Anybody build colosseums?

[Kekkonen]

I've been wondering what the point of colosseums is in Civ4. I don't remember ever building one. Theaters already give you happiness in return to investing in culture, and they produce culture themselves. Colosseums produce no culture and give you that one measly default happy face.

I've never been in a situation where that one happy face is important enough to justify building a colosseum; when cities get seriously big, I've always had enough luxury resources to keep the populace in check, especially are so many buildings whose side effect is doubling the effect of said luxuries.

[Adagio]

Sometimes I do, in the rare occasions when I don't have enough luxuries to keep all my cities happy, and only in the largest cities

[Blake]

The Colosseum now (In Warlords 2.08) costs the same as a temple - both provide +1 happy, the temple provides +1culture, the Colosseum provides +1 happy for every 20%.
(the temple requires religion, Colosseum doesn't but you can only build 1).

A theatre is a bit cheaper but provides no base happiness - only +1 with Dye and then +1 per 10%.

Now basically, if you build Temples you should build Colosseum's. I build temples all the time and colos too.
I rarely find I have enough happiness...
It depends on the difficulty level of course, those buildings are far more essential at higher difficulties.

[rah]

Agreed, as the level increases, you sometimes need anything you can get for happiness. Fortunately by the time a city really needs this less than optimal building, it's large enough that it doesn't take long to produce.

[Crossfire]

Besides, it keeps one more worker working when you are in a prolonged war and need happiness the most.

[MasterDave]

If a colosseum allowed you to create specialists (perhaps an artist or a merchant?) then they would be useful. As they are now, I only build them when I lack luxuries or am having a happiness cirisis (such as a never-ending war with Snotty or something).

[Virdrago]

Maybe they can be modded so when they are built you can choose to "delete" a religion in that city...

Just a thought.

[rjmatsleepers]

It has never occurred to me not to build a colosseum in a city that I want to grow and that has hit it's hapiness limit. The cost to my research of increasing culture seems too high - I've never done the sums, so perhaps this is a mistake.

It's also never occurred to not to build temples either - this may be a hangover from Civ2, but also there is the academy/pagoda/cathedral angle

Theatres are useful, particularly since I like to have the Globe in my SSC, but I assumed they did nothing for hapiness if culture is set at 0%.

RJM

[Arrian]

Absolutely, I build them. I don't usually prioritize them, but I will get around to building them. More happy = good. More time until war weariness starts to really hurt you

-Arrian

[joncnunn]

Cols are usually on my build list; but on the low side unless there's happiness issues. Every +1 happy helps in the event of War Werrious

Now I think Creative makes them double speed, which moves them up the happiness queue when playing them.

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, it is a low priority improvement - they could do to be beefed up a bit more...

[Addled Platypus]

more so when I plan a prolonged war

[frenzyfol]

Historically, holding games in a city usually cost vast amounts of gold.
Maybe you could increase the amount of happy's that a Colosseum produced by a slider, each time you bumped it up it would cost more gold per turn to hold games in that city.

Adding a mechanic to automate this would be essential.
A button that automatically holds games when people become unhappy.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by frenzyfol
Maybe you could increase the amount of happy's that a Colosseum produced by a slider, each time you bumped it up it would cost more gold per turn to hold games in that city.

Isn't there already such slider in the game? The higher the culture slider is, the more happiness the Colosseum gives

[rah]

Wasn't the extra happiness based on culture added in Warlords? If not, I guess I just never noticed it at first.