The Wise Men

[Hot Mustard]

Oliverfa has a good point though - if we do use a city other than Madrid, we should use the Palace as a shield bank rather than a wonder, because it won't be communicated to the other civs.

[E_T]

the thing with starting to prebuild is that we are still REXing, Madrid is the best city to do part of that with, especially with it's temple. We need to explore this in about 20 turns time, but our best bet, to have the growth & trade from it is to get the HG & Monarchy.

Eta Tamali

[Arnelos]

E_T and I discussed wonders the other night.

I'm of the opinon that the Pyramids is only minimally useful because, as we've discussed, having granaries isn't really the end-all be-all. Pyramids also risks an early GA

We could, however, use the Pyramids as a shieldbank for a more valuable wonder in Madrid.

My personal recommendation, if we can get it before the others, is the Great Wall.

We plan to be building city walls in a number of our cities for the added defense and the Great Wall will double those city walls' effectiveness. With the Glory of War about to get their dreaded Riders and Neu Demogyptica concurrently getting their hands on the dreaded Ansar Warriors right about the same time, having pikemen fortified behind double-strength city walls might not be such a bad idea for neutralizing the value of their UU's.

The Great Wall will then last throughout much of the Middle Age until it becomes obsolete with the rise of canons. This does mean that anyone planning to do harm to Spain need only build their forces and wait for this time, but by then we should have musketeers, our own UU, and will have had most of the Middle Age to plan our defenses for when Metalurgy arrives and we need a new plan.

So what the Great Wall buys us is the neutralization of two out of three UU's on our own continent AND it buys us time throughout the early middle ages to hopefully avoid war against us and build ourselves up to be stronger than our potential opponents.

Think about it....

The other best option would be Great Library. Though it goes obsolete very quickly, it would allow us to concentrate on MONEY rather than science and thus quickly upgrade our spearmen to pikemen (and other upgrades) when we get feudalism, whereas our competitors will be more cash-strapped.

Thus Great Library is worth consideration...

Beyond that, there are very few ancient wonders that make an enormous difference for us that don't risk an early GA. Pyramids wouldn't be bad, but it risks an early GA. We are the civ that needs Hanging Gardens LEAST (having four luxuries and the religious trait at Regent level, we should have little difficulty with unrest). Great Library is nearly useless because we're on the main continent and likely will have contact with all other civs anyhow (AND it would risk an early GA ). Colossus is an AWESOME wonder, but the near certainty of causing an early GA makes it a bad choice. The Oracle has the same problem as the Hanging Gardens, we don't need it... AND it might cause an early GA we don't want yet.

So, in my book, the only ancient wonders worth shooting for are Great Wall and Great Library, in that order. The Sistine Chapel might not be bad if we can use another wonder or a palace as a shieldbank, however. It would be worth triggering our GA with Sistine... especially since the wonder never wears out and it doubles the effectiveness of our cheap cathedrals (whereas Oracle wears out and we probably don't need it).