Useless building?

[1/2 Kordov]

Is it me or some building in the game are just useless? What's the point of building a church or a workshop when marketplaces are much more profitable?

[Azunai]

the number that is shown for the market place is the amount of trade power it adds.

that is not the same thing as the direct income increase that is shown for workshops and temples.

trade is a rather complicated system so there's probably no easy way of telling in advance how much money you'd actually gain from a marketplace.

[tonypa]

Churches and workshops are highly recommended.

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Only Churches (via Tax income), Workshops (via Production income) and Manufactories (also via Production income) "generate" money directly.
Marketplaces (and Manufactories in addition to their direct income) have the potential(!) to generate money from Trade. However, just building a Marketplace (or a Manufactory) does NOT automatically increase your income, you need to collect the increased Trade Value (from Manufactories) with your increased Trade Power (from Marketplaces) somewhere.

Extreme example: You own 100% Trade Power in a node. Building Marketplaces then has NO finacial effect (ok, maybe a very small one because of increased TP propagation upstream) because 100% Trade Power are always 100%, regardless whether the actual TP is 50 or 5000.

Also Marketplaces are (nearly) worthless in Nodes where you don't collect or/and actively steer (unless you want to reduce the money a collecting nation gets there but then Privateering or conquest would probably be better) or/and Nodes which only have one exit.

[Makenshi]

Workshop is typically useless I agree, but churches and temple are a decent source of early income. The problem though is how long it takes for them to pay off. Unless you start off with some well developed provinces, they take several decades to return on investment, and EU4 is a snowballing game. You are almost always better off fielding a bigger army/navy to take new provinces or colonizing. By midgame I just wait for AI to build them before I take over the province

Also, marketplace is fairly useless in many instances as well. They increase your share on a trade node to a point, but you hit diminishing returns after a while. Once you fully control a province they become next to useless. I don't really build them outside of center of trades

[Razor Feather]

Originally posted by Makenshi:

Workshop is typically useless I agree, but churches and temple are a decent source of early income. The problem though is how long it takes for them to pay off. Unless you start off with some well developed provinces, they take several decades to return on investment, and EU4 is a snowballing game. You are almost always better off fielding a bigger army/navy to take new provinces or colonizing. By midgame I just wait for AI to build them before I take over the province

Also, marketplace is fairly useless in many instances as well. They increase your share on a trade node to a point, but you hit diminishing returns after a while. Once you fully control a province they become next to useless. I don't really build them outside of center of trades

Workshop + manufactory spam is the key to going from having a solid income at the start of midgame, to having virtually unlimited cash by the time absolutism hits proper. Often if you are conquering smaller nations or ones that are behind on tech, you don't really need the extra chash/army size at the time, but when the time comes for endless merc spam to fight everyone at once and deal with endless rebels from overextension, the benifts from building up your economy earlier are reaped in full, as you can sustain lots of combat indefinetly.

Market places though are indeed useless to build outside of COTs, and there is seldom a good reason to build them in provinces with no trade power bonuses.

[Razor Feather]

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

Workshops increase goods produced - this increases:

1) production
2) trade value in the node

Workshops increase production income effecinecy only, not goods produced. They only give you the listed income bonus unless you do something else to boost goods produced later

[Tulduil Iphukiir]

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

Workshops increase goods produced - this increases:

1) production
2) trade value in the node

Therefore it is a double income increase that is not fully shown when you select it.

[...]

Workshops, on the other hand, have increased your trade value and therefore are full to scale in value irrespective of the source of trade power.

[...]

You mix something up, Ultrix.

Workshops is increase Production Efficiency and NOT Goods Produced.
Therefore Workshops only increase Production income and have absolutely NO effect on Trade.

Manufactories are the ones that increase Goods Produced and thereby indirectly Production income and (potentially) Trade income.

[billy]

workshops and churches are great , Production is worth lots of money by mid game.

A building a lot of people overlook is shipyards , they pay for themselves over time assuming you need the trade ships.

Anyone saying workshops are useless doesnt know what they are talking about.

[Makenshi]

Workshop only increases the local production, not the trade value. Yea, they help, but they are very far down the priority list imo. For most goods and development, temple is straight up better than workshop.

[kaiyl_kariashi]

The important thing about Workshops is make sure it's a valuable trade good in a province with decent production development.

production income is usually less efficient per point than tax income is, so you generally need a better starting province before building a particular building there is worthwhile.

But since the building slots are also limited on poorly developed provinces, you're generally better off sticking a static effect building like a manufactory or one of the Army/Naval cap buildings (if you find yourself constantly needing to go over your force limit) there, since they'll provide the same value regardless of the province quality (though keep in mind the trade good when building manufactories as some trade goods become almost worthless late game once newer and better goods become widely accepted). Some of the new administration buildings might be worth considering as well once 1.30 drops, as while they won't really be generating extra money, they can reduce some of the money lost from upkeep/penalties and might pay for themselves over time.

Percentage modifier buildings are better spent on provinces that are already pretty well built in a particular field.


Generally if you can get 0.10 or more per month from building a building, it's generally worth it. 0.06 for workshops if it's a trade good you know will only increase in value over time (or will remain strong for at least 2/3 of the game. Copper starts strong, gets stronger, but then drops off once Iron Working becomes more efficent however its' still a good trade good because of how long it retains it's strong value, Iron on the other hand just gets better and better as time goes on, Grain however drops into the Toliet as the game progresses and is fairly meh as a trade good to start with. About the only decent thing about it is that Grain provinces can fire the Agricultural Revolution event that let's you choose 1 of any kind of development to gain a point, though you'll generally want to take taxes unless you know the province will eventually flip to Coal, in which case you'll want Production).

Market places are rarely worth building outside of a province with a bonus trade feature, and only in nodes that are and will remain contested.

Nodes you can quickly gain a solid monopoly in, you generally don't need to worry about trade power buildings, since you can just use your light ship fleet to prop up your trade power while you're conquering the node and then move it further upstream once you've established your monopoly. instead of spending money on buildings that will end up basically obsolete and significantly drop off in value once the monopoly is established.

However if you're going a relatively Tall trade empire, you'll rarely be pushing out your competition and you monopolies will stay relatively contested. In those cases the trade buildings can be worth building, as they'll pay for themselves over time vs having to keep a possibly over the limit extra Light Ship fleet there to prop up important nodes (generally nodes with a lot of connections. Nodes with only 1 exit you can usually safely ignore unless an unusually large amount of the income is collected in the node).