Doea anyone else use this strategy?

[Jesus Civs]

Hi

This is the "Stonehenge - Louis XIV" strategy:

1. You beign with a cultural advantage so cities expand quickly so you can secure more resources, but you particularly want Mysticism so you can build Stonehenge.

2. Secure a stone resource if possible and start building Stonehenge as quickly as possible.

3. One it is built, all your cities start expanding rapidly with the culture "free monument" boost.

4. You also have a headstart on Great Leader production. You first great leader will probably be a Great Prophet on account of Stonehenge.

5. Beeline for Judaism after Mysticism so that you can found that religion. I normally assume when playing as Louis XIV that Buddhism and Hinduism are founded by someone else.

6. When your Great Prohpet appears, build the Judaism special building so you can start earning cash and spreading religion.

7. With lots of cash, you can build more cities.

8. With the earliest religious special building, your religion should be flourishing more than others, so other civs will likely adopt Judaism and you will have good relations.

9. With lots of cash and good relations, you can easily top the technology race and probably win with a cultural victory.

I think this is a good strategy. Does anyone else?

 

[Ruler]

I voted yes, but I don't like to ruin my GP pool with Stonehenge as I've already Creative trait from leader. Try to get Hinduism if not lucky, continue with your plan if you find Hinduism skip Judaism and go for Priesthood and build a temple/oracle for first GP. Oracle is definitely good reason to ruin your pool in my opinion.

 

[madscientist]

Yes I have done exactly this in the past with Louis. Adding the Oracle is also an important thing as this doubles the GP points. Given a choice between Stonehenge and Oracle I would take the oracle hands down and get the free tech of metal casting (Louis is industrious and those cheap forgers early are more valuable than the judaism/temple of solomon gambit, which is what this is). It is not unrealistic to get both wonders in the capital, plus and extra city or 2 up and going early.

Now if you run a priest in the capital you can also pop out two prophets next and snag Theology (founding Christianity) and the Church of the Nativity.

Then there is also hitting Confucism and Philosophy first.

These are some of the reasons Louis is probably the best non-Philosphical leader to go for a cultural victory. It's his industrious trait coupled with fast cultural border expansion to collect resources that make him powerful.

 

[MrCynical]

I voted no. It's not that the Stonehenge - increase borders - get a great prophet - get shrine is weak, indeed at levels up to about Monarch it's a sound strategy. It's just Louis isn't particularly obvious as a leader for it. OK, he's industrious which helps with Stonehenge, but there are plenty of other leaders with this trait. He's Creative, which renders the monuments provided by Stonehenge rather useless, since new cities will rapidly expand their borders anyway, and most of all he doen't start with Mysticism, making it harder to get either Stonehenge or a religion. Gandhi is by far the most obvious candidate for this strategy, not Louis.

 

[AlessioCerci]

Creative + stonehenge is overkill, you only need one or the other.

 

[Ankh]

You can actually do this with about any leader not just Louis. Actually I think Louis as a bad choice to do this with since he has the creative trait. Building stonehenge as creative is abit of overkill and a bad investment of hammers imo. Egypt or Ethiopia or Native Americans benefits the most from stonehenge since their UB is a monument.

6. When your Great Prohpet appears, build the Judaism special building so you can start earning cash and spreading religion.

It whould actually be better to settle your first prophet for 5 and 2 and build the religious shrine with your second one so your religion have some time to spread so your shrine generates more then 5

 

[xanadux]

Even if you have creative, stonehenge is cheap, and if you plan on founding a religion, and getting a shrine, it's a perfectly reasonable option. I agree it is probably more of a monarch and below strategy.

IMO, the real value to this strategy is when on a map with lots of early contact with many AI. Getting the early shrine built, plus open borders and your religion may spread like wild fire. This is good for cash, but even better for diplomacy. Personally, I prefer beelining to CoL through alphabet, possibly using oracle, and using confucianism for this.

This can be a valuable strat for a culture win ... try to get everyone to be your religion so you have more friends.

I tried this in Vanilla with Ghandi ... IND/SPI. Spiritual is a nice trait for a culture win because changing civics a lot is very helpful. On the right maps (lots of AIs around, and close), building a shrine really can be very lucrative.

As for Great Prophets being bad ... I disagree. A settled Great Prophet is a welcome addition to a city.

 

[Jesus Civs]

It whould actually be better to settle your first prophet for 5 and 2 and build the religious shrine with your second one so your religion have some time to spread so your shrine generates more then 5

That's a nice tip Ankh, never thought of that.

The culture over-kill, as some have mentioned above, is great for gobbling up your neighbours' cities. Expecially if you are pitted against Alexander or some of those other crazy leaders.

 

[dankok8]

I voted yes but I do agree that Ghandi is a better leader for this. First, the free monuments provide more benefit to him. Second, he starts with mysticism and can found an early religion more easily and third, philosophical means that great people come out more quickly.

 

[Percy]

It whould actually be better to settle your first prophet for 5 and 2 and build the religious shrine with your second one so your religion have some time to spread so your shrine generates more then 5

True, but don't forget that a shrine doubles the chance for the religion to spread to other cities, so it could actually save you a few missionaries, and get you more than 5 rather quickly. I'm not saying it is a no-brainer, mind you. Just that a Missionary costs 40 at normal iirc (60 at Epic, which i play). So that's 20 turns of a Settled Prophet if you build them where you settled him (an often incorrect assumption, i'm aware, but it helps for comparison purposes).

Just sayin'

 

[vale]

It is a no vote from me. Researching Mysticism early and especially building Stonehenge are two huge wastes of the Creative trait since there is no Creative/Charismatic leader. Getting your worker techs and related economy running right away without sidestepping for less important techs is the key benefit of being Creative. Cheap libraries (aka get thee to Writing asap) are a close second.

It seems like basically any other Industrious leader is much better suited to this strategy. The most notable of the bunch to me would be De Gaulle for the happy boost and Ramesses because of his unique monuments.

Of the Philosophical leaders, I'm staring down Sitting Bull because of the unique monuments, Lincoln because of the happy boost and Gandhi because he has the exact best two starting techs to attempt to found a religion and build Stonehenge.

If you actually choose to do this strategy with Louis, then you must build the shrine. You don't know for sure when your next GP is going to come and the whole (misguided some may say) point of this was to get an early shrine, early religion and early OR.

 

[madscientist]

It is a no vote from me. Researching Mysticism early and especially building Stonehenge are two huge wastes of the Creative trait since there is no Creative/Charismatic leader. Getting your worker techs and related economy running right away without sidestepping for less important techs is the key benefit of being Creative. Cheap libraries (aka get thee to Writing asap) are a close second.

It seems like basically any other Industrious leader is much better suited to this strategy. The most notable of the bunch to me would be De Gaulle for the happy boost and Ramesses because of his unique monuments.

Of the Philosophical leaders, I'm staring down Sitting Bull because of the unique monuments, Lincoln because of the happy boost and Gandhi because he has the exact best two starting techs to attempt to found a religion and build Stonehenge.

AT first I thought Sitting Bull would a slam dunk for this, but I thought how many of your cities actually build archers? Usually only a few, so the totems turns into normal monuments if archery units are not produced. I'll take it if I have stone With Sitting Bull, but the AI builds stonehenge fairly quickly and Bull starts nowhere near masonry.

 

[Percy]

AT first I thought Sitting Bull would a slam dunk for this, but I thought how many of your cities actually build archers? Usually only a few, so the totems turns into normal monuments if archery units are not produced.

That's the other way around: you get huge bonuses for Archery units, so you should build some.

 

[madscientist]

That's the other way around: you get huge bonuses for Archery units, so you should build some.

I wasn't clear. Most of us use 1 or 2 cities to produce military (well I use maybe 3-4) so those ar ethe only ones that needs a totem pole built. Sitting Bull starts pretty slow as far as military options (he starts with fishing and agriculture) so he needs to get 2 techs for some decent defense. Add 2 techs to open up stonehenge in a reasonable time (mysticism/masonry since you would need stone). Just doesn't seam worth it for him.

 

[mnf]

Settling your first two Great Prophets will probably let you run 100% science for quite a while. It's not too late to use the third Prophet on a Shrine, I think, although a lot of people probably want to have their GP farm up and running by this time.

I still don't get how well Shrines spread religion. I often have rivers spreading my religion faster than when I had Shrines.

 

[madscientist]

Settling your first two Great Prophets will probably let you run 100% science for quite a while. It's not too late to use the third Prophet on a Shrine, I think, although a lot of people probably want to have their GP farm up and running by this time.

I still don't get how well Shrines spread religion. I often have rivers spreading my religion faster than when I had Shrines.

You also need a trade route to spread the religion. Rivers are a natural trade route, build roads and the shrines would spread religion.

Also settling the second prophet assumes you will get a third. A settled GP does not generate GP points, so if you build the great library, national epic, or any other non-prophet wonder you are diluting the phophet points.

 

[popejubal]

AT first I thought Sitting Bull would a slam dunk for this, but I thought how many of your cities actually build archers? Usually only a few, so the totems turns into normal monuments if archery units are not produced. I'll take it if I have stone With Sitting Bull, but the AI builds stonehenge fairly quickly and Bull starts nowhere near masonry.

Even with only 1 Archer per city, a Barracks is a cheap city improvement and with a Barracks and Stonehenge, Protective Sitting Bull gets Drill III or CG III Archers immediately with 5 XP.

I think that the Ger is kind of pointless since I really want all of my horse units to have 5 XP and the Stables already gives me the extra 2 on top of the Barracks 3, but the extra 2 XP from the Totem Pole for Archery units is an absolute delight.

Also, don't believe what you've read about Sitting Bull's UU being the Dog Soldier. His real UU is the Longbow after an Oracle slingshot to Feudalism.


Hmmm. Stonehenge... Oracle... Great Priests... found Judiasm on the way to Monarchy and build the shrine... Oracle for Feudalism. I like it. Everything except for the Worker techs is all waiting for you already along the beeline that you want in the first place.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I still don't get how well Shrines spread religion. I often have rivers spreading my religion faster than when I had Shrines.

You get that the religion can spread on its own, at random, right? The Shrine doubles the likelihood that you win the dice roll.

 

[Diamondeye]

I voted no. It's not that the Stonehenge - increase borders - get a great prophet - get shrine is weak, indeed at levels up to about Monarch it's a sound strategy. It's just Louis isn't particularly obvious as a leader for it. OK, he's industrious which helps with Stonehenge, but there are plenty of other leaders with this trait. He's Creative, which renders the monuments provided by Stonehenge rather useless, since new cities will rapidly expand their borders anyway, and most of all he doen't start with Mysticism, making it harder to get either Stonehenge or a religion. Gandhi is by far the most obvious candidate for this strategy, not Louis.

Agree

 

[Shoot the Moon]

I voted no. I consider that a waste of the creative trait. And I would never dream of bothering to found Judaism. I would much rather get my worker techs already. Oh, and for Stonehenge, Industrious isn't really needed. It costs what, three chops?