When do you build courthouses?

[mariogreymist]

UJJ: Thanks. And I wouldn't expect anyone to play out the military win for me here...it could take a week given the speed, size of the map and the resource problem. Someone on the other thread played it forward to a space win (and then to a rush buy army, but not a fight), so it's good to know my opening wasn't as hopeless as I had feared, and I won't go scurrying back to monarch with my tail between my legs. And you did nail my plan...research communism and the military techs while trading for constitution/demo for an eventual US/FS/Eman/SP/FR set up.

and you're absolutely right about farms v cottages here. The vast majority of the cottages were up before getting my exploration/contact done, so I was proceeding on a false premise that would have been true at monarch; namely that I would have an insurmountable tech lead at 1000AD. While cottages for rushbuying in US aren't as efficient as a farm/ws/sp approach, they are more flexible. Live and learn.

And for settling the whole island earlier: you're right of course. It's my first serious lesson on emperor: that even when I don't have a big tech lead coming into liberalism, I shouldn't stop settling until there are no more spots! Again, lesson learned. Thanks for the input, i do appreciate it.

TMIT: the specialization thing here was a choice. At lower levels, with situations far less favorable to isolated economic development than this one (which is clearly extremely good with >20 coastal sites + glh) I have found that a late push on gpp is preferable to an early one as the need to bulb Gscientists is not great...another emperor level lesson for me. To that end, I was considering a NE/NP combo in the one inland city. Given the weakness in production, I might abandon that for a SP/WS town, and put the NE in the town at the far eastern spot (2 seafood, sugar, cant' remember the name) and work specialists rather than the sea. But the idea of a NE/NP is still appealing to me, as with my slow production of GPP, it will churn GSpies like no one's business, a nice thing when entering a warmongering end game. (part of the lack of a NE was also my complete abandonment of the aesthetics path early on)

When you say a "serious case for democracy" you're not suggesting doing that before rifling, are you? (assuming I go Communism>Rifling) I believe I will be able to trade for it by then, allowing me to reserve my research for military techs. I certainly want to grab US as soon as I can, but there is no way I am putting it ahead of communism, as I will get it one way or another after building the Kremlin.

And thanks for the input.

 

[Yxklyx]

On Prince, I generally build them ASAP mainly for espionage defense.

 

[Shurdus]

Courthouses are not too hot on espionage defense really. The amount of espionage points you generate only marginally helps thwarting enemy spies.

 

[Bezurn]

But they do let you slot a spy specialist, so that's another 4 EP 1 beaker. I typically run spys if there are a lot of AI's I want to keep tabs on in cities I don't plan to produce a great person in that city.

I build courthouses in cities further away from my core first. Typically my core will be my commerce / science area so I focus my hammers on improving those aspects there. Building the courthouses in further out cities lets the core cities make the best use of those hammers.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Courthouses usually complete my economic recovery from REX/invasion. Chop/whipping them in the furthest cities first and work the way back towards the capital. Usually I won't build them in the closest cities to the capital, though, since it's a lot of hammer investment with fairly low returns.

My economy is generally kicking ass after getting those courthouses up in the furthest cities.

As for the espionage: I gotta say that they are the earliest source of excess EP beyond devoting to it. In those early stages, I find that (unless starting up an EE) I want as much devoted to science as possiblr.

 

[Thor7]

I'm *horrible* at demonstration games.

I'll always go 'hmm, start was too good... not representative' or 'hmm, unusual blocking opportunities' or 'just a typical case of snatching the GLH and island city spam which isn't really the point' or 'does active choking with a phony war or two count?'
Given my glacial playing speed, this will take a while...

I'll look out if I get a good example though.

Isn't that kind of the point? You can't get all those cities on immortal+ without some sort of tactical advantage like blocks or choking

 

[Thor7]

I build courthouses asap in all my cities. After a granary, necessary border pop buildings (usually a library since it pops so much quicker than monument and can run scientists in low commerce towns), I build either a courthouse or a forge. It will depend on how many trees I can chop, what traits I am, how much food I have, if the city will be a production city, and if I have gold/silver/gems for extra happys from a forge.

 

[Tristan_C]

personally, never unless I'm Org, Deutsche, or dead-certain I won't be running SP. They have-- very suddenly-- flown up in all my cities before when I left SP and went corporate. That was an expensive and unusual transition.

 

[deathturnip]

This thread died over a month ago, and the resurrecting comment seemed rather underwhelming. That said, I might as well add my 2 .

Courthouses should be ignored outright if a library or some other modifier will have a greater effect. Unless I am mistaken, city maintenance is in gold, not commerce, so say you have a city producing 20 commerce and costing 5 gold, and you are at 80% science. 16 commerce go to science. a library would amplify it by 25%, which is 4 more beakers. courthouse would save 2.5 gold.
4>2.5
This does not take into account that courthouses are more expensive, but that is the method I generally use. Markets fit in pretty well too if your science slider has dropped really low.

 

[PieceOfMind]

This thread died over a month ago, and the resurrecting comment seemed rather underwhelming. That said, I might as well add my 2 .

Courthouses should be ignored outright if a library or some other modifier will have a greater effect. Unless I am mistaken, city maintenance is in gold, not commerce, so say you have a city producing 20 commerce and costing 5 gold, and you are at 80% science. 16 commerce go to science. a library would amplify it by 25%, which is 4 more beakers. courthouse would save 2.5 gold.
4>2.5
This does not take into account that courthouses are more expensive, but that is the method I generally use. Markets fit in pretty well too if your science slider has dropped really low.

It seems you implicitly assume that and have equal values. If one goes for a high commerce capital with science multipliers (seems to be all the rage these days) e.g. including an Academy, then in most cities other than the capital 1 is worth more than 1. This makes courthouses a little more attractive again, though they are still very expensive.