Why build an aqueduct...

[varus]

If a freshwater city would only get 2 extra housing, and you could put a much higher yield neighborhood in the same spot later, wasting fewer tiles?

Isn't it worth it to have a neighborhood instead? Or if you want both... just 2 neighborhoods? In other words, any time you would put an aqd in a freshwater city anywhere at all, couldn't you just put a neighborhood there later and be better off? +2 seems low.

Now, in cities away from water sure, the early housing boom is huge.
Thoughts?

 

[ShoGuL]

First: The bath is one of the best unique buildings in the game; +4 housing +1 amenity that early is incredible and I build it everywhere asap.

Second: Aqueducts seem only to be for non-freshwater cities. I try to place cities either on fresh water or 1 tile away (1 tile away from mountain is good too), since aqueduct then gives +6 (?) housing. That makes it a priority build.

It might be worth building an aqueduct if you have really high production and need the housing for another district, but short of that? Once you unlock neighborhoods, aqueducts are simply obsolete.

 

[Stacked_Deck]

Aqueducts are available way, way before neighborhoods. At a time where housing isn't that easy to come by and is probably the limit of your growth.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Aqueducts seem to actually give non-water +4 and coastal water cities +3

So a neighborhood is usually better, but aqueducts are available much earlier.(and ignore affinity)

 

[toptech]

Baths are awesome and should be built everywhere. Regular aqueducts in freshwater cities aren't worth taking up a tile for a mere +2 housing, unless it's a useless tile like desert or tundra

 

[Jarms48]

I only use aquaducts to make my workable tile area more reliable. If there's a unique luxury, or a needed strategic resource, just outside culture growth/tile purchase range I might place my city 1 tile away from a river and connect it via aquaduct. Other uses are if there's simply no rivers available for city expansions, placing cities 1 tile away from mountains is your next best bet. I don't always like placing cities next to lakes, because the lake tiles take away from land improvements, and district placement. I generally place 1 city 1 tile north away from a lake, and another city 1 tile south of the lake -- the same goes for the east and west -- to take control of as many tiles as possible, whilst making the least amount of overlap between the two cities. You can also use aquaducts to limit the amount of "bad" tiles in your workable area, if you only access to fresh water is oasis', or tundra rivers, placing the city 1 tile away (and closer to more favourable terrain) can be a good idea.

When planning this I'll generally send a builder with my settler and chop down forests to rush build the aquaduct. Obviously this tactic is best played when Rome.

 

[ddd123]

Early vs late... 1 2 more citizen early >>>>>> 4 5 late.

 

[Frank327]

On that note, has anyone ever felt the need to use monarchy + medieval walls combo for +2 housing? It helps with the housing situation well before urbanization and you could use the defensive tactics policy to get the walls twice as cheap.

I haven't personally because the AI has never been threatening enough in the midgame to use walls or a lot of military policy slots. It would just be kinda disappointing if monarchy and walls would be useless just because of the bad AI. But maybe it's useful?

 

[toptech]

I'd rather have +2 trade routes from merchant republic

 

[King Jason]

If housing were actually an issue I might consider it - but you can chop your way well beyond your housing cap and work non-growth tiles for maximum efficiency.

As it stands now, it is almost impossible to not always be at or near your housing cap in this game before neighborhoods come online - which means the only real purpose of food resources is to chop them once you hit your cap. This is true even if you build aqueducts, as you're quickly going to hit your cap and then growth is going to screech to a halt again.

I consistently run 3-5 pop over the housing limit, such that the building of aqueducts is virtually pointless; they would do literally nothing for the city. At this point, the only growth investments that are worth it are neighborhoods.

Now, one could argue that you could wait until you get your aqueducts online before you do your pop chops - something that I do with granaries, usually; but you're ultimately going to lose efficiency this way due to the time that you're building up the cities ability to reach a higher pop;

If you could go from pop 7 to pop 10 in say, 20 turns. Vs delaying growth until you've built your aqueduct, grown to pop 9 naturally, and then chop'd to pop 12, a process that would probably take at least twice as long if not longer... Well I'm going to take the extra 3 pop now, rather than wait a silly amount of time for a mere 2 extra population.

Now, if you couldn't grow beyond your housing cap via harvests - then sure, I'd seek out extra sources of housing. As it stands now, the only thing I use for housing is granaries and improvements. The game is usually just about over by the time I can actually build neighborhoods.

 

[Resipsa]

I'd rather have +2 trade routes from merchant republic

and the discount on gold purchasing

 

[Paramecium]

I have to agree, that an aquaduct in a city which is already located at a river or lake, makes not that much sense for just the 2 housing bonus. But in some circumstances it is still valuable, if you want to get the Eureka for construction f.e. and if you dont want to settle somewhere without water, because that city will normally be very slow in the early game. But the aquaduct also gives the adjacency bonus for districts, which is good as Japan and can be usefull for others too, because it doesnt count for the district limit and it can help a little bit excisting and future districts, f.e. the obligatory commercial hub, placed next the the city center and the aquaduct, it will get an extra +1 gold. Sure, it is not much, but it can help in the early game.

The aquaduct itself is probably most usefull for cities which will be planted somewhere, where no river is aviable and a mountain or lake give the opportunity to grab some important ressources. And yeah, adjacency bonus again, sure, the minor district bonues is not much, but over the course of the game, your bigger cities with 4+ districts will profit by it from less to more.

EDIT: Forgot to mension, that there are really few situations, where you want to settle one tile away from rivers, because the water mill is imo one of the strongest eary game buildings, no upkeep, +1f +1p and if there is wheat and rice, it is just getting better. So there have to be a strategic ressource or luxury, which you wouldnt get at any other way, to plant your city one tile away from the river or you cant place the city there because of to being to near to other cities.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Now, if you couldn't grow beyond your housing cap via harvests

Or simply have chop follow normal rules and give you only 25% of the nominal yield if you are at housing cap.

 

[Jarms48]

EDIT: Forgot to mension, that there are really few situations, where you want to settle one tile away from rivers, because the water mill is imo one of the strongest eary game buildings, no upkeep, +1f +1p and if there is wheat and rice, it is just getting better. So there have to be a strategic ressource or luxury, which you wouldnt get at any other way, to plant your city one tile away from the river or you cant place the city there because of to being to near to other cities.

This. Sometimes I feel like an Aqueduct should allow a city centre the ability to build a watermill. The aqueduct model (asset?) actually has what appears to be a watermill at the end of it, at least the ones on rivers do. The cost would just be additional production investment, and the loss of a workable tile. A good historical example of this would be the "Barbegal aqueduct and mill".

 

[Aenthin]

An aqueduct also counts as a district for adjacency bonuses, so you may wanna build that if you're lacking the population to build another specialty district and you're just lacking one more adjacent district. Also, two extra housing is still nice. albeit admittedly expensive as aqueducts also count towards the total number of districts you have in the empire, which increases the production costs of districts. It's definitely better for a non-river city.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

The aquaduct doesn't compete with neighborhood because neighborhoods come too late. Having said that, I'm quickly realizing that it doesn't always make sense to build them.

 

[elitetroops]

So far I've never built an aqueduct, not even for the eureka. The eureka comes at a time when there's far more important stuff to build and aqueducts are way too expensive for their very small benefit. So far there has always been enough rivers or lakes/oasis tiles around to settle cities mainly with fresh water. Might be a different situation on some other map scripts. The bath is a different story though. That one could certainly be worth the investment.

 

[GMMiller]

If my city is next to a river do I need an aqueduct?

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

Yeah I rarely ever build them - the cost seems to outweigh the benefit for me but I haven't really tested it thoroughly.

 

[joncnunn]

If my city is next to a river do I need an aqueduct?

It's usually not worth consuming an entire tile for only +2 housing capacity. Independent of that, it's probably cheaper to with the +2 charge civic enabled use four charges building farms than building the aqueduct to a city that already has fresh water.