When Do You Build Windmills?

[glory7]

just don't build windmill, unless you don't have anything else to build.

 

[Deau]

The consensus seems to be that they aren't worth building all the time, they mostly useful for their specialist slot, but there are so many more things that are worth building / rushing before them.

One interesting piece of math is that the 10% building bonus pays off after constructing buildings that would take (roughly) 9 times as long as the windmill. So if the windmill took 8 turns to construct and you spend the next 72 turns after that constructing buildings then you will have covered the initial cost of the windmill with the 10% bonus, leaving everything else as profit.

Note that this does not factor in the static hammer bonus that the windmill gives or that the 10% bonus will be providing more hammers as the number of tiles worked by the city increased (both of which would lower the number of turns required to turn a profit). It also doesn't factor in any benefit you might gain from the specialist slot and does not factor in the cost of the ongoing maintenance on the windmill.

TL;DR: Due to the 10% production bonus the number of turns until a hard-build windmill or workshop pays for itself are somewhat proportional to the number of turns it took to construct it. The multiple of turns is x9 assuming no city growth and ignoring the static hammers provided by the building, making the actual ratio certainly under x8 but probably not less than x5.

Not quite correct math since the bonus is additive with other % scale so at best you are looking at 13/12 instead of 11/10. If you have RC or play Rome or use piety trick or spend much time with nuc or sol plants etc, the ratio gets even worse

 

[Ninakoru]

By design is an horrible building. The restriction is stupid, a GP slot building should not be restricted by terrain. There's also no improvement compared to a workshop, witch is better, and its cost is more than double.

I rarely ever build it, maybe if my tech path leaves some cities with nothing to build at some moment, or if the city has a horrible production available and if I can purchase it.

They should boost the building production so is there some improvement, +3 production would be nice and fitting (workshop 2, factory 4), and maybe 15% to buildings or 10% to everything. Also I would remove the hills restriction, or move the GE slot to another production building.

To start getting a benefit, you have to spend about 2k production in buildings, not counting the windmill maintenance and the fact that those buildings will come later and thus give less benefit over the time.

 

[stoz]

Not quite correct math since the bonus is additive with other % scale so at best you are looking at 13/12 instead of 11/10. If you have RC or play Rome or use piety trick or spend much time with nuc or sol plants etc, the ratio gets even worse

You are right that the math comes out worse when you already have other multipliers involved. All in all, I agree that the windmill seems well below the power curve and could probably use a modest buff.

In my current game I'm playing fairly wide. I rushed the windmill in my cap because I am spamming tourism wonders there but I doubt I will build it in any other cities. The payoffs from other buildings are too great to delay them for the windmill. If you wait until you've built all of your important buildings and then build the windmill, the 10% production bonus is either lost (because you're not constructing buildings) or it's wasted on unimportant buildings that you don't really care about.

 

[peddroelm]

I tend to play tall economic heavy - discount rush buy heavy games ... Windmill becomes available in a time I'm almost always low on cash with lots of more important buildings to rush/build ..Still I always try to scrape a few to buy it where is available (eventually)... (I tend to play long games - usually past T280 so it has more time to return the investment especially since late game I will spend the gold on units and free the hammers for buildings and the eventual wonder)

And also there are those rare games when I have a mega production capital that can build it in like 4-5 turns ...

 

[kb27787]

There does come a time when your size 50 cap (running out of slots and tiles to work) is waiting for that CV to happen eventually and you can build it in 2-3 turns just for that extra slot.

But otherwise even when I wonderhog the +10% is to buildings and not wonders (if I understand correctly) and +2 production is rather meh... the extra slot is OK but only when you run out of mines to work...

 

[neilkaz]

Patches from the days of vanilla to now have enhanced most of the previously overpriced and underpowered buildings, but LOL..Windmills receive no love!

Sickening that they do less than Workshops and cost twice as much and can't be built on hills. In RL they want to be on hills since this wind is stronger.

I hope it isn't too late for the patch to make them the same cost and usefullness as Workshops.

.. neilkaz ..