To Sacrifice Granaries?

[Jon Shafer]

Under what situations do people see not building Granary(ies) a good idea?

[nbarclay]

I've been known to defer granaries on occasion when I had a nearby rival I wanted to take out early. The Gallic Glory AU game was a classic example. But it would take an extremely strange map for me never to build any granaries at all. Sooner or later, I'll almost certainly want to do some serious REXing, and I regard granaries as an integral part of that. (Note, though, that I don't play Deity.)

Nathan

[ZargonX]

As nbarclay says, I really only pass up on granaries if there is an immediate strategic reason for doing so, such as whupping up on an extremely close neighbor. Then, once I've cleared some extra land from my backyard, I can switch to a proper REX mode.

[Jaybe]

I will rarely BUILD granaries, maybe when food surplus shrinks to one in a town during the REX period. Perhaps I should change that?

[nbarclay]

Jaybe, you seem to view granaries as a way to help growth in cities with low growth rates. I view them as a way to help cities with normal or especially with high growth get even still higher growth to crank out settlers and workers quickly. Keep in mind that almost any core city at size five has the production to crank out workers in two turns and settlers in anywhere from four to six. The only thing stopping cities from having that kind of REXing power is the lack of enough food. Build granaries in high-growth core cities and you double (possibly minus some loss to rounding) the cities' growth rate, allowing them to build workers and settlers up to twice as quickly. The effect of that on REXing speed can be truly enormous. (Note that you'll have to use some combination of MPs, luxuries, and the luxury slider to avoid happiness problems.)

The trick is to build the right number of early granaries to fit the land you have available. If a granary won't be done in time to help you with your REXing, it's probably not worth building until you're ready to take the city past size 6 (when the food cost for growth is twice as high).

Nathan

[Aeson]

When playing CivIII 1.16f-1.17f

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Aeson
When playing CivIII 1.16f-1.17f

Why?

[Mountain Sage]

Don't build granaries, build Pyramids instead

More seriously, granaries helps you with REXing, then you can use them for speeding up the size of cities to 6, 12 and 12+.
A bigger city gives you more shields (i.e. improvements and/or units) and gold (happiness, trading etc.).

[Arrian]

I have taken to building granaries more often (Nathan is actually the one who finally convinced me of their power), but I still will sometimes not do it in the early game.

Usually such a decision coincides with ultra-early warfare. Granary = 60 shields. Barracks + 2 archers = 60 shields (militaristic civ). Smacking the closest AI civ silly in 2500bc? Priceless.

-Arrian

[Dominae]

Somewhat counter-intuitively, if your capital produces a lot of Food, you're sometimes better off producing a quick Settler then focusing on the Granary next. This way you can have the second city take care of military units and such, while the capital focuses on just pure REX. To be really safe (especially in MP), you have to produce quite a few Warriors out of your capital city at the beginning of the game (unless you really want to live on the edge). But this puts back your Granary and therefore your first Settler even further. So sometimes I find it better to go Warrior-Warrior-Settler-Granary in a high-Food capital.

Expansionist civs are really advantaged with respect to Granaries (makes sense, no?). They can use a few early Scouts to determine if there are any better Granary-city sites around the capital. If so, the capital produces a Settler at the first opportunity, then more Scouts/Warriors. If there are no better sites, or if the capital is already a perfect site for a Granary, then the Granary may be started immediately in the capital. All the while the Scouts are contacting other civs and determining if there is going to be any threat while the Granary is being built, which is a time of weakness. Non-Expansionists do not have all these benefits, and most importantly have to decide to blindly research Pottery from turn 1, which may not always be the best option.


Dominae

[Aeson]

Because in those two versions you could expand faster by demanding cities from the AI. Certainly the ratio of player to AI expansion was much greater as the AI is building the cities for the player. The limiting factor was how fast you could get to a power advantage (mainly number of cities, in 1.16f also number of units, in 1.17f quality of military units). On anything other than Deity, that was the third city built. Even on Deity in 1.16f it could sometimes be that quick as well.

Building a granary cut out unit builds, and usually is a bit slower to the 3rd city (definitely slower in the case of a Settler from a hut). Once you got to the power advantage and started demanding cities, then Granaries are worthwhile.

[DaveMcW]

From chieftain to emperor, you can do a peaceful REX with as many granaries as you like, especially one in your capitol.

But on deity and multiplayer, sinking 60 of your first 100 shields into an improvement will leave you defenseless against the early rush. I don't buiild granaries at all if I start next to an aggression level 5 AI, and I build settler, granary for aggression level 4. In multiplayer I do the same, based on the estimated aggression of my opponents.

[trev]

Mostly I do not build early granaries, my preference is to build armies in between worker and settler builds, this is necessary to keep a reasonable parity of military power with nearby rivals and send armies to explore and defend settlers and new towns from barbarian attack

[Kirby]

Early granaries are too slow on deity. If you don't constantly pump military and settlers the other AI's will be all over you because you are too weak.

[Yahweh Sabaoth]

Would someone here be so kind as to go into greater detail as to what areas you would build a granary in, and which you would not?

For instance, take two games where you're playing as Russia. On one game you start out next to a lot of wheat on grassland. In the second game, you start out in the middle of a forest, with game.

I would build a granary in the second instance, and just another settler in the first (with a scout, or warrior, of course).

But I'm often wrong in these matters. What would you all do?