Lighthouses worthwhile

[omnimirage]

When not playing as an Organized player and when in the earlish stages of the game, assuming there's no lakes, is it worthwhile to build a Lighthouse if there's only one sea tile with a food resource, to harvest from?

 

[krikav]

For sure it's worthwhile.
The question is if there is other things that are more worthwhile!
And in the situation you outline, quite often there are things that are more urgent.
Can the city perform without the lighthouse? If it does have alot of other nice tiles already, there isn't much need for the lighthouse and it can be delayed.

In almost all my games, nearly all coastal cities eventually get a lighthouse. It's not only the +1F from the seafood, it's also the possibility to grow population prior to a whipfest or a pacipush.
But it could be that a city have first been on settler/worker build duty, then it had to get a library for that borderpop and cultural defence of that tile.. Then it simply had to build wealth during music/lib races.. And only now, on T150 the poor city finally is allowed to build the lighthouse it has been yearning for thousands of years.

 

[sampsa]

The question is if there is other things that are more worthwhile!
And in the situation you outline, quite often there are things that are more urgent.

+1

From what I've seen, people overbuild/overvalue lighthouses. If the city has plenty of decent tiles, lighthouse can be delayed by quite a bit. If it lacks decent tiles (say 1 seafood, surrounded by tundra) a lighthouse will improve that city tremendously. Without seafood I'd try to not build a lighthouse.

 

[krikav]

Map spoiler for NC272

Spoiler Example :

This was a quite early city that I settled, it's first task was a monument to grab the marble.
After that, it got a granary and then a library.
A while later I had CoL but not MC so I started a courthouse because it was far away from capital and economy was hurting. At that point I never finished the courthouse though. Then came MC and it got a forge. After that it got the task of building Taj, as it still had some forests standing.
Then came preparation for possible drafting so it got a barracks and a theatre.
Then tactics changed and space might be a viable option so it got to build a university to enable oxford in capital. It also whipped away bad tiles in a observatory.
Can't remember when the harbour was built, but somewhere when I was preparing for waaaaaay later when health could be a problem, as I had too much cash for wealth-building to make sense.
Now, many thousands of years later this city finally got to build a lighthouse, but that was only because I settled a filler city that needed to pig to grow.

Lighthouse here was still worthwhile, and I would have been happy if I got it for free all the way back.

@sampsa have to pardon me, the city above is the only one with a built courthouse in the game. The only other courthouse is a captured one.

 

[AcaMetis]

@krikav

Spoiler :

No "build Courthouses, build Forbidden Palace on main continent, build cheap Palace on conquered continent to avoid colonial maintenance" play? I'm disappointed . Unless you got a really early State Property, or your target build Versailles, of course, but obviously I can't tell from the screenshot.

Actually, I count 16×1.25 (Forge)=20, but you're outputting 21. 16×1.35 (Forge/State Property)=21.6, floored to 21. You are off the hook, sir .

(The -3.91 maintenance cost is probably a dead giveaway, but I'm not that familiar with Deity maintenance costs beyond "they're yikes", so...that's me on the hook I suppose .)

Lighthouses are as useful as the amount of water tiles a city is going to work. Early on that can be as few as one if you've got a single seafood, or even zero, in which case a lighthouse obviously does little for you. Later, when all cities want to grow and your compact empire runs out of land tiles to divvy up pretty quickly, lighthouses are great to give coastal cities some food neutral tiles to grow on while land-based cities can work the land tiles. A size 12 city is always better than a size 6 city, unless the tiles it works are unapologetic garbage. Coast, even non-FIN coast, doesn't qualify as such with a Lighthouse.

 

[krikav]

@AcaMetis

Spoiler :

I did fool around with Mansa for a long time. Bullying him for techs, making peace, gifting junk cities for him to develop. Turned out I stol the poor guys only sources of metal. But I was pretty slow abroad. And after that I have had a hard time with diplo, have not been able to trade much with anyone basically (multiple strong AIs I don't want to upset.)

I did go for communism early on, first prio after lib->astro was done.

 

[Fippy]

Many great replies already, adding something:
Early LH are connected to your happy situation. Even if a city has plenty seafood and works pretty much only coast, LH can be the wrong build (or use of your hammers / whipping).
You may prefer getting a library for example and start using scientists, while still growing at good speed.
Or if you are stuck at size 4/5, growing very slowly (or not at all) can be a good move with those scientists cos you are working on an important goal instead (Great Scientist).

Counter example..if you picked a city with seafood as Settler / Worker production spot, every bit of helps.
Putting overflow and other into a LH while growing after a whip will increase efficiency once it's completed, and the happy situation doesn't matter so much if you mix in slow building while cooling off whip penalties. Now extra LH will help with both re-growing and slow building .

 

[drewisfat]

To me it usually depends on how much surplus food the city has. For core cities it's actually pretty rare that I build lighthouses. This is because it takes 10 turns for whip anger to decay, so if the city is able to regrow at that pace or faster already, then the benefit from additional food is marginal.
Not all cities are whip-oriented though, and extra food (lighthouses) are nice for a GP farm, or even for a production city working as many mines as possible. If I have a capital with multiple seafood/lakes I may build a very early lighthouse for faster worker/settler production, especially if I'm not exp/imp.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

If I plan on drafting then lighthouses in small coastal cities are necessary to reach 6 population.