What nonsense about the grocery store?

[vendar82]

Why can I only build ONE grocery store per nation? The grocery store is incredibly important for my growth!
And the funny thing is that the description on the wiki says that you should build it wherever there are farms to boost their production! How am I supposed to do that if I'm only allowed to build ONE grocery store per nation?!?!?
Absolute nonsense! I've had a lot of fun with the game so far. But now that I need a lot of canned food and can only have one grocery store, I'm losing interest!

[vendar82]

The same goes for hospitals! Why only ONE hospital per nation?!?!?
Like there's only ONE hospital in the entire US?!? Ridiculous!

[vivas]

First off, the wiki is filled in by fans right, so they might be wrong. Ara while a civ builder does not represent exact history or world mechanisms. I think the one per nation buildings are part of the game mechanics and you should take them in that perspective.

[turnbasedlife]

They are powerful buildings. It's an issue of game balance.

If the player makes a good choice about where to place these buildings, they can dramatically increase overall national productivity. If one had to be built in every city, that just adds filler to production queues and soaks up a lot of resources without adding any fun or strategic decision making to the game.

If it helps, think of these as the central food and healthcare distribution facilities for your nation, and assume there are smaller facilities everywhere for your people to use that are beneath your notice.

[Takfloyd]

A lot of buildings have nonsensical limits, the devs clearly just didn't pay attention and just put in something random at the last minute, because the Encarta doesn't even show how many you can build, they forgot to add different icons for "per city" and "per nation", and some buildings upgrade to buildings with completely different limits. Mills (6 per nation) upgrade to Windmills (1 per city) for one example, meaning you can have 6 Windmills in one city, but only if you upgrade them from Mills...

[turnbasedlife]

Originally posted by Takfloyd:

A lot of buildings have nonsensical limits, the devs clearly just didn't pay attention and just put in something random at the last minute, because the Encarta doesn't even show how many you can build, they forgot to add different icons for "per city" and "per nation", and some buildings upgrade to buildings with completely different limits. Mills (6 per nation) upgrade to Windmills (1 per city) for one example, meaning you can have 6 Windmills in one city, but only if you upgrade them from Mills...

It's not nonsensical to put limits on these things. As i said above, it's a matter of game balance.

There are obviously things about this game that still need fixing up, but the "problems" most people are so upset about are pretty easy to patch. The game is 6 days old. Give them a minute.

[Fast Pooper]

It makes sense if you think of the game as a board game and not civilization simulator. In a board game you can’t just spam big bonuses or it’s pointless.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by vendar82:

Absolute nonsense! I've had a lot of fun with the game so far. But now that I need a lot of canned food and can only have one grocery store, I'm losing interest!

Why? Canned food only gives you around 50% more than preserved food is nice, but it's limited by only being produced in the grocer which has no real way of boosting production - unlike preserved food which can be prepared in a bakeries (+25% bonus to other bakeries in their region on top of the four slots).

Originally posted by turnbasedlife:

They are powerful buildings. It's an issue of game balance.

They're more situational than powerful. The grocer in particular can be a trap; probably it's most useful trait is the fact you can put it in a city that already has a granary to boost two farming regions. The thing to be wary of though is that the boost from it (and the granary for that matter, though since it's needed for the ability to craft stored grain it can be a bit easier to justify) add a portion of the territory's food output to the farm output in the region they're in, which is good if you have a territory with a high food output and five or six regions, otherwise (or rather inevitably as you get better farming tools and tech) you're better off simply building another farm in that region.
Hospital is similar, it's main benefit being it's basically a clinic you can build one or three eras ahead of unlocking the clinic.

[Surge]

Balance can be adjusted so the improvements you'd expect to be able to have in every city could indeed be city limited instead of nation limited.

Limiting Inns, Mills, and Grocers per nation feels like breaking the suspension of disbelief for the sake of lazy balancing.

[Tandis]

I think you will see balance passes based on community feedback as we go forward.

As for limiting buildings per nation as breaking suspension of disbelief, I would say if I had to choose between the arbitrary 1 per city vs. 6 per nation I would rather go with the latter but that's just my opinion.

[Surge]

Originally posted by Tandis:

As for limiting buildings per nation as breaking suspension of disbelief, I would say if I had to choose between the arbitrary 1 per city vs. 6 per nation I would rather go with the latter but that's just my opinion.

I was more commenting on the more egregious examples, like one Inn or one Grocer per nation. What kind of medieval nation has a single Inn countrywide? My very small countryside market town has ten pubs, and many of them have likely been around for the last few hundred years.

[Surge]

Originally posted by vivas:

This is not a real live simulator of history or civilization, it is called game mechanics. I am sure there are loads of examples to be around in games where comparrison with reality would be rather strange.

Nice strawman there. It is indeed not a simulator, which is why I was talking about maintaining suspension of disbelief. Consistency in theme and all that.

[Astasia]

A "Grocer" which is the building in game, is not the same thing as a "Grocery Store" which people keep comparing it to. The original "Grocer" was a bulk dry food/goods store, the word grocer is based on the French word for wholesaler. The building unlocks in game long before the concept of a Grocery Store or things like refrigeration, and it increases the output of farms in the region and is compared to a granary, implying it's a notable food preservation/collection improvement.

I feel like buildings like the Inn and Grocer serve as examples of like notable prototypes for a building that significantly impact a city because of how novel they are at the time, and that in the future those become mundane buildings that exist all over an empire in civilian sectors like dwellings and just become a standard thing that doesn't change the baseline stats of things.

This could be made less jarring to some by giving the building a special name though. Rather than just being called "Inn" change it to "The Great Inn" or something and make it sound like the national wonder that it is rather than a generic building.

[Stealknight]

Originally posted by vendar82:

Why can I only build ONE grocery store per nation? The grocery store is incredibly important for my growth!
And the funny thing is that the description on the wiki says that you should build it wherever there are farms to boost their production! How am I supposed to do that if I'm only allowed to build ONE grocery store per nation?!?!?
Absolute nonsense! I've had a lot of fun with the game so far. But now that I need a lot of canned food and can only have one grocery store, I'm losing interest!

You want to build all these buildings? Personaliy i dont want to build the grocery inn hospitals, weavers bakeries blacksmiths in every city. Isnt their enough things for you to build and manage?

[The Former]

Originally posted by Surge:

Originally posted by Tandis:

As for limiting buildings per nation as breaking suspension of disbelief, I would say if I had to choose between the arbitrary 1 per city vs. 6 per nation I would rather go with the latter but that's just my opinion.

I was more commenting on the more egregious examples, like one Inn or one Grocer per nation. What kind of medieval nation has a single Inn countrywide? My very small countryside market town has ten pubs, and many of them have likely been around for the last few hundred years.

Inns and pubs aren’t identical. Inns are full-feature places with horse boarding and security where traders and travelers would come to rest during long journeys. Check out Modern History TV on YouTube, there’s a good video about this.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by Surge:

What kind of medieval nation has a single Inn countrywide? My very small countryside market town has ten pubs, and many of them have likely been around for the last few hundred years.

It's another early access building - you unlock pubs later, they do much the same thing but you get one per city (presumably two if you put it in the city with the inn).