The Cathedral Slingshot

First, some disclaimers.

1) This is my first post, so be gentle.

2) I just purchased Conquests (got this really cool collector's edition that had Civ 1-4, all expansions except for Civ4s, some collector stuff, and 'Civ the card game') two weeks ago. Before that I played 1.29f for a few years off and on between MMO addictions, so I'm not all that experienced with Conquests or the changes it brought to the game.

3) I still play on Chieftain, mostly because I'm too strict in my strategy and play style that I'm not very good. I'm thinking of moving up to Warlord though so wish me luck.

The Setting: France, Chieftain, small pangea map, three opponents, Ottomans, Spain, and the Inca.

I started on a coast, and decided, "Hey, I wonder if I can do a single city cultural victory." I usually turn off all other victory conditions except conquest and try for that, but I've been wanting to try and improve my game so I left them all on and decided to play to my Civ's strength instead of forcing a military game.

Okay, so 20K culture victory, that means I need all the wonders I can get (I now realize that this is a flaw, and have since moved to a wonder victory attempt, mostly because I have no idea what that is). I see the Temple of Artimis and think, "That's kinda neat, I'll go for that first." Lucky me I get a SGL from Mysticism (remember, chieftain), and decide I'll use him when I get Polytheism. I get my ToA and continue through the AA.

About the time I have to make a decision as to when to research Education, a few cities have started to build cathedrals (I had been vacillating between 20K, 100K, and wonder victory). Then I realized I was going to lose some happiness when I lost my ToA to Education, and started thinking about how to get around that, when I noticed that the ToA was going to expire while I was building a few cathedrals. Wondering what would happen, I researched Education and let my Temples vanish. To my (ignorant) surprise, the cathedrals were built without a hitch. My other cities will have to build a temple first, but in those few cities, I have cathedrals without have to ever pay for or build temples.

This isn't game breaking, I'm sure. I've read how hard it is to get wonders in the higher difficulty levels. But I did think this was kind of a neat trick. It works on the same principle that resources do for military units- if you have iron the turn you begin building a swordsman, you can finish that swordsman even if you lose iron the very next turn. The only difference is has more 'neato' factor because it's a building, not a unit.

Anyway, I didn't see it posted yet, so I thought I'd toss it out there for discussion. Let me know if it's been discussed before. I'm a pretty regular lurker here, so I don't think I've missed it.

Welcome to CFC, xyresic!

I'm don't recall seeing a specific thread where this has been discussed--although I assume there has been--but it is a pretty well known Civ fact.

It works the same for markets --> banks --> stock exchanges, libraries --> universities, etc.

In fact, as I'm sure you'll discover with your game, you'll be able to rebuild the temples in those cities that now just have cathedrals.

This is also the case if an earlier city improvement in destroyed. For instance, if bombers wipes out your market, but you already have a bank in that city, you can rebuild the market and the bank doesn't disappear.

And IIRC, those later buildings still give their effects even though the earlier improvement has disappeared or been destroyed.

It's a good observation to make, and important to understand, such as for the swordsman/iron example you mentioned.

Thanks for the welcome.

Othniel said:

It works the same for markets --> banks --> stock exchanges, libraries --> universities, etc.

In fact, as I'm sure you'll discover with your game, you'll be able to rebuild the temples in those cities that now just have cathedrals.

This is also the case if an earlier city improvement in destroyed. For instance, if bombers wipes out your market, but you already have a bank in that city, you can rebuild the market and the bank doesn't disappear.

Click to expand...

I understand this. What I though was cool about this was I never built a single temple but still received the benefits when I most needed them, in the early game. In your example, you've built the markets, libraries, etc, and are receiving benefits from them. What I thought was neat was the fact that I had the temples in the early part of the game for REXing, but once they became not as useful (because of other happiness benefits I had accumulated, though the double culture is nice for non warmongering games), I could rush cathedrals and never have to pay for the upkeep or construction of a temple.

In your example, there's no wonder that gives you a free marketplace or a free library to do the same 'slingshot' from. You have to manually build each improvement. That's the distinction I'm trying to make (apparently not very well).

yup.

It's nice.

Though, if you wanted to do a 20K victory, you should rebuild the temple in your 20K city!!

xyresic said:

In your example, there's no wonder that gives you a free marketplace or a free library to do the same 'slingshot' from. You have to manually build each improvement. That's the distinction I'm trying to make (apparently not very well).

Click to expand...

Aha, now I understand you a little more...

The problem with the ToA is that it is nearly prohibitively expensive without an SGL (500 AA shields). Plus, the utility from temples, and cathedrals for that matter, is usually not worth the shields, regardless of whether you use the ToA or manually build each one.

The exceptions are for cultural games, of course, and also for a quick domination game where getting free temples for border expansion is huge. Then building the ToA makes sense. In that domination game, the goal would then be to avoid getting Education so that the ToA never obsoletes...

You could get Sun Tzu, build some civil defense, and then lose Sun Tzu and still have the civil defense.

20k is a very interesting game, because it is the 'most different' of the VCs. And because of that you really have to decide to do it right from the start, and stick to your guns (well you can switch from 20k to another VC, just not the other way around.)

Hmm interesting addition, I don't recall having seeing this before.

As others have posted, temples and cathedrals are not worth building at all unless you aim for a culture victory IMO.

I like 20K. A 20K attempt will usually knock the difficulty up a notch because you'll be focused so early on on one city that your rex'ing/military suffers. So you'll be smaller/weaker and the AI will pick on you. (On the other hand, those early wars may lead to an early MGL and an early Heroic Epic )

20K games also tend to last well into the industrial/modern eras too, and you don't have the additional pressure of fast research you'd have with a Diplo/Space game. So you can have fun with modern warfare. Well that's how my games tend to wind up, at any rate.