Great Lighthouse - Worth building?

I always think of this wonder as "nice to have," but am I missing anything else that is useful about it other than improved ships? I always build it because it makes exploring and isolated ruins-hunting easier. Is it a good, mediocre, or pointless wonder? Any strategies that need it?

Between mediocre and pointless. It's one of the wonders that you'll quickly be giving up as you advance in difficulty levels not so much because it isn't worth it, rather because at higher difficulties your options for build-que priorities become more and more restricted until things like Great Lighthouse are no longer options.

If you're playing at a difficulty level where it is an option, I'd recommend it. Like the pyramids, I call them "Well, I'm already..." wonders. My internal dialogue for the pyramids goes, "Well, I'm already needing two workers, which would cost X hammers. But for only Y hammers more, I get the two workers, plus every worker I have will be 25% faster for the whole game, plus I get 1 CPT in the city, plus I get a great engineer point which starts early. Similarly with the Great Lighthouse, "Well, I'm already going to need a lighthouse in this city. But for so many hammers more, all navy units get 1 extra move and sight for the whole game, the maintenance on the lighthouse will be free (effectively adding 1 GPT in saved maintenance), the city gets 1CPT, and you get 1 Great Merchant point (but many players view this as a negative).

Bear in mind that the principle bonus from the Great Lighthouse is the additional movement and sight in naval units, and this bonus is acquired by capturing it from another civ instead of building it yourself.

Very good in competitive water maps from what I hear, and not so good otherwise.

Being able to see (and dictate engagement) in naval combat especially between humans is a potentially decisive advantage, and you're less likely to have to sell your soul to pick it up than high difficulty SP.

Tgl is always worth it to build particularly in water maps. The extra lighthouse for the city is free and provide quicker growth if your city has food in the seas. The added movement to ships is fine also because you get to move your ships more.

reddishrecue said:

Tgl is always worth it to build particularly in water maps. The extra lighthouse for the city is free and provide quicker growth if your city has food in the seas. The added movement to ships is fine also because you get to move your ships more.

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Water maps though on high difficulty levels is the one time that it's really difficult to actually beat the AI building it.
With being one turn short of Great Lighthouse fail gold not giving enough gold to cash buy a regular Lighthouse, risky on Immortal+ Large Islands/ Tiny Islands / Archipelago.

I don't know how people get early wonders!

I tend to not even try early on, the first one i tend to go for is petra if i have a desert start, but still miss out on it sometimes even when i head straight for currency.

As for the great lighthouse, i guess on water maps it would be nice, but if i was capable of getting an early wonder (and i cant) it would be the great library

Honestly, it depends whether you're playing singleplayer and multiplayer, besides the usual naval map preference.

On paper, Great Lighthouse is about as powerful on naval offense as Great Wall is on land defense: because of the quirks of Civ5's naval combat, eg. no defensive bonuses, no naval units that can move after attacking, no fortification bonuses, no healing outside of friendly terrain, etc., the person who can move and attack from the furthest away with their navy gains an even bigger advantage than on land combat. As a result, sight and movement as valuable on all naval units as extra movement is on mounted units, or extra range on archery units.

If you're playing singleplayer, the AI is already so bad at handling its navy that you do not need Great Lighthouse to win with a smaller navy. Since the AI cannot move and attack and cannot retarget units it has just gained visibility on, it can barely make use of Great Lighthouse's bonuses, so you do not need to deny the AI Great Lighthouse, either. Basically, the wonder is only useful for its Free Lighthouse and +1 culture on singleplayer, which makes it almost worthless.

Things are completely different in multiplayer than in singleplayer, as even the newbiest of humans can handle their naval units better than the AI. If you want to win with Frigates, Battleships, Subs with Atomic Bombs, Carriers with Bombers, etc., Great Lighthouse is definitely worth investing in. If you think someone else wants to win with Frigates, Battleships, etc., then denying them Great Lighthouse is an excellent idea. What is a near-pointless wonder in singleplayer can be a vital wonder in multiplayer, even on land-dominant maps like Pangea.

It's a pretty damn decent wonder for Venice or England. But for Venice you'd probably want the Colossus and its pretty much impossible to get Colossus and Great Lighthouse.

Although for Venice on higher difficulties you really need the boost to ship sight and speed at least to make the Great Galleas a little more manueuvarable.

Used to go for it as England pre fall patch. Then I decided to just work on my SOTL rush and capture the wonder off of the AI.

If you're going domination, the only early game wonder you want to build yourself is the Oracle, because capturing it doesn't give you the free policy.

I used to think it's a free lighthouse per city, so when I actually got it on Deity once, I was overjoyed, but then wait a tick, why are my expos not raking in the roided fish. Oh dear....

Always get if you intend to do a lot of coastel work early game. But I also like to get them just cos I like lighthouses... yea, not all of us play just for the numbers, but aesthetics too! But it is important to know what they do.

I'm not really a big fan of the GLight. It's not that expensive though, if you have a starting location with some sea reasources in.

A lighthouse costs 75 hammers.
The Great Lighthouse costs 185 hammers.

So taking the costs into account you don't "waste" that much extra production seeing as you get the free lighthouse basically lowering the cost to 110 hammers.

I still don't like it that much though. I don't usually play big watery maps since I find them tedious, so for me there really is never any need for it. The extra movement stacks very nicely with Lizzys UA though, and going exploration aswell is just amazingly fun. So much movement for those SotL's!

I love it if I snag an early God of the Sea however.

The extra sight is amazing for subs and destroyers (for seeing other subs), and battleships for attacking cities without a spotter.

Which is cheaper, burning a social policy on Exploration (which also lets you build the Louve) or building the GL? It probably varies from game to game, whether you have excess culture or excess production.

zxcvbob said:

Which is cheaper, burning a social policy on Exploration (which also lets you build the Louve) or building the GL? It probably varies from game to game, whether you have excess culture or excess production.

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Or building Oracle and using the extra policy point to get Exploration. If you plan on getting a filler point in a tree other than Exploration or Commerce, you can just spend the Oracle policy on that filler and spend the policy point you would have spent for the filler on Exploration opener, essentially "delaying" your free Exploration opener. Admittedly, Oracle is 55 hammers more expensive than Great Lighthouse and doesn't give a free Lighthouse, but it's located on Philosophy, which you're going to pick up quickly for NC anyway; it also generates GS points instead of GM points, so there's that, too.