GLH or Collosus

[Mantic0re]

If you start on an obviously water map and could be guaranteed to get either the Great Light House or Colossus (one or the other but you can't have both), which would you take? Can you give some key reasons for your decision?



Colossus seems to go later and become obsolete a bit earlier in my games. When GLH obsoletes at least your gaining the trade routes from the tech (corporation I believe) so it compares fairly well with only loosing half the wonders benefit (assuming all you cities are coastal).


Financial swings a bit toward The Colossus but I'm it is dependent on actually working those tiles which fluctuates with whip cycles. I could see someone arguing that higher food surpluses favor Colossus as well but in my limited experience that seems a minor point. GLH commerce should be more stable than Colossus commerce.


I guess that would push larger empires toward GLH because there are potentially more cities for more trade route commerce. At the point in the game when you should start building this the map my not be explored enough to make use of this though.


I may as well flip a coin on this one.

 

[ABCDPuppies]

GLH for sure.

1. Lasts way longer.

2. Just seems to fuel expansion more efficiently. A new city with GLH trade routes will often nearly pay for itself right away, while to get the Colossus benefit you really need to grow and work a few tiles.

I'm sure there are a lot of other factors, but based on point 1 alone I predict most will pick GLH hands down.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I won't make the decision for you, but here are some thoughts to consider:
The Great Lighthouse lets you work Food Resources and Mines (if there are any Mines) or even mid-game Workshops while still benefitting your City.


The Colossus requires you to work Coastal squares, Ocean squares, or Lake squares for you to benefit from it (beyond its Great People Points--an equal amount of GPP that you'd get from building The Great Lighthouse).


Having at least one early island City makes your The Great Lighthouse's Trade Routes even more powerful, as do Intercontinental Foreign Trade Routes.


Having the Financial Trait makes working The-Colossus-enhanced Coastal squares pretty powerful--powerful enough to skip working Cottages (that is, if you are a player that normally works Cottages--some players don't build them).


The Great Lighthouse, while strong, can require you to sacrifice some early-game expansion in order to ensure that you are the Civ to build it.


With Copper, The Colossus is quite cheap for a Wonder. It also comes at a point in the tech tree that building it won't drastically affect your Settler-based expansion.


The Great Lighthouse may encourage you to settle more Cities in poorer locations than you would otherwise, just so that said Cities will be Coastal Cities.


Early Forges can be quite powerful and going for The Colossus ensures that you will get at least 1 of them (since having a Forge is a pre-requisite for building The Colossus), while unlocking the ability to build more of them in your other Cities.


On a map without Stone or Marble nearby, The Great Lighthouse can help to make up for your lack of discounts on early Wonders relative to AIs that have those Resources (since they can't get a Resource bonus on building The Great Lighthouse).


The Colossus has a nice synergy with Moai Statues, which can be a great National Wonder to build, especially if you have Stone nearby.

 

[ecuwins]

GLH = two free citizens producing commerce only, in coastal cities.

Collosus = working coast tiles which is generally meh. Financial makes it a bit more tempting, though. They become "free" villages in that case.

That being said. If not FIN, GLH. If FIN, then I'd have to step back and think about it.

 

[xenex]

The thing however is that if its a water heavy map your surely gonna obsolete Collosus and pretty earlier then you normally do.

GLH does not have to be obsoleted.

GLH also is much easier to take advantage of, just plant a city and you boost your commerce, Collosus however you have to work those water tiles and sure while your probably gonna work them anyways its gonna take a while, when you plant a new city its almost gauranteed its gonna have some improvable tiles which you will work first,so it takes a while to make use of collosus bonus.

Dont take me wrong Collosus is great, its just not better then GLH if you can only choose one.

The same thing could be said about GLH though, in that you want more cities to take advantage of it, but still I think GLH is better.

 

[ABCDPuppies]

The thing however is that if its a water heavy map your surely gonna obsolete Collosus and pretty earlier then you normally do.

Yes this is the main point in my mind. On a water map, getting to Astro asap is often one of your main goals from the start, which pulls against TC.

However Dhoomstriker also raises the good point that with Copper TC is dirt cheap, so definitely worth picking up in many circumstances. If you're Industrious and would be building cheap forges early anyway you really can't lose. Actually I'd say the most common scenario where I build the Colossus is if I'm Industrial -> Oracle MC early -> Build forges, Colossus. And of course the sooner you get to MC the longer you can use TC before it obsoletes, and Oracle is a good way to do that.

Overall the whole question is a little misleading: TGL and TC come at pretty different times and different costs, so it's rare you would actually need to choose between them in any straightforward sense.

 

[coanda]

The biggest problem with Colossus is that it requires Metal Casting, and MC costs about 3 times what it should. Unless I'm using Oracle, I almost never self-research MC.

The Oracle -> MC slingshot tends to be worth it only for IND leaders; non-FIN leaders tend to find GLH stronger than Colossus. So if I were playing as Huayna Capac on a water-map, I might prefer Colossus over GLH.

 

[xenex]

Your right, even when you are "rushing" to astro in a water heavy map your probably still going (want) to build collosus, even if you know your gonna 0bsolete it "soon" and even those few turns that its in game its gonna help you.


I agree that I dont think you will ever be at a spot where you have to choose only one, but I believe both wonders are pretty much at the same range in effort.

For Colossus you have to get a tech which you normally would wait for or like you said oracle it, which means your going down a path that won't help you as much, though if its a water heavy map having a early religion can be a good boost.

With GLH your going to have to go sailing, which in a water heavy map won't be a problem, since your gonna need it anyways, this enables lighthouses which atleast a few cities are gonna need, not to mention those important galleys to get those small islands.But then you also have to tech masonry, which if your not gonna get any of the other wonders will increase the cost of GLH a good deal.

This is not counting that both wonders need a building before you can build them.

So in my opinion they both require about the same effort although in different areas.
One you pay in beakers mostly and the other in hammers mostly.



I think that also gives a good idea of what suits which wonder better, it may be obvious but still, if the land is more lots of sea dotted with some islands then Colossus is better.
If you have more land with some patches of water, like a good size or mutliple lakes then GLH is better.

This obviously ignores the fact that the best thing you could do is just get them both.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On high levels consistently getting colossus is pretty much impossible without oracle MC or having a very high commerce start. Not true for GLH, though GLH usually requires you to cut cities in the short term (bad idea if you need to rush spots to block).

Unfortunately they do often turn out mutually exclusive on high difficulties (oracle MC and colossus or GLH) but Colossus is not expensive to pursue if you trade for MC and it's not gone yet.

Of the 2, if you have a bunch of coastal cities GLH is USUALLY stronger. The exception is awful land...colossus coast is better than a regular grassland cottage and far ahead of crap like non-riverside plains etc to the point of being silly...which gives colossus a boost on odd maps with swaths of bad land like tectonics.

 

[Mylene]

The biggest problem with Colossus is that it requires Metal Casting, and MC costs about 3 times what it should.

I think it's fine, getting the tech for forges more easily would make IND (and maybe PHI too for the engineer) even more powerful.
You get happiness, hammers and the chance for engineers, it has to be expensive.

On topic
GLH is prolly always stronger, unless you are isolated. The sea tiles require cities to grow (and stay bigger) to be efficient, GLH makes you more flexible and kicks in faster.

 

[ahcos]

GLH is prolly always stronger, unless you are isolated. The sea tiles require cities to grow (and stay bigger) to be efficient, GLH makes you more flexible and kicks in faster.

That's the point, you'll need foreign traderoutes, and you'll need quite alot of them. There's little use in semi-isolation or isolation for GLH. Even without foreign traderoutes GLH will have it's usefulness, but significantly less.

Also worth considering is that you'll need alot more resources overall to support the happycap with colossus, whereas your traderoutes will give you an decent income even with relatively small cities.

 

[Sian]

GLH is still fairly good even if in isolation, if you have enough offshore cities (3 or 4 depending on techs) ... even if they're on otherwise lousy one tile islets

 

[coanda]

I think it's fine, getting the tech for forges more easily would make IND (and maybe PHI too for the engineer) even more powerful.
You get happiness, hammers and the chance for engineers, it has to be expensive.

I don't deny that MC is a very nice tech to have. But let's consider another tech you tend to get a chance at around the same time - Writing. Getting the tech for libraries more easily would make PHI even more powerful. You get culture, beakers, and a chance for scientists, it has to be expensive.

And yet Writing costs 120 beakers, and Metal Casting costs 450. In fact, this is overly generous to Metal Casting, because Writing has more prerequisites (and you often do have two of them beforehand - AH and Pottery) giving you a research discount (86 beakers mod vs. 375 beakers mod). Making Metal Casting more than four times as expensive as Writing, despite both being comparably valuable and available at about the same time.

 

[ahcos]

@Coanda: MC offers hammer modifiers and therefore is naturally alot more expensive than research modifiers, and there's a reason for that: hammers are freakin' powerful. On top to that it unlocks one of the best wonders in the game (although it's underrated alot), and forges are happy-modifiers - making them cheaper would result in a huge happy-cap enhancement in a time when they're worth the most.

But the most important reason is the hammer modifing aspect, giving that away for cheap would be imbalanced.

 

[Mylene]

@Coanda Well you can hardly compare writing to it
This is a basic tech, and the only chance on high diff. to get any beakers going with poor land.

 

[coanda]

@Coanda Well you can hardly compare writing to it
This is a basic tech, and the only chance on high diff. to get any beakers going with poor land.

Fair enough. I was a little overharsh in comparing it with Writing, which is an extraordinarily good tech. (Much like if I looked at worker improvements, and said "building a cottage isn't nearly as good as farming a wet corn - so building cottages is a bad idea!"). And you were right to call me out for that unfair matchup.

But I still think that MC's base cost is much too high - compare it with the similarly priced Aesthetics + Literature (500 beakers combined), and once again it looks like a lousy deal.

 

[ahcos]

Are your numbers for the beakers based on quick speed? Even on normal/immortal writing is worth 180 beakers, 200 on deity iirc. Somehow i doubt that the research costs go up that much. Aestetics alone is worth 500 beakers, lol.

 

[coanda]

Are your numbers for the beakers based on quick speed? Even on normal/immortal writing is worth 180 beakers, 200 on deity iirc. Somehow i doubt that the research costs go up that much. Aestetics alone is worth 500 beakers, lol.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/techs

Unless they changed the prices in 3.19, Writing 120; Aesthetics 300; Literature 200; Metal Casting 450. If those numbers are wrong, I'd definitely like to know because I've been using them as the basis for comparing tech choices in my personal game plans for a long time.

Difficulty level will scale it somewhat, of course, as will a variety of other factors.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/tech_research.php

 

[ahcos]

Don't know, they're definetely alot more expensive on IMM/Deity. Didn't play any lower difficulty a long time, but i do not remember the research costs to go up that much.

 

[Dirk1302]

@coanda

That's also how i read it of that chart ages ago and i think it still fits:

Just checked on deity:

alpha 507
currency 676
MC 760

It's all scaled but it complies with the alpha-currency-MC 300-400-450 scale you're talking about.