Late Divine Right trades - are you serious?

[Sisiutil]

It has occurred to me that DR and the Spiral Minaret in particular could be very worthwhile to a spiritual leader, since you can then build all those cheap temples for extra gold. Get the University of Sankore as well so the cheap temples also provide a research boost, and you've got quite a synergy going for your economy and research. This would obviously be easiest with ind/spi Ramesses, especially if you have stone (and the War Chariots should certainly make sure that you do). Then the opportunity cost of the two wonders and the accompanying temples is quite low.

I'd try to plan it so you can get several Great Prophets, including one that would research most of DR for you. Ramesses should be able to build Stonehenge, the Oracle, and Angkor Wat without difficulty (preferably in the same city), so GPs shouldn't be too hard to get.

Didn't aelf do something just like this with Ramesses in one of the EMC games?

 

[gdgrimm]

I feel the same way about Fascism. If I'm not the first to it, the other benefits are generally useless. At even if I can be first to it, one Great General isn't a big deal. I'd rather be the first to Assembly Line, build the Pentagon, and get the equivalent of a settled GG advisor in EVERY city.

 

[gdgrimm]

It has occurred to me that DR and the Spiral Minaret in particular could be very worthwhile to a spiritual leader, since you can then build all those cheap temples for extra gold....

The biggest issue with this strategy is that it requires you to maintain a State Religion. Switching to Free Religion will remove all the benefits of the Minaret and Sankore.

So the diplomatic benefits/suffering of having a State Religion can impact the value of this economic/research strategy.

 

[KMadCandy]

I love Divine Right. Islam, I admit, is close to useless most times. The wonders, are VERY useful. And, as I tend to run a GP farm or two, and engineer is usually available to build at least one.

The Minaret gives +2 gpt state reli building PER city, which means an easy 6 gold if you have a temple, monastary, cathedral or Academy/Stupa etc.

It has amazing synergy with the univesity of sankore, which gives 1 beakers instead of gold, so together, a lowly temple provides 2 gold and 2 beakers, all the way to computers if I remember correctly.

i tend to use a GP to pop DR if nobody has it, if i'm trying to control religious contamination among the other folks. sometimes i like that spiral and ToS give the benefits per city (so that i can build them where i have the production and not have to put them in a specific city), sometimes i wish it was the other way around. i hardly ever settle great people, altho i have settled 2 great scientists in my latest game after building 2 academies and WOW.

in an RB OCC game where each civ was teamed, me as gandhi with asoka, i settled a couple of late great people in a pathetic city he'd built on an island far away just to help him with his production there, silly guy.

 

[lilnev]

BTW, fishing can always be useful if you have coastal cities with resources, is that not so? That makes it actually worth something!

I'm not saying Fishing is useless; if nothing else it's a required pre-requisite. But the really cheap techs should be self-researched, not traded for. If a particular leader will consider you too advanced after you've traded for a total of ten techs, do you want Fishing to count towards that limit, or would you rather still have some room under the cap for big industrial-era techs? Similarly, you shouldn't trade for techs that you don't really want, because every tech you get in trade counts against you. Before I learned this, I'd often pick up worthless techs like Horseback Riding and Divine Right as part of larger trades whenever I could get them thrown in for free. Now I might fly to Alpha Centauri without ever learning to ride a horse (which actually has a side benfit: I don't lose the ability to build chariots as cheap garrison troops).

peace,
lilnev