Desert start and Petra

[arand86]

I've hung around these forums for a while, and have picked up a lot of tips that have, along with experience, improved me from a Prince and King player to a immortal and Deity player.

However, one thing I've never understood was what the big fuss about desert starts was. The general idea was to beeline currency for petra, and life would be perfect. Doesn't petra just make desert the equivalent of you know, plains? food+production? Why is it so hyped?

Anyone mind explaining?

 

[Unresolved]

I've hung around these forums for a while, and have picked up a lot of tips that have, along with experience, improved me from a Prince and King player to a immortal and Deity player.

However, one thing I've never understood was what the big fuss about desert starts was. The general idea was to beeline currency for petra, and life would be perfect. Doesn't petra just make desert the equivalent of you know, plains? food+production? Why is it so hyped?

Anyone mind explaining?

It makes desert hills into overpowered tiles. Coupled with desert folklore, you get great faith, production, food and gold all in the same city. And flat desert tiles around an oasis are also quite nice .

 

[arand86]

I understand that, but is it really worth the effort? If you miss out on Petra/Folklore, then really, I don't feel like there's too much of a point. In addition, it always has to be in your capital, and petra only affects the desert in 1 city.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

The draw is the the +1 food on hills, so you can be productive and still grow that city. Oases becoming 4 food farms with a hammer and gold is also very nice, really any resource tile becomes super. Mostly it's about the food though.

 

[Soffacet]

I've hung around these forums for a while, and have picked up a lot of tips that have, along with experience, improved me from a Prince and King player to a immortal and Deity player.

However, one thing I've never understood was what the big fuss about desert starts was. The general idea was to beeline currency for petra, and life would be perfect. Doesn't petra just make desert the equivalent of you know, plains? food+production? Why is it so hyped?

Anyone mind explaining?

The point isn't that it turns the flat desert tiles into 1F/1H. It turns desert hills into 1/3. Desert starts have tons of hills. Throw on some improvements and you can easily be working lots of 5+ yield tiles.

You don't actually need Folklore to make desert good if you have Petra, but it's a nice bonus. The most powerful pantheon by far when properly deployed.

 

[Decaux]

Is it recommended to beeline the Petra tech when you spawn in a "Petra location"?
Beeline as in prioritize over Philo is what I'm asking.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

In addition to the above, I'd like some build times for certain difficulties, for future reference.

 

[slowcar]

Is it recommended to beeline the Petra tech when you spawn in a "Petra location"?
Beeline as in prioritize over Philo is what I'm asking.

no. On Deity it is often built before you even research the tech, and in any cas it is a risk to adjust the whole start to a single wonder you might not get.

 

[Decaux]

Nice to know.
Guess I'm starting from turn 0 in my current game where I'm going for Currency first.
Too bloody bad with the four CS quests I finished - might just reroll so the hurt won't haunt me.

 

[Buccaneer]

I've rolled a lot of desert starts and I make sure I get Desert Folklore. Petra is hard to get, imo, on Immortal+ and besides, a lot of my desert starts have floodplains which Petra does not affect.

 

[dragonxxx]

How exactly do you make sure u get DF? Sometimes other AI start on deserts too Its not something you can rely upon.
To be completely honest I think its a bit overrated, esp if u dont have many flooded plains desert tiles. I have had way better early FPT with Wine, Incense and Quaries. DF is probably nice if u can work 10-12 tiles late game, but at the start where u really need a lot of FTP to kick it off lot of the desert tiles are useless ...

 

[Browd]

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you've started in a desert (and chosen not to wander away in search of better surroundings before founding your capital), DF and Petra are certainly useful to make your capital more productive. Maybe you get one or both of them, maybe you don't, but most capital sites are quite viable without either (if you have floodplains and hills, deserts aren't any worse than riverside grasslands starts). As dragonxxx notes, DF is nice, but you can do nearly as well (more or less) with incense, wine, gold, silver or gems (+1 faith/+1 culture per tile, with the right pantheon).

If you are eying a desert location as an expo site, unless you're playing on lower difficulties, you should assume you won't get either DF or Petra. If Petra is still there when you spawn a settler and you have an engineer (say, Liberty finisher), maybe you send them off together to found a golden city in the desert, but you certainly shouldn't plan your strategy around that.

 

[adwcta]

On Immortal, you'll get desert folklore 75%+ of the time.... with just a shrine and nothing else. It's not a guarantee, but it's also not necessary because it doesn't set you back to try for it.

I keep hearing people not being able to get Petra on Immortal, but I've never missed it. I mean, you guys are getting early trade routes right? If you can block off a civ with an early expand (so that it can only trade with you), you can get +6 science per trade route while researching currency (and you can have 2, the AI sends 2) easily by holding off on the luxury techs besides mining. Sets you back a bit, but getting Petra is worth it. Extra food route!!!

I rarely build libraries early anymore on Immortal+ early unless I'm in an iso start. And, I never beeline philo. It's all about the caravans now on higher difficulties. This could be map dependent though. I play mostly Fractal/Continents and not Pangaea (unbalanced map imo), so there's more geographical strategy and land/sea balance involved when it comes to peaceful play... and any time there's more strategy involved, the human player can get ahead more.

 

[Catan_Settler]

It's not as great as they say it is, but it is better than they say it is in the right circumstances. More often than not the hype leads people to build it in terrible cities with like 1 or 2 desert tiles. What a waste. It is god like if you have a hilly desert start, with a river running through it. It's strong in flat desert area with oasis, but it's strong in the sense of it makes that area into somewhat usable instead of mostly useless. My favorite side effect of the petra is the huge culture boost you get from it, but I do believe overall the wonder is over hyped. You can tell that's the case when ou see people in MP beelining it even when they only have 2 or 3 desert tiles nearby. That's just dumb, a waste of hammers building it and a waste of the wonder in general.

 

[Deau]

no. On Deity it is often built before you even research the tech, and in any cas it is a risk to adjust the whole start to a single wonder you might not get.

It depends on the purpsoe of your game. If I am looking to min/max from a desert start and waste time respawning new games, I will typically go pottery->mining->commerce to grab petra and use trade routes to generate science. Should I miss the wonder with this approach, I simply roll another game. For min/maxing turn-to-victory or for the sake of testing/theorycrafting, a good petra/df start is extremely powerful.


As for the OP,
I consider a good petra start to have about 10 tiles with existing 2+ base yield (hills oasis luxuries strategics other ressources) that would benefit from Petra (not resources on flood plains) to consider the map a solid petra start.

I would still try to grab it with fewer tiles benefiting from it but the start isn't benefiting enough from it, imho, to turn my opener strategy upside down. I will simply try/hope that it is still availible in the late 80-90s after NC and give it a shot if too few tiles are worthwhile.

An additionnal perk of desert starts is that they very often come with flood plains wheat and/or mount sinai nearby.

 

[Js_9001]

In my current game, my capital has lots of desert and i got desert
Folklore+ petra. It's only king difficulty do I didn't have to beeline it. Now my capital is big, around 18 citizens in the beginning of the industrial era I think. It's also really good with production because it has lots of gold and stone, and Petra helps. It can make pretty much any military unit in 2 turns i think. DF has been a big help with my religion too.

 

[Deau]

I also want to add this to the Petra discussion:

In GnK, if you didn't have good desert tiles to work, Petra was near useless.

In BnW, if nobody has built it by T80 or so on deity, you can somewhat safely assume that no AI can in one of their first 2 cities and if you build it in a city with even just 1 desert tile, the total yields of one extra trade route the entire game is outstanding. like one desert hill petra capital can get an extra internal trade route to itself so the net gain would be +5 food(1 from tile 4 from free trade route) +1 hammer +1 culture +1 GE point making it more or less another hanging garden...

 

[Lunco]

It's only worth getting Petra, if you have 3+ hills. No actual theory behind it, just a gut feeling from building it a lot because it's my favourite Wonder.

I find that good Petra starts are also quite accommodating to getting a Great Library as well which makes the whole thing a lot easier. Wheat is amazing at securing a Great Library because it offers so much extra growth at the start and thus more hammers when you get to constructing it - basically a combination of hills and wheat is the most amazing thing you can imagine.

You'll still have to get lucky but not as lucky as on normal starts. Aim for a Great Library on turn 40ish and Petra around 80. However, this does not allow you to expand fast. Mostly because you need to go Tradition for the Wonder building policy. Immortal difficulty.

 

[Buccaneer]

It's only worth getting Petra, if you have 3+ hills.
.

That's about the only benefit Petra has. It seems that a desert city have plain desert tiles (no yield), oasis, hills and floodplains. Building on a desert hill next to a river could give you 4-8 floodplain tiles and a bunch of plain desert tiles surrounding them. So that only leaves oasis (which you will not likely have more than one) and whatever desert hills. Is the benefit just to the hills and oasis worth the cost of having the beeline and detour to Currency in order to beat the AI to Petra at Immortal+?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

More like 8 hills, and flat land can be ok as long as there are plenty of oases or lakes. Of course, you need plenty of hills to get the hammers to actually build the thing...