Monoliths

[Chaos Theory]

I almost never build them. Does anyone else? As far as popping borders, if not creative, I try to use libraries where needed, religion where possible, and avoid putting early cities in sites that need border expansion to be useful. Once Caste System is available, I might use that to assign an artist at a new city, or once I have Drama, a theater makes for plenty of culture at a modest cost.

[Krill]

Depends; If the city is going to be a production city then I don;t have a reason to build a library because it would not get much out of it, and the monuments are cheaper so I can spend more hammers on units/wonders. If it is a gold city then I'm probably going to build the monument early on and whip a library if there is enough food so that the city will regrow quickly. I will rarely be using Caste system; there are exceptions, like my AU202 game, where I needed caste system for most of the game but I was playing under added restrictions in the game. Also Spi civs can make very good use of this trick while trying to spam out GP.

Personally I prefer to build missionaries in a hammer rich city for each new city, but of course this then raises the whole point of religion...and I feel that after I have sewn up the basic requirements of my civ, BW, AH, Pottery, maybe Archery depending on settings, then I'll chase religion. If my start absolute needs happiness though, then I'll just go straight for a religion and use that to pop the borders for all of my cities.

Henge is a possibility if you are willing to try and chop it, because sometimes it just goes so fast to an Industrial civ, and this solves most problems, but it also serves well a civ going for a religion as the great preist will help spread the religion.

So much depends on the game that it is very hard to say "I always do this" because a fair portion of the time it would be the wrong thing to do.

[Dis]

I build stonehenge alot. Only because it's an easy wonder to build. I know, everyone says to go for Oracle. But I can never get it. The ai always snags it.

[baboon]

I'm currently using Civ's with mining and fishing, and I choose financial (Carthagian, English), and ignoring early religions, so I kinda have to build Stonehenge to get my second and third city to expand. Works fine for me so far (at Prince). I chop a lot though. After it I build the Oracle for CoL and sometimes Pyramids if I get stone.

Building order for it is worker, worker (not chopped), settler (chopped)

[clarkcd]

Unless I snag Stonehenge I don't build monoliths (statues for Warlords). They expire too early for the cost (IMO) and I'd rather use that production to build granaries, settlers or military units.

[Jaybe]

If I'm not playing the late-summer-time Caesar (Augustus ), I build them until I have another culture-expanding building available. Got to get that border expanded STAT!

OTOH, I don't do it until I have researched Mysticism, and it usually is not the first thing I research. Being a consistent Roman, I never start with it.

[Chaos Theory]

Building Stonehenge is quite a bit different from building Monoliths in each and every city. I build Stonehenge sometimes, depending on the circumstances, and welcome the free Monoliths, but almost never build Monoliths themselves.

[couerdelion]

In certain circumstance Monuments make a lot of sense

1) Obviously for the Egyptians
2) For Charismatic leaders

For other cases, the can be a fairly decent case for a city which has borders to pop and some useful tiles to use in the fat-cross. With a good food source next to the city, the Monument can be whipped easily when Libraries or Monasteries are unavailable or require too many population points.

Overally, I build them rarely.

[rah]

I usually only build them in my second and third city. As stated here, there are many other options after that. It's usually as soon as the city gets to size two, whip it and the leftover will help build the second warrior faster.