[R&F] How do you build the Great Wall of China?

[SupremacyKing2]

I am trying China in my new game and I want to build the Great Wall for the tourism bonus. I figure the wall should be big (several tiles long) in order to get the most bonus. My issue is that the realistic place to put it, a long stretch between me and Spain would be on tiles that I don't own yet because my territory has not stretched out that far yet. I want the wall to be 2 tiles out from my city center so I don't lose precious tiles that I could work. It would be a big investment in gold to buy all those tiles and/or put theater districts in those border cities to eventually get those tiles. Maybe that's the point? The GW should be a big investment?

So my question: what do you do? Do you try to build a GW that is historically accurate (ie a long continuous wall on the edge of your civ) or do you just put down walls inside your border wherever just to have them for the bonus later?

Thanks.

 

[679x]

I recently played as China on a continents map and had America and Khmer on my continent. I conquered America early on and Khmer much later (Khmer didn't put up a fight at all), and went to claim the rest of the open space on the continent. I was going for a culture victory so I knew I wanted to have big chains of walls eventually.

What I did was ignore the wall improvement for a good chunk of the game, and instead opt for mines and farms everywhere. Most of my cities were running pretty efficiently after doing this - it helped that I didn't have any immediate threats on my borders. Once the Conservation civic started to come around, though, I began the tireless search for spots to put a chain of walls, which usually required removing existing mines/farms. No problem doing that, because I had a good number of cities and majority of them had already built at least two districts. At that point in the game, with no remaining neighbouring civs on my continent, I found there to be no harm in using most of my land for walls solely for the tourism bonus, especially in the newer cities that weren't going to be doing much else at that point. I ended up easily winning culture with 1800~ tourism per turn.

Prior to playing that game, I didn't think the wall improvement was very good at all. I still personally think it's only worth it if you place it later on in the game, e.g. at Conservation or later, and only use it as a later-game tourism source. By that point in the game, your borders will probably have expanded enough to have more land to put walls over.

So, my advice: ignore the defensive bonus of the walls, and wait until Conservation before you actually bother building any.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I recently played as China on a continents map and had America and Khmer on my continent. I conquered America early on and Khmer much later (Khmer didn't put up a fight at all), and went to claim the rest of the open space on the continent. I was going for a culture victory so I knew I wanted to have big chains of walls eventually.

What I did was ignore the wall improvement for a good chunk of the game, and instead opt for mines and farms everywhere. Most of my cities were running pretty efficiently after doing this - it helped that I didn't have any immediate threats on my borders. Once the Conservation civic started to come around, though, I began the tireless search for spots to put a chain of walls, which usually required removing existing mines/farms. No problem doing that, because I had a good number of cities and majority of them had already built at least two districts. At that point in the game, with no remaining neighbouring civs on my continent, I found there to be no harm in using most of my land for walls solely for the tourism bonus, especially in the newer cities that weren't going to be doing much else at that point. I ended up easily winning culture with 1800~ tourism per turn.

Prior to playing that game, I didn't think the wall improvement was very good at all. I still personally think it's only worth it if you place it later on in the game, e.g. at Conservation or later, and only use it as a later-game tourism source. By that point in the game, your borders will probably have expanded enough to have more land to put walls over.

So, my advice: ignore the defensive bonus of the walls, and wait until Conservation before you actually bother building any.

Thanks. I agree the defensive bonus is pretty pointless in most games. If you need to put your units on the wall, you are probably doing something wrong. Waiting to later and building it on empty land for the tourism, sounds good.