Classical Monumentality

Karmah

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Everyone seems to count on 'monumentality'. I understand , it's one of the best golden age ever. But ,you need faith to make it work. Does that means that everyone is going shrine first on their 2-3 first cities and not campusx3 or campus x2 + encampment as I used to gather ?
Monumentality you can have it at the first and second age transition. For the second , you might have a bit of time to prepare but the first one ?? Or is anyone playing faith generating civs nowadays ?
 
30% reduction in buying power is the biggest bonus to monumentality to me. The faith purchasing is nice, especially if you end up with lots of faith boosts from shrines/pillaging/terrain and don't have anything else to spend him on then year it's nice to have a second avenue to purchase them, but as long as you're doing well for cash, I'm more than happy to use it just for the cheaper builder/settler even if I only get one faith purchased unit in the entire era.
 
Everyone seems to count on 'monumentality'. I understand , it's one of the best golden age ever. But ,you need faith to make it work. Does that means that everyone is going shrine first on their 2-3 first cities and not campusx3 or campus x2 + encampment as I used to gather ?
Monumentality you can have it at the first and second age transition. For the second , you might have a bit of time to prepare but the first one ?? Or is anyone playing faith generating civs nowadays ?
Generally speaking, Animal husbandry ---> Archery ---> Horsemanship gets you all the faith you need via AI holy sites.
 
I have found that even when I am not actively competing for a religion, I'm still sitting on enough faith for at least two builders by the time the classical era comes around. Add the gold discount and the movement speed and monumentality becomes quite good even at such a low threshold.
 
I generally shoot for classical Monumentality to really jump-start my empire so that it feels a bit more complete by the time the Middle Ages comes around. It use to be a but tough for me to give up faith prior to nabbing my 3rd and 4th beliefs via apostles, but I look at the benefits of an additional 2-3 cities over the loss of a belief or two. Plus, the benefit extends to trader units— getting those online ASAP via faith buys can really crank up your civ.
 
If you are not otherwise going for a religion or playing a civ that benefits from holy sites, I really don't think that you want to build holy sites even after taking monumentality into account. There are plenty of other ways to get early faith (pantheons, city states, conquer AI, relic from goody hut, Divine Inspiration). Even if you don't have a good faith economy the 30% gold discount and the increased builder movement are very very strong.
 
Mostly harvest pantheon is your main source (or earth goddess). This relies on you managing at least the 3rd pantheon on the map.

Otherwise, civs such as Egypt, Scythia and Maori can have MASSIVE faith output from tiles. I rarely rely on faith from holy sites as the early district is extremely crippling. Brazil with rainforest pantheon and Russia with tundra pantheon are the exception though (still the tech path is very risky early on).

On deity though classic golden age is really difficult (simply not enough huts with AI's extra scouts and the era ending so fast due to AI tech/civic bonuses)... mostly Medieval is the time where you want to make your move (and that is also the era where your cities are more stable and you have your faith generators up and running).
 
The best case scenario is getting harvest pantheon into classical monumentality. You essentially get a perpetuum mobile (although my avatar denied any such things :) ) which works as follows:
1.Harvest Pantheon
2.Monumentality
3.Ancestral Hall

Now you can chop settlers at 100% bonus production, buy builders/settlers with the faith you generate by chopping and get even more builders by settling your cities. Those builders are used to chop again. Rinse and repeat. (eventually without the settlersof course :D )

Monumentality will still be a solid choice without harvest pantheon, but it is nowhere close in power.
 
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30% reduction in buying power is the biggest bonus to monumentality to me.

This. You don't need to buy them with faith; gold works too. Also the extra builder move is quite decent.

The other pantheons just aren't as good.
 
The best case scenario is getting harvest pantheon into classical monumentality. You essentially get a perpetuum mobile (although my avatar denied any such things :) ) which works as follows:
1.Harvest Pantheon
2.Monumentality
3.Ancestral Hall

Now you can chop settlers at 100% bonus production, buy builders/settlers with the faith you generate by chopping and get even more builders by settling your cities. Those builders are used to chop again. Rinse and repeat. (eventually without the settlersof course :D )

Monumentality will still be a solid choice without harvest pantheon, but it is nowhere close in power.

I find that Ancestral Hall comes around too late to be useful. By the time it's built (even if beelining), most land is already occupied.
 
With a classical golden age, I usually go monumentality because I typically don't have the districts yet to make the others worth it. And even if I'm going for a religious victory, I'm usually not ready to send out my waves of apostles in the classical era.

As others have noted, the discount on gold buying can be valuable, and I really like the faster builders.
 
Harvest/Earth Goddess/Stone circles can be some pretty big early faith outputs. If you get lucky, even just the base faith from a few holy city-states or a relic, or having a natural wonder like Roraima nearby, or even an early ally with Nazca, as a well placed line improvement can be worth 4-5 faith or more. If you go Desert Folklore or Aurora then those +6 or more holy sites are actually pretty useful.

But early on, traders and builders are only like 100 faith with monumentality, so even at just +4 per turn, you can faith-buy one in 25 turns, meaning with virtually no effort on faith you should be able to buy 2-3 builders during the golden age. And if you do happen to get an early holy site, or have a larger than expected faith output due to the above, you can get more.
 
The best case scenario is getting harvest pantheon into classical monumentality. You essentially get a perpetuum mobile (although my avatar denied any such things :) ) which works as follows:
1.Harvest Pantheon
2.Monumentality
3.Ancestral Hall

Now you can chop settlers at 100% bonus production, buy builders/settlers with the faith you generate by chopping and get even more builders by settling your cities. Those builders are used to chop again. Rinse and repeat. (eventually without the settlersof course :D )

Monumentality will still be a solid choice without harvest pantheon, but it is nowhere close in power.
Then a guy with a few military units comes around and conquers all of that
 
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