Are Pyramids worth it?

[Theseus]

I'm gonna stay away from the relative value of using build-time or a GL for the Pyramids... I'd rather have an Army anyway!

I generally don;t bother with Pyramids, but I am waiting for a situation where they make sense: core cities on rivers, with multiple food bonus tiles and luxuries.

I generally focus on good / great sites when REXing, and I often let towns get larger (5-6 pop) rather than cycling between 1-3 pop while building Settlers.

Given the opportunity, I'd love to see unrestricted growth while maintaining happiness.

Re granaries, I'll build them sometimes under the same circumstances (i.e., on a river and sufficiently happy), but lately I've been building them AFTER hospitals... the food box is bigger, no more restraint on growth, happiness is usually not an issue, and at that point it's usually a 2 turn build (with many instances where there's nothing critical to build anyway).

[Lord Merciless]

The decision about whether to build the Pyramid depends on the difficulty level. At Monarchy level and below, it's probably a good idea to build it to speed up your growth and increase the culture.

But at Emperor and above, warmongerings become essential because you need more luxuries to keep your citizens happy and GLs to build either an Army or a more important Wonder. I would rather build 13 Swordsmen/Horsemen than to spend to same resource on the Pyramid.

[Jethro83]

Since I find granaries to be useless until the Industrial age, I'd have to say no.

However, I'd prefer a neighbour on the same continent to build the Pyramids so that I may take the Pyramids off them later. No use if they are on another continent, or wasted on a small island.

[Fighter]

I have to say, it all depends on the map...

If your going Pangea, largeish map with slightly less than max civs then its well worth it. Archipelago, Continents or smallish map makes it next to worthless.

Large Pangea with that teamed up with Sun Tzu's is a great combo for rolling through territory.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Fitz
The "grow to fast" argument makes 0 cents to me. You can always turn the extra worker into an entertained if you need to, in which case he takes care of himself. And if you do get the luxury that allows you to use him, you dont have to wait for him to grow.

Well, I can see what you mean, but it is not exactly true that the entertainer will take care of himself... he will still eat two food every turn. Often, it will be a difference between having a slowly (=reasonably) growing city with a surplus of 1 food and a stagnating city with no surplus (which is ok) or even a city where one forest or hill (or any other high-shield, low-food) tile working citizen must be reassigned to grassland in order to prevent starving. Having entertainers early in the game somewhat forces you to focus more on food instead of the production, which is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.

[Ribannah]

The Pyramids are the single best wonder of the ancient times, mainly because they last forever.
But like all early wonders, they come at a high price.
Instead of building this wonder, you could have many more cities or a large army.
So it depends on what you have in mind for the game you're playing, on the map and on your opponents.

[vulture]

Originally posted by vondrack

Well, I can see what you mean, but it is not exactly true that the entertainer will take care of himself... he will still eat two food every turn. Often, it will be a difference between having a slowly (=reasonably) growing city with a surplus of 1 food and a stagnating city with no surplus (which is ok) or even a city where one forest or hill (or any other high-shield, low-food) tile working citizen must be reassigned to grassland in order to prevent starving.

Why bother preventing starvation? Without pyramids, the city will grow in 20 turns, and then either have the same problem or keep up the production and starve back down immediately. With pyramids, it grows in 10 turns, and then if you don't want to stabalise the food supply, you can let it starve for 10 turns before it drops back down a size. There is never any disadvantage to having the pyramids, and at the worst it gives you an increase in your score from the higher population of entertainers (and if you have enough luxuries, it gives you a more productive, larger population with no problems).

[Thrawn05]

I always build the pyramids. For a couple of reasons:

1: It helps build settlers out of newers cities quicker and more of them before the city pop goes back to 1.

2: If you're aiming for a culture win, you want this, and all other anchient wonders in the capital. By the time modern ages comes around BOOM... you win.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by vulture
Why bother preventing starvation? Without pyramids, the city will grow in 20 turns, and then either have the same problem or keep up the production and starve back down immediately. With pyramids, it grows in 10 turns, and then if you don't want to stabalise the food supply, you can let it starve for 10 turns before it drops back down a size. There is never any disadvantage to having the pyramids, and at the worst it gives you an increase in your score from the higher population of entertainers (and if you have enough luxuries, it gives you a more productive, larger population with no problems).

It now looks almost like I was trying to convince others that the Pyramids were worthless... I am not, believe me, I just think that the advantages granted by them are not extraordinary enough to make them a must-have wonder (see my original post). Sure, they do make your growth more rapid, making your settlers and/or workers easier to crank out, but you will have some hard time finishing them before anyone else, and they come at a pretty high shield cost. Besides, you will have to be able to support the cities founded by those extra settlers with a sufficent military and keep the extra population happy. It is a pretty well balanced wonder, I think.

As for the starvation thing... sure you can let that extra citizen die soon after he's born. But it adds to the tedium, since you can either have your governors manage the mood (which they do, IIRC, by reassigning citizens so as to prevent riots AND starvation) or manage it manually - in which case, you have to manually set the newly born citizen to an entertainer as soon as he is born (to prevent the city from going into disorder on the next turn - we assume that he would be the one to push the city over...), or your city goes into disorder for one turn and you lose production...

Sure it is manageable, but I can't see any major advantage that would make me feel strongly about the Pyramids.

It seems that I was VERY right about the Pyramids in my first post.. It really depends on the personal preferences and the game context, as we apparently have here people loving them and others saying don't bother. My opinion alone would be of little importance, as I am hardly a Civ3 pro, but I can see well-known names in both groups, so... this thread is not helping much, IB, is it?

[Wormwood]

Everybody here knows the real ancient wonder to go for is the Great Lighthouse

[Long Happy Man]

no, you guys go it all wrong! the greatest wonder of all time is the Colossus! The Colossus is good because it gives extra trade. And trade is good because it gives you gold and science output. You can't have enough of trade! -

(1) Tired of not being to catch up in tech with the AI? That is because you're not generating enough science! Build the Colossus!
(2) Not enough gold to maintain your empire with a large army? That is because you're not generating enough gold! Build the Colussus!
(3) Not satisfied that your city generating too little trade? Build the Colossus!
(4) One of your coastal cities have nothing better to build? Build the Colossus!
(5) For just 200 shields, it's the best bargain you can ever have, considering the extra trade you get! And what did I said about trade? Trade is good!! build the Colossus!
(6) Just build it!

There are many more great points to bring up but I think I'll just stop here. Too bad you can't build it at every city . Of course the incentive for buliding this wonder couldn't be better, but it is available with one of the earliest techs! Not to mention it is the cheapest wonder in the whole game!

Btw why is the Colossus obsolete with flight? (I think). Is there some historical background on this or just game balancing issue?

[Bamspeedy]

I agree with other posters who said that it depends on the map and difficulty level you are playing. If you are playing with minimal civs, it is more worth it than max civs. I'm guessing/estimating, that by the time you actually complete the pyramids you could have had at least 3-4 more cities had you been building settlers instead of the Pyramids.

With minimal civs (and lower difficulty levels) you have more territory you can claim, so the faster growth from the pyramids will make up for the settlers you could have had built, had you not built the pyramids. With max civs (and higher difficulty levels), the AI gobbled up alot of territory, so even though you did get the Pyramids, you ran out of room to build any more cities. So the end result was that you did get the Pyramids, but had alot less territory.

I give masonry to my neighbor and build up an army to capture it from him after he finishes it.

[vmxa1]

Let's not forget that you may not always be able to build it. Huge map, you are dropped in the middle of a large landmass and not near the ocean. If you can not found a city in a coastal square by your 4th city, you can forget getting the colossus at any level over regent and maybe all the way down to warlord.

[wrgj]

Pyramids at Deity

[Sorry for being so lengthy while restricting myself to deity, and to a particular situation therein, but I do think it's worthwhile to encourage alternative early strategies at higher difficulty levels.]

I restrict my discussion to deity, and certain map conditions (e.g. Thesus' situation with a capitol on a river, with lots of food bonus', allowing quick growth, high production, and at least a slim chance at building an early wonder in deity.) I also need to agree with Fighter, and say that it will depend on your map size (and I'll add, the number of opponents). This seems like I am saying it is different every time, but let me explain why Pyramids are important to me EVERY TIME! I assume, also, that you are on a large continent, and therefore expansion is the challenge - otherwise the Pyramids wouldn't be worth it!

(vmxa1: You'll recognise some details here! Including one way of getting the wonder without a leader. what can I say - I am biased by my current game!)

Axiom 0: We start in a position where this strategy will work! (I.e. we can build a settler, and then still have time to build the Pyramids.)

[Unfortunately, this is only applicable to the case where you're on a river, and you can therefore expand quickly along that river. If you are in a generally barren landscape, everything is more dependent on terrain, so it is not a very safe strategy.]

I want to contradict any post that claimed that the Pyramids always have a lower importance on higher difficulty levels. I claim that this is entirely dependent on your style of play, and if you have a chance at building them, then they are ESSENTIAL for producing the theoretically most powerful (wealth/shield producing capacity) civ much later in the game. I am ignoring the different ways of winning, but in the spirit of Civ2's "build the biggest civ you can to get a record score", I concentrate on putting the civ in the best place for the end-game.

N.B. Doing this is HARD and will not work every time. But if you manage it, you're in a much better position, relative to before, to win.

=====

Axiom 1: I assume that one plays with many civs, such that you cannot win by attacking early, and deeply wounding them, as there will always be more civs to come and beat you up
later.

Axiom 2: I assume that playing emperor/deity with lots of AI civs means that their early expansion creates a civ with 16 cities under despotism in the time that you can build in
the order of 6-8 cities (if you concentrate on building settlers), which means that if you attack a neighbour, you stunt your growth, and that of your neighbour, and you both end up much smaller and weaker than all other civs, leaving you to be crushed later in the game. N.B. This is a huge assumption, which would probably need to be combined with the fact that the other civs expand into the space nearby, leaving you, in the end, with a much smaller civ. If you tried to fight your way out, they would get alliances with other more powerful civs (more common at deity due to high AI-AI trade bonuses) and crush you.

So if you are a warmonger, stop reading here!

We are left with the situation where you find yourself in the unfortunate position of playing deity, and face the prospect of the enemy starting with two cities, and a higher exponential expansion rate than yourself. You have to face how you catch up, and one way is by building the Pyramids. The other is to only build settlers, and expand, expand, expand. But at the end of this, you are left with many size 1 cities. What I propose leaves you with all of that, PLUS a mega-capitol with wonders.

Why?

1) Everyone tries to build a wonder. You simply do not have time to build the colossus on diety, but this would preclude you from having a stab at the Pyramids. If you build it,
everyone is left with a couple of hundred production wasted, meaning that you've caught up on some of your handicap. Hooray!

2) Building the Pyramids means that you have a city with around 10-12 population, with high production (esp. if you were racing India in building it!). This means you have a city big enough to compete for the Great Library, when you get Literature. (N.b. Wormwood's only have a chance at one wonder, that'd be Great Library) There is no doubt in my mind that the Great Library is necessary. If you have many AI opponents, who always trade among themselves a lot, you cannot keep up in tech. The colossus wouldn't even give you enough
to keep up. The only real way out seems to be the Great Library, giving you a chance to concentrate on building an empire capable of keeping up in tech by ignoring tech until education. (Plus, Great Library is very valuable, just in the money value of the techs you get for free, also allowing you to reduce your handicap if you get it!) My claim is that there is no way you can build the Great Library (when they only need to build 240 shields) unless you have a city with its production already maxed out. As you do not have
any other tech in your efforts to get Literature ASAP, you cannot build improvements, so what else will you build as you grow? The only other option are warriors, but by Axiom 2, you cannot use them for war. The only way to be in a good position for Gr. Lib is thus to have just finished the Pyramids.

3) Ribannah made an excellent point: it is the only ancient wonder to last forever. This means that it reduces your handicap for the entirity of the game, which is important, as
we are concentrating on coming out at the end with a more powerful civ. You have permanently gained ground.

Expansion:
==========

The problem here is expansion. Often, if you do not start building the Pyramids before your first settler, you won't get there in time, due to your production handicap. Thus, you are doomed. Hence, you must build a settler, and then still have enough time to get there. And hence Axiom 0. But if you are not using your best city to produce settlers, you will expand at an even smaller fraction of the rate of the AI. You appear to be even more handicapped, but...

1) let us say you are retarded by about four cities in your expansion efforts. This will vary greatly, according to your terrain, optimisation efforts and proximity to your neighbours. So, you only have around 4 new cities expanding, rather than 7 or 8. At first, you are restrained by growth. But, as you expand, you get waste, and suddenly your settler production is restrained by low production, while your inner cities are restrained by growth. Building the Pyramids (1) doubles* the rate of your growth, and therefore doubles settler production for cities restrained by growth, and (2) means that if you grow faster, and reach size 4, when you've only half finished the settler, you can rush the settler - overcoming the waste problem and the produciton constraint.

* When you build, the granary is not full, so the first settler takes longer. You stay longer at size 1, which also means small production.

2) if we estimate the benefit of having the Pyramids to, say 5/3 times the exponential rate (a very approx. estimate based on such a game), then it only takes a few "pure expansion" cycles of production (where everyone produces settlers and concentrates on expansion) to overtake where you would have been without wasting production on the Pyramids. You can therefore catch up while still BC. This leaves you with around 24 +- 4 cities, which is approximately the size of AI civs at this stage of the game, if you have selected the largest number of AI players for you map size. This is the case, because that seems to be when the AI stops expanding a lot, and has changed to Republic, and is concentrating of improvements more than expansion.

Hence, in the LONG TERM, you make up any loss of expansion due to misused production. It is critical here, though, that you have enough room to exand at this rate, and that your
optimal empire size is at least 24. If you get in some border cities quickly, to stop your neighbour expanding in that direction, you should be able to secure an area large enough.

Conclusion
==========
While all your cities are working at catching up to the AI civs in terms of size (and v. soon after, power) you capitol/wonder producer is left at nearly max size (12, on river - Axiom 0) with maximal production (you had time to finish all mines necessary) and is suddenly free to go for Great Library. If you can fit in a settler, to not waste your surplus food, then go for it, but this would be hard.

In all games at deity with many opponents I have fallen behind in tech. This is a given. You can catch up at critical times by getting all the really old ones at bargin basement
prices, and then get the last half a dozen by buying for gold/turn, and declaring war. You are then up to date for a while, and you just have to wait until your gold/turn is worth something again. The only time that I have managed to be consistantly up to date in tech, was when I got the Great Library. The only way I managed to get it, after trying several times by playing the same map in several different starting spots to around 400BC, was to go all out for it. You need to start at roughly the same stage as the Pyramids are always completed, and the only way to get there turned out to be to have a go at the Pyramids.

Penultimately, I think only going for Great Library would stunt your growth more than if you didn't go for Pyramids first.

Finally, a game at deity is personally rewarding if you managed to get the Pyramids, even if you lose! So have a go, and if you don't get them, it didn't take too long, and if you do, you'll be so chuffed, it'll all be worth it!

[wrgj]

PS It didn't look that long when I was writing it!!!!!