural victory, figuring out just how insignificant their tourism is. Food markets look just as bad
I find the bank and stock exchange to be too weak, except possibly for Eurekas. The second and third tier govt plaza buildings don't impress me, unless I really need to faith-buy an army; but they do give governor titles, and that's usually worth it anyway.

I will defend the amenity buildings, but recognize that most of the value comes with the last building, powered.

But the shopping mall is also an amenity building as well.

Also, Broadcast Centers? One slot of a crappy great work and some culture.

I've been a big proponent of adding an Opera House building for more great work slots. I'd like to rework Broadcast centers to provide their tourism mainly from rock band concerts. I think a choice between those two late game will make the culture victory a little more interesting.

 

[hhhhhh]

Sewer, Arena, Bank and Stocks Exchange. (Commercial hub has the worst layer 2-3 buildings.)

 

[Aurelesk]

To Banks and Stock Exchanges defense, they do enjoy the third Envoy (+4 Gold) and sixth Envoy (+6 Gold) bonuses from City-States, which make them better on the long run. Contrary to other buildings, they do not have Maintenance. You can see them like this: a Bank is at +7 Gold with 2 Maintenance, and a Stock Exchange is at +7 Gold (+7 additionnal Gold with Power) with 3 Maintenance. This is not utterly fantastic, but not as nearly as bad that some people might think. Well they fit the theat well: they are underwhelming. It wouldn't hurt to see a +2 Gold on Banks, and +1/+2 on base/powered Stock Exchanges.

This is not the case with Arena (no city-state) or Nuclear Power Plant (in competition with Coal Power Plants). Heck, I even start to find the Entertainment Complex + Arena appealing now: it is 3 Amenities, 1 Culture, 1 Appeal, and give major adjacency to Theatre Square.

 

[UWHabs]

To Banks and Stock Exchanges defense, they do enjoy the third Envoy (+4 Gold) and sixth Envoy (+6 Gold) bonuses from City-States, which make them better on the long run. Contrary to other buildings, they do not have Maintenance. You can see them like this: a Bank is at +7 Gold with 2 Maintenance, and a Stock Exchange is at +7 Gold (+7 additionnal Gold with Power) with 3 Maintenance. This is not utterly fantastic, but not as nearly as bad that some people might think. Well they fit the theat well: they are underwhelming. It wouldn't hurt to see a +2 Gold on Banks, and +1/+2 on base/powered Stock Exchanges.

This is not the case with Arena (no city-state) or Nuclear Power Plant (in competition with Coal Power Plants). Heck, I even start to find the Entertainment Complex + Arena appealing now: it is 3 Amenities, 1 Culture, 1 Appeal, and give major adjacency to Theatre Square.

Yeah, and when you actually get your EC loaded up, I find amenities can really skyrocket. EC+Arena is already +3 amenities to the city, and then if you plan it, you can get another +6 from zoo/stadium plus the 2 water park buildings. Once I've gotten the core of my districts down, I find that more often than not, having the 4th district in a city or so be an EC or Water Park can truly load you up.

As for the other T2/T3 buildings, I find banks and Stock Exchanges vary in value so heavily depending on the city-states. If there's only 1 or maybe 2 commercial CS in the game, then those buildings are highly underwhelming. But I've had games with 4 of them that I can get to +6 envoys on, and then suddenly those change. When your banks are pulling in +11 or +13 gold, suddenly they start looking a lot nicer to get built.

 

[Stringer1313]

I’ve always thought it weird that Airports (or Aerodromes in general) don’t provide tourism.

To me, it seems obvious that, upon researching Flight, all cities with Aerodromes should receive something like +25% tourism. This could then increase to +50% after building an Airport.

It would massively incentivise building Aerodromes and, y’know, it would actually make sense thematically.

This is a really great idea. They should then nerf the automatic tourism boost you get merely by researching flight.

 

[Shadowstrike]

What about just replacing the Food Market building altogether with something else? Like maybe a "Public Housing" building that gives additional housing as an alternative to the Shopping Mall.

 

[Vargas1]

Having public housing without sufficient food available might be a little too on the nose...

 

[Mr. Salt]

The Sewer, I'll defend as coming at basically the perfect time. The Industrial Era is when your core cities start getting big enough and productive enough that they can pump out a lot of Food, and the Sewer is usually a detour of a couple of turns in cities with decent Production. The Food Market also comes late enough that you might have a corner case where you do end up wanting some extra Food output, although it's a lot worse than the Sewer. The easy option remaining is the Arena, of course, but the Bank is also pretty bad imo. Given that Gold is a lot easier to accumulate than other yields it's easy to just hold off on.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

What if you needed the bank to do "buy with gold" for more modern units/buildings (or perhaps give a better ratio of gold: production if you think that's too harsh)?

 

[hhhhhh]

What if you needed the bank to do "buy with gold" for more modern units/buildings (or perhaps give a better ratio of gold: production if you think that's too harsh)?

I'd like banks do what bank do -- building a bank will allow you to convert some of your GPT into cash that you can instantly use. E.g. You can use 250G at a cost of 10 GPT for 30 turns. That would be fun.

 

[Vargas1]

The Sewer, I'll defend as coming at basically the perfect time.

I agree that the sewer is useful when it comes, but that’s also why it’s kind of underwhelming. It’s just kind of dull to bang something out for relatively limited production and to get two housing. Thinking more, it might be cool to have options for sewer types - the basic one as is, something with increased cost for +3 housing, and something with further increased cost and increased maintenance (or even power) for +5 housing.

 

[Josephias]

I'd like banks do what bank do -- building a bank will allow you to convert some of your GPT into cash that you can instantly use. E.g. You can use 250G at a cost of 10 GPT for 30 turns. That would be fun.

Or, another extremely annoying, but in certain way logical and already applied way to go(with arsenals): Put a hard/soft cap in the maximum gold you can have at any moment, that is increased with each bank built (or bank specialist, for tall players). / Soft cap would mean once you are over it, your income wold reduce in a %.

 

[Time Tested]

Arena/Ferris Wheel are a classic, altough I'm pending to check if the double amenities of the last patch really have an impact. I don't see nevertheless how they could be boosted much more ¿maybe some gpt or adittional situational amenities (e.g, arena +1/+2 amenities if the city has an encampment and/or a holy site, ferris wheel +1/+2 amenities if the citiy has a campus and/or industrial zone)?.

I feel like these buildings should just be removed. I like the Tier 2 and Tier 3 buildings for the regional benefit, and I think the EC/WP itself is an acceptable investment to get access to these, but the Tier 1 buildings feel like too large an investment and I don't really care about the localized amenities that much anyway. I'm usually only building an EC by the time I unlock the Tier 2 buildings anyways.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I don't really understand the joke about Sewers providing amenities? Living in a house/street/village that doesn't stink of refuse sounds like a massive quality-of-life improvement to me. Why don't they already?


Anyway, Food Markets should provide extra Food based on the housing bonus of the Neighborhood, Sewers should indeed provide an Amenity (or two). Aerodromes and their buildings should increase the Tourism output of everything producing Tourism in their city. (Literally just increase the percentage tourism per turn by 10%, +25%; +50% for having the district and either/both of its buildings, just like the Film Studio's +100%).

Ironically I think Babylon's Palgum is how Watermills should've worked in the first place. Regardless, +1 Food from farmable bonus resources isn't bad, just beef up its production and you're good. However, I think the weak early game building is the Granary with its meager +2 Food, +2 Housing. Just meh, if I'm honest. There should be some scalability here.

 

[Duke William of Normandy]

I don't really understand the joke about Sewers providing amenities? Living in a house/street/village that doesn't stink of refuse sounds like a massive quality-of-life improvement to me. Why don't they already?


Anyway, Food Markets should provide extra Food based on the housing bonus of the Neighborhood, Sewers should indeed provide an Amenity (or two). Aerodromes and their buildings should increase the Tourism output of everything producing Tourism in their city. (Literally just increase the percentage tourism per turn by 10%, +25%; +50% for having the district and either/both of its buildings, just like the Film Studio's +100%).

Ironically I think Babylon's Palgum is how Watermills should've worked in the first place. Regardless, +1 Food from farmable bonus resources isn't bad, just beef up its production and you're good. However, I think the weak early game building is the Granary with its meager +2 Food, +2 Housing. Just meh, if I'm honest. There should be some scalability here.

I agree with basically everything here. For the Granary, perhaps it should get Bonus Food for every Domestic Trade Route ending in its City.

 

[kaspergm]

Or, another extremely annoying, but in certain way logical and already applied way to go(with arsenals): Put a hard/soft cap in the maximum gold you can have at any moment, that is increased with each bank built (or bank specialist, for tall players). / Soft cap would mean once you are over it, your income wold reduce in a %.

I really like this idea, it would certainly make gold management much more interesting.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

Instead of building a building or buying another building I keep telling myself to build another military unit or rush buy another military unit. They seem to be more valuable as I pillage my way across the map. I don't really like the AI very much so I just keep killing them. It feels good. The more Domination Victories I achieve, the better I sleep. My favorite is when the AI gives me 500+ gpt and everything else to war with their neighbor. Very Satisfying.

 

[kaspergm]

Ironically I think Babylon's Palgum is how Watermills should've worked in the first place. Regardless, +1 Food from farmable bonus resources isn't bad, just beef up its production and you're good. However, I think the weak early game building is the Granary with its meager +2 Food, +2 Housing. Just meh, if I'm honest. There should be some scalability here.

I agree with basically everything here. For the Granary, perhaps it should get Bonus Food for every Domestic Trade Route ending in its City.

I think the more logical solution would be that Granary gets the bonus food on farmed resources that Water Mill currently has, and the Water Mill instead gives +1 production on tiles along rivers.