Usefulness of temples and similar buildings

[shl7070]

I had read many posts in this forum and saw that many view the temples very negatively.
I usually play on monarch or emperor and find these improvements so useful that they are present in almost every serious city i have regardless of corruption because the following reasons.

1) Anyone should prevent riots at any cost and there are several known ways to do that: luxury resources, luxury slider, entertainers, MP, improvements and wonder. If WLTK is not sought then the only advantage of happy face against content face is score. each of them equals 1 gpt.

2)Temples at core cities: Using lux slider is very crude way of managing happyness because it's one fit for all cities and cities are different from each other. deciding to build happiness improvements is a way to efficiently micromanage hapyiness and tailor approach for each city. Each temple costs 1 gpt and compensate for 1 gpt not spent on lux so there is no net loss of gpt, cathedrals are even more efficient (2 gpt gives 3 gpt unspent on lux).

3)Temples in corrupt cities: Corrupt cities produce so little commerce that using the slider doesn't matter. The only ways to pacify them are resources, improvements and specialists. If lacking resources then building the temples allows turning one entertainer to taxman thus yielding 2 gpt at cost of 1 gpt (net gain per city).This alanysis works for other improvements in large corrupt cities.

4) Temples and warmongering: Temples aid war in direct and indirect way, Directly rushing temples in conquered cities usually prevent flips, I never saw any of my cities that have 10 culture flip (probably because to flip you need foreign tiles in city radius which disappear after first radius expansion). Temples also work to limit rioting as said earlier The indirect effect comes from the fact that building temples and similar improvements create high culture rating for your civ thus limiting flips (chances depend on relative culture also), limiting resistance (less resistors and faster quelling), increase territory (for domination VC) and probably improve foreign leaders attitude.

5) Production issues: The only problem with this strategy is production time or using pop/gold rushes but I think that these are still controllable. The most important thing is generating commerce, commerce gives you trade options and techs while shield don't. You can convert shield to commerce only at unfavorable ratio of 4 to 1 using wealth so wasted "production commerce" is only 15 gold per temple for nonreligious civ.

6) To sum up: temples are must for cultural VC and important for conquest/domination VC they are the best pacifying method available and the production cost is managable, especially on archipelago. This also works for any mod that contains similar structure and even assuming the "doubling" wonders are not owned by the player.

[vmxa]

I don't have the time to go over the points, but I won't be making temples all over the place any time soon. 60 shields is 2 swords, enough said.

[Hellfiredoom]

In conquered cities I build temples for the reasons you mention, plus the expanded culture boundaries. Expanding culture lines is my way of controlling movement in foreign territory and as a warmonger, controlling the battleground is a key element to victory.

[Snarkhunter]

Originally Posted by shl7070

3)Temples in corrupt cities: Corrupt cities produce so little commerce that using the slider doesn't matter. The only ways to pacify them are resources, improvements and specialists. If lacking resources then building the temples allows turning one entertainer to taxman thus yielding 2 gpt at cost of 1 gpt (net gain per city).This alanysis works for other improvements in large corrupt cities.

Don't think I follow this. Why build a temple to get a taxman when I can just get the taxman directly? I never need temples to control corrupt cities; just turn everyone into taxmen or beakerheads. In fact, I sell off any temples I see ASAP if I capture them. I also don't follow the slider bit; if I manipulate it, I certainly see the effects in a corrupt city right away.

If worse comes to worse, I just grab a few more luxes from the neighbors until I have all 8. I can handle any size 6 town that way, & virtually any 12 town, especially with spec cits.

kk

[grumjug]

Originally Posted by Snarkhunter

Don't think I follow this. Why build a temple to get a taxman when I can just get the taxman directly? I never need temples to control corrupt cities; just turn everyone into taxmen or beakerheads. In fact, I sell off any temples I see ASAP if I capture them. I also don't follow the slider bit; if I manipulate it, I certainly see the effects in a corrupt city right away.

If worse comes to worse, I just grab a few more luxes from the neighbors until I have all 8. I can handle any size 6 town that way, & virtually any 12 town, especially with spec cits.

kk

I don't think it is possible to capture a temple.

I used to rarely build them, but recently I have been playing with religious tribes and I use them a lot more. I really hate being at the bottom of the culture stack and having to worry about cities flipping all the time - early temples have a big payoff in overall culture score. Also, if you can get Sistine that makes cathedrals worth building all over the place, especially if you can't get trade with other landmasses for a long time.

The best of both worlds is to capture Temple of Artemis and use the free temples to start cathedrals without actually building temples, then you won't have to pay for them later on.

[Fiddlin Nero]

Originally Posted by Hellfiredoom

In conquered cities I build temples for the reasons you mention, plus the expanded culture boundaries. Expanding culture lines is my way of controlling movement in foreign territory and as a warmonger, controlling the battleground is a key element to victory.

Agreed, cultural border expansion and happiness are useful in my play. I find the CxxC spacing ugly and Temples are the cheapest way to get that expansion, you can always sell it off afterwards if you don't need the happiness.

[Snarkhunter]

Originally Posted by grumjug

I don't think it is possible to capture a temple.

I used to rarely build them, but recently I have been playing with religious tribes and I use them a lot more. I really hate being at the bottom of the culture stack and having to worry about cities flipping all the time - early temples have a big payoff in overall culture score. Also, if you can get Sistine that makes cathedrals worth building all over the place, especially if you can't get trade with other landmasses for a long time.

The best of both worlds is to capture Temple of Artemis and use the free temples to start cathedrals without actually building temples, then you won't have to pay for them later on.

It's possible to capture a town with a temple. Sorry, thought that was clear. (Actually, I sell off most of what I find when I capture a town (& am annoyed that I can't sell off aquas or hospitals). I rarely need structures in most captured towns & don't want to pay maintenance on them. Besides, you can pick up a good bit of spare change that way.)

Certainly, if going for a cultural win, I would build temples. But I rarely decide to play that game. As for flips, that so annoyed me at the get-go that I turned it off--even more efficient than building temples

kk

[vmxa]

AFAIK you cannot capture any culture generating structures in C3C. Temple/Cath/Colo and so on.

[Spoonwood]

I can't quite tell if you mean to argue "temples DO usually work out better" or more "I have a positive view of temples, and you should too, here's why..."

Originally Posted by shl7070

1) Anyone should prevent riots at any cost and there are several known ways to do that: luxury resources, luxury slider, entertainers, MP, improvements and wonder. If WLTK is not sought then the only advantage of happy face against content face is score. each of them equals 1 gpt.

As this stands right now it doesn't provide any reasons for building temples. Not even one bad reason.

Originally Posted by shl7070

2)Temples at core cities: Using lux slider is very crude way of managing happyness because it's one fit for all cities and cities are different from each other. deciding to build happiness improvements is a way to efficiently micromanage hapyiness and tailor approach for each city. Each temple costs 1 gpt and compensate for 1 gpt not spent on lux so there is no net loss of gpt, cathedrals are even more efficient (2 gpt gives 3 gpt unspent on lux).

Slow down. Look, you first talked about "core cities". By definition of 'core city' all cities within the core have about the same amount of corruption. If they don't, they don't qualify as a core city. Consequently, for core cities, using the luxury slider has about the same effect for each city. Why? Because they have about the same level of corruption. So for core cities, using the luxury slider doesn't end up crude. If anything, it ends up elegant.

Yes, using the luxury slider comes as a "one-size-fits-all" way of managing happiness. So, for non-core cities, the luxury slider doesn't work as well as it does for core cities. But, this doesn't say anything about core cities. It might imply something about semi-core cities, but that comes as a different issue.

On top of this, you don't have to exclusively either use the luxury slider or build temples.

Originally Posted by shl7070

3)Temples in corrupt cities: Corrupt cities produce so little commerce that using the slider doesn't matter. The only ways to pacify them are resources, improvements and specialists. If lacking resources then building the temples allows turning one entertainer to taxman thus yielding 2 gpt at cost of 1 gpt (net gain per city).This alanysis works for other improvements in large corrupt cities.

One could also turn the entertainer into two taxpeople, for 4gpt with no upkeep required. So, by the metric you've used here, there doesn't exist a compelling reason to put in a temple.

Originally Posted by shl7070

4) Temples and warmongering: Temples aid war in direct and indirect way, Directly rushing temples in conquered cities usually prevent flips, I never saw any of my cities that have 10 culture flip (probably because to flip you need foreign tiles in city radius which disappear after first radius expansion). Temples also work to limit rioting as said earlier The indirect effect comes from the fact that building temples and similar improvements create high culture rating for your civ thus limiting flips (chances depend on relative culture also), limiting resistance (less resistors and faster quelling), increase territory (for domination VC) and probably improve foreign leaders attitude.

First off, cities can flip without touching borders of an adjacent tribe. I know I've seen this happen. Second, specialists can help prevent rioting. The relative culture idea come as interesting, but really libraries work better as culture bearers than temples. The increase of territory can also get accomplished through tighter city spacing, as in settlers for more cities which 1. raises unit support and 2. cost less than 60 shield temples.

Originally Posted by shl7070

5) Production issues: The only problem with this strategy is production time or using pop/gold rushes but I think that these are still controllable. The most important thing is generating commerce, commerce gives you trade options and techs while shield don't. You can convert shield to commerce only at unfavorable ratio of 4 to 1 using wealth so wasted "production commerce" is only 15 gold per temple for nonreligious civ.

That comes as a signficant issue. If you spend your shields and gold on temples instead of libraries for a space or diplomatic, you've inevitably lessened your maximum beaker potential for a while. Unless you simply can't push the tech pace faster, that implies you've slowed down your finish date. In a conquest or domination game, you've given more time for the AIs to train units, and/or have less of an army when you attack them.

Originally Posted by shl7070

6) To sum up: temples are must for cultural VC and important for conquest/domination VC they are the best pacifying method available and the production cost is managable, especially on archipelago. This also works for any mod that contains similar structure and even assuming the "doubling" wonders are not owned by the player.

There do exist conditions under which temples come as *extremely* useful. An 80% archipelago where you can't trade for luxuries for a long time, comes as an example. In a 100k they come as indispensable. In a 20k, you want a temple in your 20k city for sure, but elsewhere they have as much value as they do in a space or diplomatic game. If playing a pangea map for a conquest/domiation VC where you can hook up to many luxuries for trading, then you can 1. get contentedness from luxuries even without markets and 2. produce a sizeable army via cash-rushing/standard shield production. You want those roads anyways for invasion purposes. So what added benefit do temples produce? If playing for a fast space or diplomatic game you want roads to your borders for commerce to a. help yourself research faster and b. hopefully help the AIs research faster to pick up the overall tech pace. Of course they also help in that you can 1. get contentedness from luxuries even without markets and 2'. now you have shields/cash freed up for building libraries and possibly even granaries for growth (or workers for add-ins). How do the benefits of temples outweigh this?

The general difficulty in your argument doesn't consist in arguing for temples per se. I don't see in your argument anything which gives us to a way to rank games, or in other words measure how well they got played. I considered finish date (the earlier the better) as a way to rank games (non-histographic games), and thus I don't see how temples usually come out useful. The HoF and GOTM competitions pretty much settle this if you look at the saves from months of those competitions, and if you still think temples better by this metric, then I challenge you to build temples as you do for one of those contests and demonstrate their superior powers.

But, I don't know if you'd agree with finish date as a suitable metric for ranking games. And we simply need some sort of metric for ranking games before one can work out as "better" in any sort of sense other than "I liked this game better than that one."

[Aabraxan]

Welcome to CFC, shl7070!

I will just say that I usually play for domination or conquest, and I rarely build temples. I will often have a couple of cities that need temples, but not many. As vmxa pointed out, I could build two swords for the shield cost of a temple (assuming I'm not playing a religious civ), and I'd usually rather have the 2 swords.

[vmxa]

shl7070 it is good you posted and I for one do not want to be taking pokes at it. I think the reason games last a long time is that there are many ways to reach a win. It seems to me that a lot of players start out with the same perspective as you and later modify, either abit or a lot.

I had started a response, but not had time to finish. I see now that Spoonwood has pretty well cover things. There is no one way to do things, there are some basic things that are useful to incorporate though.

[Spoonwood]

In a conquest/domination game I would rather have two horsemen instead of a temple. Or one kinght a bit later instead of a temple. That said, thanks for the post. It almost always proves useful to work one's ideas out on paper.

[trcamp100]

Somewhere in one of these threads (can't find it now), someone said they deal with cities flipping by turning it off somewhere. I dislike this part of the game, a lot, but I can't find where to turn the flippin flipping off. Can anyone help?

[Optional]

Originally Posted by trcamp100

I can't find where to turn the flippin flipping off. Can anyone help?

Open up the editor, choose the 'Scenario' tab, choose 'Scenario Properties', untick 'Default Game Rules', then untick 'Allow Cultural Conversions'.
If you save that you've created a scenario, though, to be accessed by choosing 'Civ Content' at game set-up, so you're not playing the epic game anymore.

[trcamp100]

I can't find the editor, and I'm wondering if I don't have it for some reason. The manual says to go to the conquests folder, which I found in the first screen after the intro, but there is no editor in there. Am I in the wrong place?

[Aabraxan]

No need to use the editor. At game setup, there's a screen with a bunch of boxes at the bottom. Look for "Cultural Conversions." That box is the one you're looking for.

[Maeztu]

Originally Posted by Aabraxan

No need to use the editor. At game setup, there's a screen with a bunch of boxes at the bottom. Look for "Cultural Conversions." That box is the one you're looking for.

This is true only if you are playing conquests, but not the vanilla version.

[Aabraxan]

Ah, good to know. Welcome to CFC, Maetzu.

[trcamp100]

So if I'm not playing conquests, where is the editor?

[Optional]

It should be in your game registry, but the Mac version of the game doesn't have it (and I didn't even know there was a box at set-up where you could turn it off as well).