Which guild do you build?

[holycow]

Was wondering which guilds do you build or consider absolutely useless.

Me? Usually play english so1-2 archer guild.

I always build a merchant guild in capital to increase $$ from trade and merchants.

and usually just 1-2 each of spy,assassin,theology guilds.

have never been offered horse guild.

find explorers guild useless, but will build 1 just in case.

rarely get weapon guild

every other city gets merchants.

[dismal]

Was wondering which guilds do you build or consider absolutely useless.

Good question. I'm starting to wonder if most guilds are worth building at all.

I have completely stopped building thieves, theologians and explorers. I feel like I have been to quick to throw away that 1000 fl fwhen the window pops up.

I like the ones that give military bonuses, but I question the value of the others.

I tend to go mostly merchant's guild as well, but if the only benefit is a little merchant experience I'm not sure the thousands I'm spending on merchant's guilds are worth it.

Are you sure they give trade bonuses to the city?.

[vonsch]

Just checked ancilliary file, nothing there triggers from thieves' guild.

The only traits are the basic skills boosts we already know about.

It would be pretty easy to up the value slightly by adding the stock ancilliaries and related traits in to a trigger based on ending the turn in a city with the guild. Things like false papers, spyglasses, dancers, catamites, and pickpockets.

As it stands the skill boosts aren't THAT useful. Spies are reasonably easy to train. But the ancilliaries that boost them to the very high levels are harder to come by. Those would justify having a guild or higher.

Similarly, the other non-combat ones could be enhanced a bit.

[Budwise]

I have a Theology Guilds HQ at my capital but it looks like I will have to destroy a lot of my explorer guilds just to get the others.

I really like the Theology Guild HQ because most of my now Bishops turn right into Cardinals RIGHT AWAY. I had one graduate just to become a Cardinal.

[gardibolt]

I like Theology Guild (especially where I have a Cathedral) to get pretty nearly insta-Cardinals.

Assassin's Guild is a must if you want to use assassins; they're worthless without one.

Swordsmith is decent if you have a forward troop training center. Too much hassle to sent troops to be retrained, though.

The rest strike me as pointless (other than the Hospitallers/Templars/Teutonic Knights buildings).

[vonsch]

I like Theology Guild (especially where I have a Cathedral) to get pretty nearly insta-Cardinals.

Assassin's Guild is a must if you want to use assassins; they're worthless without one.

Swordsmith is decent if you have a forward troop training center. Too much hassle to sent troops to be retrained, though.

The rest strike me as pointless (other than the Hospitallers/Templars/Teutonic Knights buildings).

I just added in some of the appropriate ancilliaries to the thieves, merchants and explorers guild to try. The merchants can get a merchant_clerk if they hang around a guild city a while. Generals can get a money counter.

The thieves guild cities can pop pickpockets and spyglasses too now for spies. Testing with fairly low chance, 5% per turn without expending movement points, I think.

Also the explorers will pop more of the movement ancilliaries for generals that sit in their cities a while. Stacking several of those should help for things like crusades. I did quartermaster and intrepid_explorer, I think. Was a chance of the latter in some circumstances, I expanded that and added in the former. Hmm, if admiral can be tested for separately, naval_navigator is another.

Hmm, interesting, master_of_horse can pop from gm_horse_breeders_guild, but master_of_archers could not from woodsmens_guild of any sort. Changed that. Swordsmiths can pop master_smith too. And the various ponies come from horse_breeders_guild, which makes sense. Heh, princesses and diplomats can get those. Hmm, oddly, generals can't. Easy to fix.

I think more ancilliaries makes management of agents/generals more interesting.

Anyone get a princess with a yappy_little_dog yet? There sure are a lot of princess ancilliaries and triggers considering the relative rarity and short duration of "life" for them. Be better if that attention had been lavished on the generals.

[Xehh II]

I build every one available.

[IrishArmenian]

I try to stack them, for instance:
Sicily--Assassin's guilds in cities, Swordsmith's in castles
Russia--Theologian's guilds in cities(to convert Catholic/Muslim settlements to Orthodox), Swordsmith's guilds in castles
Scotland--Merchant's guilds in cities, " " in castles

[gingergenius]

Merchants guild in every city except:

Nottingham - my military capital. Woodsman's Guild HQ here

York - my religious capital. Theologians Guild HQ here

Antwerp - my assassin capital. Assassin Guild HQ here

and so on. I have one of each type of guild including a Templar's HQ nicked off the Hungarians at Halych, plus maybe a few more swordsmiths/ hospitallers at my castles. These all will change when my borders change, since apart from Nottingham, I only keep castles that have borders with other factions.

[holycow]

Are you sure they give trade bonuses to the city?.

Yes, it boosts your $$ from trade. Look at your city before you click build on Guild build screen and you'll see your $$ go up ~50. And you've all probably noticed by now, that any trade upgrades to your capitol also increases $$ from merchants out in field.

[Philbert]

For some reason I got offered loads of merchant guilds as the HRE. I accepted almost all of them simply for the merchant cavalry, which is a cavarly unit that fits in the free upkeep slots. I find cavalry units very useful in defending a city.

I purposely selected a castle to train only dismounted knights for a long time, just to get the swordsmith's guild there.

On the other guilds I just don't know what they do for me, but usually I just take what's offered.
Next campaign I will make a guild planning in advance.

[Furious Mental]

I train as many merchants as I can, so I generally end up with the guild HQ no matter which faction I am, which suits me because I like to use them in predatory fashion. Piece of advice (think I';ve mentioned it before but nonetheless) don't build a high level religious building in a city where you train alot of merchants, it will make them too moralistic.

[FrauGloer]

I usually reject most guild proposals because most cities just don't need one... The only exceptions to this are merchant guilds which I accept most of the time for the trade bonus. Of the others, I almost never build more than two or three.

Merchants' Guild: all trade-heavy cities, but not in cities that have only insignificant trade

Theologicans' Guild: the first city I can take in the Holy Land (usually Antioch or Jerusalem) to pump out priests. In my England game, Antioch has the HQ and a huge cathedral for instant piety 8+ bishops. Nowhere else, most of Europe is my religion anyways...

Thieves' Guild: I never built those myself, you can get enough of these by just taking enemy settlements, as the AI spams spies like there's no tomorrow and usually gets these guilds in most of their cities. Shame...

Assassins' Guild: I don't use assassins that often so I haven't built one of those yet...

Masons' Guild: This has got to be the single most useless guild around. The building bonus is hardly noticable...

Horsebreeders' Guild: I don't know what the guys at CA were thinking when they made HBGs city-only... For non-muslims, it is nigh-impossible to get anything more than basic level which does no good to castle-trained cavalry... If you can capture an HQ - good for you!

Swordsmith's Guild: I usually built two to three of these in strategic locations, depending on faction. One in western Europe, one in central Europe, and one in the middle east (Acre or Aleppo).

Explorers' Guild: Hmm, I don't know about this Guild... I can hardly notice a difference in movement, but I build one to two, anyways...

Chapter Houses: This depends on faction. For factions with inherently good cavalry (France, HRE, Spain) those are unnecessary, really. I usually build one or two to add some variety or as a boost in the early game. For factions lacking their own high era heavy cavalry (Scotland springs to mind), however, I spread them evenly across the map (5-7).

[dismal]

Theologicans' Guild: the first city I can take in the Holy Land (usually Antioch or Jerusalem) to pump out priests. In my England game, Antioch has the HQ and a huge cathedral for instant piety 8+ bishops. Nowhere else, most of Europe is my religion anyways...

England with huge cathedral in Antioch? Shouldn't the game be over?

While those high piety priests look pretty good, think about how much cash you have invested to get them there. I usually build a level 2 church everywhere eventiually so I won't count that, but you've got to build 3 more levels plus 2 levels of guilds = (3200+6400+9600+1000+2000) = 22,200 fl. If you are at the point of having excessive money, this is no big deal, I guess.

I have found that 4 or 5 priests straight from a church get whatever job is needed to be done done pretty well, and will level up piety fast enough.

The other factor I would consider is sinking that much money into buildings in the holy land while the Mongols are still a factor.

Thieves' Guild: I never built those myself, you can get enough of these by just taking enemy settlements, as the AI spams spies like there's no tomorrow and usually gets these guilds in most of their cities. Shame...

Guilds past enemies have built are a nice source of emergency cash. I don't actively cull them, but when I'm really short of a couple thousand florins I can usually scrape it up by going on a useless guild hunt.

[HoreTore]

Guilds in my current campaign as hungary:

- Budapest - master merchant
- Jerusalem - assassin
- Sofia and Bran castles - templar

Guilds I'm trying to get in other cities:
- Venice - assassin HQ
- Zagreb - thieves
- Bucharest - theologians
- Antioch - theologians HQ
- Iasi - swordsmith
- Caffa - merchant probably