A little underwhelmed with great works, wondering what others think

[Isisius]

Firstly i love this game. 426 hours.

But honestly, the great works feel a little underwhelming.
For the most part they just do what other buildings do, but in the form of a great work.
Add a bit of disease resistance, or add some piety or prestige to liege per month.

I guess i was kinda hoping they would be special.

At least the university gives you the ability to buff your character stats permenantly.

I built the great library thinking maybe it will let me use more books at once or something but it just gives you technology spread?
I dont really understand why you would ever build it. It feels like people who can afford to build it are likely to be pretty technologically advanced anyway.

I was hoping the great wall would mean that enemies couldnt move through that territory without conquering it (think EUIV forts). Nope, just seems to do similar stuff to the great fortress and make your place harder to conquer.
Honestly, if i run into a place thats hard to conquer, i just ignore it and conquer eveything else first.

I think one of the places even gives local movement speed? How useless is that. One province where you can move faster. MAYBE if it give it to all surrounding provinves, or all provinces within 2 i could see it being useful, but local seems garbage.


I guess i was hoping for a bit more, for these things to be tough to build but to also change gameplay a fair bit, and not just affect one province with things that i could just build other buildings to do.

Great Harbour actually looks like it could be beneficial, seems to give lots of gold, but again, its still just giving income. Nothing special.

I dunno, maybe im being fussy, but i would personally prefer they costed 5000 gold, take 50-100 years and give you some kind of gamechanging benefit that you cant get elsewhere.


TL:DR great works just give you what other buildings give you for the most part. Kinda underwhelming

What are others peoples thoughts?

[Cpt.Shroom]

They for sure can use some more work, Universities and Great Harbors seems to be the most beneficial. I would have liked the Great Library to affect writing books or collecting them instead of just plain buffs. Some historical great works provide some special upgrades but that is about it.

[Isisius]

Originally posted by Cpt.Shroom:

They for sure can use some more work, Universities and Great Harbors seems to be the most beneficial. I would have liked the Great Library to affect writing books or collecting them instead of just plain buffs. Some historical great works provide some special upgrades but that is about it.

Ooohh, great library that starts off average, but as you collect or write more books and add them to the library it gets stronger and stronger.
That could be a super diverting thing as my kingdom goes through a devestating war with the byzantine empire to loot those sweet sweet books.
Maybe it getting looted makes you lose some of that bonus etc etc.

See thats an example of a different mechanic/gameplay difference. Instead of just going, yeah i build this thing, and now i get +0.5 prestive +0.7 piety, it actually gives you an objective to follow.

[Jirki88]

Originally posted by Cpt.Shroom:

They for sure can use some more work, Universities and Great Harbors seems to be the most beneficial. I would have liked the Great Library to affect writing books or collecting them instead of just plain buffs. Some historical great works provide some special upgrades but that is about it.

I'm actually pretty sure the Great Library CAN affect writing a book. I had an event where my scribes kept using the Great Library for material, and encouraging them to do that more had a chance to make the book better.

[KingCobra]

great library has event for searching books.
u can find book on ancient history(+3 martial +3 intrigue +3 diplomacy)
and seems like book from this event could be stacked. i have 2 intance of this book in library

and great amphitheater give u very good commander every 5 years

[Isisius]

When you say in the library, do you have to equip them (and thus it contributes to your limit of 4 books)?
You can already get pretty good books from wrtiting your own or from hermiatic society.

[Karlington]

You do have to equip the books.

[Chikuwu]

I dont see how youre saying "They would be technologically advanced anyways" plays any part in this?

I started as a Count in finland in 769, i had my first Stone Circle great work built by 850, Since you know... Raiding and pillaging and selling prisoners can net you 3000 golds before year 850, and that wasnt even concentrating on Great works. I firstly used most of my pillaged gold and ransom money for fully equipping my demesnes, then started working on great works while pillaging everything in 2k doomstacks (had 5 of them running at best of times, so i got around 50 sellable prisoners per month)

[Karlington]

Btw, to go back to the main point of the original post, I think great works are supposed to be a bit underwhelming. They're kind of a "here's something you can spend a truckload of money on when you've literally done everything else."

They don't make you uber-powerful, but by the time you are at the point where you can easily build multiple great works, you're probably too powerful for any outside threat to pose a real challenge anyway.

At least it gets rid of late-game "I have 20K gold but nothing to spend it on" problems. :)

[Isisius]

Originally posted by Chiku:

I dont see how youre saying "They would be technologically advanced anyways" plays any part in this?

I started as a Count in finland in 769, i had my first Stone Circle great work built by 850, Since you know... Raiding and pillaging and selling prisoners can net you 3000 golds before year 850, and that wasnt even concentrating on Great works. I firstly used most of my pillaged gold and ransom money for fully equipping my demesnes, then started working on great works while pillaging everything in 2k doomstacks (had 5 of them running at best of times, so i got around 50 sellable prisoners per month)

I was talking specifically about librarys. The main purpose seems to be spreading of techonology in a single demense, which just doesnt seem that useful to me to empires that could actually build it.
And it cant be built by the norse.

[Isisius]

Originally posted by Karlshammar:

You do have to equip the books.

Yeah i guess it just feels like there are easier ways to get good books.

Originally posted by Karlshammar:

Btw, to go back to the main point of the original post, I think great works are supposed to be a bit underwhelming. They're kind of a "here's something you can spend a truckload of money on when you've literally done everything else."

They don't make you uber-powerful, but by the time you are at the point where you can easily build multiple great works, you're probably too powerful for any outside threat to pose a real challenge anyway.

At least it gets rid of late-game "I have 20K gold but nothing to spend it on" problems. :)

I guess it just feels like a missed opportunity to me. They could have been a cool way to add a bit more roleplay or side quest stuff to playthroughs. Oh well.

[Karlington]

There are some pretty good books one can get from library. The book events can also give a permanent Learning boost. Another effect of libraries is that they have a chance of increasing the quality of a book you write yourself the "normal" way.

However, if you don't like the libraries, there are plenty of other wonder options. :)

[K E N N I]

I'm not really into CK2 patch notes, so the addition of great works was a surprise to me. So far I've only finished a garden, I have a university and a synagogue on the way. I would agree that they're underwhelming, as it seems to me they are just glorified hospital buildings, i.e. money sink for players who don't care about their vassals' holdings. Still, I think it's a good addition, because, unlike with hospitals, you're very unlikely to run out of things to build.

[Darkhosis]

It seems like most offer the exact same upgrades.

The random events are pretty rare (or at least have been for me, I haven't checked exact %'s).

Seems to me like the University is by far the best one... & you can just build multiple of them? rather than get this penalty to cost by building some of the less useful ones ..

[KingCobra]

Originally posted by Darkhosis:

It seems like most offer the exact same upgrades.

The random events are pretty rare (or at least have been for me, I haven't checked exact %'s).

Seems to me like the University is by far the best one... & you can just build multiple of them? rather than get this penalty to cost by building some of the less useful ones ..

yes, u can. but duplicated wonders have additional cost penalty.

garden also pretty good. -2 age every 10 years(fountain of youth)

[NerdExtrodinare]

I love my giant palace in Dubhlinn. I'm a tribal king ruling from the only large permanent structure in the land, it's great. And +1k retinue (once it's completed, I'm currently building stage 3) isn't anything to sneeze at. Not to mention my golden throne.

Not to mention that my character is so self satisfied with the great work he sent himself a letter about how great a job he was doing on it.