Production towards Wealth, Culture, Research

[Idiodyssey]

I feel like I discover something new every time I play, and last time I discovered that you can direct the hammer output of a city into building wealth, culture or research with the appropriate requirements. How often do people use this and in what circumstances?

I was playing a warmongering game and I accidentally let my economy plummet. At one point I was losing money with 0% research. I finally got currency researched, and used my newly discovered ability to build wealth in a few cities. This allowed me to increase research by 10-20% per city directed towards wealth building. Now obviously those cities aren't going to be building any units or buildings during this period.

Is it wise to use wealth building in commerce cities which shouldn't really be focuses on building units? What about building culture in newly aqcuire cities, or is it better just to whip a library/theatre?

 

[johnny_rico]

That is a resourceful use of wealth building. It was necessary so you didn't start disbanding units. These are a few examples where I convert hammers

Beakers: Science city that has all the buildings it needs and a stable military. Convert the hammers to beakers and take advantage of the bonus from libraries, Uni's, academies, etc..

Beakers: If I know the race to a particular tech is very close (liberalism, physics) and converting hammers to beakers will shave off a couple of turns, I'll do it.

Wealth: If you're economy bottoms out, it's a necessity, as you've shown

Wealth: You can bump this up in finance cities (shrine, banks, cottage heavens) to make a lot of money for upgrading troops, bumping research rate, or buying stuff late (US/Kremlin).

Culture: After capturing cities, this can useful with theatres and artists to gain a foothold on turf.

Culture: Obviously, you'll want to crank this to 100% when you make your final run during a cultural victory pursuit.

This is only scratching the surface. While converting hammers is situational, when it's useful, it's very useful.

 

[lilnev]

If I'm not mistaken, you get production multipliers (e.g. forge, factory) but not beakers/gold/culture multipliers (e.g. library, bank).

It's generally an inefficient way to generate your commerce -- one beaker/hammer in warlords -- but sometimes you have to. And building culture in a newly-built or -captured city to get that first border pop is often a fine idea.

One other fact: Overflow hammers won't be applied to culture/research/wealth, but will be saved for your next 'real' build. So if you've just whipped a missionary with a lot of overflow, but you now have three missionaries so you can't build the next one until one reaches his destination, you can build wealth for a turn or two to save that overflow.

peace,
lilnev

 

[johnny_rico]

Interesting lilnev, I didn't know that. I suppose that makes sense though, that the hammer modifying buildings will affect the hammers, same as when building. Either way, if the city has nothing to do (which is rare), might as well burn hammers for science or money.

 

[Idiodyssey]

By the way, what allows you to build research? I know drama allows culture building and currency allows wealth building, but I can't figure out what allows research building

 

[manu-fan]

I usually only build wealth in my cities (other than units and buildings). The time I do it most often is as I'm approaching a new Technology where I know I'll want to upgrade a bunch of units (e.g. Chemistry). I'll switch some citiies to researching wealth so i can afford the upgrades once I get it.

Cheers.

 

[johnny_rico]

By the way, what allows you to build research? I know drama allows culture building and currency allows wealth building, but I can't figure out what allows research building

Alphabet tech