Angkor Wat : Can someone enlighten me

[frenzyfol]

Angkor Wat Philosophy 500 hammers +8 culture; +2 Great People points; +1 hammer from Priest in all cities; May turn 3 citizens into Priest; More likely to generate Great Prophet; May be built only in Medieval and earlier starts; Doubled production speed with Stone; Obsolete with Computers

Why would I ever want to build this?
I guess it does make priests a great all rounder specialist for a specialist based economy, but we are approaching the time where GP are becoming very weak. If I'm going to run a specialist economy I don't want to waste all my great people points.

I consider this wonder to be the weakest wonder of the game. Maybe I'm overlooking something?

[Thrak]

Well it comes with Philosophy, which enables the pacifism civic for more great people.

You are correct in that it is probably not worth wetting yourself over; but if I'm Phi and running a GPP city (normally with 1 holy shrine for the priest specialists) there is a strat that concentrates on generating great prophets and dropping them in as super specialists. The Angkor Wat compliments this strategy nicely - giving the GPP city decent production for building more wonders that give Great Prophet points.

Basically the combination of pacifism and the angkor wat gives you (in the above scenario) the ability to forget about caste system and switch perhaps to serfdom to get some improvements done on newer cities.

With representation it means your priest specialists are giving +2 hammers +3 science, not too shabby at all.

[couerdelion]

I used to like the wonder but now barely touch it.

But if Taoism is the first religion that you found, then it’s likely that you will have been generating GP points already so the amount needed to generate a Prophet would be high. Add to that, the priest specialist is weaker than all the other specialists, it means that you might have to wait a long time for a Prophet or simply be forced into slowing down the generation of “useful” GPs.

So I found it was useful if I wanted a Prophet FOR the Shrine.

Once you have the shrine, there’s plenty of slots for priests anyway and if you want gold in your Shrine city, Great Merchants work better.

[Arrian]

If I have stone or have a comfy lead and can afford to spend the hammers, I'll build it. But it's not terribly special.

-Arrian

[JackRudd]

It's nice to have in conjunction with Mercantilism/Statue of Liberty.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Angkor Wat : Can someone enlighten me

Originally posted by frenzyfol
Angkor Wat Philosophy 500 hammers +8 culture; +2 Great People points; +1 hammer from Priest in all cities; May turn 3 citizens into Priest; More likely to generate Great Prophet; May be built only in Medieval and earlier starts; Doubled production speed with Stone; Obsolete with Computers

Why would I ever want to build this?
I guess it does make priests a great all rounder specialist for a specialist based economy, but we are approaching the time where GP are becoming very weak. If I'm going to run a specialist economy I don't want to waste all my great people points.

I consider this wonder to be the weakest wonder of the game. Maybe I'm overlooking something?

It turns Priests into Engineers who also give you gold. What isn't there to like about it?

(Well, the GP GPP.)

[popejubal]

It's absolutely delightful if you want a city or two to produce lots of hammers and lots of cash.

Angkor Wat in a high food city that founded a dominant world religion obviously gets a Shrine. That contributes lots of cash to your economy right there.

With just a Shrine, Angkor Wat and a single Temple, you can put 7 Priest specialists into action. That massive production makes it easy to build Market/Grocer/Bank/Wall Street in the city and now each $ you earn is being multiplied by 3.

Put any excess specialists into Merchants and you are now producing an absolutely astounding amount of gold and still have a startling number of hammers from the city. Settle any Great Priests in the city and build either National Park (if appropriate number of forests are available) or Iron Works and you have yourself a production city that can't be beat along with enough cash produced each turn to run at 100% science with an enormous empire, purchase buildings with Universal Sufferage and upgrade troops as needed all at the same time.

Great Priests are not that great near the end of the game if you are looking to lightbulb, but they can still be settled for 6 hammers and 15 gold per turn each and they can be spent on a Golden Age as well.

Angkor Wat really is fairly worthless as a Wonder. Unless you base some of your strategy around it. Then it's simply delightful.

[enderw]

Unless you are running the slider all the way to either end, coins and light bulbs are basically interchangeable. So regular priests are now 2 hammers and one gold which is better than an engineers 2 hammers, and GP is 3 hammers and 5 gold which is better than 3 hammers and three light bulbs. So it is a nice wonder, and can make a specialist economy better, but its no gamemaker.

[Blake]

I like it.
But I don't like it enough that I'd waste a GE on it, or even build it without stone (unless I have mad production like it's a 11 turn build).

If I have stone and if I get philosophy early I figure I may as well build it. One nice thing is that Philosophy tends to be an unpopular tech once Taoism is gone, so you can sit on the AW for ages until a good city is just sitting idle.

It is pretty good for Spiritual civs, particularly with like watery maps where you expand throughout much of the game. It can make not running slavery semi-viable, since spiritual temples aren't too hard to build.

It's noteworthy that Great Prophets are one of the best settling GP's (they simply have better yields), as such AW can be more for strategies where you settle a lot of GP's. This obviously goes well with early philosophy which generates you a lot of GP's earlyish in the game, when settling as lots of time to pay off.

The final thing to note is that the 3 priest slots can be useful. This is usually the case when Taoism is your first and only religion and you've already generated some GS's. This means you can only run single priests, and it'll take a long time to generate a prophet. But with the AW you can run 4 priests in a city can get a prophet for the shrine in no time.

[joncnunn]

Re: Angkor Wat : Can someone enlighten me

Basically it makes a Priest specalist yield the same number of hammers as an Engineer. And Priests are so much easier to get.
With Stone I highly recommend it, but without Stone it's something I skip. I also usually like to found mulitiple religions and so the Phophets are useful for the shrines.

Originally posted by frenzyfol
Angkor Wat Philosophy 500 hammers +8 culture; +2 Great People points; +1 hammer from Priest in all cities; May turn 3 citizens into Priest; More likely to generate Great Prophet; May be built only in Medieval and earlier starts; Doubled production speed with Stone; Obsolete with Computers

Why would I ever want to build this?
I guess it does make priests a great all rounder specialist for a specialist based economy, but we are approaching the time where GP are becoming very weak. If I'm going to run a specialist economy I don't want to waste all my great people points.

I consider this wonder to be the weakest wonder of the game. Maybe I'm overlooking something?

[Yosho]

Yeah, with Angkor Wat, priests are quite useful. That being said, I don't think I've ever built it, but I'm always quite happy when I conquer it from an AI. +