Leo or Sun

[steviejay]

ok here's the thing, I have two of my main cities building wonders. 1, size 8, 5 turns till next level and its 35 turns away from Leonardo's Workshop and I've got another city, size 7, can't grow any more 20 turns away from Sun Tzu. I would like both but I only have one Great Leader and I know for a fact that the Greeks are building Leo's workshop and the annoying Iroqui (who I haven't met yet) have pipped me to quite a few wonders, most noticably the Great Library. so which one should I go for??

anyone got any pointers?

 

[mrlight]

Personally I like SunTzu. it is quite useful (unless you are on a very small archipelago map). its good especially on pangrea.

There isn't anybody else building SunTzu, is there? Try not to sell your tech. You might just want to compete with Greeks for Leo's Workshop first and if you win, you will get both wonders. if you lose the competition, you can stil get suntzu (with or without a leader).

if you can get another leader, it'd be nice. you can declare on a small and weak nation that does not have advanced units and you can use your elite knights and medieval infantry to hit them to increase the chance of getting a leader.

 

[Bouchehog]

If you're going on a military rampage then both are useful. The main question is how many troops are you going to upgrade? If you've got hundreds of warriors and horsemen that you've not had a reason to upgrade before then go for Leo's, if you've got mostly up-to-date units go for SunTzu. If you can go for both!

 

[Catt]

With a decent-sized landmass, I would favor Sun Tzu's. Since you're into the Middle Ages, you're into the era of mobile warfare. Blitzkreigs with knights and cavalries go that much faster with instant barracks in conquered cities to quickly heal your frontline troops. Even if your warmongering ways are drawing to a close, the relief from maintenance costs for every barracks is significant -- lots of saved gold each and every turn for the rest of the game. Finally, I feel that I don't get as much use out of Leo's as some players -- my play biases just make it less useful. The upgrade cost from pike to musket is expensive; I often skip Nationalism (and riflemen) but will eventually pick it up in trade; long story short is that I very selectively upgrade some pikes to muskets, but leave a bunch of pikes until the era of infantry when more often than not new infantry are built from fully-developed core cities and relieve older pikes -- the pikes become recycled shields for slightly-out-of-core cities. After the pike - musket upgrade, upgrade costs don't ever hit me as prohibitively expensive. A large upgrade of horsies to knights (or even horsies to cavalry) would push me strongly towards Leo's, but more often than not I have already done a knight upgrade before I build Leo's or I intend to build lots of knights / cavalry from scratch.

 

[anarres]

I agree with Catt, although in one recent game I had a spare leader and only Leo's available.

After building, 30 gold to upgrade Pikes to Muskets is useful, since they will always defend before Knights. It is one of the most annoying factors of the game that Knights sometimes defend before Pikes, I have saved many Knights this way.

At 60 gold a pop, like Catt says, you have to selectively upgrade.

 

[jack merchant]

If you're certain you can beat the AI to one of the wonders, you can still get both by rushing the other wonder the turn before one completes. That way they complete simultaneously and the AI can't cascade to either one.

I generally prefer Sun over Leo's since I'll probably have knights by the time Leo's completes and the upgrade to cavalry isn't all that expensive. Leo's is more useful as Anarres said for the defensive units, but depending on the level you play, you may not need all that many and focus on attacking units instead.

@Anarres: So that's how you got Leo's ! And there was me thinking you had been skilfully prebuilding for it all the time

 

[anarres]

Damn! I knew I shouldn't post about my PBEM experiences outside my spoilers, but it's so natural to do so...

And of course you now know I have some kind of access to saltpeter. Oh well, I suppose I will have to satisfy myself with waiting until tonight when I can pay the Koreans to attack your undefended western cities.

 

[jack merchant]

[threadjack]

Go ahead, make my day !

That's just one more civ on 'the list'

[/threadjack]

 

[cromagnon]

What Catt said. Also, remember that in order to take advantage of Leo's you need barracks in your cities. If you don't have many of them, you'll be spending a lot of time shuffling units to be upgraded (some don't mind this).

 

[SuperDave9x19]

I have always felt Leo was 100% better than Sun Tzu. I have never felt a need for Barracks in >25% of my cities, even before railroads. After an acceptable rail network exists, there is virtually no need for a barracks an more than 1 city per continent.

Plus, each Barracks costs (I think) 1 gold upkeep.

But with Leo, there is only savings and upgrades. And Leo means virtually nothing when it is built. But when you are trailing in tech, and are 10 turns behind those stinking Chinese getting Modern Armor, it is nice to simply upgrade ALL EXISTING TANKS to modern Armor in one turn.

I just feel sun Tzu is a drain on economy for no real benefit, but Leo offerrs only savings and real benefit thru all ages.

And let's not even get into the fact that Sun Tzu's Art of War is a classical book on stratyegy, not a big statue of crossed swords. That pisses me off

 

[anarres]

SuperDave9x19, how do you produce veteran units in quantity if you have 1 barracks per continent??

Also, when fighting a war, how do you heal your units quickly?

Sun Tzu's is amazingly useful for warfare since the cities you capture can heal the units that took it in just 1 full turn.

 

[ivory]

I don 't see how Sun drains the economy. Those barracks he provides are free. It is even advisable to sell any and all existing hand-built barracks on the turn before the wonder is completed.
Sun Tzu may not have thought of his teachings as a book, it is even not certain he wrote it! (Ask Google, the better sites will give you the details). Leonardo did have a workshop, sure enough, but whether it looked anything like what we see in Civ, is doubtful, to say the least.

 

[Sirp]

It depends on how many upgradeable units you already have fielded, and on how many barracks you already have built, and the victory condition you are going for.

If you're going for conquest, Sun Tzus is very powerful, and you should probably go for that unless you have lots of troops you want to upgrade.

Also, are you a militaristic civ? Barracks for militaristic civs are half price, and thus Sun Tzus is much less valuable, since you can build cheap barracks anyway. The main value for a militaristic civ is instance barracks and healing ability in captured cities, so you can storm through conquering faster.

-Sirp.

 

[SuperDave9x19]

Originally posted by anarres
SuperDave9x19, how do you produce veteran units in quantity if you have 1 barracks per continent??

Also, when fighting a war, how do you heal your units quickly?

Sun Tzu's is amazingly useful for warfare since the cities you capture can heal the units that took it in just 1 full turn.

I am generally a peacemonger with war as a last resort, and generally late in game. Since barracks are quick to build compared to other things, they usually get put in as an afterthought.

I did exagerrate my lack of barracks. In general, I use one in my capital and one in each or my EARLY cities since those are the producers and I complete non-military items first. After that I generally go 1 barracks per 4 cities.

I did not realize those barracks were free. I thought I checked that back when in 2002 when I started to REALLY hit Civ3. Obviously there is much for me to think about regarding that. I still think you'd be amazed at how sparse my "Barracks" percentage is.

I generally play Aztecs, so that may warp my thinking since they are militaristic. And I generally prep for war, with 2-3 mega producing cities producing 1 MA/turn and a dozen or so strong producers making MA in 2-4 turns, so my other 40-60 cities really don't need barracks.

But as I said before, I am a peace monger in generall.

I just get SO much value out of Leo compared to Sun when I play.

 

[Dwarven Zerker]

One other consideration for the Leo/Sun debate is that to upgrade any unit it has to be in a city with barracks. I consider it a pain to move all of "obsolete" troops to a city with barracks to upgrade. Especially before rails. Of course Sun's takes care of this until I expand beyond my initial continent (which happens late in the game and I win by SS or another peaceful means as I'm more of a builder. But I'm learning more blood-thirsty ways to advance my civ.)

 

[TerraHero]

can u beat the other guys with building Leo's?..try empazisizing u're Prod. Iff no good, go with leader. U can then try again too get Sun..but i prefer Leo's coz in the end it let's u save a lot of money

 

[Sullla]

This is probably the fourth time I've seen this question appear, so I'll try to set the matter to rest. Which is better, Leo's or Sun Tzu's? The answer, like so many other things, is "it depends."

Are you playing on a pangea map? Sun Tzu's is extremely powerful on pangea maps, almost useless on archipelago maps. How large is the map size you're playing on? On a tiny map, Sun Tzu's will only put barracks in a handful of cities. On a huge map, it can potentially give you free barracks in hundreds of cities, saving thousands and thousands of shields. What is your victory goal? For conquest or domination, Sun Tzu's is far more useful than if you are going for a different victory type.

How many units are you planning on upgrading? If you have specifically tailored your strategy around upgrading units and attacking, Leo's can potentially be the strongest wonder in the entire game. This requires much planning and foresight to set up, of course. What units are you planning on using? If you're using horsemen or knights and planning on upgrading them later, Leo's is very powerful. If you're using longbows, MDI, or cavalry, then the wonder is all but useless to you. Keep in mind that you can also only upgrade units at cities which have barracks.

Think about your situation and what your goals are, and you should be able to figure out which one works better for your game. Leo's works best with some very advanced upgrade strategies, so for a novice player Sun Tzu's is probably the better choice. It's all situational though, depending on the map and what victory type you are trying to achieve. Anyone who tries to assert that one wonder is unilaterally better than the other doesn't know what they are talking about. Use your head, think about these factors, and determine which ones works best for your game.