Should I sell my Libraries and Universities?

[Buttercup]

Scenario: Deliberately avoiding Diplomatic and Space VCs, even though they both became available in the 1700s, I am slowly collecting islands towards a Domination/Conquest (haven't decided) VC (the 20k might interrupt that anyway) and I've researched all of the Modern Age techs, it's about 1850ish. I still have a few leftovers to 'collect' from the Medieval/Industrial era, but, essentially, I was thinking at some point I might as well sell my Libraries and Universities?

Anyone ever done this before? Any experiences of similar?

 

[Theov]

if you don't need the science and culture output, then sure, sell them.
Just like you should sell your barracks when you're not producing units anymore and granaries when you're at size 12 (and not planning to build hospitals).

 

[tjs282]

I agree with Theov re. Libs+Unis. Under the circumstances you describe, you probably don't need them anymore. If you really want to get those leftover-techs, you should still be able to research them reasonably fast using basic 20-40% SCI% (plus Geeks), or buy them (using Taxman-gold?), or just plain beat them out of the AICivs before you kill them. And if you're specifically aiming for a Dom/Conq vic, you certainly don't want to trigger an accidental Culture-win first (how close are you to that?).

Re. Grans + Raxes though: There rarely (if ever) comes a point when I stop needing mil-units, Settlers or Workers, so I'll usually keep those buildings right to the end

Spoiler :

Playing on Emp-level Continents-maps for preference, I'll usually only build these in my core (0-30% waste before CHs) and semi-core (30-60% waste after CHs) in the first place:

• Raxes nearly everywhere for mil-unit builds throughout the game, and mid-/late-game mass-upgrades without tedious unit-shuffling (I love SunTzu for this!)
• Grans only in food-bonus towns for spinning out Settlers/ Workers, with minimal time at reduced Pop-levels to minimise CPT-loss

My late-game empire/ economy is usually easily able to cope with that 30-40GPT maintenance (TAX%=10% easily covers it, or 15-20 Taxmen total, if I'm doing SCI%=100%)

 

[Lanzelot]

It depends:
If you are quickly approaching a 100K victory (before you are able to "collect" enough territory for domination), you may be forced to sell them.
If one of your opponents threaten to reach a 100K victory (before you are able to "collect" him...), you may be forced to keep them in order to stay above 50% of his culture.

If none of the above applies: sure, sell them and invest the extra money in more ships, planes, modern armor, etc.

 

[Wahsayah]

Try modding the game in a way that education provides either gold or entertainment, or reduce corruption to reflect the continuing education of your workforce so you don't need to scrub these sorts of things from your cities.

 

[Buttercup]

In terms of selling Barracks, there's a Wonder which gives them for free, otherwise I likely wouldn't build them in every city anyway and those that are built, even if not producing new units, would likely be good for quickly repairing Yellow or Red-Lined battle-worn soldiers. Granaries are still required even if you stop at size 12, because you might still want to produce a Settler or two at any moment for a host of reasons.

So, with most buildings there's a plus-side beyond their primary function, such as the Wealth bonus for Factories, but with the Libraries and Universities they're two functions, Culture and Tech, become completely redundant once the Tech limit is reached and you are not hoping for a Culture win interruption. While they are the most important buildings for getting a military win set-up, once you hit a certain point they suddenly become the most useless.

I like Wahsayah's idea of modding in some more useful additions to their use, but then they really are already vastly overpowered in the early game and the human player doesn't need them to have any further early ages advantages, it's just at the very late stages they become redundant. Perhaps they could have replaced the Longevity Wonder with a Wonder which convert's beakers into reduced corruption or something, that would work better, and kill two birds with one stone, as who the heck needs Longevity?

 

[walletta]

What will you do with the money?

 

[Buttercup]

Well, that's the thing. By the time I'd got all the techs and reduced my Science funding to zero, I was running 70% Luxury ( +owning a monopoly of 6 Luxuries), 140 Units over my allowed amount and still turning a 500gp profit per turn. So there was, interestingly, no actual benefit in selling them for extra gold, it would make no material difference to my game, even though they had become useless.

Even though I sold my Library, Temple, Colosseum, University in my Capital it still hit the 20k before I could get the two 66% totals for a domination win. I hadn't even built any Great Wonders at my Capital since Sun-Tzu. It's now about 1965 and I'm at about 50% land and 60% pop, still slowly moving my troops from island to island, even with my army now consisting of purely Mobile Artillery and Armies of Modern Armour.

I guess the slowness can be mainly attributed to my desire to keep each turn's micro-management at a micro-level and just having one battle-zone rather than maximising my gp to produce enough troops to take two or three islands at the same time. The other aspect slowing me down is my desire to complete this process without losing a single troop.

Admittedly, I lost a few Medieval Infantry in the first war to gain control of my island, but since then I've lost no-one, making wars so much more feasible in a Republic. Well, I did lose one solitary Unit. Would you like to know what that loss was? Why, it was a Veteran Mechanised Infantry attacking a Veteran Persian Immortal that was Fortified in a City on Plains. Just before my Units were all pure Armies.

So, anyway, yeah, there's no reason to keep the Libraries and Universities, but there's also no good reason to sell them, if that makes sense.

 

[justanick]

It does make sense. By Espionage you can waste great amounts of money. So if you want to waste money that is the way to go.

You also mentioned islands without mentioning Marines. Armies of Marines can accelerate conquests significantly as one turn of waiting per island is eliminated.

 

[Buttercup]

Espionage for what purpose? (this isn't a high difficulty level game where there's any need to use that function).

Yeah, I've tried Marines a few times, but it requires a whole different kettle of fish to utilise, a complete restructuring of your forces, such as replacing all the Mobile Artillery with naval bombard units, increasing Mechanised Infantry quantities instead of Modern Armour (because once occupied Marines have appalling defence stats, just like Berserkers). And, most importantly for my no losses fetish in this game, a much greater degree of losses and casualties. The turn saved in the actual process of attack is easily lost in both preparation and post-battle healing/replenishment.

Basically, Marines seem better on paper, but in practice they're a heap more hassle than just dumping a few armies/artils on the island and waiting the extra turn.

 

[justanick]

Espionage for what purpose?

To satisfy your curiosity. But you are probably right it is not worth the expense.

And, most importantly for my no losses fetish in this game, a much greater degree of losses and casualties.

Somehow i doubt that Armies of 4 Marines will suffer much losses. They have attack 24, defence 12 and at least 16 HP. The main difference in warfare is that at least for the first taken city of an island you cannot utilize mobile artillery. Instead you would have had to go into mobilization to spam out battleships for efficient bombardement from the sea. That mobilization had also cut your culture output by almost 50%.

 

[Buttercup]

Exactly, you would have to completely restructure your Unit production from well back in the game.

Take Artillery, for example. One third of my Mobile Artillery used to be Catapults, one third was ungraded Artillery won during combat and the other third was upgraded Artillery built for purely defencive reasons as soon as Replaceable Parts was discovered. So I have never actually built any Mobile Artillery from scratch, not one.

However, for late Industrial boats, there's no upgrade tree, you have to start building your stack only once you discover the relevant Technology. Likewise, both Modern Armour and Mechanised Infantry have some element of Upgradability which allows you to have a huge stack of them many, many turns before the Tech is researched. Marines are dead-end Units, again, you can only start building them once you've learned the Technology, and then you're stuck with them.

Yes, Marines probably wont die if they're in an Army, but then that's true if you put almost any late game Unit in an Army, heck you could have armies of TOW to defend the Marine taken cities, but it's all just a completely different long-term plan to which the early stages of battle, where you're not fully Armied-up and still attaining Armies as you fight is where you'd lose a lot of them.

It's like saying "A Nuclear Bomb Strategy would save you X amount of turns", it's just a different way of doing the same thing within the mechanics to which the actual turns-saved is incalculable as each requires so many tweaks along the line in the preparation process. Not to mention personal taste issues.

 

[robbus]

Well, that's the thing. By the time I'd got all the techs and reduced my Science funding to zero, I was running 70% Luxury ( +owning a monopoly of 6 Luxuries), 140 Units over my allowed amount and still turning a 500gp profit per turn. So there was, interestingly, no actual benefit in selling them for extra gold, it would make no material difference to my game, even though they had become useless.

Even though I sold my Library, Temple, Colosseum, University in my Capital it still hit the 20k before I could get the two 66% totals for a domination win. I hadn't even built any Great Wonders at my Capital since Sun-Tzu. It's now about 1965 and I'm at about 50% land and 60% pop, still slowly moving my troops from island to island, even with my army now consisting of purely Mobile Artillery and Armies of Modern Armour.

I guess the slowness can be mainly attributed to my desire to keep each turn's micro-management at a micro-level and just having one battle-zone rather than maximising my gp to produce enough troops to take two or three islands at the same time. The other aspect slowing me down is my desire to complete this process without losing a single troop.

Admittedly, I lost a few Medieval Infantry in the first war to gain control of my island, but since then I've lost no-one, making wars so much more feasible in a Republic. Well, I did lose one solitary Unit. Would you like to know what that loss was? Why, it was a Veteran Mechanised Infantry attacking a Veteran Persian Immortal that was Fortified in a City on Plains. Just before my Units were all pure Armies.

So, anyway, yeah, there's no reason to keep the Libraries and Universities, but there's also no good reason to sell them, if that makes sense.

I know you are a regular and maybe I could spin a B'cup victory into defeat!

My only wins are on monarch so it is time to level up for me