warmongering advice

[sjm]

I must say, I prefer theocracy to free religion myself (as a warmonger), although the new AI's tendency to actually spread religions actively means that FR has probably become a viable option.

Of course, this probably also has something to do with my preferred playing style and opening gambit, which generally involves beelining to code of laws ASAP, netting Confucianism in the process. If I'm going to go to war, I really don't want to mess around with spamming missionaries all the time, so theocracy is a good way to combine a military boost with the security of only having my chosen religion spread (= bountiful shrine gold + no enemy LoS). It means you only need to "worry" about sending missionaries to cities you capture that already have a "foreign" religion. I play on huge maps, where the sheer number of cities means that one shrine can basically drive your entire economy. And you really need a solid economy to finance your wars, for military research, troop maintenance, upgrading troops and possibly rushing (if there are 12 other civs running emancipation, you'll have no choice but to ditch slavery )

And slavery is definitely great for a warmonger (get rid of those useless unhappy citizens), as is State Property (low upkeep for your vast empire, massive production advantages for a constant flow of units).

Later in the game though, the high rate of basic trade from trade routes is a great source of culture if you use the slider. Throw in +50% from the Eiffel Tower, +100% from Free Speech (+any extra income from towns as well), and popping your borders in one turn on marathon is almost a given in any decent sized city. As you might be forced to run emancipation at some point, you can't just rely on pop rushing in the later game. Of course, depending on your map size, the game might be over long before you get that far into the tech tree

Earlier on though, pop rushing is almost a must, and it makes sense to rush culture buildings throughout the game (starting with a theater) in any city that is going to be a frontier city for some time (especially near a third civ's borders).

[ZEE]

sjm,

as always your insights are fantastic. pop rushing is a very debatable topic: as was the biggest AI flaw of Fundy in Civ 2 if u recall... killed their economy. in civ 4 tho its a different model, and killing unhappy citizens seems the best way to do it...

[One_more_turn]

When I go up against a very strong AI civ, I tend to raze my initial conquests. This way I don't have to garrison anything and can keep my attack going. Only when my victory seems certain do I begin to keep their cities.

Also the first build item in a conquered city is always the Theater (when available). With 1 stroke I kill off 3 trouble makers and have instant culture in the city. Sometimes I will go with Courthouse first if my financial situation is dire.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by AshenPlanet
Kremlin is good for everybody, Sistine Chapel for non-creatives, and Pyramid for philosophicals, but the others generally aren't even as good as national wonders which you can build at your leisure.

Very much the advice of a pure warmonger. Being more inclined to a build strategy, I have to disagree with the last statement. Even for warmongers, a few well-timed wonders can do….well, wonders, for their overall game. If you have to look at relative values of different build options - cost in terms of hammers vs gain in terms of {various}- the benefit of wonders can give a very good payout.

Just look at a very basic wonder like Stonehenge. If we can assume that a prophet can pop a tech worth 1000 beakers then we can equate the 100 GPP needed to generate that prophet to the 1000 beakers. In other words, each GPP with worth 10 beakers so just the GPP output of Stonehenge generates 20 beakers per turn!!! As a side note to the warmonger, the Prophet lightbulb will be Theology so the warmonger gets his favourite civic too from this.

Wonders tend to be undervalued because people undervalue the GPP. And for this reason, wonders like Temple of Artemis, Great Library and Statue of Liberty can be extremely useful to any civ. I’d certainly put them above Sistine Chapel, which is of no great use apart from border popping and cultural victories.

[sjm]

The great thing about this game is the multitude of different strategies available.

My preferred wonders for warmonger would be (huge maps!):

Stonehenge: Prophet for shrine for economic reasons; quick early border expansions. Less useful if you're creative of course. Works well with other strategies too.

Pentagon: An obvious choice to me, but the bigger the map, the bigger the net benefits, as you're building units in numerous cities. On small maps, the game might be over before you can build it though.

3 Gorges Dam: Build units, not power plants! Not a good choice on island maps. But if you've got 50 cities on a continent, boy is this a nice one! Worth saving a engineer for IMO. Again, on small maps, the game might be over sooner.

I'll spend most of the game not building any wonders (as a warmonger), unless I have a breather and a good opportunity - if you snag divine right first, the spiral minaret is always nice, especially with theocracy. And as I said before, Eiffel Tower can be nice to speed up the end game.

If I had to choose only one wonder, it'd be the 3GD for its synergy with State Property, which is IMMENSELY powerful on huge maps

[Arrian]

SP is pretty powerful even on a standard map. It's a late-game civic, so it kinda should be strong.

Poprushing is powerful as hell, particularly poprushing courthouses in captured cities. It's a double-whammy of killing off unhappy citizens (who are likely to starve anyway!) and getting a CH up and running. I also often poprush theatres... it depends on exactly how my economy is doing.

Poprushing your own cities under the right circumstances is also quite powerful. Blake can tell you a thing or two about that. I don't even do it right, I don't think, and I get quite an early game advantage out of it (typically, my first 1-3 settlers are whipped out).

-Arrian

[rah]

IF it's a large enough city, I'll usually pop rush a library over the theater since the theater won't kill enough poeple off. Loss to starvation is such a waste.

[AshenPlanet]

.

Actually, building a wonder to get a gpp is a poor payout.
You can get a gpp by running a specialist faster than you could by making a wonder.
It saves you what that specialist could be making instead of being a specialist, but that's not much considering the base 3 beaker, 3 gold, 2 hammer, or 1 hammer 1 gold output of specialists not including factors like philosophical, representation, sistene chapel, etc.
That's certainly not worth the time except for certain circumstances like oracle, great wall, pentagon, and the ones listed above.
Stonehenge is the cheapest wonder, and so is close to being worth it since it only costs like 3 axemen to make.
If you had 3 extra axemen though, how much sooner could you win a war?
As for sistene chapel, it's meaningless for creatives, but being able to pop borders without buying theaters, or run caste system, is a huge deal for builders too until you get universal sufferage.
Before US, you're paying people to rush buildings, and people don't replenish as quickly as gold.
Building a theater first which I always do under universal sufferage, will greatly delay the important granary, forge, couthouse that you need under slavery, it's nice to not need it.

National wonders, on the other hand, are very powerful and usually worth building asap, unless you're in the middle of a war.
And, of course, you still get a world wonder's benefits when you capture a city that wasted time building it.

Building wonders can be fun.
I just played a warlords prince game on the earth map as asoka where I founded every religion and built every wonder.
But, if you find yourself able to build so many wonders, you might also find that you could move up to a higher difficulty with success if you spend your time building more important things...
World wonders just aren't the game-breaking buildings that they used to be.
That's not to say that building wonders in peacetime, or just avoiding war all together is a terrible thing, but just that if you are in a war, you are better served making troops than by making wonders.

.

[ZEE]

ive always said that in earlier versions people used wonders as some sort of a crutch. easy solutions to hard problems such as the Great lighthouse letting your galleys transverse oceans.

not so anymore, and ive NEVER been big on building wonders anyways...

[AshenPlanet]

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In civ2 and Alpha Centuari, you did get crazy bonuses from world wonders like ocean sailing with galleys, half cost upgrades, double terraforming speed, etc.

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[Arrian]

Yes, the CIV wonders are much less uber. But I'm a wonder fiend and I'm ok with that. It's one of the things by which I gauge the success of a particular game (score means nothing to me). There are only a handful of wonders I don't care about/try for, depending on my circumstances (resources). I am fully aware that this has very little correlation with winning the game. I've never really played Civ just to win, though.

-Arrian

[zeace]

Yay Firaxis,

They have done a great job with the wonders in Civ IV. There's a fine balance to be had between useless wonders and essential wonders. In past games there were wonders that if you missed them you'd immediately restart. There were other wonders that you'd never ever build unless you were trying to build all of them.

In Civ IV the most overpowered wonders are probably:

Pyramids: If you get it you can run a specialist economy, otherwise you pretty much can't
Great Wall: It's a crutch for some people who can't deal with Barbs on their own.
Stonehenge: Some people can't play non-creative civs without it.
Oracle: Used to be overpowered with the slingshots, now a slingshot is a lot of work. You could almost do as well focusing that energy on research instead
3GD: This wonder is way better than building 50 coal plants. On a pangea/large continent map it is very powerful.

There's almost no wonders that are universally useless but a few are really weak in all situations:
The Temple of Artemis: A free priest which helps get an early prophet, but it generates GM points so it pollutes the pool. The trade route increase is usually pretty marginal.
Chichen Itza: +25% defense in cities is pretty weak. Especially since most wars should be taking place at your enemies cities, not yours.


Compare that list to a similar one for any other civ game and the difference is astounding. I still miss the old pyramids and leonardo's workshop, but I like being able to lose a race for a wonder and go "Oh well, I guess I'll have to try something else. Now what should I do with all this money...". Much better than "Oh crap, time to re-load my game and rush it a turn earlier..." (I know, I used to be such a cheat)

[couerdelion]

If you can’t do a lot better with a city population than 3 beakers or 1 hammer + 1 gold (to all intents and purposes these are the only GPP generators until you get currency, then there’s something wrong. With slavery civic, even a 2/0/0 tile will get you something in the region of 4 hammers per turn so using specialists early can be a serious drain on all forms of construction. If we are using a 2/1/0 tile then the “cost” of appointing a specialist works out at something approaching 3hpt and over the time it takes to generate a prophet/scientist we lose over 100 hammers.

So already the 120 hammers for something like Stonehenge is looking worthwhile and we have not even considered the fact that it will continue to generate GPP and culture.

I’m surprised that you don’t seem to think the Sistine Chapel is much use for creatives. It’s less important I’ll agree but the combination of Free Speech and specialists will often allow a Creative civ to pop a border in the first turn that a captured city comes out of resistance. Both for military reasons and for the ability to work valuable tiles, this can sometimes make the difference between starvation and an early productive city. Personally, I don’t like Sistine Chapel that much so will only build it if I think I have a decent chance of losing the race so can keep the gold (with wonder production bonuses)

What’s wrong with the Temple of Artemis many times. Get this in your capital and your trade income can be huge. Of course, if you’ve made lots of enemies then that’s your own fault but I suppose one of the costs of warmongering. I should admit here that I built Stonehenge and Temple of Artemis in my current game as Incans because the Industrious trait came in handy here. With 6 overseas trading nations, Cuzco is netting over 30 commerce from just 3 trade routes and this converts into something like 75 beakers per turn. Not bad for 160 hammers (before wonder building bonuses)!! And this ignores the GPP benefit 5 GPP/turn and the hammer/gold benefit from the priest (this alone is worth something in the region of 100 hammers)

I took a look at Three Gorges Dam and at the moment, I have to say I am unconvinced. Basically, this just gives +50% production to a city which

a) is on the same continent
b) has a factory
c) does not already have power

In the last case, there could be a benefit from replacing coal plants and reducing unhealthiness but at best this will generate +2 food for those cities. By the time you can build 3GD, you should already have power in your most developed cities so the power benefit will go to the more marginal cities. Add to this, the cost of the 3GD is the same as 7 hydro plants so one can basically assume that it is not paying off until it has provided power for 7 cities. If this takes some time the cost is barely justified.

My least favoured wonders are Parthenon, Great Wall, Hanging Gardens, Notre Dame, Sistine Chapel, Versailles

[Quillan]

Perhaps, but then 3GD has a couple of other uses. Depending on your play style, you might research straight from Industrialism into Plastics, which I do a lot of times. In many cases I finish Plastics before all my cities could build their factories, and if so I don't bother with power plants for them, I just let the wonder take care of it. The other use is that captured cities on that continent automatically have power. I can't guarantee that the AI will have built a factory plus power plant there to begin with, or that it will survive my capturing the city if they did. I still may have to rebuild a factory, but I won't have to waste time building a power plant if I have 3GD.

[ZEE]

heres the REAL reason i dont build wonders: when i played hotseat or LAN with my friends in civ3, they all were in a race to get all the wonders so they would have that "CRUTCH" like most wonders gave. so i tested myself to win WITHOUT those wonders. and as i stated in another thread, i was the BEST in my circle. im certainly not bragging, but simply stating that i TRAINED myself to win without wonders. i know wonders are less SUPER in civ4 and warlords, but there will still be a certain RUSH to build them in MP. I dont build wonders, but i build my army... to TAKE them from you...