Scott Manns
United States
Fort Myers
Florida
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I know you can build for free if you build in the right order but can you build for free another way?
This is what happened when I was playing my first trial game:
The statue building tile has just the "forest" and " mountain" resources on it.
I played a "statue" on an empty space that had the "forest" resource. Adjacent to the space was a "mountain" space. So it looks like I can build this building tile for free, correct?
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Joe Lee
United States
Milford
Connecticut
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Correct.
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Andrew Brown
United States
Lawrenceville
New Jersey
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I think your confusion arose from the word 'free'. Building the different buildings in their proper order is the only way to build a building for free. By free, I mean without having to pay the building's cost.
However, it is also possible to build a building without having to supply any resources from your hand. This is because there are resources available on the game board itself. When you played your statue, it was not free (in the same way as I describe above). You still had to pay the required resources to build it. You simply used the resources available on the board rather than those represented by the cards in your hand. Of course, I acknowledge that it makes sense to call this a free build as well, even if it is slightly different.
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Alan Kwan
Hong-Kong
Hong Kong
Unspecified
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This is the main reason why the City is actually less important than many novices may think. The City lets you build 6 buildings for free, but you can often build them without spending cards even without the City.
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David Boeren
United States
Marietta
Georgia
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Correct. The 1st level buildings off the City are all cheap 2-resource ones, so they're easy enough to build elsewhere "for free" and the 2nd level ones can go next to them.
However, consider that building them for free off of board resources may often require you to cover up a resource which means you no longer have it available for another building, or alternately to cover up a clear space bordered by several resources. On the other hand, building next to the City might allow you to still do it for free in an area with poor land so you're not covering anything of great value.
So, both methods are viable, but please include the value of the real estate and any resources you're losing access to when you decide or else free may not turn out to be such a good deal after all.
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Alan Kwan
Hong-Kong
Hong Kong
Unspecified
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While covering up terrain spaces is a concern, I feel that it is usually a better play to build city 2-resource buildings off on-board resources than to build them around your City hub. The reasons:
1. Building in a lump (such as all around a City hub) is usually poor shape. It is usually better to build in a line, for better temple control and also better access to resources.
2. If you build your City hub cheaply using on board-resources, this means you will be covering up those resources when you build other city buildings around it.
3. Sometimes covering up too good resource spaces is a good thing, as it discourages other players from dropping in. This is especially when you have set up (or are setting up) free builds for that area.
In practice, I usually build only 2 or 3 city buildings around my City hub, and try to build the others elsewhere.
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