What is the worst Unique Building?

[TheMeInTeam]

Concerning:kochman vs themeinteam

If there were a segment called "argue with TMIT" on that civilization podcast, I would listen to every one. It would start with a simple discussion and escalates into increasingly bombastic TMIT tirades on buildings, imbalances, and bad play. Have a guest call in and watch the ratings soar.

Edit: a demo: copy paste a select TMIT tirade into a text to speech program like this one
http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php
Select US Mike

my favorite so far are

and

and

I got a little testy when he put words in my e-mouth, but at the same time it IS annoying when people said you put something down that you did not, and then apply it in an argument. Multiple times. In my defense I otherwise had no personal attacks in that post - tone isn't ideal maybe but I do get a little heated in debate over any random thing, and the posts are largely on-topic in comparison between the UBs.

I'm not sure PolyCast could retain it's "family friendly" status if it had a TMIT tirade segment .

 

[madviking]

I voted obelisk. I see no tangible value in getting early prophets, especially when I avoid making religion-enemies like the plague.

 

[Iranon]

Well, TMIT's rants deserve praise for being insightful and applicable. Many other good players don't provide backup for their derision, and I tend to get carried away with the theory without caring whether it's actually useful.

Now, a few things:

How many cities a UB applies to matters less than the total effect we get out of it while pursuing a reasonable strategy. The forum is weak not because it may only affect our GP farm, it's weak because 1/4 of a trait is below the general power level of UBs.
In a comparison between Dun and Totem Pole, Walls being less desirable than Monuments (assumption) matters if we intend to rely very heavily on archery units. If they'll be part of a balanced army, we can get away with 1-2 Duns and building all archers there.

*

The hammer discount of the Assembly Plant varies a lot depending on leader but is never impressive imo:
Assuming normal speed, +25% to production before the factory and +50% afterwards, it puts Bismarck (250/1.25 - 250/1.75)*1.5 = 86 hammers ahead at the point where we'd have built a regular factory. For Frederick, the savings are only (250/2.25 - 250/2.75) * 1.5 = 30 hammers.

On Marathon, the savings would would be 257 hammers for Bismarck and 91 for Frederick; even taking account further snowballing for getting a power plant faster and military costs scaling less, this should not put us a full Panzer per city ahead.
An argument that every turn can matter is an argument AGAINST the assembly plant; other civilian UBs would have had millenia of snowballing gains by now.

I usually find the engineer slots useful, but all in all other late UBs offer considerably more value over base.

*

I dislike all obsoleting UBs but don't think the Dun is the worst of the lot. In a vacuum, I find the Totem Pole a lot weaker - 2xp doesn't come close to a useful promotion. Shelf life can go either way: You can get some benefit out of the Totem Pole after Rifling, provided you have neither Military Science nor Astronomy.. but is it worth the bother? I think getting the direct benefit for Muskemtmen and sometimes Grenadiers is more practical more often.
Leader synergy may make up for this a little though.

A good argument could be made for the citadel being the weakest since in addition to the other problems it comes late and may require serious concessions to keep from obsoleting before you built any. However, a benefit for siege units is arguably more useful than the others because this is where most of the attrition happens.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd certainly not rank citadel top 10 or anything, but it gives us one thing that is almost worth it alone: cannon devastation. Any time you can use cannons, vassalage OR theocracy + citadel = CR III cannon. Whether one is OK with leaving corporation/assembly line off for a while and going for arty + machine guns + state property or not helps determine the shelf life...but the mere access to what amounts to a ridiculously punishing renaissance UU helps the citadel. Unfortunately it carries some anti-synergy with the UU although spain can be quite flexible there as a result. Nevertheless, I'd argue that sometimes the citadel actually outshines the very decent conquistador, since its will run roughshod over rifles and cavalry and will even do decently vs machine guns.

CR III arty tears infantry, machine guns, etc to shreds and is actually threatening to tanks, so if one can come up with alternative production to factories/power, rife/arty/mg/anti-tank has an interestingly long shelf life - infantry struggles vs MG, cavalry suffers vs rifles, anti-tanks keep tanks away, and ALL of that gets torn to shreds by CR III artillery.

This is not particularly novel ----> it's been used very effectively by others than me at high levels. The one argument against it is that it is not CONSISTENT...buildings like the ikhanda, sac altar, terrace, hammam, etc that are top tier offer sound benefits and are nearly guaranteed to give them in each game. If Spain can't pull a treb or renaissance war, the citadel bottoms out at 0 value, while sometimes its value is impressive.

Of course, inconsistency is one of the biggest reasons late UBs are bad (along with compounding effects consideration), since having a building that helps in mop-up isn't a big difference, and dying before you see it also nets 0 value.

What's depressing is that some of these late UBs aren't impressive even if we start in later eras!

 

[kochman]

TMIT, your arguements are so incredibly weak and short sighted, to specific situations, it is not even worth carrying on this debate further, so this is my final statement on it. I am also slightly worried that continued debate might give you a stroke or heart attack. Chill out dude.
No one builds factories in most of their cities anyway, and everyone wastes on walls all over the place for Guerilla I promotions to feed that shining city on the hill with defensive archers to prevent ancient DoWs from that one specific direction. Good call.
You win, the dun is better than the assembly plant.

 

[Iranon]

@ TMIT:
The citadel comes relatively late, is situational (like all pure military benefits), may require serious concessions to make work even if you want to fight, is on a building that may well be ignored otherwise and so on.
The only undesirable box it doesn't tick is 'works only on water maps' and it comes close because keeping it alive is a lot more sensible if you control the Great Lighthouse.

Am I likely to resent it? Hell no, I'm going to have a lot of fun with Spain because it favours strategies I'm not likely to pursue without a little prompting and the Citadel is part of that. But objectively, I think it's one of the worst.

@ kochman: I for one definitely prefer serious discussions - including getting more worked up about them than warranted - to cheap sarcasm and childishness.

 

[kochman]

Iranon... good for you.

 

[Absolute Zero]

everyone wastes on walls all over the place for Guerilla I promotions

If you're building them for Guerilla I promotions, how is it a waste of hammers?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To be fair, we're arguing over things that are both valid candidates for "worst UB". Very few uniques have a consistent/decisive impact on the game (same for traits). Spawn luck >>>>>> anything else. Some of the top tier UUs and a couple UBs are good enough to raise %win chances. IMO I've covered enough of why the dun offers more %win variance than the assembly plant, and I don't see any new points to be made in the comparison between the two.

Just remember these ill-appreciated traits/uniques the next time shaka comes calling...

 

[Higher Game]

TMIT, your arguements are so incredibly weak and short sighted, to specific situations, it is not even worth carrying on this debate further, so this is my final statement on it. I am also slightly worried that continued debate might give you a stroke or heart attack. Chill out dude.

There's some unintentional irony here. TMIT is firm and doesn't mince words but he hasn't lost his cool once in this thread. Not even over the feitoria (I still disagree with him, though).

No one builds factories in most of their cities anyway, and everyone wastes on walls all over the place for Guerilla I promotions to feed that shining city on the hill with defensive archers to prevent ancient DoWs from that one specific direction. Good call.
You win, the dun is better than the assembly plant.

It's usually not one specific direction where the dun saves you. It's for those lovely times when you're stuck in between Shaka and JC. Most people quit when that happens, so they ignore it. It could very easily be the building to save them, though.

The assembly plant will save a few extra turns. The dun could end up saving you, period.

 

[r_rolo1]

Wait, but the dun is really better than the assembly plant It gives you a tangible military benefit in the earlier times, that is when it matters the most. Of course you have to build them... and people just don't build walls unless someone points a gun into their heads

 

[Deckhand]

Of course you have to build them... and people just don't build walls unless someone points a gun into their heads

A gun to the head, plus Stone. Gotta have stone if you're gonna bother building walls.

 

[bestbrian]

A gun to the head, plus Stone. Gotta have stone if you're gonna bother building walls.

I build them all the time, but that's just because I love castles. They look cool, and are a source of early EPs. No great gamebreaking strategy there, it just makes me happy.

 

[Kullervo]

I have random events enabled, and the 'Best Defense' quest is hands down the best in the game. So I generally build walls and castles anyway and hope.

 

[Calouste]

I think people misjudge the Baray a bit. Keep in mind that growth is based on (Food - (unhealth + consumption) ). That means that a Barray giving +1 food to a city that's current surplus is only 2, causes it to grow 50% faster.

Don't think in terms of max population (As even a granary isn't useful at max pop), but rather of developing population. If you are trying to grow from size 8 to size 16, you'll do it a lot faster with that +1 food.

The Baray makes whipping of high cost buildings (Banks, Universities, etc) far more effective because, as you point out, the cities grow significantly faster at higher population levels. The effect of this is that, because most cities only have a fairly limited number of good (resources, riverside, hill) tiles, you can have fewer citizens work the good tiles with higher multipliers from buildings rather than have more citizens work more marginal tiles with fewer multipliers. Or at least until the point where you can turn the marginal tiles into something more useful with Lumbermills, boosted Workshops or Biology farms.

 

[obsolete]

I have random events enabled, and the 'Best Defense' quest is hands down the best in the game. So I generally build walls and castles anyway and hope.

Hmm. Any time your strategy revolves around RANDOM events and involves HOPE, I think you've hit rock bottom.

 

[Iranon]

Hmm. Any time your strategy revolves around turning off standard features of the game to make it more controllable/predictable, I think you've hit rock bottom.

Well, actually I can see the appeal of either... for one thing, I like both chess (no randomness) and roguelikes (very much randomness and totally unconcerned about being fair). Civ4 I feel works best with a large amount of randomness and a no-reload policy, unless you specifically want to compare one game to others.

*

Taking random events into account for your actions only makes sense if you play with them on. Building otherwise unnecessary buildings in anticipation seems excessive though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Only a few events are really broken and should not exist in the game, and those are the ones that have the potential to decide outcomes by themselves.

As much as I've argued against events in the past, I would gladly put them back into the game in exchange for 1) honest GUI 2) REASONABLE (not necessarily fair) spawn balance 3) doing away with peace weights.

Spawns will never be 100% fair outside of things like teamer mirror maps. However, spawns that allow 1 civ to insta-block double the land of any other civ and run away w/o war just by the starting location of their capitol are a little ridiculous, especially if that land is high-quality. It's not quite as bad as the "you lose" event (3000-2500 BC 4-6 archers), but it's worse than most of the others and a little too common for my tastes. I fault fireaxis for this less than a lot of the other game's flaws though. I'm no programmer, but I've been around game development (betas, discussion over spawns in both TBS and even other games like shooters) enough to know that creating balanced spawns consistently is actually very very difficult. So while I'd trade in events for it, I still understand why civ IV does not have balanced spawns.

Peace weights are stupid IMO. They function to make the game more erratic, at the expense of realism and with any benefit conferred debate-able. They are part of the reason more aggressive AIs struggle - they can't form any semblance of relations with good techers. In games where it results in a 2-3 warmonger sandwich dogpile on the human, it adds some challenge (though if survived they are completely incompetent at actually winning themselves). In normal games, they just slow down the tech pace and give the humans a window. Why not have them actually function OK in diplomacy, picking or willfully backstabbing other guys like themselves as benefits them? I never understood this mechanic from a gameplay standpoint.

Honest GUI should be self-explanatory. The GUI should not imply things to the player that are not true. It sure as HELL shouldn't lie outright. Events annoy me, but the lying GUI and non-difficulty based AI cheats are worse.

Finally, I guess it gets old saying it, but I'm not willing to trade anything for proper controls. Controls should always work in a good game. This has been the most disgusting blemish on civilization IV since it was released, allowing a great game to be comparable to some of the worst titles ever released in one actually crucial respect. That the controls have gone unpatched for over 5 years as all kinds of other bugs were swept or introduced through patches is the single greatest travesty of post-release game support. Frankly I'm shocked that there is less outcry over the fact that a lot of hotkeys, unit selection, and unit movement do not work properly on a consistent basis. They should never have released even a single expansion before fixing this...or even considered making one.

 

[r_rolo1]

A gun to the head, plus Stone. Gotta have stone if you're gonna bother building walls.

Elaborate this, please.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Elaborate this, please.

Without some artist magic to fortify the walls, guns can shoot through stone like nothing...no matter how thick. Even if it resists rather high impact damage from trebuchets.