Medieval and Renaissance buildings elimination thread

[Mount Suribachi]

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (19)
Art Museum (9)
Grand Master's Chapel (21)
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (28)
Workshop (15)
University (21)

Grand Masters Chapel 21 (24-3): I suspect this is going to be the Audience Chamber 2.0 - a small number of passionate advocates who are totally bewildered that other people don't rate it as highly as they do. I have built it, more than once, and I don't think I've ever used it to create more than a couple of units in a game. If playing peaceful (90% of my games) the only military I build past the Ancient Era danger phase is that which I need for eurekas, with a lot of upgrading of my early game military. If I need a unit for a boost I can usually pump it out in a couple of turns in my high production city and faith has so many other uses these days - not least bringing heroes back. Building it as "an insurance policy" is a complete waste as buying military units with faith is a one trick pony, whereas spies can be used multiple ways. Just use your spies from the Intelligence agency to steal the AIs gold and buy the units if you need them that badly. Doubly strange since the AI rarely declares war on you once you get out of the classical era, and if they do ancient walls and a ranged unit are all you need to fend them off.

Workshop 15 (14+1): Yeah, its not a huge amount of production, but production is still king in this game and you're going to have to build them anyway. ROI is poor if you hard build it, but I tend to gold purchase it, it's only 580 gold IIRC.

 

[JhGf_123]

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (19)
Art Museum (6) (9-3)
Grand Master's Chapel (22) (21+1)
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (28)
Workshop (15)
University (21)

Grand Masters Chapel:

I suspect this is going to be the Audience Chamber 2.0 - a small number of passionate advocates who are totally bewildered that other people don't rate it as highly as they do

With due respect, people don’t like being patronised. I could just as easily rephrase your quotation against you: “a small number of passionate detractors who are totally bewildered that other people don’t agree with their dismissive views”.

There are multiple ways to play the game. Faith is one of them.
Moderator Action: There was no need for this personal attack, if you have an issue with what someone has written then report it. Your response is just way over the top and unhelpful --NZ

EDIT: fine, I have edited out the more inflammatory remarks.

Art Museum:
It has its place, but unless you’re Russia or Pericles, I can’t help but feel that art works are too hard to theme to make them worthwhile.

 

[bengalryan9]

I think one thing people should realize it that we don't have to put the Grand Master's Chapel up one-on-one against the Intelligence Agency just yet. It's kind of silly to be downvoting GMC already because you think spies are more useful or to downvote IA because you personally tend to get more from the GMC... they can both be pretty good buildings and are far stronger than a lot of what's left on this list. I personally tend to prefer the Intelligence Agency but that doesn't mean GMC is weak, at all. Let's trim some more of the fat off of this list before we make this thread all about those two buildings.

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (19)
Art Museum (3) (6-3) I think it's a lot harder to theme great works than some people want to admit. You need to get somewhat lucky in terms of a) which Great Artists are actually in the pool, and b) how fast Great Artists are actually being recruited. If you pop someone with sculptures, good luck. Archeology are easier to theme in my experience, and sometimes you might even get lucky enough to get Mary Leakey to boost them even more...
Grand Master's Chapel (22)
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (29) (28+1) I've had games where this single building has given cities 16 (or more!) production with the help from cards, heroes, and/or governors... that's one strong building. That may be a fringe case for most cities but it's still really easy to get +6 or +8.
Workshop (15)
University (21)

 

[InsidiousMage]

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (20) - Far better than the Art Museum. Earns more culture and tourism when it isn't themed, easier to use when you aren't going for a culture victory and gets you +3 Era Score compared to the +1 from recruiting a Great Artist.
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (19) - Requires a significant faith invest to be useful and that is not always a given. It's also only really useful if you are warmongering or your neighbors hate you and there are other ways to deal with those issues that only involve planning your game around a specific resource.
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (29)
Workshop (15)
University (21)

 

[João III]

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (21) [20+1] Out of everything remaining, this just seems the far & away best to me on account of providing culture/tourism while removing artifacts at the same time.
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (19)
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (26) [29-3] While not a bad building, I think this is too high for something that's conditional on being coastal.
Workshop (15)
University (21)

 

[Francel]

Some thoughts: I agree archeological museum is probably better than art museum, but in terms of being easier to theme, I'm not sure I agree. At least when it comes to the great artists, you can choose whom to recruit or skip. With the artifacts, you're kind of left to the vicissitudes of fate. I often have a hard time getting three artifacts from the same era, but different civilizations. Artifacts can come from five different eras, of course. If I follow the usual approach of digging up what is first in and around my territory, theming tends not to work out for whatever reason. A significant reason to go for archeologists is to dig up ruins that block your construction.

Also, regarding GMC, I love faith. However, I use faith for patronizing great persons and buying apostles, naturalists, and rock bands primarily. I can build units or buy them with gold, and since there are things that can only be acquired through faith, faith is reserved for those. Thus, I don't find GMC to be the best of the tier 2 government buildings. I think Intelligence Agency is better, because, like I said, it increases the success chance of spies at the start of their use. If spies can succeed at the beginning, they will get promotions that make them very strong and allow them to fail rarely. If they fail at the start, they can struggle for long portions of the game, until other means of boosting them (eg, cryptography) become available.

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (21)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (19)
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (27) (26+1) - The harbor itself is kind of a "jack of all trades" district, and the same goes for lighthouses and shipyards. Ship experience, great person point, and production. The unimproved tile boost is okay, but the adjacency production is strong. The adjacency production itself can be doubled with naval infrastructure. It isn't too hard to get an extra 8 or 10 production from the shipyard, in addition to its other benefits. Great admirals are better now too.
Workshop (12) (15-3) - There are viable ways to get production outside of the workshop - quarries, mines, lumbermills, armories, reeds pantheon, work ethic belief, some of the wonders - so much so that workshops don't feel crucial to me. They are something that can be bought when factories become available. They feel less essential to me than temples or lighthouses, for example. Obviously some production is lost just building the workshop, unless you buy it, so that counts against it as well. The GPP is nice, but I feel a lot of great engineers, especially early ones, are a bit meh (free walls, culture bomb IZ, extra district).
University (21)

 

[KingPiggyXXI]

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (21)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (19)
Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (28) (27 + 1)
Workshop (9) (12 - 3)
University (21)

The Shipyard on its own turns coastal cities into viable and productive cities. It allows them to not only have high growth and gold output but also decent production as well, putting them into the range where you no longer need to invest resources to support them. It can easily double a small city's production. I'd say that with Naval Infrastructure, the production it provides can honestly come close to rivaling a Coal Power Plant. They require a good deal of investment to build or buy, but the production they provide is huge and they should pay themselves off quite quickly.

On the other hand, Workshops are quite terrible. It costs a hefty amount of production, and it'll take a while to get any returns on that production. Workshops are typically just a cost barrier you need to pass before you can start building Factories and Power Plants. I usually only build Workshops last out of all the buildings I have available.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Armory (17)
Archaeological Museum (21)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (20) 19+1. It does not require you to make a massive investment from faith. Why? When you go to war, you don't need to invest in anything-- you take it. If you're conquering things you will take Holy Sites. You can also pillage for faith extremely easily. If you don't do either, then sure, it's not useful because you're not really warring in the first place.

Holy Sites are excellent investments past the early game even without a religion. Shrines and Temples cost 190 faith together (still cheaper than a workshop) and it only takes a mountain pass to get a lot from adjacency. Certainly better than spending it on junk like workshops. If you fight a single significant war, like an emergency, this thing is totally worth it. So don't give me the "I don't go for domination" thingy. I'll even do it in DVs where I ally most of the civs.


Intelligence Agency (23)
Shipyard (28)
Workshop (6) 9-3 Get rid of this dead meme; being a prerequisite is only so much of a virtue considering factories and power plants are situational too. I haven't heard of a single justification for 195 production for 3 production. Even if you did want that...

Did you know the armory does the exact same thing except that's not even the real reason you would build one?

I mean I like to have a strong power plant set up in my core cities. But before you go showing off your awesome +20 power plant consider the setup is.

Workshop 195
Factory 330
Coal Plant 300

That's 825 production, not including the IZ itself. That's an entire wonder's investment almost. Did I mention that IZ adjacency is mostly from other buildings you have to build and doesn't really occur naturally beyond strat resources. Compare against Holy Sites and Campuses that use natural terrain features.

Of course, you do have the ability to affect multiple cities and you need power to work t3 buildings at all. But what does the workshop do in this? It's just an extra step really.

(Unless you pass the WC resolution for increasing IZ building production. And yes I will push it through because it is high value due to everything I've said before. But I bet you didn't even think about that.)



University (21)

 

[Vizurok]

Armory (14) (17-3) I have to admit that the yield list looks quite impressive at a first glance, but at the end of the day, I feel that it's just fool's gold. Okay, it's quite cheap, but you still have to be build a district and a building that's practically useless in peaceful games. Same feeling about the GG points, the combat xp, the stockpiles and the Military Engineers. Eventually, you'd still be better off building one Armory as you need to get those Eurekas but at this point, I prefer voting on buildings that should be mass-built across your empire.
Archaeological Museum (21)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (20)
Intelligence Agency (24) (23+1) It's just simple math. The Intelligence Agency costs 290 p and provides you with a Spy that would cost 225 p, and that is a very nice bargain.
Shipyard (28)
Workshop (6)
University (21)

 

[TCBB]

Armory (11)(14-3)
Archaeological Museum (21)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (21) (20+1)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (28)
Workshop (6)
University (21)

Armory (11)(14-3) Previously upvoted this, but it should go soon - probably after Art Museum and then Workshop. Military Engineers are good, but not good enough for Armory to break top 5.

Grand Master's Chapel (21) (20+1) I completely agree with some of the stronger words being said I’m support of GMC. But equally, I agree with @bengalryan9’s diplomatic words - even if you prefer Intelligence Agency, there is no need to be downvoting GMC yet. The ability to insta-buy anything is very powerful.

 

[evahappy]

Armory (11)
Archaeological Museum (21)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (22) 21+1 As it was said above, GMC gives you possibility to save your production from building military units if you pursue peaceful strategy. And if you want to start a war, it allows you to quickly double your military. Great building, both offensively and defensively.
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (25) 28-3 It looks like future winner so it has to be downvoted at least once for discouraging you from building any maritime infrastructure. 1 production on unimproved tiles rule penalizes you (once shipyard is built) for future building work boats, fisheries, kampungs.
Workshop (6)
University (21)

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Armory (11)
Archaeological Museum (18)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (22)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (25)
Workshop (8)
University (21)

Certainly better than spending it on junk like workshops.

Man you guys clearly play very differently than me - I love the workshop and the armory! (Shipyard and GMC are nice too but they don't need the love).

I haven't heard of a single justification for 195 production for 3 production.

You don't build it you buy it, exchanging gold for production and G/E points - yes please. Workshop (7+1=8).

Of the building left the Archaeological Museum (21-3=18) is probably the weakest, not needed for a Culture win and difficult to theme - I very rarely build them these days. Can't believe the Art Museum is at 3 when this is at 21 .

 

[Leucarum]

Armory (11)
Archaeological Museum (18)
Art Museum (3)
Grand Master's Chapel (22)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (22)

University (21+1) gets my upvote - science is really the king in this game and while universities are pricey they are still needed. Shipyard (25-3) didn't seem like it should be a clear runaway winner. So just voting to reel it back in a little. This thread feels like there are a lot of buildings that I would rank almost identically at the top. These downvotes are going to be tough.

 

[mrwho]

Armory (7) -3
Archaeological Museum (18)
Art Museum (4) +1
Grand Master's Chapel (22)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (22)

For my personal playstyle, the Armory is the thing I build the least out of everything here. Unless you're going domination it doesn't seem useful to me other than military engineers, and I don't see why military engineers are particularly useful either. I think workshop is more general-purpose and is used in a wider range of games. Giving some love to Art Museum to save it from being voted out in one vote. It's an easy, passive way to get culture and tourism without the large expense of archaeologists, and IMO it's usually worth having a few of in a culture game in your lower-production cities where an archaeologist would be difficult to get, and also just because you need the great work slots.

 

[Drivingrevilo]

Armory (7)
Archaeological Museum (15) (18-3)
Art Museum (4)
Grand Master's Chapel (22)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (23) (22+1)

University (23) (22+1) Hoping that the Grand Master’s Chapel debate has been (rightfully) put to bed for now, I’m upvoting Universities. For the specific reason that, because they unlock early, it’s very easy to get a massive science boost early on through a combination of scientific city-state envoys & Kilwa.
Archaeological Museum (15) (18-3) By contrast, the cultural buildings don’t unlock until much later. This makes it much harder to get long-term benefits out of the city-state envoy & Kilwa combination.

 

[kryat]

Armory (9) (8+1)
Archaeological Museum (15)
Art Museum (4)
Grand Master's Chapel (19) (22-3)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (23)

Armory - The thing about military engineers is that they help everything run smoother. When they first unlock, you can spam them to rapidly get aqueducts and dams, both of which can solve housing issues in cities without freshwater and help pile on the IZ adjacency bonuses for craftsmen (shoutout to @Sostratus and his patented aqueduct triangles). Shortly after, they'll be building railroads and tunnels to let you move builders, archaeologists, missionaries, or even armies across the continent in a handful of turns. After that, they'll be helping you build floodwalls as you sit back and watch your smokestacks churn out sweet, sweet production. That's on top of the +3 production from the armory. I typically build 3-4 armories throughout my empire because military engineers are that important.

Grand Master's Chapel - I don't think this should be eliminated soon (that should go to the art museum). But it is time to start downvoting it. Here's why: Although it's powerful, it's more insurance policy than active bonus. If you're not using it, you aren't benefiting from it, so all you're getting is a governor title and +5 faith per turn. I much, much prefer to spend my faith on naturalists, great people, or rock bands. What's the difference between these units and military units? You can already buy military units with gold! In my experience, even with the discount that the GMC offers, I find it much easier to buy units with gold than with faith, because I accumulate gold so much faster with trade routes. Once you have an army of sufficient size, the advantage of the GMC goes away. You'd be better with the Foreign Ministry, since you at least get favor and a CS bonus with that. You'd be better with an Intelligence Agency, because you will continue to use spies. So why am I downvoting the GMC? Because it is redundant. It doesn't give me anything I don't already have, and it siphons faith away from other uses.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Armory (9)
Archaeological Museum (15)
Art Museum (1)
Grand Master's Chapel (19)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (24)

Art Museum 1 (4-3): Yes, the Archaeological Museum + Archaeologist is more expensive, but its also better.

University 24 (23+1): Voting is getting hard now, lots of similarly good buildings left so I've tried to order them in my head and University comes out top. +4 science isn't game breakingly good, but it's reliable and consistent. The +1 housing isn't amazing, but it comes in that mid game period before you get to sewers and neighbourhoods when your housing starts to get squeezed and is a nice little bonus.

 

[Vargas1]

Armory (9)
Archaeological Museum (15)
Art Museum (0) ELIMINATED
Grand Master's Chapel (19)
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (25) (24+1)

Art Museum (0) - The biggest problem for me with Art Museums is that you have to really commit to going down the art path by having several at once (and/or other buildings with GW slots). The malus to having art from the same artist in the same place is high, and since you can only move art once every ten turns, you have to be able to plan ahead and spread out your art when you get it or you waste a lot of the value. Archaeological museums may take a while to theme, but you're not losing out on their value while you're filling them up.

University (25) - Science is good for any game, but if you're going for a science victory this is when it really takes off. +4 base is strong on its own, but that's easily increased if you plan ahead and get Newton, if you have one or more science city-states, and ultimately if you slot in Rationalism (since a +4 adjacency is not all that difficult for at least some campuses). And as @Mount Suribachi mentioned, the +1 housing comes along at just about the right time to be helpful.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Armory (9)
Archaeological Museum (12) -3: Overrated building. I hardly build these anymore as you have to wait almost an entire era before you can start filling them, and once you can fill them you're better off just focusing on Natural Parks. My last 3 culture games saw me build 1-3 of these per game, as opposed to a majority of Art Museums (not saying they are good either, but at least you can start filling them almost immediately, and you can keep building a few just to fill up further as you go along). The Archaeologist arriving too late (compared to Naturalists) and costing too much is what keeps this museum from being as good as it once was. Digging up artifacts just isnt as good anymore as it was before GS. EDIT: Sad to see Art Museum getting eliminated before this one. At least the Art Museum gets used in most of my cultural games, whereas this one just stays idle for too long (15-30 turns getting to Natural History after unlocking the museum, spending 10-15 turns building the damn guy, another 10-15 turns travelling around to dig up the stuff - way too long in the end).
Grand Master's Chapel (20) +1: I wasn't gonna upvote this as I thought we had this settled for a while, but when people keep downvoting it this early (why!?) I will have to keep upvoting it. I'll just repeat the main points: Extreme insurance value for when you want to "speed run" (especially a CV) on Deity with a minimum of allocation into "unneccessary" defence investments, which saves you a lot of turns and resources spent on building and maintaining an up-to-date army. Units pay for themselves almost immediately if you pillage for faith when going domination. Entire strategies can be built around this building. A must have in most of my games, the only exceptions being some science and domination games (often even then I still like to get it, as it allows for quick and flexible transition from peaceful into domination play if the need arises, though the Intelligance Agency is a good contender then). GMC is at the power level of a civ/leader ability, enough said.
Intelligence Agency (24)
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (25)

 

[Equilin]

Armory (9)
Archaeological Museum (13) (12+1) I need them to clear out those antiquity sites that occupy so many tiles in my land. I'm not even considering cultural victory.
Grand Master's Chapel (20)
Intelligence Agency (21) (24-3) The only reason i'd build it is because i'm not building the other two. Spies take too long to operate to be beneficial to me.
Shipyard (22)
Workshop (8)
University (25)