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[Kris Rhodes]

Are granaries worth building? Any pros and cons besides the obvious?

I sometimes think my cities with granaries are not *that much* bigger than the ones without... but I don't know if that is an accurate impression or not. It seems like they should be almost twice as big, I don't know why they aren't.

-Kris

PS are there any patches needed for civ for windows? Mine just crashed when the germans beat me to building a spaceship. It told me the germans built one, then the game did some wierd graphics and crashed on me...

I could have beat them, too...

-Kris

 

[stormerne]

Your cities will grow faster with granaries. Yes, you would think they would grow twice as fast because they only have to half-fill the food box. But you'll usually find it takes longer to grow at higher sizes so your cities will not be twice the size with granaries in the same number of turns as without. This is partly because you're always collecting from (size+1) squares and feeding (size) workers, and partly because the best food squares get used first unless you manually intervene.

And yes that crash scenario is VERY annoying. We get it randomly on our super-stable 486/33 machine of 1991 vintage running on DOS! I know of no remedy, only the obvious prevention - save every turn during the spacerace.

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[Håkan Eriksson]

The very best thing is to buy the Pyramides in the eraly stages. Then your cities wont "get stucked" in size 1-4.

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[GenghisK]

Mmm?? Håkan, you're getting confused with Civ2 I think. In Civ1, Pyramids = all governments available and no anarchy period during revolution.

Kris, granaries are the first building to build in your cities... Is it necessary to state more about its importance? Concerning your crash, I've no clue. Have you tried to run it in MS-DOS mode?

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Genghis K.

 

[Håkan Eriksson]

Opps... I thought I still were in the civ 2 forum, sorry.

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[TTG]

The first thing to build? I would hardly say so. I originally thought that... but then I used to think it was good to attack with phalanxes and democracy was a good government for ALL conditions...

The time to build a granary is when you want to commit to the long-term growth of a city. If you think a city is about the right size, or if you are purposely stunting its growth for a militaristic strategy, then of course a granary is a total waste of time and money (upkeep, remember?). I've gone whole games without building a single granary, although I wouldn't reccomend that either. Even if you WERE deciding to build a city up as high as you wanted it to go, a granary is still not the best first thing to build. I would go with barracks-marketplace-granary-temple (for chieftan) or barracks-marketplace-temple-granary (for lord/prince) or barracks-temple-marketplace-granary (for king/emperor/higher). You will find on high difficulties that a temple becomes essential. Did you know that on emperor, a city of size 4 already has 2 unhappy people? Forget trying to grow just yet. The marketplace is valuable too, but only if you are willing to commit and build them in all of your cities as a matter of course. Nothing is nearly as annoying as being at the peak of success only to be hit by a budget deficit and start losing city improvements almost randomly. That's my take.

stormerne here explains the usefulness of granaries well so I won't repeat that.

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[Ptolemy]

The granary improvement doesn't allow you to get more food for your tiles, but it prevents against starvation.

And with the crash thing, I must tell you, that has happened to me a thousands of times. Even in my greatest games in civ1. I my self have never been able to run my civ1 in Windows.



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Ptolemy: Greek general under Alexander the Great & Founder of a new egyptian kingdom after Alexander's death

 

[TTG]

No it doesn't increase food production. And yes it does prevent starvation. More important, though is that it cuts the size of your food storage into two parts, and when your city grows, only one of them is emptied to zero. The other one stays full, making it much much easier to grow, Ptolemy.

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[GenghisK]

TTG, is a barrack really necessary? As I stated it in another thread, I've never built a barrack. Since your units can achieve veteran status after 2 victories...
Concerning the marketplace, I'd like to add an important detail. Build it and only build it when you earn at least 2 gold coins. Otherwise, it's useless. Indeed, it cost 1gold to upkeep and "only" give you 50% income bonus, you can lose money if you build it too early.

Kris, another tip that is totally off-topic but very useful is that you shouldn't forget to sell obsolete building. For instance, as soon as you've access to Mfg plant and build one, sell your factory. You won't loose shield (I've tried it, trust me!) because it's redundant with the Mfg.

When the game is quite advanced, there's a way to earn a lot of money, "honestly" (not by cheating). It's fastidious but worthy. Take your most productive cities (those who have 50 shields or more in production). Set them to build a little and obsolete building, such as barracks (I assume that you've already discovered gunpowder then, therefore making barracks obsolete). It'll be built in 1 turn only. Sell it and build it again for next turn, etc. You'll earn a lot of money but it's fastidious (click-click-clik in the city box is quite boring

)

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Genghis K.

 

[TTG]

Yes they are necessary. You should read what I posted in that other thread.

Personally, I think that line about not building marketplaces till you have two gold is important, but not too relevant. If your city is size 3, chances are you are already producing 4 trade (some of which is gold), even in despotism or other low-level govs. Who is stupid enough to build a marketplace in a city of size 2?? Or who has the resources at that level?

As for selling buildings, it's almost important to remember to sell your barracks before they go obsolete. This is important because if you wait until after they are obselete you will lose them anyway, but get no money. So watch your science carefully and before you get gunpowder or combustion sell all of your barracks. And yes, factories too.

This other thing you mentioned, building barracks and then selling them again... When barracks go obsolete, you can replace them you know!! With new barracks that work perfectly well! Didn't you know this?? Anyway, I always favour building the largest possible improvements for this selling purpose. SDI defenses are handy for this. Who uses them anyway? Especially towards the end when there are almost no enemy cities left and you want the extra cash. This is explained more in my strategy guide which is of course not published to this site yet (Somebody hit me, I'm a bastard).

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