why do pyramids give granaries???

[farting bob]

why do the pyramids give granaries in all cities on the same continant??? a pyramid is a large tomb / monument to egyptian pharoahs. no food was stored in them for later use as they wodl in a granary. i think a better idea woudl be for it to increase the chance of Great leadrs, since the tombs inspired those in power that they can do well, and if not, there's a nice afterworld.
hey, it's better than granaies in cities all over the continant isnt it?
what other ideas can you great marvelous peopel think of for pyramids that is more historically accurate compared to granaries??

 

[Moonsinger]

Because it did take a lot of food to feed the army of pyramid workers. During the construction cycle, I'm sure there were countless granaries near by that were filled. Therefore, it is related to the granary and the food in way.

 

[farting bob]

but they woudl only have been during the build and you dont need extra food to buidl anythign in civ. anyway, once they were built and occupied, there woudl be very few peopel there if any at times, so you wodl prob only need 1 granary, and that woudl be local, not nationwide.

 

[Gengis Khan]

Originally posted by farting bob
i think a better idea woudl be for it to increase the chance of Great leadrs, since the tombs inspired those in power that they can do well, and if not, there's a nice afterworld.

I think that might be a little too powerful for an ancient tech that you can normally build after 10-20 turns.

While the granerys aren't the most realistic use for the Pyramids it does balance out quite well.

 

[budweiser]

The egyptians used to make slaves make lots of bricks out of clay and straw. Because they know construction, I guess thay can make lots of granaries out of the extra bricks left over from making the Pyramids and use them to store the extra food from the nile flood plains.

As for your question, and the fact that eqypt are religious, I think it should give a happiness bonus like bach's or sistine chapel, or a commerce bouns like colossus because people would travel far to see it.

 

[anarres]

Egypt came up with the idea of granaries in the first place. They stored the food in the plentiful seasons to carry them through the hard times. They also started the domestication process of Cats for us, to guard their granaries...

If I had a civilisation in Egypt 4000 years ago I would probably build the Pyramids to keep my people busy. After all, what's to do in a desert when the harvest is in the granaries and you have time to kill?

 

[Tassadar]

I think its because they have found some wheat seed into pyramid and they were good. So it look like a good place to store seed for food later.

 

[The Last Conformist]

It just might be a reference to the medieval legend that the Pyramids were the granaries Joseph ordered built to store grain in preparation for the seven lean years.

 

[Wazell]

Building the Pyramids in Civ2 and 3 represents a society not unlike ancient Egypt, a society that has tendency to build lots of big stuff of rock, not only pyramids but great temples, palaces, obelisks and so on. To build all this a civilization needs continuously lots of workers who in turn need lots of food. So it's reasonable to think that if a civ can achieve this, then they must already have granaries everywhere to support themselves.

Bit of backward thinking, no? One popular theory is that Egyptians built so much monumental buildings only to keep workers away from causing trouble during the annual Nile flood, when peasants had nothing better to do. This was beneficial in keeping Egypt stable and unified nation for so long, and population growth was also stable, like in Civ with granaries in every city.

 

[Hermes]

Well actually there were lots of people around when the pyramids were finished. Due to the whole concept of temple economy where offerings where made on hourly basis and supported a big staff of priests which in turn needed people to keep the daily lives going, cleaners, cooks and so on. And also the temples played the primary part in redistribution of grain to the people, payed workers their wages in grain etc. So the religious monuments was the driving force of the economy, which means grain-economy at this point. In this way it makes perfectly sense that building pyramids increases the abundance of food - as the pyramids represents a major orginizational change for the benefit of the control with the economy.

BTW to say that the egyptians came up with the granaries is a bit far fetched. As storage facilities was a major condition in the whole process of the agricultural revolution, of which the earliest known examples are in the fertile crescent in todays israel/jordan/syria/turkey/iraq.

 

[barron of ideas]

In Civ I, the pyramids let you move from one government to another with no waiting period, and could move to ones you hadn't researched yet.

I beilieve Firaxis decided that was too powerful an attribute (moving to democracy at 3000 bc if you got a great leader and built the pyramide) so they probably spent about 10 seconds and said, ok lets give a granary in every city on the same continent. I doubt they worked out a reason for the wonder to work that way.

When you are in a hurry, you take shortcuts. Could just have easily been a temple in every city, weren't the pharoh's gods?

 

[Krayzeenbk]

Originally posted by farting bob
but they woudl only have been during the build and you dont need extra food to buidl anythign in civ. anyway, once they were built and occupied, there woudl be very few peopel there if any at times, so you wodl prob only need 1 granary, and that woudl be local, not nationwide.

Most of the Egyptian pyramids took a pharaoh's entire lifetime (or rather period on the throne) to build. So by the time they were completed, the pharaoh would be nearly dead, and when he died, the next pharaoh started his pyramid. Pyramids were being constructed almost constantly during Egypt's most prosperous periods.

Several pyramids were not finished because the next pharaoh in line had better things to do than finish his predecessor's tomb (meaning, build his own tomb of course ).

There were also numerous other kinds of monuments, temples, and tombs that workers had to build and maintain. Egypt's population was almost always busy building something huge when not reaping the harvest.

Of course, workers require food - even in Civ 3. To produce shields, you need population, to have population, you need food.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by barron of ideas
In Civ I, the pyramids let you move from one government to another with no waiting period, and could move to ones you hadn't researched yet.
I beilieve Firaxis decided that was too powerful an attribute (moving to democracy at 3000 bc if you got a great leader and built the pyramide) so they probably spent about 10 seconds and said, ok lets give a granary in every city on the same continent. I doubt they worked out a reason for the wonder to work that way.
When you are in a hurry, you take shortcuts. Could just have easily been a temple in every city, weren't the pharoh's gods?

A (free) temple in every city?

I guess that's a (free) cultural victory (or free domination by flipping), no?

o I'm glad they didn't just spend 9 seconds about it. The free granary sounds about the most reasonable effect from an early ancient wonder (and yeah, for traditional civ reasons, you would enable it with masonry and that's traditonally an early tech).

I agree that the Pyramids were too powerful in civI. Btw: my atari version had a very bad habit of possibly crashing during anarchy - so I would go for Pyramids to minimize anarchy turns anyway, 'cause floppy save/load was as much fun as... ... waiting for your dentist to pull a wisdom tooth (that doesn't want to leave your mouth).


Maybe they changed the anarchy/free gov choice thing because it's even harder to explain that effect. So Egypt was famous for running a communist government once in a while in the ancient - w/o knowing anything about it.
Although... no.

Granaries. The most logical and easiest to explain.

The Grillopolis Tribune: "Attila says sorry for mis-understandings.
"Latest We-Love-That-Wonder results."

 

[troytheface]

becuase they were homes for the dead and since the kings were all big fat lazy pigs all that extra food gets to go to the people, or how about, because they had such tiny actual space it was a trick so robbers would go and loot very little while the real stuff was hidden in like wooden boxes under the sand...or how about , since tons of slaves died building the things there was alot of extra grain around ,...or how about....

 

[farting bob]

so there wera lot fo workers that needed feeding. isnt that true for great wall as well, maybe more so?
just givign granarys to all cities because it is conveinient is not what civ3 shodul be about. it should have buildings, wonders and units thatare histoicially accurate, and then you try to use them to recreate your own version of the last 6000 years. not, what woudl be nice to give with these pyramids then?

 

[Pirate]

It's an early wonder that allows faster expansion in that critical time early in the game when cities are small and food is crucial. Forget about the specifics. The overall effect is that a civ with the Pyramids will grow faster, more prosperous, and more glorious while the civs without it will be wasting resources on basic farming (i.e. building granaries). This is how ancient Egypt must have looked to its contemporaries, no?
Its importance in gameplay is well reasoned, but I agree there could be a more relevant wonder. Perhaps the Ifugao Rice Terraces in the Philippines?
http://www.philtravel.net/wiz_destriceterraces.htm

 

[farting bob]

they do look good for a granary / food related wonder, coudl be added to civ4 and fit in well.

 

[Grille]

Yep, they might fit to a food related wonder.
But what should the Pyramids have as an effect (that's not too far off the ground)?

I mean you couldn't just leave the Pyramids away and then talk about whatsoever great number of game-included "Great Wonders".

 

[barron of ideas]

Maybe the pyramids should do in the game what they do now, increase the tourist trade? Give a (small?) bonus to commerce?

 

[Grille]

I would agree on that (wouldn't mind the Collossus to have the same effect at the same time).

However, maybe the commerce bonus is as difficult to explain as the granary benfit (but not the biggest problem IMHO). I think the "tourism industry" that existed before 1800ad or so was more forcing people to travel somewhere than on a voluntary base.

Hmm, talking about slavery: when the Pyramids were made by slaves (or many workers at least) how about associating the Pyramids with workers? Increase working speed by x (expires with democracy? - maybe native workers or slaves only?), free upkeep for (a certain?) number of native workers or something like that.

Or in a religious context: maybe the temples won't need upkeep anymore with Pyramids (would be better than free temples I think)?