Upgrading Buildings in Place

[primislas]

Hey, everyone. After another go at a long campaign on a large map, I once again feel that late-game I'm forced into judge rulers just for upgrading buildings in place. It feels too restrictive. Off top of my head, maybe builders should allow this too? And perhaps judge/builder governors?

Alternatively, am I playing the game wrong? I enjoy playing tall and like the sense of empire building and progressing that the game offers. But without the ability to upgrade in place planning becomes a tedious chore. And it just rubs me the wrong way, when more advanced buildings are spread further away from city center.

Thoughts and advice?

[Dale Kent]

Originally posted by primislas:

Hey, everyone. After another go at a long campaign on a large map, I once again feel that late-game I'm forced into judge rulers just for upgrading buildings in place. It feels too restrictive. Off top of my head, maybe builders should allow this too? And perhaps judge/builder governors?

Alternatively, am I playing the game wrong? I enjoy playing tall and like the sense of empire building and progressing that the game offers. But without the ability to upgrade in place planning becomes a tedious chore. And it just rubs me the wrong way, when more advanced buildings are spread further away from city center.

Thoughts and advice?

Any leader can replace a tile improvement, or upgrade in place as you called it. Judges just get to do it cheaper than other leaders.

[primislas]

Originally posted by Dale Kent:

Any leader can replace a tile improvement, or upgrade in place as you called it. Judges just get to do it cheaper than other leaders.

It's not just cheaper and way more convenient. It also saves an insane amount of time. Here's how I feel I'd have to do it without a judge:
* plan layout way ahead and either plop lower level building elsewhere or be ready to rebuild tier 1 to tier 3;
* build tier 1, perhaps train the specialist, usually to tier 3 to get all those juicy tech and law bonuses;
* build tier 2 somewhere to the side, takes N number of years;
* build tier 3 building, takes N number of years AND M number of years to (re)train the specialist;

It's a ginormous hassle. Whereas in my current campaign when building over later cities I can just
* plop my buildings wherever they feel natural;
* judge upgrade in place takes only one year AND can upgrade the specialist;
* ...that's it, done

It's so much cleaner, faster and more convenient, that I dread not having a judge heir. Just my 2 cents of feedback. :)

[Siontific]

The only thing a judge really saves is space, imo, unless you just have zero intention of building the entire line of buildings in a group. Which, sure, maybe you don't always need.

Math time:

The Odeon line takes 4, 5, and 6 turns to build in a city normally. If we assume a decent civics rate then an apprentice could take about 3 turns, master 4, elder 5. So to build a full stack of 3 elders you get something like this:

Odeon 4+3+4+5 = 16 turn Elder.
Theater 5+5+6 = 17 turn Elder.
Ampitheater 6+7 = 13 turn Elder.

Total time = 45 turns.

I added an extra turn to the theater and ampitheater specialists due to rising costs, but just 3 extra turns because overflow, which probably washes some rising costs out. Now let's use a Judge, and again, I'm assuming we're building all 3 buildings here, which you might not always want to do.

Odeon 4+3+1+1 = 9 turn Elder Amphitheater
Odeon 4+4+1+6 = 15 turn Elder Theater.
Odeon 4+5+6+7 = 21 turn Elder Odeon.

Total time = 45 turns.

Again, used the same logic here and added an extra turn to the second group of specialists.

The main benefit of a judge is that the upgrade to the next tier happens immediately and you save some costs and resources. So to be clear, there is definitely some value in being able to jump from a theater that has a master directly to an ampitheater with an elder if you haven't been prioritizing this line. However, if you have any intention of stocking the whole set with Elders then it comes out in the wash. If you figure it takes you 4 turns to build an odeon, 1 turn to upgrade it, and 1 turn to upgrade it again; that's 6 turns, which is exactly equal to the turns you would spend building an ampitheater naturally.

If we assume you're just shooting for the ampitheater with the elder, then sure, you save a decent amount of resources by only needing to build the apprentice, and yes you will definitely save N turns of build que time by not needing to build it's upgraded version.

However, pretty much the minute you take your que and allocate it toward a second poet (in this example), you get close to breaking even. Let's assume you don't bother with a specialist at all in the Odeon because it isn't worth it to you; you're just gonna put the master in the theater and the elder in the amipitheater:

Regular:
Odeon 4+ Theater 5+4 + amphitheater 6+6 = 25 turns to get a master and elder specialist from your odeon line.

Judge: Odeon 4+3+1+1+ Odeon 4+4+1 = 18 turns to get a master and an elder specialist. You've saved 7 turns - if you build an odeon too for any reason, you've saved only 3 turns. Of course, getting stuff a touch earlier in this game can pay dividends, so the judge's ability to upgrade is certainly neat. However, I don't think the savings are insane.

The builder, for example, can do this:

Odeon 1+3+4+5 = 13 Elder.
Theater 1+5+6 = 12 turn Elder.
Ampitheater 1+7 = 9 turn Elder.

Total turns: 34.

Now, for this example I used the odeon, which might not be a building you want everywhere, so perhaps it's a bit moot. However, the Library and courthouse is a line that, if you unlock them, you're gonna want each of them. Upgrading solely to a palace or university in a city boosts your science or civics by 50% -- having the entire courthouse or library line in a city boosts it by 100%, so this isn't a set you want to shortchange yourself on.

But lets say you mostly just want those modifiers so we won't factor in specialists right away with a judge;

Library 4+1+1 = 6 turn university.
Library 4+1 = 5 turn academy.
Library 4 = 4 turn library.

Total: 15 turns.

This should be obvious, but to do it regular;

Library = 4
Academy = 5
University = 6

Total: 15 turns.

Your savings comes from the specialist upgrades, and having a full elder effect quicker than you might normally, using a judge. In reality, you're probably only shaving off something like 5 ish turns off an elder specialist through the upgrade route depending on your circumstances. These numbers obviously change depending on civics income. Less civics income, the better the judge upgrade becomes with respect to efficiency -- the higher the civics income, the less impact the judge rush becomes even with regards to specialists (except ignoring food costs).

Of course, then there's a builder, who can do this:

Library = 1
Academy = 1
University = 1

and have their full university line up in 3 turns. Now THAT's insane :P

[Siontific]

Having said all that, upgrades is part of what makes Judges cool - if anyone could do it, then judges would be less cool. They're very helpful if you're running tight on space - but if you're not, there's very little reason not to just plop buildings wherever they will fit. Also I don't want to diminish the fact that getting an Elder specialist in 9 turns overall vs 16 overall is absolutely not nothing. It can be super convenient in the mid game when you get your libaries or baths or whatever, to build the the building and specialist, then upgrade. There is some savings there. But if you do the entire line, the overal time it takes comes out in the wash, you've just frontloaded the good stuff by about 5-10 turns (again, not nothing - I just don't view it as essential).

Aside form that, You can plan extensively if you want to squeeze out some adjacency stuff, or you can completely ignore urban planning altogether and just put buildings everywhere randomly - the loss of efficiency in ignoring adjacency is less impactful than you might think. In the full scope of a game, it's a drop in the bucket compared to just getting the buildings up and running as fast as possible. So if planning frustrates you, you can just put buildings wherever you want as they come out.

The other thing about the above numbers that I didn't really factor in though: As a judge leader you could be using the governor ability to rush out your specialists further, which would reduce the total time to achieving an elder in all 3 buildings quite significantly as well, but of course it would be expensive. I wouldn't normally rush an apprentice, though, so at most you probably save another 10 ish turns - which is not insignificant; HOWEVER, that is a separate ability from the upgrades, and a builder, or a scholar, could enjoy that same ability by having a judge governor in their empire, so I didn't factor that in.

Worth mentioning that the Judge is one of my favorite archetypes in the game.

Edit: those above numbers skip one crucial detail, which shouldn't be glossed over and that's the fact that you can start each odeon with a judge the same turn you upgrade to a theater, which does indeed save you another 2 turns.

[mk11]

Don't follow your numbers. You can build the next building in parallel with recruiting the specialist. So in the non-upgrade case the time would be 4 (odeon) + 3 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 6 +7 for specialists = 34 turns complete and 15 turns to have all the buildings built.

With the courthouse series being able to build the Palace first is a bigger saving because the increased civics makes recruiting the specialists quicker.

[Siontific]

Well spotted! So under similar civics costs, The full upgrade using the judge method, assuming you're building 3 odeons with 3 apprentices each and upgrading as you go, would be about 31/32 turns to get to 3 Elders.

I goofed about the parallel build times, but it doesn't really affect the overall point in that the speed of the Judge upgrade in terms of actual time to a fully developed sequence isn't much faster, if at all.

You are correct though, in that there is benefit in some cases to front-loading some effects. Getting to an elder scribe Palace in 9 turns is certainly not nothing. Though there's one complicated nuance to all this and that's culture levels. Most cities probably aren't building from zero courthouses to palaces in a city that's already legendary.

In the time it takes me to go from strong to legendary, I might have a courthouse and Ministry, and one or both might have an elder in them. So the upgrade jumps you from 50% civics to 80% civics immediately. Not nothing, of course; and then you would build a courthouse for 4 turns, and go Apprentice/master/elder in whatever amount of time it takes you at that point. If it's end game, you're probably doing 2-3 turns on all specialists, or perhaps 1 turn on the apprentice and 2 on everything else (I hit this in my capital regularly).

So the courthouse to elder could be as fast as 4+1+2+2 = 9 turns.

Yet, if I'm in the exact same spot and don't have a judge, I build a palace for 6 turns and I build an elder for 2 turns and am done in 8 turns.

Basically, I'm just trying to highlight that the "time saved" aspect on the Upgrade feature probably isn't as massive as people might think.

In fact, I just did two turn 1 tests using the editor:

Hard building (Odeons) in strong city got me 3 elders in 34 turns, where the judge method did it in 31 turns.

Of course this also technically depends on if you're using the judge leader as the governor for the target city; of course you're gonna save a bunch there - but it's important to note that the person who is building their buildings normally can also use a judge governor. But naturally if your ruler is a judge you can put them anywhere so it's guaranteed you can rush.

It does get tricky though when you're dealing with well developed city - with fast build times you don't really want to rush; if I'm cranking out specialists in 3 turns, I probably want to save my rushes for something more taxing. So there's definitely a nuance.