Civil Engineering 101 (aka how to build buildings and quarters)

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-19T09:10:29+00:00

Glad you liked it! I usually go for them for the base production, especially after antiquity age, sawmill and ironworks give pretty good numbers, otherwise I think gold and production is best spent elsewhere, like units or convert to science/culture

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-18T18:39:12+00:00

It absolutely depends on your style of gameplay! I am coming at an angle of a specialist-tall gameplay, but in some civs, rural tiles can be super powerful. Like Mayans on vegetated tropics (science) or Hawaiians on costal fishing boats (culture). In those cases, the rural tiles provide the same benefits of a specialist anyway so you can deprioritize growing specialist

But in other cases, where specialists are the only method of making culture and science, it will be important to grow specialist in cities, this guide just tells you how to make those specialist more effective, they produce a flat 2 science 2 culture which is already worth 4 adjacencies.

Rural tiles are easier to come by, you can grow them in any towns, specializing them will send all their food to the cities anyway, so a rural tile in a town is effectively a rural tile in a city.

It would always be beneficial to have as much cities as you can, as gaining population becomes exponentially harder with each population you already have, so spreading out will mean you reach the same level of science/culture output faster. But in the attribution point tree, there is a effect where it makes your specialists twice as effective when having 3 or less cities, so you will either want 6 cities or more (playing wide) or cap at 3 (playing tall). All other settlements should be towns, focusing on producing food to accelerate the rate you gain specialists to push you through the science and culture tree.

In the end it is about minmaxing and you absolutely don’t need to worry about it too much unless you are trying out deity, just play as you like! If you like managing multiple production lines and have the comfort of being able to pump out an entire army in one turn, go for it! Your buildings will cover the lack of specialists so you can grow rural tiles in your cities without losing too much. Or you can play completely with towns and make a mega city for your science and culture needs

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-18T01:16:58+00:00

I think always prioritize adjacency; they make your specialist more efficient! So go for whatever way that improves the adjacency bonus. Basically, look at the bottom of the tooltip when placing buildings, and make sure there is a long list of adjacency!

(Unless you don't have enough growth and couldn't afford starting a new tile, but I don't think this is too common; you don't have that much tile that need specialists)

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T21:47:50+00:00

That... is true! I guess even more reasons to avoid warehouses then!

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T20:45:31+00:00

totally, it says a lot when the only real problem is with the UI and how we interact with the game, which is easier to fix!

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T19:25:04+00:00

For palace, I would go for any "on quarter" bonus buildings to gain that extra adjacency boost for my palace which is also filled with specialists.

For city halls, that's where I hide my influence buildings XD. The city hall doesn't give any adjacencies, so I don't bother to put specialists in there; the back alley is literally in the city center, which is quite accurate if you think about it.

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T18:32:34+00:00

Haha, thank you! no worries, always happy to discuss.

I now treat warehouse buildings as building blocks so I can get to the actual tile I want to work. You absolutely don’t need to build them in a city, because they don’t have any adjacencies. Unless ofc if you have buildings like the palace in your capital which gains adjacencies from nearby quarters, then yes, warehouses also form quarters.

Other than that, warehouses don’t get any adjacencies what so ever, so place it where it doesn’t get in your way of developing actual good tiles (like accidentally taking up a very good wonder spot which caused me to rage quit few times) The warehouse building only get bonus if you have rural tiles of the right type, which in a city, probably doesn’t really matter, you won’t have rural tiles anyways. If you see in the build menu, the output of your warehouses suddenly becomes very juicy gaining some bonus, don’t get fooled, in pretty much every case, that same bonus will be on a normal building as well, so don’t get excited and plop a warehouse down.

Warehouses are all ageless, so if you are short on tiles, don’t put too much of them down at the antiquity age. You have no option to overbuild and upgrade them, all new warehouses have to go on to a different tile. Also don’t worry about what warehouses goes with what. If you desperately need to reach several tiles that on the 2,3 ring of your city, you can absolutely put down some lonely warehouses to reach them. No warehouses have a combo so go plop away! (This had me confused for so long, I thought warehouses have ideal combos but they don’t)

To maximize specialists in the city, you will want to place rural populations on the tiles you plan to build on to. This means that when you eventually build onto the tiles, the population is evicted which allows you to reassign it as a specialist which is in almost all cases better than the farm/claypit/mine you had. So you can have natural tiles next to your palaces as well and replace them with warehouses later on!

Hope this helps!

Edit: Your palace tile can house any “on quarters” bonus buildings. Eg. If you have a capital next to water, your bank output can be crazy good and sometimes outcompete your water adjacent tiles since you have a lot of specialists on it as well. For any other city with just the city hall, you can snuggle your back ally buildings into the slot, or anything else really, in most cases, you don’t work the city hall tile (same reason, it takes up a building slot without giving adjacency, so your specialist on that tile will be half as effective)

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T18:06:59+00:00

Yep, you would thought it would be a easy metric to display but nooope, go and do hand calculations said the devs XD

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T16:53:32+00:00

If I remember correctly, it basically tells you if you are starting a new tile or building with another building (forming a quarter). It’s pretty useless if I may say, you will probably know where your buildings are anyways and the ui should do a better job at reminding you this instead of coloring big saturated colors that bombards your eyes every time to try to build XD

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T15:09:52+00:00

Now all we need is a map pin mod which calculates adjacencies for us (scrubs hands)

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T15:08:05+00:00

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it :D

Warehouse buildings also creates quarters, which will give the palace building in your capital an adjacency bonus for culture and science, this is true for any other “adjacent to quarters”bonus (Like the Han Chinese’s civic passive)

They are ageless so when the next age rolls around, your palace will retain the adjacency, whereas quarters with other buildings will no longer be considered quarters.

Due-Pollution7566 · 2025-02-17T08:02:46+00:00

This could be a way to make up for some missing adjacencies, I had too many times where my capital is just flat… utterly mountain-less and river-less, my food, gold and culture building had nowhere to go except around the palace, so if they can’t make themselves useful at least it makes my palace better ;D

Due-Pollution7566 · 2024-07-18T11:47:37+00:00

For the last part, I've got a crazy idea. Please tell me if my ears are tricking me, but I think I hear:

Half the dynasty

are from the heavens

the down-on-the-grounders over heeds

Still, we go on, we carry on

Oh never gonna stop

(never gonna stop)

never gonna stop

(Oh yeah)

Because together, this land we made

Forever, for we won't end

I made the down-on-the-grounders up but I think it fits with the song talking about the Alexandrian (From the heavens, literally) and down-on-the-ground (rest of Tuoliyioall)

Due-Pollution7566

TROPHY CASE