Economic buildings - Are tier 3 and 4 buildings worth it?

Remember Shogun 2 vanilla? With few exceptions, upgrading buildings to consume food was never worth it. Even in previous games, the top tiers pay back your investment after so many turns that they aren't worth building except for vanity purposes.

Looks like CA is up to the same with Rome 2. A huge amount of buildings have either a -4 public order or -4 food penalty at tier 3. The tier 4 counterparts generally have a -12 public order or -12 food penalty. At first glance, most don't seem worth the price. Tier 4s generally have double the benefits of tier 3 at triple the penalty. I'm struggling to think of examples where upgrading to tier 4 is better than upgrading 3 different ones to tier 3.

Tier 2 structures have no penalties. It might be better to have most structures stay at tier 2 and only upgrade a few select ones to tier 3. Another option is to build the shrines that increase food/order but give no penalties. That removes a level 2 building but lets you upgrade some buildings to tier 3. What have you guys found out?

Personally, as Carthage, I'm building either the shrines to Eshamun (food and a little order, no penalty) and/or to Tanit (order, minor food penalty compared to others). That allows me to counteract the penalties from upgrading the base settlement. I'm not sure if it's worth it, actually.

No idea how it goes for non Hellenic factions yet but once you get to the sanitation buildings, like viaducts, wells, fountains, that sort of stuff, it's a really good idea to 'respec' cities far away from any war and have them have only production and sanitation buildings. You can easily cram all the highest tech ones in there and they affect the entire province they are in.

I'm gathering the same thing. The sewers line and the circus line of buildings have MASSIVE bonuses to their effects (Colosseum provides +30! public order), so you have to start with a forum and build up from there. Of course, you need a ton of food to counter the usage of the big buildings, but it seems worth it. It does require a lot of care and planning, though. It seems very easy to build yourself into constant revolts through squalor (which I have not done, but someone posted about having 1-2 revolts per turn in Italy because he didn't watch his builds) or a food shortage (which I did by not paying attention. All settlements stopped growing, all armies stopped replenishing lost troops, and in the province that had the lowest net food all garrisons and armies started suffering attrition. It was not pleasant).

So far I managed to get by without revolts but my food supply has been dropping due to more buildings and regions and as Suebi I have still to explore the public order buildings. Overall I think it is fair to say that the trade cities of valuable goods are clearly worth it with a couple of trade partners. I have researched pretty much only on the civic side of the tech tree. Only the Celtic lands brought me close to a revolt.

I have yet to reach tier 4, I lack the tech but I have build a considerable number of tier 3 farms and harbours to support my trade cities (great ROI), frontier towns (garrison) and provincial capitals.

About 150ish turns into first campaign (Rome, Junii). I haven't really figured how to optimize provincial economy yet (although my treasury seems to be doing fine). My general impression, however, is that the "-4 order penalty" buildings (Rank 3 I think?) are generally manageable and worth getting. The -12 squalor buildings, however, have kicked my butt; I had to go back and demolish most of them.

With careful planning, I'm sure some of them are worth it. But a wholesale "No yellow up-tick arrow goes unchecked" approach definitely spirals out of control.

I don't get what's good with the sewer line of buildings. I've never built any. The bonuses seem pretty small compared to the city center line ones.

I'm playing Carthage so far. My rule for upgrading tier 3 and 4 food/order buildings is to add food + squalor. For example, Carthage's tier 2 fishing port gives 6 food. The tier 3 fishmonger gives 8 food at the cost of 4 squalor. That's a total food + squalor of 4. If I capture tier 3 fishing ports, I raze them and rebuild to tier 2. Not worth it.

Carthage's Temple of Eshmun is awesome. I just spam these into almost all my settlements. It gives food without any penalties, even at tier 3 and 4.

I specialize some provinces to produce income. The harbor line gives wealth in exchange for food. I build one of the industry line of buildings and the two city center ones that are specialized for income (wine and market). The public order city center line and Carthage's Temple of Tanit do a good job of counteracting the public order penalties at the cost of food.

The other provinces build fishing ports and farms to counteract all the negative food of the economic provinces. The Temple of Eshmun gives food as well without any squalor penalties.

I'll go ahead and just say it - I love the food/squalor province system. It is, in my eyes, the most brilliant part of Rome II (which is veiled criticism as well, but oh well).

The reason for this is singlehandedly because food as a resource has a capped bonus, where squalor-to-food and squalor-to-profit has no cap. Which means that t3 buildings are usually worth it here and there or in specialized profit-provinces. The t4 ones become useful as the game progresses due to a naturally growing overweight of public order and food - but only a few select places where the ROI for the -12 public order is positive within a reasonable amount of time. In other words, the game leads you to make centres of greatness around minor provinces that primarily provide food and a bit of public order. And that is genius.

This will function even better if you mod in 2 seasons along with extended research time and rebalance a few of the temples. I dont see perfection, but I see potential.

Having done quite a bit more playing, I would say they are definitely worth it, but you have to be smart about it. You have to carefully balance happiness and food both on a province and faction level or it's terribly easy to build yourself into famine or constant revolts. You also have to do quite a lot of research down the civil trees to unlock all the various buildings you will need to balance things out.

Here's a few buildings from the Roman faction, with their significant bonuses:

Cloaca Maxima (level 5 sewer), adds +2 public order (not great), adds +12 growth to the province (nice), adds +3 growth to ALL provinces
Circus Maximus (level 5 public forum), adds +30 public order (this counters all that squalor), +5% cavalry morale upon recruitment in ALL provinces
Colosseum (level 5 public forum), adds +12 public order, +1 experience to new champions in ALL provinces (you can get rank 5 champions with this and a Vigiles Urbani)
Pantheon (level 5 temple), adds +20 public order, adds +2 public order in ALL provinces

All those public order bonuses help cancel out the huge squalor hits from the high level farms, which helps with the food usage. You can similarly balance the buildings leading up to these, but it's a matter of research. I've tended to get food by conquering territory and putting farms in all the minor settlements. Now that I discovered the gladiator school and its +12 public order I've been building a lot of them in provincial capitols.

i have trouble playing with carthage, cant seem to actually earn more money (2nd day to play the game ), but I really want to eat Rome's lunch.

Side note WRT the Colosseum: either the games does not stack different sources of experience bonuses upon recruitment or the Colosseum champion bonus is broken. Recruiting agents out of a city with a Vigiles Urbani, which gives +3 to all agents, I get level 4 agents from the start. Recruiting a champion there still gives a level 4 champion. I tried recruiting a champion in a city that was still building the Vigiles Urbani, and only got a level 3 champion. I have not yet tried recruiting a champion at a city that gave no other bonus; I'll try that the next time one shuffles off his mortal coil.

Edit: Ok, I had a champion croak just now. My bonus cities are Mediolanum (sorry, I don't like the Celtic name), Carthago, and Singidun. So I recruited a champion in Rome (where I build the Colosseum) and got a level 2. Then I disbanded him and recruited another in Brundisium (different province, no bonuses) and got a level 2. Then I disbanded that one and recruited one in Mediolanum, getting a level 4. Apparently the Colosseum bonus doesn't stack with the water tank building line; only the largest one applies.