Ankhor Vat

[Vampgelus]

Am i the only one not liking this wonder ?

Sure, on the short term, you run a priest in stead of an engeneer, so that you gain 1 , but on the other side, you pop prophet's rather then engeneers, and i tend to prefer those once i got all my shrines built.

Thoughts ?

[wodan11]

It's a must for the religious track. Spawn lots of religions, make sure you found the AP for one of your minority religions, run lots of priests because you need lots of shrines, get Pyramids if you can.

Think about it this way: with AP and AW, you get something like 6-10 free hammers per city. So, you don't have to whip or work mines at all. You can go the SE route and run a couple of scientists along with your priests, or you can go the CE route and work lots of cottages. Either way, you get your production from all the free hammers.

It's definitely a pigeonholed wonder, but in its place it is pretty huge.

Wodan

[snoopy369]

Prophets are quite valuable, actually, in a GA strat. Prophets are the hardest type of GP to generate in quantity unless you found a lot of religions (which usually in the GA strat you don't have time for), so the Vat is quite useful there.

Overall I rarely build it, certainly, but I rarely build most wonders.

[Vampgelus]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Prophets are quite valuable, actually, in a GA strat. Prophets are the hardest type of GP to generate in quantity unless you found a lot of religions (which usually in the GA strat you don't have time for), so the Vat is quite useful there.

Overall I rarely build it, certainly, but I rarely build most wonders.

GA strat ? Culture-bombing to cultre-victory ?

[Jaybe]

Probably Golden Age.

See Glossary of Terms, post nr. 1.

[Vampgelus]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Probably Golden Age.

See Glossary of Terms, post nr. 1.

Yep, i got it after posting, just didn't edit. Anyway, i'd rather get GE then GP, just for beeing more polyvalent. And for the GA strat, it doesn't matter if you sacrifice GE or GP.

[snoopy369]

For the Golden Age strat it matters very much what you use There's no way you use GE until late anyway, they're the hardest to use (and most useful externally).

Usually, something like this happens:
GSc
GSc+GM
GSc+GM+GA
GSc+GM+GA+GP
GSc+GM+GA+GP+GSp
and then GE for the 6-for-all, for those of us skilled enough to get that far (21 specific Great People). GS/GM/GA are by far the easiest to get (caste system), GP/GE/GSp are much harder.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Prophets are quite valuable, actually, in a GA strat. Prophets are the hardest type of GP to generate in quantity unless you found a lot of religions (which usually in the GA strat you don't have time for), so the Vat is quite useful there.

Overall I rarely build it, certainly, but I rarely build most wonders.

I'd have thought that GE's were the hardest. Two religions with in the civ allow one food rich city to build two temples and two cathedrals for 6 priest specialists. Wouldn't that be sufficient?

On the original question, the Angkor Wat is quite poor but not all that expensive if you’ve got stone. I tend to go for it if I am having trouble popping a prophet to build a shrine. After that, the small bonus you get for a priest over and engineer can have some small additional value if you are running with mercantilism or have built the statue of liberty. The free specialist adds +1h+1g+3GPP with Angkor Wat (ie versus a standard non-specialist).

Now for the most part, the forge will be more useful for a new city while the theatre is cheaper. Temples really only come into play as a strong early build for these late cities if you also have spiral minaret and/or sankore. Even more so if you are SPI where the temple costs 40h and can produce +1 happy, +2b, +3g, +1h, +6 GPP (with Pacifism), +2 culture (with Free Speech?).

But that’s all a bit exceptional. In practice, I’d go back to my original reasons for building AW

[Supr49er]

Re: Ankhor Vat

Originally posted by Vampgelus
Am i the only one not liking this wonder ? ...

NO. It's one of my least favorites, and I almost never build it.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by couerdelion


I'd have thought that GE's were the hardest.

Indeed, but I wouldn't use GE's for GA popping unless I had a ready source of them (Pyramids+Gardens+third GE wonder, or something like that). I should have been more specific

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by snoopy369


Indeed, but I wouldn't use GE's for GA popping unless I had a ready source of them (Pyramids+Gardens+third GE wonder, or something like that). I should have been more specific

So if I happen, by chance to have built Stonehenge, Pyramids, Great Wall, Hanging Gardens in Rome with a forum, I might be on to a good thing.

I'm wondering whether or not I possibly ought to pass up the opportunity now of Colossus. If I can add Hagia Sophia. I can get the GPP rate to 27/turn and a GE ratio to 66%.

[Theben]

For an early GE city, you need Pyramids/Gardens/Hagia Sophia+ a forge. PHIL helps also. Maybe the National Epic wonder, but I usually put that in my main GP city (usually my capital).

[Vampgelus]

I tried several games, i never seem to be able to get a "pure" GE city, it has the right ratio, but lacks GPP to get them out .

By adding national epic, i would lower the ratio... and i don't care a **** about artists.

BtW: Give me the old GW with GEP back !!! GS suck...

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Vampgelus
Am i the only one not liking this wonder ?

Sure, on the short term, you run a priest in stead of an engeneer, so that you gain 1 , but on the other side, you pop prophet's rather then engeneers, and i tend to prefer those once i got all my shrines built.

In my view, the main value of Angkor Wat is that it enables cities to have more two-hammer-per-turn specialists than they can support engineers. With Angkor Wat, the extras can be assigned jobs as priests where they generate a higher direct value than engineers do. For a civ with the Statue of Liberty and/or several cities with big food surpluses, that can be a meaningful advantage, especially on larger map sizes.

There is also a micromanagement nuance worth considering. Even when a player has a strong desire to generate great engineers instead of great prophets, there tend to be cities that generate so few GPPs or that got such a late start generating GPPs that they will never actually produce a great person (or never produce another one after the last one they generated). In some cases, great persons generated in higher-GPP cities keep driving up the cost of the next great person more quickly than a city is generating GPPs. In other cases, several cities are producing roughly the same number of GPPs, so that there isn't enough time for cities that got a late start to get their turn to produce a great person before the game is over. The more cities a civ has, the more cities will fall into one of these categories.

If a city is never going to produce a great person, there is no reason for a civ with Angkor Wat to give up the gold advantage from a prophet in that city to generate great engineer points instead of great prophet points. So there are almost always cities that can benefit from the gold advantage without sacrificing a civ's ability to generate great engineers.

Angkor Wat is certainly not one of my favorite wonders. But if I can build it without unduly disrupting the other things I need to be doing, and especially if I have stone to lower its cost, I like having it.

[Seedle]

Originally posted by Vampgelus
By adding national epic, i would lower the ratio... and i don't care a **** about artists.

This annoys me too, but I find that even if my city generates an artist rather than an engineer, since I get more great people, I get more engineers. I.E. Getting 5 engineers and 2 artists from a city is better than getting 4 engineers from that same city, or even 5 engineers from that same city.

BtW: Give me the old GW with GEP back !!! GS suck...

Agreed. In my current game as Lincoln of China, I built the Great Wall so I could concentrate my forces on the AI. I've generated 3 Great Spies, even though my odds of producing the last 2 were 16%. Oh well, I took a gamble and paid the price.