when to build granary/pyramid?

[effb]

Hi, I've played 4 or 5 games and sort of winged it in the start. Due to chieftain/warlord, I usually did ok regardless of starting strategy. But I am moving to Regent and focusing a lot more on fine tuning the first few thousand years (which go by really fast).

One thing that strikes me as extremely important is granaries because they effectively double your city growth rate. Also the Great Pyramid which places a granary everywhere. I don't think the AI cares much about granaries on the difficulty levels I played on, and his cities usually grow very slowly (yet he can keep up with culture/tech/military just fine)

My tendency is to build granaries in the first few cities (for the immediate growth increase) and then go for the pyramid ASAP so I don't have to build granaries in every other city individually. When is a good time to do this? Obviously, building the pyramid ties up a city for 40-50 turns, granaries 10-20 turns, which are significant time investments early on. I don't want to stunt my early growth (founding new cities) by focusing on these too early, so does anyone have a good way of going about it?

Am I even on the right track by putting a lot of emphasis on granaries?

 

[DaveMcW]

Granaries can be good, but don't overdo it. You need +4 food per turn in a city before a granary really pays off.

The Pyramids is great, but paying 400 shields that early in the game really hurts. It is usually more efficient to spend 400 shields on an army and take them by force.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Yes, it's a difficult question. A granary (60 shields) does double your effective food production but so does having two cities (a settler is 30 shields). If you look at some of the great expansion tactics like Aeson's settler flood you can expand quicker without granaries, and perhaps hope to get pyramids with a great leader on the way or by capturing it along the way. I tend to build granaries only in cities that can produce 5 extra food per turn now, they can usually produce a settler every four turns and this situation occurs alot more frequently that people think, especially if you place cities to take advantage of the terrain. Once you spread out beyond the Optimal City Number for the map, produce warriors and workers that can build roads back to the capitol and then add the workers into productive cities to produce powerhouses of production for your war machine or science or culture centers.

Some maps do offer more potential than others so you have to play the map and adjust accordingly.

 

[Bamspeedy]

If you are going to build the Pyramids, then you probably don't need to build any granaries or just maybe 1. You don't want to have a city buid a granary only to get a free granary 20 turns later.

Tiny and small maps you probably won't need to build granaries very early in the game anyways and the Pyramids loses its value somewhat. On larger maps then the Pyramids is a great investment if you start on a good sized chunk of land.

If going for the pyramids, I'd probably only build a granary in my settler/worker factories. Have a city build a temple then start right in on the Pyramids. If the city is producing at least +2 food/turn and has good tiles (like alot of bonus grassland and is on a river) it usually grows fast enough to beat the AI to the Pyramids on Regent. Have other cities build warriors that can be sent to this city for military police. And if you run out of room to expand (or to just build the pyramids faster) than other cities can build workers to join the wonder building city to speed up it's growth. By joining workers to the city (and making sure the tiles are improved) I can usually complete the Pyramids in 30 turns or less.

 

[bpowder89]

i usually go for the pyramids as soon as i can. after producing maybe 2 settlers with defenders also i will switch my capital to the pyramids. that way those 2 cities can take over the production of settlers while the main city builds the pyramids.

the only thing is the other 2 cities gotta have at least one steady tile for food production or u'll stop making settlers altogether. a cattle or wheat helps.