Many years ago, I did an analysis that showcased issues in the market line: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-market-line-balance-discussion.677465/
Basically, I showed that under most conditions you were better off just getting basic no bonus stone quarries rather than going the market line....if gold was your intention. Many years and balance patch later, how does the scenario look now?
So overall, the main change was that the maintenance (ongoing) costs for the market line was completely removed. Now its an upfront cost, but you don't have to maintain them like many other urban buildings. How much impact did that have? Lets find out!!!
I will be repeating the same calculation I did back in the day, and we can compare.
Scenario: Market then Grocer then Fair
We will assume a single worker. Now the worker can either build stone quarries (basic flat land quarries which have a base of 5 stone per turn) or the market series of buildings. We will run the scenario for a market, a market + a grocer, and a market + a grocer + a fair. In comparison, we will make the equivalent number of stone quarries (including adjacencies as we are making them in a circle). Our goal is to calculate X, the amount of gold per turn our city would need to generate for the market series of buildings' gold boost to be MORE PROFITABLE than our basic 5 stone per turn quarries. We will run the scenario for 50 turns after the last building finishes to give our buildings some time to accumulate.
Getting our Formulas (Heavy Math)
Summary of Results
So now we have our easy to use formulas. From our original work, the main change is the wood price, and so we show the old wood price factor in our formulas for our upcoming comparison.
Market Only: X = 25.5*stone price + 8*wood price (old: 18) - 2*iron price
Market + Grocer: X = 37.62*stone price + 6.93*wood price (old: 20.77) - 2.31*iron price
Market + Grocer + Fair: X = 33.83*stone price + 5.56*wood price (old: 14.63) - 1.85* iron price
From these, all we need to do is pick the market price of the various resources, and we can then calculate X for that scenario. Lets look at three scenarios (but you have the formulas, feel free to use any market numbers you feel are appropriate):
Market Favorable (we are generally selling our stone and wood at half prices, and iron we are buying)
Stone: 3 gold
Wood: 3 gold
Iron: 8 gold
Common Middle Game Scenario (stone and wood we are generally buying, and the price is starting to go up. Iron is relatively cheap)
Stone: 8 gold
Wood: 8 gold
Iron: 4 gold
Scarce Resources (stone and wood are heavily bought, and up quite a bit in price. Even iron is scarce, and we are buying it as well)
Stone: 13 gold
Wood: 13 gold
Iron: 8 gold
Market Favorable
Market Only: 84.5 GPT (old: 114.5)
M + G: 115.17 GPT (old: 157)
M + G + F: 103.4 GPT (old: 131)
Common Middle Game
Market Only: 260 GPT (old: 340)
M + G: 347.16 (old: 458)
M + G + F: 307.72 GPT (380)
Scarce Resources
Market Only: 419.5 GPT (old: 550)
M + G: 560.67 GPT (old: 741)
M + G + F: 497.27 GPT (old: 615)
Conclusion
So overall, we can see a pretty significant reduction in how much money a city needs to generate to warrant the use of a Market/Grocer/Fair. That said, its still pretty high for a normal city, and you would still only consider this line for cities that are generating a good amount of money through other means if your goal is principally the cash (as many cities will still fall short of the threshold). Now you can of course always go for the specialists (which as others have rightly pointed out, the growth bonus on the higher shopkeepers is quite good). Also, fairs are pretty solid for the culture boost in a city with a lot of luxuries. Its worth mentioning that grocer's are still the weakest building in the line, they are quite expensive for their returns and so actually require the largest threshold to justify their creation.
In summary:
1) The line has gotten a notable buff from where it was several years ago.
2) The grocer remains the "weakest" of the three buildings, with a very high expensive for only a slight bump in strength.
3) Overall, the building is still a niche one, good for if you have a really strong money city or have a high culture city and you want to push growth through the specialist. But its still not a mainstay building....you should not spam the line willy nilly, but do want to consider how much money a city produces before investing.
Basically, I showed that under most conditions you were better off just getting basic no bonus stone quarries rather than going the market line....if gold was your intention. Many years and balance patch later, how does the scenario look now?
So overall, the main change was that the maintenance (ongoing) costs for the market line was completely removed. Now its an upfront cost, but you don't have to maintain them like many other urban buildings. How much impact did that have? Lets find out!!!
I will be repeating the same calculation I did back in the day, and we can compare.
Scenario: Market then Grocer then Fair
We will assume a single worker. Now the worker can either build stone quarries (basic flat land quarries which have a base of 5 stone per turn) or the market series of buildings. We will run the scenario for a market, a market + a grocer, and a market + a grocer + a fair. In comparison, we will make the equivalent number of stone quarries (including adjacencies as we are making them in a circle). Our goal is to calculate X, the amount of gold per turn our city would need to generate for the market series of buildings' gold boost to be MORE PROFITABLE than our basic 5 stone per turn quarries. We will run the scenario for 50 turns after the last building finishes to give our buildings some time to accumulate.
Getting our Formulas (Heavy Math)
Spoiler :
Summary of Results
So now we have our easy to use formulas. From our original work, the main change is the wood price, and so we show the old wood price factor in our formulas for our upcoming comparison.
Market Only: X = 25.5*stone price + 8*wood price (old: 18) - 2*iron price
Market + Grocer: X = 37.62*stone price + 6.93*wood price (old: 20.77) - 2.31*iron price
Market + Grocer + Fair: X = 33.83*stone price + 5.56*wood price (old: 14.63) - 1.85* iron price
From these, all we need to do is pick the market price of the various resources, and we can then calculate X for that scenario. Lets look at three scenarios (but you have the formulas, feel free to use any market numbers you feel are appropriate):
Market Favorable (we are generally selling our stone and wood at half prices, and iron we are buying)
Stone: 3 gold
Wood: 3 gold
Iron: 8 gold
Common Middle Game Scenario (stone and wood we are generally buying, and the price is starting to go up. Iron is relatively cheap)
Stone: 8 gold
Wood: 8 gold
Iron: 4 gold
Scarce Resources (stone and wood are heavily bought, and up quite a bit in price. Even iron is scarce, and we are buying it as well)
Stone: 13 gold
Wood: 13 gold
Iron: 8 gold
Market Favorable
Market Only: 84.5 GPT (old: 114.5)
M + G: 115.17 GPT (old: 157)
M + G + F: 103.4 GPT (old: 131)
Common Middle Game
Market Only: 260 GPT (old: 340)
M + G: 347.16 (old: 458)
M + G + F: 307.72 GPT (380)
Scarce Resources
Market Only: 419.5 GPT (old: 550)
M + G: 560.67 GPT (old: 741)
M + G + F: 497.27 GPT (old: 615)
Conclusion
So overall, we can see a pretty significant reduction in how much money a city needs to generate to warrant the use of a Market/Grocer/Fair. That said, its still pretty high for a normal city, and you would still only consider this line for cities that are generating a good amount of money through other means if your goal is principally the cash (as many cities will still fall short of the threshold). Now you can of course always go for the specialists (which as others have rightly pointed out, the growth bonus on the higher shopkeepers is quite good). Also, fairs are pretty solid for the culture boost in a city with a lot of luxuries. Its worth mentioning that grocer's are still the weakest building in the line, they are quite expensive for their returns and so actually require the largest threshold to justify their creation.
In summary:
1) The line has gotten a notable buff from where it was several years ago.
2) The grocer remains the "weakest" of the three buildings, with a very high expensive for only a slight bump in strength.
3) Overall, the building is still a niche one, good for if you have a really strong money city or have a high culture city and you want to push growth through the specialist. But its still not a mainstay building....you should not spam the line willy nilly, but do want to consider how much money a city produces before investing.
