Harbour or Courthouse for small coast city?

[frenzyfol]

I'm sure I already posted this but returned this morning and could not find the thread, so apologies if this thread is mirrored elsewhere.

This question is about small coastal financial cities.
After building a granary and a lighthouse I usually find myself tossing up between a Harbour or a Courthouse.
These cities are usually between size 4-6 and have 2-3 trade routes each bringing in 1 commerce coin.

Ive noticed that with harbours you don't really get any increase in trade if each trade route is only 1 commerce.
Unlike courthouses and maintenance commerce multipliers don't fractionalise (is that a word?).
So where a courthouse might decrease maintenance from 5 to 2.5 a harbour does not increase trade from 1 to 1.5 it will only ever do 2 to 3.

So should I wait until each trade route is bringing in 2 commerce before building a harbour? Or is there something I'm missing?

Thanks

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Maybe it's something I'm missing, but I seldom build harbours unless/until

- there are health problems a harbour would solve
- I've already built all the other buildings that improve science/cash (library, market, university, etc)

Generally I'll build a courthouse if the city is costing me 6 or more gold a turn. That's almost always the case before a harbour is worth building.

[frenzyfol]

Harbours 50% on trade route yeild.

Trade route yeild is base commerse and is affected by all multipliers. Thats why harbours can be powerful.
Expecially if u add that to anything that increases trade route numbers (Economics, Castle, Great Lighthouse etc)

[Dis]

for some reason I find I end up researching harbours later, so it's not a big deal. And in the beginning I'm doing too much pop rushing to really have large cities.

I'd imagine harbours really pay off when your cities start getting large. I'm not sure what the cutoff is. Maybe size 7 or higher.

courthouses I build as a matter of habit. One in every city, regardless of size. Though new, and conquered cities get other improvements first. new cities get graneries first. conquered cities get a library and theatre (and maybe a temple), then a courthouse- depending on how bad my income situation is.

[couerdelion]

If you're still in the "whipping" phase then Forges might be useful earlier as a generic build.

Certainly a library would more than likely trump a harbour. As for Courthouses, it depends how high your maintenance costs are. With a financial civ, I'd guess it would need to be 8+ before a Courthouse would better than a Library

[Swiss Pauli]

Yeah, Library is better than both of those, as CdL wrote.

As to Harbour vs Courthouse, this is quite an easy piece of maths: is trade route income x 50% better than maintenance divided by two? Assuming you're whipping then Harbour will often better, as lowering the pop lowers the maintenance cost.

[Quillan]

The harbor does not give, strictly speaking, a 50% increase in trade route yields. What it does is apparently give a 50% increase in the "worth" of the city for determining which trade routes connect to it. That's mainly based on city size; a size 12 city with a harbor is roughly equivalent to a size 18 city without, but I'm sure there are other factors that figure in.

Since you're dealing with mainly fishing villages - small settlements that never get very big - , they will never be large enough and valuable enough to get decent trade routes. So the harbor isn't very good for increasing commerce. Depending on circumstances, it might help with health, because it does give +1 health for the seafood resources.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Quillan
Since you're dealing with mainly fishing villages - small settlements that never get very big - , they will never be large enough and valuable enough to get decent trade routes.

Huh?
You can build some powerful trade centers on the seashore.

[rah]

I usually build court houses too early. But it's nice to have them in place when you start expanding later.

And Unless I'm doing a SEA trading focused strat, I usually use them for health, but starting to learn how to appreciate them more.

[Jaybe]

Whether a courthouse or a harbor, the value of the 'building' increases with the size of the city. Even number of cities maintenance will increase with city size.

If your main concern is your gold balance, build a courthouse. If research (assuming that is where the focus of the spending slider is), build a harbor.

[Quillan]

Originally posted by Ming


Huh?
You can build some powerful trade centers on the seashore.

Yes, you can, but the original poster wasn't talking about powerful trade centers. He was talking about size 4-6 cities and whether a harbor or courthouse was more useful. A size 20 seaport with a harbor will have loads of 10-13 per turn trade routes. The size 4 will likely have trade routes worth 2 or perhaps 3.

[frenzyfol]

Originally posted by Quillan
The harbor does not give, strictly speaking, a 50% increase in trade route yields. What it does is apparently give a 50% increase in the "worth" of the city for determining which trade routes connect to it.

That's helpful to know..
Cheers.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Quillan
The harbor does not give, strictly speaking, a 50% increase in trade route yields. What it does is apparently give a 50% increase in the "worth" of the city for determining which trade routes connect to it. That's mainly based on city size; a size 12 city with a harbor is roughly equivalent to a size 18 city without, but I'm sure there are other factors that figure in.

Since you're dealing with mainly fishing villages - small settlements that never get very big - , they will never be large enough and valuable enough to get decent trade routes. So the harbor isn't very good for increasing commerce. Depending on circumstances, it might help with health, because it does give +1 health for the seafood resources.

It can be worse than that. If you have a well developed, but inland, science city, building a harbour in a small coastal city can reduce the value of the trade routes in your inland city.

RJM

[joncnunn]

If Expansive, build Harbors early.
If Organzied, build Court Houses early.

Otherwise, both improvements fall under the build as needed category.

(Such as city developed enough to use Harbors or more commonly cheapest remaining Health improvement; or on the other reducing the city's maintance cost in half improves the city more than the science or tax multiplers.)

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by joncnunn
If Expansive, build Harbors early.
If Organzied, build Court Houses early.

Otherwise, both improvements fall under the build as needed category.

In practice you're right but I don't think the "rule of thumb" should be anything like fixed. All the EXP/ORG bonuses do is make the buildings cheaper, and therefore make it more likely that you would build them earlier rather than later. Put another way, the basic hammer bonus doubles (generally) the return you will be getting from your hammer investment in the building. If the return were low before it would just become a little higher with the bonus.

So it is likely that this will push the buildings higher up the build priorities but it might not be all that far and could still easily remain behind forges, theatres, libraries, monasteries and a lot of other basic buildings.