Worst building

Wojciech_R

Chieftain
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Dec 15, 2015
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69
Hi,

I am wondering which building (not wonder) do you consider to be THE WORST, MOST USLESS building in the game.

I nominate Windmill
 
Bunkers, or air shelters, or however that thing is called.
I never build them in any version of Civ.
They are only relevant in border cities at war times, but by the time they are finished, the respective city isn`t a border city any more
 
Windmill is good, gives a GE specialist.

Things like the Mint, Forge or Stable only benefit certain locations so are useless in a lot of cases. Also coastal building if you have no use for them.

The financial ones (Market, Bank, etc.) tend to be low priority as I don't put much emphasis on GMs.
 
Windmill is good, gives a GE specialist.
Although not quite useless, I definitely wouldn't call Windmills "good". Someone on this forum once did the math & demonstrated that the +production effect of Windmills rarely pays off; the hammers you save from the building's effect are often cancelled out by the rather large number of hammers you need to spend to build the Windmill. So the real benefit to Windmills is the extra GE slot. That's a lot of hammers to spend for an extra GE slot.

Ideally, your cities should be founded on a hill instead. You get +1 hammer from the very beginning, plus you get a large defensive bonus.

Things like the Mint, Forge or Stable only benefit certain locations so are useless in a lot of cases.
That doesn't mean their useless. It just means they're situational. And when you *can* build those buildings, they tend to be pretty phenomenal. Well, Mints are phenomenal, Stables are usually pretty good, and Forges can be useful in certain situations.

The financial ones (Market, Bank, etc.) tend to be low priority as I don't put much emphasis on GMs.
You shouldn't build financial buildings for the GM slot. In fact, you should avoid filling that slot most of the time, since GMs are much worse than GEs or GSs for most civs. (Venice and possibly Austria are the two exceptions.)

Instead, the financial buildings are built because they generate money... something which is always useful. I usually consider financial buildings medium priority, but the exact circumstances of the game can change their priority for me.


As for the OP's question, I think Caravanserai are probably the most useless buildings. I don't think I've ever built them. Granted, there are a bunch of late game buildings (such as the air bunkers that Der_Zorn_gottes mentioned) that are even more useless, but the Caravanserai bug me a lot more since they're available much earlier and I spend the entire game queuing up practically every building in all my cities *except* the Caravanserais.
 
Windmill is good when you have the gold to rush it and the production for it is used for building wonders which you can't buy. The additional engineer slot is also good for freedom which you should work once you have universal suffrage.

All gold buildings are good especially when you play freedom also. The 2nd and 3rd stage of as well as mint produce happiness. They are also crucial if you plan to play domination.

Yeah, caravansary is pretty useless most of the time. The only time they are useful is if you have a landlocked city that can't reach some AI that's too far away for TR.

I would also say buildings such as constabulary/police station are useless most of the time unless you really wanted the National Intelligence Agency.
 
Although not quite useless, I definitely wouldn't call Windmills "good". Someone on this forum once did the math & demonstrated that the +production effect of Windmills rarely pays off; the hammers you save from the building's effect are often cancelled out by the rather large number of hammers you need to spend to build the Windmill. So the real benefit to Windmills is the extra GE slot. That's a lot of hammers to spend for an extra GE slot.

Ideally, your cities should be founded on a hill instead. You get +1 hammer from the very beginning, plus you get a large defensive bonus.
True, although (rightly or wrongly) I value GEs highly so like that bonus. If I can't settle on a hill, the Windmill is a building I like to go after as soon as it's available.

That doesn't mean their useless. It just means they're situational. And when you *can* build those buildings, they tend to be pretty phenomenal. Well, Mints are phenomenal, Stables are usually pretty good, and Forges can be useful in certain situations.
Yeah I get that, that's why I said they're useless in a lot of cases based on your location. Perhaps the word 'useless' is a little harsh, but if you don't have gold/silver or pastures, a Mint or Stable is a lot less attractive.

You shouldn't build financial buildings for the GM slot. In fact, you should avoid filling that slot most of the time, since GMs are much worse than GEs or GSs for most civs. (Venice and possibly Austria are the two exceptions.)

Instead, the financial buildings are built because they generate money... something which is always useful. I usually consider financial buildings medium priority, but the exact circumstances of the game can change their priority for me.
I do avoid filling the GM slots, which is why, at the point in the game that I start chasing GS or GE slots, the financial buildings always slip down the priory list. Money is nice though :D

As for the OP's question, I think Caravanserai are probably the most useless buildings. I don't think I've ever built them. Granted, there are a bunch of late game buildings (such as the air bunkers that Der_Zorn_gottes mentioned) that are even more useless, but the Caravanserai bug me a lot more since they're available much earlier and I spend the entire game queuing up practically every building in all my cities *except* the Caravanserais.
Doesn't that depend on a style of play though? A game as Venice, where you can have ten trade routes by the Medievil era and one of your only advantages to exploit is a reliance on trade routes, would greatly benefit from one.

I guess they're just as situational as all the others mentioned, so as usual unless you play one type of game on one type of map every time there probably isn't a definitive answer.
 
I guess they're just as situational as all the others mentioned, so as usual unless you play one type of game on one type of map every time there probably isn't a definitive answer.

I think this is the best answer. It would be poor development if you had to build everything. Civ is not meant to be sim city.
Having situational buildings is great is gives you more choice to pursue certain strategies etc.

That said I think the worst buildings are

Caravansary - It's a lot of hammers at a time in the game when you really need to be building more important things. It's not bad for what it does, but there are always better things I could think of to build. Later in the game when you can afford the time to build this, you probably won't notice the extra gold that much or even be using caravans for external gold.

You'd only ever build it early if you had a reason to send a lot of land routes (i.e. a landlocked capital on a river). That said it would be good for Arabia to get even longer distance trade routes.

Police Station - Very expensive but I guess if you were leading in certain technologies (i.e. space victory, culture victory or military victory) you might want one of these in your top 1 or 2 science cities.

Medical Lab - Great population bonuses but really too late to make that much of a difference to the outcome of a game - as usually a games outcome is already decided. It's something you tend to build if you're ahead of the crowd and don't need to build anything else.

Harbor - Necessary for city connections and provides a small gold boost to trade routes from your main trading port and longer trade routes. However most of the time you'll build this to get access to the seaport as you have limited numbers of cargo ships. Generally speaking the Harbor is pretty lacklustre after the BNW changes - it has a much more focused role. Usually you only send external cargo ships from 1 city (mostly the capital) so you want a harbor there and on any cities on different continents.

Forge - It has a bonus to unit production and a small bonus to iron but iron very rarely clumps so usually it's only 1 extra production per forge. It takes a few turns to build this and it doesn't really feel like it makes an obvious difference. I wouldn't really notice it if it wasn't there. For instance if I was playing Rome to do a Legion rush the 120 hammer cost probably wouldn't be covered until I could build more than 10 legions. Again it feels like something that doesn't really add much value.

Bomb Shelter - Yeah its pretty useless but I guess if information era games lasted longer than it might be useful in certain circumstances. That said if an AI is able to nuke your cities by turn 300 then you've probably done something wrong to start with.

Stadium - a lot of hammers for a small amount of happiness. Generally you shouldn't need this

Arsenal/Military Base - While these are maintenance free usually they don't add any real value unless you find yourself neighbors with a much more powerful civ that wants to kill you. For 500 hammers I could build a rocket artillery and have 75 hammers left over. The rocket artillery would have much more defensive value.
 
Windmill gives you specialist slot, but this building is so out of place, so ridiculus, so illogical, ahistorical, etc that I simply hate it:)

% bonus to bulding construction? From WIND MILL? Available in Economics? Not on hills - hey? Don't we have BEST WIND on hills?

Since you rarely build it I do no suppose that it is required for balance (like National College for example - another brilliant idea).

What there were smoking in Firaxis when they were deigining this building?:)
 
Windmill gives you specialist slot, but this building is so out of place, so ridiculus, so illogical, ahistorical, etc that I simply hate it:)

% bonus to bulding construction? From WIND MILL? Available in Economics? Not on hills - hey? Don't we have BEST WIND on hills?

Since you rarely build it I do no suppose that it is required for balance (like National College for example - another brilliant idea).

What there were smoking in Firaxis when they were deigining this building?:)

Yes it is peculiar, there are times though when a Windmill specialist is handy. If you are playing Order for a science victory you will need some late game engineers and the extra specialist will be useful.
 
Windmill is good when you have the gold to rush it and the production for it is used for building wonders which you can't buy. The additional engineer slot is also good for freedom which you should work once you have universal suffrage.
The Windmill bonus doesn't affect Wonder construction. (I just double checked this in-game.) So.. yeah. It's just a bonus to build *buildings*. And given where it appears in the tech tree, there usually aren't that many buildings left to build.

Yeah I get that, that's why I said they're useless in a lot of cases based on your location. Perhaps the word 'useless' is a little harsh, but if you don't have gold/silver or pastures, a Mint or Stable is a lot less attractive.
Well, if you don't have gold/silver or pastures, the situational buildings don't even appear in the build queue.



Doesn't that depend on a style of play though? A game as Venice, where you can have ten trade routes by the Medievil era and one of your only advantages to exploit is a reliance on trade routes, would greatly benefit from one.
Not really. Venice has a coastal bias, so they almost always have mostly cargo ships. And for any other civ, I always end up building a coastal city at *some* point, at which time I start sending cargo ships from it if I want external money-generating trade routes.

I guess if you were to play a mostly landlocked map (e.g. Boreal), then Venice would probably want a Caravanserai. But since I don't ever play those kinds of specialized maps.... *shrug*.
 
Medical Lab - Great population bonuses but really too late to make that much of a difference to the outcome of a game - as usually a games outcome is already decided. It's something you tend to build if you're ahead of the crowd and don't need to build anything else.
Yeah... this is a building that I really, really want to like, but it never seems useful in practice. When I get the tech for it, my established core cities usually have enough population that a +growth bonus doesn't really help them anymore. And for non-core cities (e.g. Annexed cities or whatever), I usually don't care that much about population.... they're there for some other reason. (i.e. For a resource, or as a stepping stone in my conquests, or what-have-you.)


Forge - It has a bonus to unit production and a small bonus to iron but iron very rarely clumps so usually it's only 1 extra production per forge. It takes a few turns to build this and it doesn't really feel like it makes an obvious difference. I wouldn't really notice it if it wasn't there. For instance if I was playing Rome to do a Legion rush the 120 hammer cost probably wouldn't be covered until I could build more than 10 legions. Again it feels like something that doesn't really add much value.
I've found one situation where forges are pretty useful: when I need to churn out archaeologists for a cultural victory. Given how expensive archaeologists are, the savings the forge gives me when building them more than makes up for the cost of the forge.
 
...which building do you consider to be THE WORST, MOST USLESS building in the game?
If we only picking one, it has to be caravansary. Bonus because puppet governor always builds it!

At least it has no maintenance, but clearly the caravansary is of less general utility than the windmill, and a more pointless use of hammers. Worse case, a windmill will earn back some of its hammers. Outside of one single city, hammers spend building a caravansary are totally wasted. It is kind of sad that the only building BNW added is so very weak.

This question would be more interesting if it were more general, but people are answering in that spirit anyway.

That said, even though my games go long, I hardly ever build Hospitals. I never build Medical Labs. It always seems like there are more important buildings available, or that I need more units. Am I missing something significant?

Yes, I will almost always build one caravansary and zero Medical Labs. I still think caravansary is the worst building -- because of how it distracts Puppet cities for several turns. Caravansary is the only build that is a net loss.
 
I only build hospitals/medical labs if I play freedom AND want to max population for score. Especially Medical labs comes too late for any game where I want to win fast.
 
Some of the late game buildings come, as the name say, too late to make a difference (medical labs specially). But i'm gonna jump on the intelligence building landwagon, I've never once built a National Intelligence Agency (is this what it is called?), despite really wanting the extra spy, just because I've never managed to find the space in my building queues to build a single constabulary, much less building them in every city, much less building every subsequent building.
 
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Buildings_(Civ5) I had to look through the whole list, Caravansary I think wins because the time wasted in the early game building it cannot be regained. After it, its a tie between constabulary and Police station. Its not that the buildings suck, its just that there are better things to build. Everything else gets a pass, and also how accurate is that list? I always wonder about the wikia site...
 
As with most threads here this has exposed how bad I am at this game, I always build the caravansary. I just assumed that as it gave extra gold it would pay back what it costs and then some, plus I always play on huge map so the extra range always helps fill trade route slots.
 
I love the NIA. Some games it gets skipped, but mostly I build it very late. The extra spy is just too useful for Freedom trade routes or as a diplomat (even absent pursing a diplo VC).

I always build the caravansary. I just assumed that as it gave extra gold it would pay back what it costs and then some, plus I always play on huge map so the extra range always helps fill trade route slots.
Yes, but do you build more than one of them? It does what you say, so not that bad really. If caravansary were not so distracting to the puppet governor, I would rate medical labs as being the worse. Medical labs are so useless that I would not miss if they were removed from the game. The availability of caravansary ends up being a net loss -- even though I might build one.
 
Medical labs are so useless that I would not miss if they were removed from the game. The availability of caravansary ends up being a net loss -- even though I might build one.

What makes you think Medical Labs are so useless? They nearly double the growth rate of the city, just like Aqueducts. Sure, they don't have the time to make the difference that Aqueducts do, but it can still probably make a 2-3 population difference per city if you build it (cities would grow every 6 turns rather than every 10 turns, roughly). More importantly, what else are you building at that point in the game in your best cities? Extra military units that aren't needed?
 
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