Is the Sacrificial Altar any good?

[AbsoluteZero]

Great UB, too bad about the starting techs.

I believe that UB also reduces draft anger, making the Aztecs a damn good rifle drafting civ.

 

[Mylene]

UB with the most potential imo, in a city with 2 big food ressources whip anger is basically the only thing that stops you from creating an endless stream of units

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Great UB, too bad about the starting techs.

I believe that UB also reduces draft anger, making the Aztecs a damn good rifle drafting civ.

It doesn't.

If it did, the sac altar would be indisputably the best UB in the game by a wide margin. It wouldn't take a very large empire to sustain drafting 3 rifles/turn w/o building ANY at all.

The sac altar is already excellent, basically allowing extra early-game production AND coming at a discount compared to the standard courthouse. Aztecs uniques are good and only held back by the extremely lame set of starting technologies.

 

[Gwynnja]

How so? Wouldn't you get a good return on investment per whip because of the prolonged turns?

It's difficult to 2-pop whip units because they're discounted and it takes forever to regrow.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The issue is you can arbitrarily high unhappiness due to the way stacking whip anger works. You can't just wait 10 turns after your last whip and assume it all goes away.

But if you don't whip say 3 or 4 times, then the "happiness" isn't as useful. Or more accurately, extra happiness means you can chain whip. I seem to run caste a lot more these days, so there are some games where I don't really need the benefit.

The other thing is courthouses are generally useful in cities, whereas ballcourts and forums and hammams are buildings you wouldn't usually get in say, production cities.

Hammam you would get, just much later than you would for the . When factories/power are in play you really do want them. I think the hardest thing with Hammam is evaluating whether it lets you get away with delaying certain technologies in favor of others.

Forum is just terrible overall...though I guess on sub-deity if you are capturing enough cities and can't broker tech for gold (and have 2-3 luxuries that are boosted) it starts looking much better...the UB effect just isn't that great.

 

[ahcos]

There isn't any Courthouse-UB that isn't at least "good" as an UB. Try Kremlin + Bio + Sac. Alt. once in a while and you'll simply love that UB Not only is it a great UB by itself, it also brings more fun into the game.

 

[civvver]

erm, lemme think:

with SA u can whip once every 5 turns and have a permanent 1

without SA if you whip once every 5 turns you will have
1 for t1-5
2 for t6-10
2 for t11-15
3 for t16-20
3 for t21-25
4 for t26-30

and so on and so on

There are many situations where whipping once every 5 turns is quite realistic, so I'd say the SA is real good because it turns serious anger into nearly nothing.

And in the situations where you want to whip once every 2-3 turns, it turns crippling anger into something much more manageable.

If you aren't wanting to whip so often, then SA is no big deal. A cheaper courthouse.

What speed is this?

 

[Keilah]

normal

 

[Um the Muse]

Alright, you convinced me. Thanks for the advice, everyone!

 

[Higher Game]

Hammam you would get, just much later than you would for the . When factories/power are in play you really do want them. I think the hardest thing with Hammam is evaluating whether it lets you get away with delaying certain technologies in favor of others.

Sully might just want to bulb math in every game, so hammams rock for him. Mehmed is more situational.

Forum is just terrible overall...though I guess on sub-deity if you are capturing enough cities and can't broker tech for gold (and have 2-3 luxuries that are boosted) it starts looking much better...the UB effect just isn't that great.

Forum is just average, not at all terrible. Augustus likes it.

Perhaps, but it's basically a Courthouse that's twice as effective, since you only pay 25% maintenance rather than 50%. If Charlemagne didn't have crappy traits and a really crappy UU, Holy Rome would be incredibly OP.

It's giving you maybe 1-1.5 extra gold. Even for imperialistic, that's just average. It's very good for corporations and that's it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Forum is just average, not at all terrible. Augustus likes it.

It's terrible. Markets are situational buildings and the GPP boost will get you a GP only very slightly sooner...of course you're giving up something (often turns getting GPP) just to build the thing...

Fortunately rome has good traits and a good (if overrated) UU.

It's giving you maybe 1-1.5 extra gold. Even for imperialistic, that's just average. It's very good for corporations and that's it.

It can easily be 2-4 gold (over base CH) on immortal/deity if the empire gets wide enough (still < 12 cities). It's good although I classify it alongside the dike in "good UB but people adore it way too much".

Unfortunately for the Rathaus, it comes on a crappy leader with a terrible UU and bad starting techs. Perhaps this is why people value it...it's just about the only good thing about using HRE.

 

[Mylene]

I disagree with the Landsknecht being terrible, but you probably expected that after my thread
Not big on the forum, but i wouldn't say it is aweful...just nothing special.

 

[Pfeffersack]

On the plus side it's a UB you will probably want to build anyway. I hate UB's that are jails, coliseums, aqueducts, cus I may never build those in many cities.

I see it rather the opposite way - that way a weak building I likely would not built gets turned into a building worth (Mayas Ballcourt is the best example), giving my civ one more good building choice...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I disagree with the Landsknecht being terrible, but you probably expected that after my thread
Not big on the forum, but i wouldn't say it is aweful...just nothing special.

You used them, sure, but what really does the heavy lifting with engineering? Trebs. Protective xbows outperform landcraps in most of the non-mounted fights, which means that they perform the exact same function as a pike most of the time and simply use up a UU slot. The actual variance in performance you get out of them over a standard pike is negligible in the vast majority of games played.

When you compare that alongside any of the early game power UUs or even something very average like the samurai, it falls flat.

 

[Mylene]

^^ just that mounted units are the biggest factor, you don't want your trebs to be attacked and x-bows cannot stop them. X-bows also cannot do city raider.

 

[coanda]

But if you don't whip say 3 or 4 times, then the "happiness" isn't as useful. Or more accurately, extra happiness means you can chain whip. I seem to run caste a lot more these days, so there are some games where I don't really need the benefit.

Unless you're playing UL, you only get SA as SPI Monty. With a little micro., it's always possible to use both Caste and Slavery as a SPI leader.

Regarding the original question...
When you aren't talking about specific situations where you are whipping faster than you are generating food, the SA is one of the weaker UBs in the game. Simply put, 10 turns of whip cooldown is usually short enough to let you use the food surplus of your cities anyways. Maybe you throw in a worker or settler once in a while, 4-pop whip some expensive piece of infrastructure, work some specialists... you generally don't end up wasting food even with 10 turns of whip unhappiness.

But, the SA is unmatched for letting you economically survive fast military buildups - situations where you suddenly start whipping cities into the ground to get troops quickly. So a warmonger going for a military timing attack will find the SA to be incredibly valuable; a pacifist will find it to be fairly weak.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^^ just that mounted units are the biggest factor, you don't want your trebs to be attacked and x-bows cannot stop them. X-bows also cannot do city raider.

You're not SERIOUSLY going to tell me that CR pikes are somehow effective attackers, are you ?

I get that mounted is the biggest factor, but landcraps do nothing beyond standard pikes against mounted. They also do nothing against longbows (most common defender), nothing special against knights, nothing special against muskets, etc. They're stack protection only, and are inferior city defenders for-cost to longbows.

Best defender code will put longbows, xbows, gunpowder, and then knights/melee up against them, and will favor mounted + longbows against offensive xbows. I'd rather be hitting the mounted after the trebs have weakened it! Neither Xbow nor landcrap make an ideal attacker once knights are out, but before knights are around pretty much nothing defends particularly well against cover or high drill xbow (cover which you can get at 3 xp) after even minimal collateral. All classical/early med melee is still trash vs xbow too (axes and maces are worse).

Marginally improved stack defense against a unit class that the unit isn't even generally designed to counter does not a good UU make. It doesn't even make an average one. It's like giving marines formation or something.

 

[civvver]

normal

Ok I didn't know what the base length was. Guess it's 10 on normal, 15 on epic.

As far as the rathaus, if you play huge maps it gets more valuable. You can have a lot of distance maintenance spanning a continent and around 20 cities you're looking at 10-12 maintenance in some cities. Any other buildings offer 3 gold per turn?

Forum sucks hard because just like the philosophical trait it doesn't really net you more great people, it just makes the first few quicker to get so you can leverage that, but 25% isn't much. Plus Rome doesn't exactly have specialist economy traits, though industrious is decent for it I guess.

As for landsneckts they should've done something similar to vultures and given them higher base strength but with a weaker bonus against mounted so it works out the same like 8 base strength but only +50% vs mounted and +50% vs melee so they get the same 12 against mounted as pikes but can attack cities like a maceman. Still wouldn't be a necessary unit over stacking maces and longbows/crossbows but you could simplify and just build landsneckts. At least they'd get built. Or they could've made them really interesting and left them as is but also had +50% vs archers. Then I'd build them!

 

[Keilah]

wait i'm confused, why are pikes/landsnechthxhs not good vs knights?

 

[elmurcis]

There is 1 strong building what could make difference if Sacrifical Altar would be available - Moai Statues in all water city could be done 1/2 faster. I would say that for this NW some 9/10 of hammers is done from whip and overflow from workboats/workers/settlers etc whatever need at the moment. And because Moai will go together with Globe (to get out max production already in midgame), than I will stack lot of unhappy faces... maybe even 7 or 8 (with HR its not huge problem, archers use just part of overflow, so it still pays back).
Rathaus would be wonderful if look to its effect.. 35 cities in my current game cost me around 350/turn directly and >500/turn with Inflation... (its with Courth. in all cities). with Rathaus it would be... just 175 and ~250-260/turn.. hmmm.. nice impact - net profit 250 gold/turn.. with 2500 total it makes difference