Wonder Stategy Article: Pyramids

The grand-Daddy of the anceint world wonder! ANd it's a costly one.

Wonders abilities

Opens up all government civics! (Heriditary Rule/Representation/Police State/Universal) Sufferage
Never obsoletes but useless once you get the techs unlocking those civics.
Built 100% faster with stone.
Requires Masonry
+2 Great Engineer Points

Strategies

1) Happiness is no longer an issue once you get the wonder, providing you adopt HR or representation.

2) Use Representation to fuel a very early and powerful SE game (scientists with double beakers!).

3) Adopt Police State for the extra military production and greatly reduced war-weariness.

4) It is a very expensive wonder and alot of people only go after it if IND and/or have access to stone. There is also a sneaky was to get a Great Engineer to rush it by Oracle slingshotting Metal Casting and then buildign a fast forge in another city and run an engineer.

However, Synergies are massive with this wonder, paticularly wonders/traits and I will start with a few that I can think of.

Wonders:

1) With the the Oracle Slingshotting Code of Laws you can have caste and representation super early for a devastating SE game.

2) The Great Library with it's 2 free scientists looks even more atractive with the extra beakers from reprentation.

3) Building the hanging Gardens and Hag sophia (whatever it's name) can get you a very large GE producing city early on.

4) Statue of Zues, while you have decreased WW using Police State you can inflict vicious WW on the enemy with this wonder combo.

5) Great Lighthouse/Collossus/Temple of Artmetis. Sounds odd but those are alot of Great Merchant producing wonders, and if you spam out alot of them you can use US to buy alot of military or buildings.

Traits

1) Philosophical: Because of the potential for such a strong SE game, this helps by getting a very large number of Great Scientists faster for furious bulbing.

2) Spiritual: Switchign civis can be pretty valuable here. Caste/Reprentation to HR/slavery, to Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy, to US/vassalage/theocracy.

3) Warring traits are bolstered by the early Police State option.

4) IND. well to build the silly thing

Well, there we go. It's a start but I am sure others have alot of opinions on the Pyramids.

madscientist said:

3) Building the Hanging Gardens and Hagia Sophia can get you a very large GE producing city early on.

Click to expand...

That's my fav.

Add a Engineer Spec via Forge, stick in National Epic, and roll out the GE's...

I recommend against using US early in any capacity. It's painfully inefficient compared to other options, especially with limited commerce and definitely limited gold multipliers...and unless you're SPI you're making serious concessions just to use it at all.

The statue of zeus strategy doesn't make a lot of sense. Zeus is mostly a denial wonder. That said, you get functionally no WW fighting in your territory, and the target gets just about 0 if fighting you in theirs...so there's not a lot of synergy to the SoZ + PS combo. Unless you're having massive battles outside both nation's culture. That sounds pretty niche to me, especially against the AI.

GLH is probably hard to get alongside pyramids on higher difficulties, but as two of the stronger early game wonders of course it's a good combo . ToA is interesting because of its GPP and priest that gets rep boosted...but also very hard to get since the AI inexplicably adores it.

As you said the synergy with TGL and/or caste is tremendous and can put up some pretty nice rates early in the game.

The GEs might not sound all that appealing, but a lot of people do like mining inc in the mid-late game, and this is one of the ways to have one right as you hit railroad...

First off let me say that i am thoroughly impressed with the RPC, i followed most but was never one to comment, mostly because by the time i got back to the board the group had moved on - but nonetheless very entertaining. now the business at hand

I agree completely! the pyramids are one of my top 3 favorite wonders hands down - not necessarily because of their immediate impact but because of their long-term benefits and incredible synergy. even without stone or ind, if i have a good second city location that allows for decent growth combined with a bit of chopping (and banking on the ai not going for them - which from my experience they don't) you get yourself one sweet wonder. The ability to early on get GE points (more so if as mad mentioned you multiply with gardens and hagia) and double your GS output will seriously propell you past the ai. (just for laughs try this and turn off tech trading - it's killer) The only problem is that when i play folks who know me and my love of this approach they try to SOD me - sometimes they win.

@ St. Agustine. Welcome to the fourms and thanks for following those RPCs!

Pyramids used to be a favered wonder of mine, but now it's situational for me. However, given stone I never pass up the opportunity for early reprentation.

@TMIT
I generally agree with all you say, I just wanted to put everything out there without mentioning my own preferences in the Op (well at least not too much!). Agree on US. PS early on I rarely use although I seam to recall shoving ALOT of war weariness down the AIs throat with the SoZ while be very agressive. I always thought capturing enemy cities puts them into more war-weariness, but I could be wrong here. Anyway, the SoZ I will discuss in detail when we get to it as I have some questions about that wonder.

Strategies:
5. Flip to US mid game to avoid teching Democracy. At banking (potentially guilds with Fin) flip to a rushbuy economy for superior per tile production. With either cannons or curis you can get a huge amount of mileage from turning down your sliders and using the MGB multipliers to quickly mass undraftable units.
6. Abusing anarchy to avoid strike. Flipping on and off slavery, OR, and say HR let's you get 2 turns (normal speed) without having to pay your soldiers, this can (rarely) be worth it if that gives you time to take an AI cap for mass gold or to complete an extermination war. I'm told that a 3 civic change gives you more potential conquests on marathon and the like, but I have no first hand experience with the scaling.

I recommend against using US early in any capacity. It's painfully inefficient compared to other options, especially with limited commerce and definitely limited gold multipliers...and unless you're SPI you're making serious concessions just to use it at all.

Click to expand...

How are you defining early? At guilds (or currency without MC) Fin riverside cottages provide more net than a grassland mine after 75 turns; at banking that drops to 25 turns. PP and FS make it idioticly easy to get more out of US cottages than anything else. For a Spi civ you can sometimes get decent mileage out of using conquest gold to rushbuy new pults when the logistical lines to your core are harsh (e.g. your production is across a galley navigable straight, but the AI has triremes out).

Using GM cash to rushbuy key buildings (e.g. forges, markets, or obs) in production deficient cottage cities can pay for itself in a reasonable time frame as well.

Seems like my post never got posted.

In my current game I got something like 5 Great Engineers from the Pyramids. And that's with only the Pyramids and some use of an Engineer. I didn't even try to get these I wanted a Scientist all the time - I already got one Scientist which i created an Acadamy in the capital with, now I want one for this city which is going to get Oxford (already got National Epic and Caste System so I can try to bring out the Scientist whether he wants to come out or not!). I even got the Great Library in this city and still no scientist!

Though, +15 hammers and +30 sci aint too bad (yes I settled them with representation running).

I view the Pyramids as an early game method to boost happiness via Hereditary Rule or Representation. City specialization is only really effective with larger cities. The argument then becomes whether to use HR or Rep, and when. For my 2 gold, HR is better early if you have enough health to take advantage of it. Rep outstrips HR when you are running specialists and have other sources of happiness available.

In this sense, the Pyramids enable beelining (typically up the "northern" Literature path or the "southern" military/seafaring path) by allowing you to bypass the civic-granting techs -- in particular, the entire religious tech tree.

All of that said, I don't build the Pyramids unless I have stone or am Industrious. I cringe when i think of all the workers and settlers I could have built. Even with stone, the question becomes WHEN to build them. For me, I try to wait until I have blocked the AI from my land. If you wait too long, though, you lose some of the edge from having higher happy caps sooner.

slobberinbear said:

All of that said, I don't build the Pyramids unless I have stone or am Industrious. I cringe when i think of all the workers and settlers I could have built.

Click to expand...

I forgot to write it in my rewrite of my post, but I was both Industrious and had Stone

Though it can be a good wonder even if you are neither, because of it's cost, having either one, or the other, or as me both, can be essential.

It is a nice wonder and I like going for it if I'm planning on running a lot of specialists early on or if I'm playing a spiritual leader. I got a lot of use out of it as Monty in a recent game.

madscientist said:

With the the Oracle Slingshotting Code of Laws you can have caste and representation super early for a devastating SE game.

Click to expand...

When I go for the mids, I'd rather oracle-slingshot to mathematics for the chopping bonus (especially if I have no stone and am playing on emperor or above). I've learned this trick from Obsolete.

Traits
1) Philosophical: Because of the potential for such a strong SE game, this helps by getting a very large number of Great Scientists faster for furious bulbing.
2) Spiritual: Switchign civis can be pretty valuable here. Caste/Reprentation to HR/slavery, to Police State/Vassalage/Theocracy, to US/vassalage/theocracy.
3) Warring traits are bolstered by the early Police State option.

Click to expand...

4) Industrious: it helps you build them in the first place. And it's great for wonder-spamming, which means quicker GP boosted by early representation (the so-called "Wonder Economy"). For that reason alone, pretty much every wonder has "synergy" with the mids.

How are you defining early? At guilds (or currency without MC) Fin riverside cottages provide more net than a grassland mine after 75 turns; at banking that drops to 25 turns. PP and FS make it idioticly easy to get more out of US cottages than anything else. For a Spi civ you can sometimes get decent mileage out of using conquest gold to rushbuy new pults when the logistical lines to your core are harsh (e.g. your production is across a galley navigable straight, but the AI has triremes out).

Using GM cash to rushbuy key buildings (e.g. forges, markets, or obs) in production deficient cottage cities can pay for itself in a reasonable time frame as well.

Click to expand...

By early I mean EARLY. I mentioned something about multipliers and I meant it. Once you get the full array of multipliers it changes, but IMO that's more an early mid-mid game thing at the soonest (guilds isn't something one typically gets in the BCs, let alone early ADs due to how the tech path usually winds up...although I suppose on deity it might be different since you could trade for it sooner).

I'm definitely a fan of $$$ rush. My earliest take on it was LHC mansa, a crappy monarch game that I pulled through on long ago (as a bonus, I did in fact get mids in that game and used them for US before democracy...)but I've used it to produce 100's of units in a fair bit of recent forum games, including immortal sury, so I'm no stranger to using the early multipliers to skip the unhealth and extra setup time for converting tiles or building factories and just buy the army.

Charles Martel said:

When I go for the mids, I'd rather oracle-slingshot to mathematics for the chopping bonus (especially if I have no stone and am playing on emperor or above). I've learned this trick from Obsolete.



4) Industrious: it helps you build them in the first place. And it's great for wonder-spamming, which means quicker GP boosted by early representation (the so-called "Wonder Economy"). For that reason alone, pretty much every wonder has "synergy" with the mids.

Click to expand...

Yeah IND is good, Doh! I'll add it to the OP.

A must have for a SE, or you have pretty of happiness resources and want to make a hybird CE/SE (CE under Rep) . Otherwise better capture it

mi6agent said:

A must have for a SE, or you have pretty of happiness resources and want to make a hybird CE/SE (CE under Rep) . Otherwise better capture it

Click to expand...

It's been repeatedly proven that you don't need the mids for a pre-500 AD liberalism date (or delaying it a bit to get something good)...just the GPP and about 100 bpt base research are enough.

However, the people who actually manage it are ridiculously skilled.

Nonetheless there is a good lesson to take away from that: there is no contribution from a specialist that trumps the GPP, and that's also a consideration for wonders...

TheMeInTeam said:

By early I mean EARLY. I mentioned something about multipliers and I meant it. Once you get the full array of multipliers it changes, but IMO that's more an early mid-mid game thing at the soonest (guilds isn't something one typically gets in the BCs, let alone early ADs due to how the tech path usually winds up...although I suppose on deity it might be different since you could trade for it sooner).

I'm definitely a fan of $$$ rush. My earliest take on it was LHC mansa, a crappy monarch game that I pulled through on long ago (as a bonus, I did in fact get mids in that game and used them for US before democracy...)but I've used it to produce 100's of units in a fair bit of recent forum games, including immortal sury, so I'm no stranger to using the early multipliers to skip the unhealth and extra setup time for converting tiles or building factories and just buy the army.

Click to expand...

On immort (with good tech setup) or deity you can get guilds via trade in the early ADs; typically this involves swapping paper + philo or edu so it does come with risks.

Stone, Industrious with lots of trees or great base production, and food around. As far as the discussion on Pre 500AD Liberalism - if you're not able to use it to your advantage when you get it then you got it too early.

Crusher1 said:

Stone, Industrious with lots of trees or great base production, and food around. As far as the discussion on Pre 500AD Liberalism - if you're not able to use it to your advantage when you get it then you got it too early.

Click to expand...

You can just hold off on finishing or even starting it then though...it's not like having education and access to oxford is gonna kill you .

In my current game I was running a zero science rate for quiet a few turns... but thanks science specialists bosted by pyramids opened up repersetation, I managed to conque a huge empire, keep a reaonable science rate and managed get my science slider back up once my cottages started maturing.

Currently I'm the tech leader and its moden era!

People used to talk about Pyramids + Great Library in terms of using the Engineer to construct the Library, and in particular the fact that you can put the library in your GP farm to accrue the GP bonuses as well. Perhaps that belongs in the GL section instead - or maybe we've learned that isn't really all that important.

Click to expand...

From Voice of Unreason in the Strategy Article Wonders Thread. I thought it good to go here for more discussion fodder.