Buildings

Market

A Market raises gold income. Part of the income is fixed; the rest depends on location: every Caravan road or Water tile in the city's region adds a share, counting at most 2 tiles. A coastal city is a trading city.

What it does

Gold is flexibility. A rush fully funds the item at the head of the queue — 3 gold = 1 production for units, 2 for buildings — and writes straight into the city's store; it is not subject to the per-turn draw cap. The item completes at the start of your next turn (a unit also needs a free tile next to the city). So gold is the one resource that can go where production cannot: getting a defender out by the next turn when a threat appears rests on this.

Gold also buys things off the board: a bandit camp's warband (Bandit camp) and a neutral village (Neutral village) can both be bought with the purse — one hands you soldiers you never produced, the other a city you never founded. The purse is also the only source for city repairs, tile purchases and truces (Economy).

Finally, gold counts toward score — every 7 gold is 1 point, with the remainder dropped — though that is usually its weakest use (Territory and score).

When to build it

• In a safe rear city, far from the front: production moves slowly there, while gold travels instantly to wherever it is needed.
• In a coastal city or one with a caravan route: the location share only works there, and an inland city without a route gets just the fixed part.
• Gold income does not scale with population and is pooled in the empire's purse; losing the city takes both the Market and its location share. A Caravan road node's own income feeds the same purse.

The numbers on this page are read from the game’s balance tables.