Leveraging National Wonder Combinations

[Lord Parkin]

Heroic Epic and West Point is usually the only synergy I deliberately aim for, since it's so powerful. All of the other national wonders stand pretty fine just on their own in my eyes, though they can be sometimes combined for some minor benefits.

Although, Heroic Epic and Globe Theatre combined with Slavery is another interesting combination to try in an extremely high-food city (though then you'll have trouble producing those National Wonders without using Great Engineers). I haven't actually tried this strategy out myself yet, but I've heard it works extremely well. With enough surplus food you can simply whip out 1 unit / turn quite easily with the +100% unit production. I suppose a similarly high food city would do well with Ironworks and Globe Theatre as well, then it could rush out all of its needed buildings with ease (though it's not as efficient as rushing out a military).

 

[cabert]

Heroic theater, heroic epic and globe theatre, can draft/whip as many units as you want so long as you have food surplus.

Heroic EPic does nothing for your dafting ability. It does make whipping more efficient though.
But since drafting > whipping in globe theater city, I get the feeling that HE isn't put to full use there.

 

[popejubal]

Although, Heroic Epic and Globe Theatre combined with Slavery is another interesting combination to try in an extremely high-food city

If you are planning on getting the Globe Theatre after a while, you can even start your whipping early - as soon as you have Monarchy.

With Heredetary Rule, you get one happyness per unit in the city and you get one unhappiness per whipping, so it's like free units (until they leave the city and the city explodes with . Once you build the Globe Theatre, all that unhappy mojo goes away and those troops can go about their normal business of conquoring and pillaging.

 

[cabert]

double post, don't know why

 

[druidravi]

I have recently trying to use 2 different cities for national epic and Globe. One city concentrates on Gp the other on Military via draft and whipping. Trying to run a Gp factory while drafting 1 unit/turn is not attractive.

 

[axident]

I've experimented a bit mostly on Prince and Monarch, and I've had a lot of success with 3 combos in particular:

Oxford + National Epic in a capital city

Ironworks + West Point (and a military academy, if possible; depending on civics and how far away I am from the next xp level bump, I might also want a Great General giving another +2 xp to bump up unit promotions another notch)

Red Cross + Heroic Epic (and another military academy, if I have yet another great general)

Why:

I used to put Globe Theater with National Epic as part of a standard GP farm, but lately I have been trying for megacapital games where I start off with 2 key cities: my capital (doubles as a super science city + great person farm), and a worker/settler farm. The capital builds a worker, settler, and then either stonehenge (if applicable) or the great wall, then it's off to the races: the 2nd city cranks out needed workers and expansion while the capital cranks out wonder after wonder after wonder (even the crappy ones, just for the Great People points), with the lulls filled up by building granaries, libraries, etc. with the occasional whipping until I get Bureaucracy. The 2nd city can be in a crappy location, by the way, as long as it has one or more megafood resources like corn or fish or something, since that city is going to stay below size 6 for a hundred turns or so as it's just a worker/settler farm. I finished a game recently where I built my 2nd city in a big desert area just because it had access to stone and gold (on desert/hills), but the city also had fish and a non-irrigable rice farm... and that was pretty much all I needed since it stayed at size 3 for seemingly ages (fish, rice, and gold mine).

Okay, I know what you are thinking; GP farm without Globe Theater? Solution: stuff as many religions as you can into your capital so it can build lots of religious buildings, build/trade for happiness-producing resources, build the Notre Dame, and if all else fails, whip a little more often than you have to. You'll usually have the Pyramids early on to help with unhappiness, anyway; Representation is great in combination with Bureaucracy+Mercantalism. That combo, along with a ton of religions in the capital + Great Library, Univ of Sankore, Colossus/GLighthouse (if applicable), Angkor Wat, Organized religion, stone, marble, industrious, Oxford, an Academy, a shrine (and market and bank), and a few more extremely useful wonders (the Spiral Minaret comes to mind) can generate a colossal amount of not just research, but production and gold as well, all while your research allotment never budges from 100% for a single turn as your gold pile easily climbs into the several thousand mark (especially with Spiral Minaret). Every single specialist I make settles in my capital unless it's more useful elsewhere (e.g., a great artist goes to a border city to help with my cultural, bloodless conquest).

As for the military combos, Red Cross units tend to be non-offensive units, so I don't need as many of them as I do the offensive units--units that will no doubt perish more often on the battlefield. The Ironworks+West Point timing, tech-wise, also works better for me than other possible combos. Red Cross always goes into a high-production coastal cities so that it can generate a few tag-along "healer" destroyers for my navy in addition to "healer" infantry.