When are markets worth It?

[nfw]

A few years ago I'd probably be spamming Markets everywhere and getting my arse-whupped in PBEMs
True that. I haven't played HoF in a while but I remember back to Challenge Series IX and I can't remember seeing any of the top players give Markets the kind of love I see in this post.

I didn't say I build markets everywhere, I just took exception to your assertion that 3 HAs are always better than building a market. Nevermind what situation your game is in.

 

[Pangaea]

Christ on a bike with bells on. Why must everything suddenly be either/or in here? Honestly think there is quite some strawman-making going on from the people saying markets are bad.

We all are essentially saying markets are bad.

But some of us are also saying that IN SOME CITIES they are worth building - which happens to be what the OP wondered about - where may the damn things be useful.

Lo and behold, they can actually be rather useful in

1) Capital : extra happiness and extra wealth
2) NE city: extra happiness, extra wealth, and ability to run merchants without caste
3) Shrine city: extra wealth (and obviously the other benefits too, if applicable)

Seems nfw also like building them in big cities, if the happiness is required. Personally I don't do this, but how about we let him play like that without pretending he has killed a litter of kittens and is running around with a crazy smirk on his face?

(Yes, that was a big exaggeration, but I dislike how some of the discussions in here develop. We all play differently, and this game is all about adapting to various circumstances.)

 

[byang08]

So what are the later buildings that are actually efficient? I know WS and Oxford are good so banks/universities are needed. Aside from those, I read custom house is bad, what about grocer, observatory, harbor or even monasteries (without AP)?

 

[drewisfat]

Actually most games Oxford isn't worth building if you're going for domination, and Wall Street is almost never worth building. But simply telling you what not to build isn't going to make sense until you understand the reasoning behind it and the alternatives.

In a nut shell, usually the best way to run an economy is maximizing how often your slider is on 100% To avoid going broke you build wealth in cities, and if you have stone/marble/gold/etc you build those wonders for fail gold, and when the AIs get a decent stack of gold sell your cheapest techs to mop up the gold. Lastly sell excess resources, and sometimes even your only copy of a resource to the AI for GPT.

While you're running 100% research, any + % buildings do virtually nothing, and that's why banks/markets/grocers are usually not good buys.

Observatories/universities do affect beakers and not gold, so the decision to build them is usually based on how much time is left in the game. Most military breakouts happen around liberalism, and the same time when you start building unis/obs, so they are usually not worth it.
And while Oxford is a decent building in itself, it requires you to build several unis to get it. If you compare the cost of unis/obs, observatories are significantly cheaper, so if you're somewhat close to the end, building a few observatories in key cities and ignoring unis/oxford is the best route. Usually unis/oxford are only worth it in space victories.

Harbors affect trade routes, so assuming you have foreign trade routes / need some health they are decent buys, better than say aqueducts or grocers.

Monasteries are sometimes worth it in very big producing cities, but that's only if you're a long time away from scientific method.

 

[cseanny]

So what are the later buildings that are actually efficient? I know WS and Oxford are good so banks/universities are needed. Aside from those, I read custom house is bad, what about grocer, observatory, harbor or even monasteries (without AP)?

Like most games, everything is situation dependent. Typically games in Isolation and Space (or long lasting) are good candidates for WS, Oxford, Observatory's, etc.

Monasteries w/out AP are fine (as long as it doesn't delay your bottom line) in cities providing large amounts of commerce (Bureau Cap), especially when you get 2+ religions. An Academy, Library, Bureaucracy, and 3 Monasteries is Beastly.

Pangaea maps on Immortal and below can be won in a convincing manner (most cases) with nothing more than a Bureau Capital, an x-amount of additional cities containing minimal infrastructure with emphasis on whipping, and a few key bulbs which you need to plan out (random city, Capital, GPF...just gem em).

Think streamline!! Learn to use Binary research in conjunction with building gold/research (shave dozens of turns off your time) instead of getting all the pretty buildings .

Quote:
Originally Posted by lymond View Post
This is a very good point that cseanny makes, that I was about to say as well. Higher level players know how to deal with unhappiness at that stage of the game and actually use it to our advantage. So +4 happies, which is often unlikely anyway, is not of value to us. We whip most cities a lot and keep them rather small early on. What we do value is optimizing hammer usage and potential.
Can you please stop trying to appeal to authority the entire time? It's slightly annoying.

But I can continue

a) If you don't think +1 permanent happiness is worth significantly more than 15
and
b) Don't think the value of a market is greatly affected by the amount of happiness granted

Then I question your knowledge of Civ4.

Lymond is an obvious noob!! http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/challenge.php?show=challenge&series=10&submit=Go