[NFP] Ancestral Hall vs. Warlord's Throne

[ISuckAtCiv]

I'm curious about how people choose which plaza building to build after Political Philosophy. Is it as straightforward as always Ancestral Hall for peaceful expansion and always Warlord's Throne for early military pushes, or is there also a case when Ancestral Hall will speed your expansion enough that it's still a better military option than Warlord's? Does it make a difference if your military push will be in the Ancient/Classical eras vs. Medieval/Rennaissance and beyond?

Thanks!

 

[MrCynical]

If I'm planning to go to war, even if it's an era or two down the line, I might still go with the Warlord's throne. There are other options for boosting settler production (e.g. the monumentality dedication and buying them with faith) where the Ancestral Hall isn't necessarily that strong even if you're playing peaceful. As for the Audience Chamber - well, I built it in a One City Challenge once...

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

I like the free builder you get with ancestral hall. (Magnus + provision) + Ancestral Hall + Colonization policy = Massive Sudden Expansion.

I feel like Ancestral Hall is nearly always better than the other two. Faster settlers and free builders are nothing to scoff at. Audience chamber could use a buff TBH, I have played it and the bonus is nice but it feels a bit weak compared to the other two. Not like it matters a great deal, but I wish they would just drop the -2 loyalty for cities without governors. I'll use warlords throne depending on how close my neighbors are and if I'm going all-in domination.

 

[Aurelesk]

The Ancestral Hall seems to be the consistent strategy where you could expand without worrying too much. The Governement Plaza's city could have Magnus with Provision and, thanks to both +50% Production to Settlers, can train a lot of them. But when your expansion is over, the building has no further effect. You need to snowball from them, and most of the time you do without question.

The Warlord's Throne seems to be B option when you know you cannot expand peacefully. It is basicly a "gain 1 turn of Production for each conquered city" ability which is considerate in the long run. This option is tempting when I judge training Settlers is too risky (no good area left, can be stolen...), and has a long lasting effect if you do conquer stuff all your game.

The Audience Chamber seems to be the F option when you neither can expand nor conqueer your neighboor. So when you are cornered with an aggressive civilization nearby, or somehow stuck in an island. In this case, it is more a turtling situation when you can't fully expand nor fully conqueer. Even in this case, the Warlord's Throne seems to be a better pick because you will need to conquer if you plan to win the game at some point. Furthermore, is 2 Governor's Promotions, 3 Housing and 1 Amenity to your cities is really going to make it? Isn't building a real district better overall?
I guess you can try an early Growth with a city with Magnus with Surplus Logistics, Government Plaza and Diplomatic Quarter that allow a 4 Population city to have internal trade route of +5 Food and +3 Production early on. But this looks like a desperate attempt.
Also, the Audience Chamber can be a good way to do some "Tall" empire. Yeah, there is no such thing as "Tall" play because it is not effective, but at least I need to micro-manage way less. And that's why I am taking Audience Chamber. Not because it is good but because I am lazy and it works best with my lazy playstyle.

In short
Can I expand my empire easily? Yes → Ancestral Hall.
No: Can I conquer instead? Yes → Warlord's Throne.
No: Maybe you can conquer later? Probably → Warlord's Throne
No: Sorry. Well it is time to restart the game I suppose? O.K. → Restart.
No: Oh, you don't care about the perfect game and you are playing just for fun without thinking too much about it → Audience Chamber.

 

[acluewithout]

I do wonder if Audience Chamber is maybe a little underrated.

It's definitely not as strong as Audience Chamber or Warlord. But I've often thought it was complete rubbish, when actually I think it's maybe okay.

The +4 Housing means you can settle Cities off freshwater, and still grow pretty effectively (particularly if you combine it with Magus' growth promotion). You can then maybe later build an Aqueduct, and then grow your city pretty tall. The -2 Loyalty is probably a reason not to spam Cities, but itself isn't a particularly strong negative except if you're flying a bit close to the weather on loyalty.

The real hassle is just not having enough Governors to put Governors in enough Cities to really leverage the bonus. But with all the extra Gov Titles from Secret Society, that might not be such an issue now.

That said, AH and WT are still just flat out better (partly because wide is just better overall), and I'd be happy if AC got a buff.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Audience Chamber is mostly for bad starts with limited expansion opportunity and with cities that could actually use the housing. Typically, this would be on island maps that lack rivers and you can't expand easily . without developing shipbuilding/cartography. In these cases, neither settlers nor war will be viable, so you might as well grab the immediate benefit of bigger cities. Loyalty is also less of a problem.

 

[RealHuhn]

Whenever I spam Holy Sites and go for high faith income, I mostly go for Audience Chamber because:

1. I can buy more than enough builders with faith and they all get +1 charge compared to Ancestral Hall (Liang).
2. It's a lot more important to grow cities to size 7 and 10 quickly because holy sites take away one important district slot.
3. I can skip granaries in early game which saves production.
4. The additonal amenity per city with a governor often increases all yields if you hit the critical +1 or +3 amenities per city.
5. The bonuses are always active.

It's definitely underrated on this forum.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Is it just me, or is building the Ancestral Hall (and the Govt. Plaza early on) overrated for settling?

I've tried going for occasionally myself, but every time I do it seems like I actually delay my settler spam for too long while I build it.
Usually I just prefer to slot in the +50% to settlers card early on, and get those settlers out much quicker quicker and just ignore the Govt. Plaza and the Ancestral Hall completely.
Building the Govt. Plaza and Ancestral hall is often just too many turns "wasted" for me, for "just" the 50% faster settler production (and a builder) once you have it up.
Building the Govt. Plaza with the Ancestral Hall also carries the risk of running out of places to settle if the AI settles aggressively, which frequently happens on Immortal/Deity unless you specify the map to contain fewer players than its intended size.
Bottom line, the investment doesn't seem to pay off if you (like me) are content on aiming to settle somewhere around 8-10 cities (which is often all I can do before there is no good room left). By the time my capital builds the Govt. Plaza and AH, I could have cranked out 1-2 settlers in the meantime, and by then it seems like I'm getting little return on the investment for further settler production, compared to building settlers without the AH.

Please do convince me of why you think skipping the Govt. Plaza + AH is a mistake, because right now I really don't see any upside to delaying settling and also running the risk to run out of land.

 

[monikernemo]

There is nothing from preventing you from building settlers with the settler cards in your non-gov plaza cities. Usually I would build my government plaza in the second city after my capital.

The usual strategy is to hard build Govt Plaza + AH, then chop out settlers with +50% and Magnus, to make the most out of your chops.

While it is indeed the case that you delay settling abit, but the RoI can be huge; you get savings on settler and the free builder with every city means extra productions to new cities right off the bat. You may delay settling for a bit but eventually the player with AH will certainly catch up. Even with monumentality GA, it is worth building AH since you get a free builder for every settler you purchase.

 

[Deadly Dog]

Is it just me, or is building the Ancestral Hall (and the Govt. Plaza early on) overrated for settling?

I've tried going for occasionally myself, but every time I do it seems like I actually delay my settler spam for too long while I build it.
Usually I just prefer to slot in the +50% to settlers card early on, and get those settlers out much quicker quicker and just ignore the Govt. Plaza and the Ancestral Hall completely.
Building the Govt. Plaza and Ancestral hall is often just too many turns "wasted" for me, for "just" the 50% faster settler production (and a builder) once you have it up.
Building the Govt. Plaza with the Ancestral Hall also carries the risk of running out of places to settle if the AI settles aggressively, which frequently happens on Immortal/Deity unless you specify the map to contain fewer players than its intended size.
Bottom line, the investment doesn't seem to pay off if you (like me) are content on aiming to settle somewhere around 8-10 cities (which is often all I can do before there is no good room left). By the time my capital builds the Govt. Plaza and AH, I could have cranked out 1-2 settlers in the meantime, and by then it seems like I'm getting little return on the investment for further settler production, compared to building settlers without the AH.

Please do convince me of why you think skipping the Govt. Plaza + AH is a mistake, because right now I really don't see any upside to delaying settling and also running the risk to run out of land.

I'm with you on this. I also like to often build a small tight empire of 8-12 cities for the mid game, and find myself questioning the wisdom of investing heavily in getting the AH up ASAP when I'm already close to getting my best sites for cities filled.

I do try to get the GP up, often it seems to be inexpensive and the title is worth is, plus sometimes I'm getting +1 to a district with it right away.

If I'm looking at a high faith per turn Monumentality GA though I'll really try to get it built. Because I know once I get the hammers into the AH its no trouble to buy the settlers and so I'm getting 3-4 free builders.

Similarly, times I get a high food/prod city, the AH is no problem and pays for itself quickly if you use the card as well.

So ironically the times it's really hard to get the AH going are the times I need it most. In those cases yeah I just hard build the settlers first, worry about the AH later. I still get some benefit down the road as I often continue settling thoughout the game to some degree.

I don't often chop unless I need space for districts, but if its not a tile being worked I will use it to speed either AH (if I already have settlers about to settle) or settlers (esp with rainforest) long before I need it cleared for the district/wonder.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

There is nothing from preventing you from building settlers with the settler cards in your non-gov plaza cities. Usually I would build my government plaza in the second city after my capital.

The usual strategy is to hard build Govt Plaza + AH, then chop out settlers with +50% and Magnus, to make the most out of your chops.

While it is indeed the case that you delay settling abit, but the RoI can be huge; you get savings on settler and the free builder with every city means extra productions to new cities right off the bat. You may delay settling for a bit but eventually the player with AH will certainly catch up. Even with monumentality GA, it is worth building AH since you get a free builder for every settler you purchase.

I see, I wasn't aware that people were still using Magnus combined with chopping after R&F.

Come GS, I started going into Pingala early since he just provides such obscene amounts of early culture/science which helps letting me catch up to the Immortal/Deity AI before they snowball out of control (and extra culture would let me get more governors anyway).
Since GS also buffed lumber mills to +2 production, it further cemented my choice since it makes it much more desirable to save those forests compared to R&F, as they would become quite productive in the middle game if I let the forests stay.
Since I couldn't chop efficiently anymore by going Pingala, I found that the AH was costing me too much, as not having 2 points into Magnus would quickly bleed my population dry, and that was just cementing my gut feeling of not being worth it for the city expansion phase.
An added bonus of having Pingala early now is that I can delay getting campuses too early (still another thing I would have to invest in), while letting me get closer to the +100% GP promotion (if going for a religion or science), and +100% GWAM promotion (if going culture).

Might look back into Magnus now that the NFP usually provides 2-4 "free" governor promotions very early in the game, but I'm still pretty convinced that (assuming a standard "vanilla" GS game), choosing Pingala (esp. with the culture bonus) and building settlers without AH is the way to go now. A double promoted Magnus is essentially just two "wasted" promotions (in my playstyle that is), until I can afford Vertical Integration in the late game (usually when going science). Especially since I manage to settle just fine without him, thus saving those critical governor promotions.

 

[monikernemo]

I see, I wasn't aware that people were still using Magnus combined with chopping after R&F.

Come GS, I started going into Pingala early since he just provides such obscene amounts of early culture/science which helps letting me catch up to the Immortal/Deity AI before they snowball out of control (and extra culture would let me get more governors anyway).
Since GS also buffed lumber mills to +2 production, it further cemented my choice since it makes it much more desirable to save those forests compared to R&F, as they would become quite productive in the middle game if I let the forests stay.
Since I couldn't chop efficiently anymore by going Pingala, I found that the AH was costing me too much, as not having 2 points into Magnus would quickly bleed my population dry, and that was just cementing my gut feeling of not being worth it for the city expansion phase.
An added bonus of having Pingala early now is that I can delay getting campuses too early (still another thing I would have to invest in), while letting me get closer to the +100% GP promotion (if going for a religion or science), and +100% GWAM promotion (if going culture).

Might look back into Magnus now that the NFP usually provides 2-4 "free" governor promotions very early in the game, but I'm still pretty convinced that (assuming a standard "vanilla" GS game), choosing Pingala (esp. with the culture bonus) and building settlers without AH is the way to go now. A double promoted Magnus is essentially just two "wasted" promotions (in my playstyle that is), until I can afford Vertical Integration in the late game (usually when going science). Especially since I manage to settle just fine without him, thus saving those critical governor promotions.

Building govt plaza and the buildings also alleviates issue for lack of governor titles early. I don't usually go for researcher promotion on Pingala because I think it is easier to earn science than culture. furthermore a premature grants promotion is generally useless until you have districts. I am under the impression that it one wants to get a religion (on higher difficulty) one should not have to rely on grants since the AI would have gotten a religion even before us unlocking a few titles.

Magnus with provision is still pretty good since you can grow the early city building settlers, and if you have monumentality GA, you can shift Magnus to fringe cities to chop infrastructure and purchase a few settlers so you save time walking them. I think vertical integration is overrated, you need to devote building many industrial zones. Space Initiative is alot better.

As for lumber mills, it is a matter of production now vs production later. Even though on paper lumber mills can give you higher production in the long run the burst of production chopping provides is much higher. More so if the forest are on hills where you can place mines 2f 3p or 1f 4p mines after unlocking IZs.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I'm with you on this. I also like to often build a small tight empire of 8-12 cities for the mid game, and find myself questioning the wisdom of investing heavily in getting the AH up ASAP when I'm already close to getting my best sites for cities filled.

My thoughts exactly.
For Deity especially (somewhat also true for Immortal), I found that I need about 8 cities minimum to be able to compete for the victory condition I'm going for, and at that point there is not much need for a heavy investment into future settler production.
Getting the AH is then a gamble, since I might suddenly find myself forward-settled and out of room with just 3-4 cities if I delay too much.

And speaking of neighbours:
There are also times where I find that I spawn next to notorious AIs like Korea/Kongo/Austrialia etc. (for instance, Korea spawns close by and by turn 40 already has like 50 science per turn while I have like 6).
If that happens (and it happens often enough that I need to take it into account) it's usually going to be a terrible game ahead unless I kill them outright before they snowball out of control (and as a bonus I get to keep their cities anyway).
With such neighbours, I'm not only on the clock before they snowball science/culture wise, I'm also on the clock vs. the AI military tech-wise (before they get swordsmen/horsemen/crossbowmen or walls etc.), so I'll also skip the GP and Warlord's throne/AH so that I can produce more warriors and archers right now.

TL;DR:
Getting the AH with double Magnus promotions often feels like a big gamble where you're banking on large rooms of uncontested land and no nearby notorious snowball-AIs.
Getting a core of 8+ cities (usually with Pingala for the extra science/culture) just seems a lot more stable for the average early game.

Building govt plaza and the buildings also alleviates issue for lack of governor titles early. I don't usually go for researcher promotion on Pingala because I think it is easier to earn science than culture. furthermore a premature grants promotion is generally useless until you have districts. I am under the impression that it one wants to get a religion (on higher difficulty) one should not have to rely on grants since the AI would have gotten a religion even before us unlocking a few titles.

Magnus with provision is still pretty good since you can grow the early city building settlers, and if you have monumentality GA, you can shift Magnus to fringe cities to chop infrastructure and purchase a few settlers so you save time walking them. I think vertical integration is overrated, you need to devote building many industrial zones. Space Initiative is alot better.

As for lumber mills, it is a matter of production now vs production later. Even though on paper lumber mills can give you higher production in the long run the burst of production chopping provides is much higher. More so if the forest are on hills where you can place mines 2f 3p or 1f 4p mines after unlocking IZs.

True with the govt plaza, forgot the free governor promotion it gives - good point.
And definitely choose culture on Pingala first, yeah.

What I like with Pingala (if going for a religion) is that it's usually a 50/50 to whether or not the AI goes for religion super early (at which point I need to do holy site prayers).
If they don't push heavily however, I have the option to go for +100% GP generation (to get the prophet "naturally") and just focus on more settlers in the meantime over those prayers.

Vertical Integration is kind of overrated indeed, but if I already invested 2 points into Magnus early I might as well just get it later in the game (for instance, for a second space port city) so that those vital early points into Magnus weren't totally "wasted".

I do prefer lumber mills to mines though - they produce more (early on at least), and usually lets me keep 2 food while working them, allowing me to grow further (I might not always have high food tiles available).

 

[Deadly Dog]

I see, I wasn't aware that people were still using Magnus combined with chopping after R&F.

Might look back into Magnus now that the NFP usually provides 2-4 "free" governor promotions very early in the game, but I'm still pretty convinced that (assuming a standard "vanilla" GS game), choosing Pingala (esp. with the culture bonus) and building settlers without AH is the way to go now. A double promoted Magnus is essentially just two "wasted" promotions (in my playstyle that is), until I can afford Vertical Integration in the late game (usually when going science). Especially since I manage to settle just fine without him, thus saving those critical governor promotions.

With the free promotions you get from SS, I find it no trouble at all to get Pingala and Magnus both. I find Pingala with Connoisseur is all I really need pre-Political Philosophy. Grants promotion can certainly wait unless I want a Prophet. And again , regarless of the AH the Govt Plaza is too important to delay for me and that's another Governor title.

I did say I question the value of AH, but alas I still build it as soon as I can. But when it feels like its going to take forever I just shelve it, get a few more settlers out the hard way, and build it later when the opportunity cost is much lower. I'm always looking to establish more cities later for resources, and I play a lot of maps that yield isolated places for colonies.

Again though, if say I'm in a classical normal age and the AH site is going to be a slow build, BUT I have a good faith/gpt dynamic that I expect to grow, I will build it anyway (or start it at least by end of the classical), and pick the dedication that is going to contribute most to a Medieval Era GA. Then just do my best to block the sites I want from AI and wait it out. Settling in the ME is not ideal but if my cities were focussing on infrastructure rather than expansion. Besides, if not conquering why build anything else?

Now, I should say I play mostly on Epic speed and have no concern about finishing the game early. So this is not meant to be a claim to optimal play. Just how I see it, how it fits in my style.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

With the free promotions you get from SS, I find it no trouble at all to get Pingala and Magnus both. I find Pingala with Connoisseur is all I really need pre-Political Philosophy. Grants promotion can certainly wait unless I want a Prophet. And again , regarless of the AH the Govt Plaza is too important to delay for me and that's another Governor title.

Now, I should say I play mostly on Epic speed and have no concern about finishing the game early. So this is not meant to be a claim to optimal play. Just how I see it, how it fits in my style.

That seems to be it, I guess with SS (which I play exclusively right now, even if that might change in the future) I can go back to dabble in some early Magnus + AH shenanigans as long as I manage to secure Pingala with the culture promotion early.

I guess "style" is the key word here though, and whether or not one re-rolls games for good starts.
I usually play on normal speed and will make do with the start I'm given and only re-roll if I'm very sure that I already lost the game, so (barring re-rolls to get an isolated) start I just can't take the risk to invest into Magnus in the average game.
Using Pingala and hard building settlers seems to be the most consistent "safe" play to secure a foothold, even though it might be suboptimal for settling 10-12 ++ cities if turned out that I was in a very isolated start with nothing but barbs to worry about.

 

[JesseS]

I’ve been going for Pingala with connoisseur first and building the ancestral hall purely for the new builders (as long as I expect to build at least 4 more cities). I’ll build my first 2 or 3 settlers, hopefully using colonization.

By the time I have political philosophy, I’ll know whether I have the room to continue to expand and make ancestral hall worth it, or if I need to prepare to take out a neighbor. I buy my remaining settlers with faith or gold, trying to do so from low population cities on the frontier. Cities grow fast at pop 1 or 2. Buying settlers is just so much faster, and the big benefit is that you can get a few settlers into position to settle after building ancestral hall, as opposed to starting settler spam after finishing ancestral hall.

I do get Magnus eventually, but use him for wonder and district chopping tours instead of avoiding population loss.

 

[cylenalag]

I agree that going Govt Plaza + AH has some opportunity cost going for it, but if you get Pyramids in another city and slot in Serfdom (at least for some of those settlers) then those free builders you get from AH and settler spam can more than compensate for the downtime in your AH city. And as @monikernemo mentioned, nothing is stopping you from making settlers with a settler card in your other cities whilst AH is getting built.

When it comes to chops I generally also like to relegate my chops to districts and wonders like @JesseS mentioned, though I will chop one or two settler(s) generally to speed up my pre-AH settler rush so that they can get started on Pyramids and other necessary things like an early military to get rid of barbs, an early trader for the coinage eureka, a settler or two, and early builders for the tons of eurekas in the early game.

While I can see the definite merit of going Pingala + Connoisseur first for the early culture bottleneck, I find the early production bottleneck... bottleneckier. I’m not a big fan of Provision because I generally go Pingala next anyways and a food chop can always ameliorate the population loss.

 

[RealHuhn]

That seems to be it, I guess with SS (which I play exclusively right now, even if that might change in the future) I can go back to dabble in some early Magnus + AH shenanigans as long as I manage to secure Pingala with the culture promotion early.

I guess "style" is the key word here though, and whether or not one re-rolls games for good starts.
I usually play on normal speed and will make do with the start I'm given and only re-roll if I'm very sure that I already lost the game, so (barring re-rolls to get an isolated) start I just can't take the risk to invest into Magnus in the average game.
Using Pingala and hard building settlers seems to be the most consistent "safe" play to secure a foothold, even though it might be suboptimal for settling 10-12 ++ cities if turned out that I was in a very isolated start with nothing but barbs to worry about.

Pingala is only worth 4-7 culture per turn in the early game. Whereas with Magnus and Liang you get more improved tiles and can chop settlers faster. Those new citizens all produce culture and science per turn, simply by existing. The early culture boost from Pingala is very convenient but better infrastructure provided by other governors catches up quickly. A (too) early progression through the civic and tech tree also has severe downsides because each researched tech and civic ramps up the production costs of districts.
If you spam more military units instead of settlers or go for the Oracle, sure, Pingala is great but for peaceful expansion, there are better alternatives in my opinion. You can always pick him up a bit later and still benefit from a nice culture and/or science boost anyway.
In SS, you can even go Void singers, 4x Moksha and buy districts with faith before you even get to your first government. Pingala can't keep up with that.