Statue of Zeus

Whats the true story on the Statue of Zeus?

Since Bts has been out, Ive been struggling moreso then ever with prolonged wars. Between the seige nerf, spies, and more UUs to fight against, I've seen myself fall more behind in the tech race then in Warlords when I fight these long wars. But after my latest game, Im beginning to think there is another cause...Statue of Zeus.

Im realizing that now I need to pay explicit attention to who builds it because whoa is it powerful. I had it in my last game and I noticed that in my longest war, a war with Pericles, every city I approached was gradually not that big. Like his capital, which was surrounded by farms and food resources, was a size 9. What the heck? Then I started thinking...maybe it is the Statue of Zeus. But then I remember reading on here that war weariness doesnt effect the AI as much as us.

So what is the real deal? Is it that strong to just cripple a civ more then my axes and arrows? Or should I build simply because I cant handle being on the wrong end of it?

My impression is that you cannot go wrong paying attention to who builds the Statue. I did not experience it as a determining factor in who wins a game, but AIs seem to avoid waging war against the lucky owner of Zeus.

If you are not in a strong position when the game starts, that could be a motivation to aim for the Statue, so you have potentially less enemies declaring war on you. That should at least help closing the gap to the rest of the field.

I build the Statue of Zeus whenever I can. Not only does it seem to deter the more aggressive AI civs from declaring war on me, but when I declare war on them then they suffer more war-weariness than I do.

frankly I never noticed its effects, that's on monarch and emperor, and I go by the golden rule: if you dont notice it, it prolly doesnt matter...much.

In my current game I own it and still Shaka declared war on me (of course he did... ). I'm crushing him but it's a long war and I suffer a -10 hapiness penalty by war weariness, so he must have 20 citizen in each city. That sure must hurt an economy... He doesn't have a city bigger than 8 while mines are 18-19 and still happy.

Too bad for him I just took his Pyramids and switched to state police. I have jails and not him, so ouch...

Navarre said:

In my current game I own it and still Shaka declared war on me (of course he did... ). I'm crushing him but it's a long war and I suffer a -10 hapiness penalty by war weariness, so he must have 20 citizen in each city. That sure must hurt an economy... He doesn't have a city bigger than 8 while mines are 18-19 and still happy.

Too bad for him I just took his Pyramids and switched to state police. I have jails and not him, so ouch...

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Navarre,

I'm not 100% up on WW yet, but I don't think that is quite how war weariness works. I think it's more like this: Each time you lose a unit in combat to another civ*, your citizens remember that lost unit. There is some formula that determines when you will produce unhappiness from WW.

In your example, if Shaka was defending with 2 units in each city, and you are catapult suiciding, and losing 6 catapults per city you take, you're suffering 6 casualties to his two. Even with his 100% penalty (counts as losing 4 units), he will still have less WW than you.

*The other civs are important. If you declare war on Shaka, get a hefty amount of WW built up, call a cease fire, and redeclare war right away, your WW will go right back up to where it was before. However, if you declare war on Shaka, get a hefty amount of WW built up, call a cease fire, and declare war with Charlemagne right away, you won't have the previously built-up WW. Alternately you could be at war with both Shaka and Charlemagne, and you have lost a lot of units to Shaka but not Charlemagne, by getting peace from Shaka you can greatly reduce your WW, if not remove it all together.

At least that's how I think it works. I haven't read too extensively on the subject yet.

IMO
State of Zeus is overpowered, it should also increase war weariness for nation who build it! then it would be a peacemonger's wonder

Why should it affect the builder as well? It makes no sense. The statue gets the people all boiled up for war. There's nothing in it about the people being more sick of war.

In other words, the statue is fine as is. The AI does not really care, on the lower difficulties that is... they'll even defy resolutions when their butt is being kicked

Mr Civtastic: i think they whip quite a few more defenders now too, that certainly doesn't help their population grow. does that match what you see?

here's a great article on WW mechanics.

it has a lot of details. one of the key things is that you get no WW at all if you're fighting only where you are culturally dominant (which isn't always exactly the same as where your cultural borders are). so...

Navarre said:

In my current game I own it and still Shaka declared war on me (of course he did... ). I'm crushing him but it's a long war and I suffer a -10 hapiness penalty by war weariness, so he must have 20 citizen in each city. That sure must hurt an economy... He doesn't have a city bigger than 8 while mines are 18-19 and still happy.

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well, if you're crushing him in his territories then you're getting WW from being in his territory, and if all he'd doing is staying there to defend he might not be getting any. you can see the amount you're getting vs. him, but i don't know how to see the amount someone else gets vs. you, that's the one figure i don't know how to show, grrrrrrr. but WW is a different value from . a certain amount of WW will make X number of citizens , i don't know the numbers. that unhappiness your cities feel is definitely affected by city size. a city of size 8 won't have as many people as a city of size 18 for the same amount of WW.

your reward for discovering Fascism: you suffer no unhappiness from WW, even tho it still builds up in the background, if you have the combination of Police State, Mt Rushmore, and a Jail in that city. as long as you don't swap out of Police State during the war, you're fine, even if your enemy has SoZ.

what i've heard about SoZ is that if your enemy has it, and you capture it, you start getting WW at just the normal rate, but the bonus you got before that doesn't just disappear, it decays over time at the usual rate. so that's all the more reason to go after the SoZ city first if you have to figure that guy i suppose.

i hope some of that makes some sense. the link will make more sense

Kmad has it right. The Statue of Zeus is really a defensive wonder. In order to have it affect your enemy, the majority of the fighting would need to occur on tiles that you have the most culture on.

The Statue's effectiveness disappears in the late game when a smart player would combine jails, Mt. Rushmore & Police State to completely eliminate the effects of war weariness.

KMadCandy said:

it has a lot of details. one of the key things is that you get no WW at all if you're fighting only where you are culturally dominant (which isn't always exactly the same as where your cultural borders are). so...

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KMadCandy,

That's a great piece of information. Thank you. That makes sense, too. When a person falls defending their home town, people are more likely to be upset at the attacking nation, rather than their own nation. Nice job on that one, Fraxis!

Yeah, I definitely like to get this wonder, and avoid warring with a civ if they get to it first. If warring with them becomes unavoidable, I either take the Zeus city immediately (however, in my experience, a SoZ city is defended almost as rigorously as a capital) or try to draw them into fighting on my turf (I have the perhaps incorrect impression that WW is much worse when you lose a unit on enemy territory).

EDIT: Interesting, it seems that I am kind of correct:

WW from [an opponent] = Starts at 0 and is changed by:

1. Combat Actions: only gained where you are not Culturally dominant

[i.e. a city that was someone else's for a long time might NOT count as where you are culturally dominant, even if it is within your borders]

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So, if you battle on turf where you are culturally dominant, no war weariness is accrued. If you battle on your own turf where you are not culturally dominant (say if you're defending a recently captured city), you do accrue war weariness. That's good to know.

Kesshi said:

That's a great piece of information. Thank you. That makes sense, too. When a person falls defending their home town, people are more likely to be upset at the attacking nation, rather than their own nation. Nice job on that one, Fraxis!

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quite welcome! that comes in really during the "okay monty, sure." *exasperated sigh* "lemme have it, throw those stacks of obsolete units at me, wear yourself out again . and then i'll go take your cities i let you keep last time" stages of certain wars with the aztecs *giggle*

_alphaBeta_ said:

The Statue's effectiveness disappears in the late game when a smart player would combine jails, Mt. Rushmore & Police State to completely eliminate the effects of war weariness.

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yeah i love that. it's almost as good a reward for reaching Fascism as the GG you get for being first to research it is. but not quite, so i do still try to be first to research it .

of course i'm a permanoob, and had to learn the hard way that you have to actually stay in police state during the war, since the WW itself isn't eliminated, it's just that your citizens ignore the effects of it. that's an very important distinction. like a 15+ distinction, even with a jail and mt. rushmore, in a big enough city during a long enough war. so hopefully someone out there can learn from my mistake and not make it in their own game!

If you fight against the Statue you obviously should direct your forces against the Wonder-city immediately. My first long war against a Statue owner ended as a cultural victory, because i had countered the massive 27 war-weariness with the culture slider at 40-60%. I had my economy totally ruined but was able to pull off late game culture win with corporations and the entertainment-Wonders. Very interesting and surprising game. But the regular way to go is: Build the statue yourself.
It has another nice side effect: The National Sports League-Event (build x collosseum) gives a golden age for the Statue owner, if he is successful. I find the National Sports League event quite common and easily winable, so it could add an extra Golden Age.
Especially for traditional culture victories it might be a decisive wonder. The base culture is quite high and it surely makes you a less attractive target for warmongers.

Hawe Hawe said:

...and it surely makes you a less attractive target for warmongers.

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I'd be curious to know if the AI is smart enough to pick someone else over you to war against because you have the statue.

MusX said:

IMO
State of Zeus is overpowered, it should also increase war weariness for nation who build it! then it would be a peacemonger's wonder

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Good idea!

Read KMads post and link for details, but the way I think of it when playing is that every lots unit adds up to your WW - and the amount of from WW is, I think, determined this way:
WWMad=Popcity*(WW/1000)
So if you have 1000 War weariness against a civ, you have 8 WW in a size 8 city, and 4 WW in a size 4 city.

KMadCandy said:

what i've heard about SoZ is that if your enemy has it, and you capture it, you start getting WW at just the normal rate, but the bonus you got before that doesn't just disappear, it decays over time at the usual rate. so that's all the more reason to go after the SoZ city first if you have to figure that guy i suppose.

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I had one game where I was battling Mehmed II. He had a huge empire and I'd taken two or three cities and WW was killing me cause he had the Statue so I took that city next and I noticed my WW dropped a fair amount. I assumed that because I'd captured the wonder I lost the addition WW that had accrued from the Wonder. Anyone else know for sure?

Some times when I build the statue of the ALMIGHTY ZEUS! (must cap that.) I go to war with people I can't even reach, just to mess with them. It's quite a handy building.

The Statue of Zeus is one of my favorite new wonders. If I have Ivory, I'll definitely go for it. I'm not usually a wondermonger, but it's benefits are so useful, especially when you refuse to sign peace with an AI, but just kill his expeditionary force into your lands every ten turns or so...it'll kill his economy.