11 Wildly Popular Strategies To Avoid

[Tephros]

The higher you go in difficulty level, however, the more HC becomes a jack-of-all-trades-but-king-of-none

I've won with various leaders and settings, including deity. In single-player games the incas are as good as caesar on higher levels for several reasons. At monarch and above, you will see only archers and rarely any warriors from the AI. The quechua rush will give you a huge and early advantage in expansion well before any axes appear. The Incas are by far the easiest civ to win with on higher levels, and actually are not quite as good on lower settings. They especially thrive in crowded maps. Caesar will have to spend his initial turns doing his own expansion while the incas can start stealing workers and cities, and he will be unable to use his unique unit without iron (though that's not usually a problem). Even with the latest patch, caesar's traits are not as good for warmongering. Financial/Aggressive is an excellent combination, definitely better than Exp/Org for almost any situation. Caesar's main advantage is that praetorians will not become obsolete nearly as fast as quechuas. And you mentioned Tokugawa as being better than the incas for a domination/conquest win? Not even close. The samurai are a mediocre UU, while both quechuas and praetorians are among the most useful because of their early impact. Tokugawas traits are better than caesar's, but not the incas. Financial is generally better than organized IMO, though the gap was narrowed in the latest patch. The incas are definitely in the top three for domination/conquest wins, if not number 1, and the jack of all the other types of wins.

Not sure what you could say about state property. If you have a huge empire you should use it, if you have a compact empire then free market is probably better. That's all there is to it, and you can determine which would be better by counting your distance costs, civic upkeep difference, value of trade routes, number/distribution of watermills, and number/distribution of workshops. So if your point is, "Consider your situation and goals rather than dogmatically do what has worked in other situations," then I'd agree with you on everything except the incas.

 

[Nares]

I wonder why he dislikes State Property? I don't what's wrong with state property. Stonehenge is decent as long as you aren't Creative, so I can see why he has that.

State Property's free distance maintenance costs seem to be highly lucrative. However, it is possible (not saying always, but definatly in some cases) to get more return out of Free Market.

Getting to Civil Service before the AI on Noble can be handy, but doing it on Deity can be a game saver.

Erm, umm, care to explain how you build The Oracle on Deity? Let alone in time to use it on ....nvm, explain how you build it in the first place, then worry about what you use it on, or how you survive relatively crippled for having beelined to it and devoted that much early production to it.

There are a number of reasons to not build stonehene, imo.

Reason #1 (and the only one necessary): You can whip Obelisks for 1 pop.

For the record, you can easily edit the thread title by heading to the Go Advanced options in the lower right corner of the post when editing it.

 

[theimmortal1]

If I have Stone, I'll go for Pyramids over Stonehenge.

If I don't have Stone, I'll go for Henge and Oracle, forget Masonry, use prophet for CS and Oracle for Metal Casting.

That delays war but if your production and science is that good, you can easily war at that point (specially bc you'll have maces in a few seconds).

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Stonehenge doesn't seem to have a downside. It is cheap, gives great border expansion and culture in all cities, and it lets you know how you face up in the world. It's seems to be always worth a shot.

Indeed, it is cheap, easy to get against AI and is very powerful. The culture boost to the building city is excellent, the +2 points for Priest is just the thing to get Theology ahead of the A.I so you've got a religion should you want one of your own.

I don't bother with the Pyramids as at the Immortal it just ain't happening when I'd rather be building swordsmen.

 

[Martinus]

In my first few games, I couldn't understand why you would ever consider passing on Stonehenge.

Now, it's not so much that I think it's "bad," I jut don't think it's always the best option. You either have to take a break from your other production really early (at the most critical point in the game), or by the time you finish it it's not long off from being obsolete. It's pretty much always the first wonder to go obsolete, and when it does, you're left with a big, useless set of rocks.

Centering the map can be useful, but rarely do I find it has much of an impact before I pick up calendar anyway. On an islands map, for instance, it will probably come in pretty handy as you're building early galleys and such. On most other maps, you're exploration tends to be limited to one landmass anyway; it doesn't matter at that stage where that landmass is in relation to everything else.

It does, of course, have it's uses. If you're going for a cultural victory, for instance, it lets you stockpile a hefty amount of culture in the city that builds it. The 100 or so culture (tops) you'll pile up in your other cities is pretty useless, but Stonehenge itself will continue to provide a significant culture boost throughout the game to the city that built it. And compounded over all those turns (since it comes so early), that's nothing to shake a stick at.

I can think of two reasons why you would want to pass on Stonehenge:

1. You are Creative. Stonehenge basically is a "Ghetto" version of Creative trait, and it is not that useful if you already have means of generating culture in newly founded cities.

2. You are playing Multiplayer - for the reasons you gave, almost everybody will try to get Stonehenge, so your chance of actually getting it are slim.

 

[Martinus]

Reason #1 (and the only one necessary): You can whip Obelisks for 1 pop.

This reason looks good on "paper" but in practice, if you found your second/third city, the best solution is usually to build a worker there - which delays the possibility of Obelisk/Monument rush significantly. If your city is also placed in such a way that it has a strategic/important resource in its fat cross, but not in any of the tiles adjacent to the city, this may mean a significant delay.

Since in Warlords I usually play as Ramses (his traits fit my play style a lot, and the War Chariot is nothing to scoff at), so it is usually a no-brainer for me to build Stonehenge as soon as possible (usually in my capital after building the first settler leaves my capital). Ramses is Industrious, is not Creative, and on top of that, Stonehenge grants me the Egyptian unique building in every city (in fact I would probably build Stonehenge for the same reason even if I played as Hatshepsut who is Creative).