"National Epics"

[Tiber4321]

Are they worth building? I mean National Epic, National College, Heroic Epic. I know they can pay off, and some some reason, they seem to build faster than their "due date". But are they worth the expense? I'm trying to make the jump from Prince to King. Should they be a priority?

I'm in a game now (at Prince) where I have National Epics in a city with Chi Itza + National College, and one in my Capital with Hagia Sophia, so special people are being born faster than I can use them, and I'm in perpetual Golden Age. I also have Heroic Epic in a city with all military buildings. So it cranks out the most elite units possible. Can this stategy help at higher levels? You do use significant production time to build them.

 

[mike678]

National college should always be built as quickly as possible as its an essential one. Here are the rest of the ones you should build Circus Maximus, National Epic, and Oxford University.

Circus maximus is useful for tall and conquest set ups and should be built semi quickly in those cases otherwise when you get around to it or need happiness.

National epic in combination with specialists and a garden can get you great people amazingly fast.

oxford should be built when a crucial tech needs to be bulbed save it for that.

You should only get the hermitage if your going for a cultural victory. Heroic Epic is great for conquest but that's about it.

The others you can get if you have specific need for production or gold.

 

[chazzycat]

It depends on your strategy, but you definitely want to consider them.

national college is the most important, but even that you can put off for a while if you expand & grow enough. However if you don't expand much, you definitely want to build it ASAP. It's generally worth prioritizing pretty highly in that case.

Ironworks is 2nd priority IMO. always need hammers. national treasury is important in OCC but otherwise not too much. Hermitage is niice (i disagree it's only for culture vic - it's also useful for pushing through the later policies) and of course you always want Oxford. Its best to save it for late in the game when tech cost is high and you can build it in like 3 turns.

I play mostly on immortal and I rarely find myself having enough time to build the nice setup you have described (heroic epic, etc). Seems to me a luxury that is hard to afford at that level, but maybe others disagree.

 

[Monthar]

If you're playing as Korea, you might want to delay both the library and national college in the capital to get a larger boost out of them.

 

[RedRover57]

Heroic Epic is nice for certain beeline strategies, where you have time to build barracks, armory and HE before cranking out most of your units. An example would be a "Janissary rush" strategy for Ottomans. Since nothing upgrades to Janissaries you have to wait until Gunpowder to build them anyway. The problem with HE using other types of domination strategies is that I'm usually either too busy building units or I have expanded too much earlier and don't want to build/buy barracks in every city.

NC always, after 2-4 cities depending on the map. Oxford always (usually to bulb into a critical tech, like Dynamite).

Ironworks almost always.

NE when specifically setting up Great Scientist "factories". As others have mentioned it stacks with the Hagia and gardens for fast GP production.

Circus maximus and National Treasury are nice to have, but often there are better things to be building. CM in particular is kind of weak for the hammer expenditure.

 

[joncnunn]

My take:

National Epic: Best built on whichever city your planning on running the most specialists. Will only do good when the city is about to run specalists, so it can wait for quite a while. (And only requires Monument)

National College: This is the first one of these I get. In fact I usually do a 2 or 3 city NC (sometimes 4)

Circus Maximus: I find this one very important as well; it is the second I build (+5 happiness with no maintenance costs [other than the colosseums already needed]). I build this one after having gotten the critical city spots such as unique luxuries and nearby strategic resources.

National Treasury: Nice to have. I have no set number of cities to have for this. I'll refrain from building a new city if this is already in progress, but that's about it.

Oxford: This is one I delay on purpose. Longer the delay, the more expensive a tech you get.

Hermitage: Opera Houses themselves along with the tech that opens them are both low priority for me (unless I'm going cultural), which will greatly delay when I build this. Choose the city with the most culture. If you've already built Opera Houses in all cities; may as well build this.

Heroic Epic: I've often not built this at all since I often designate only one city to have built a Barracks (and the other XP improvements) in the first place.

 

[Thresian]

I think you need to think a bit carefully about whether and where to build the National Epic. Let's say you have a university, a public school, a garden and the porcelain tower in your capital, and you've built Hagia Sophia. So your capital will be generating base 11, +50%, equals 16 GS points (rounds down). Then it's highly likely you'll produce 3 great scientists (say, the first one, the third one and the eighth one). You need to ask: will building the National Epic (which will take you up to 19 GSPs) add an extra GS in a useful timeframe? What you certainly don't want is for the extra GSPs to cause your capital to overtake the city which was going to produce the 7th GS (which has 7 GSPs), because then you'll delay your 8th GS.

 

[Dan4GS]

Although I have yet to beat deity, I've beaten immortal many times and found that really only the national college is a must have. I think most people would agree the others are more situational and depending on the victory type desired. They all have benefits, but I've found games where I don't even build Oxford because I've got some smaller cities that are strictly for things other than science, so I don't waste time buying/building libs and unis in them.

I tend not to have a huge problem with happiness so I rarely get coliseums in all my cities. I do like good production, though, so I find I build Ironworks nearly all the time. All my cities are going to have monuments, so I always end up putting national epic somewhere (usually my capitol), but I suppose it's not necessary if you plan on keeping all your cities fairly small and going very wide.

Like others have said, depends on the strat for the game you're playing, except NC, which is a must for any game.

 

[vexing]

national wonders i will nearly always build in a non domination game are national college, ironworks, oxford, and national epic.
the others are all more situational; since the costs all increase by 30 hammers per city they can easily become not worthwhile.

 

[Brichals]

They are in general a way for tall empires (ones with few cities yet high population) to compete with wide empires (many cities of low pop/less buildings). But I think they are all useful, National College the best.

 

[King_Course]

Heroic Epic I find to be most usefull for small tall empires. If you are domination or a large empire, in war you can most often not rely on a single city to produce your military units. So you end up having several cities produce military and the Heroic Epic doesn't come to full use.

If I'm playing a game where I will war some, and defend myself, and have between 5-7 cities, then I designate a certain city to military production, including the Heroic Epic. Building it somewhat early to avoid having to build barracks everywhere, maybe with 3-4 cities. The barracks can be sold after btw. This way you will have a standing army to defend with at it's strongest, and can buy and build as needed.

I like this way of playing, it is of course more fun to go for the uber units. But it's not something that you "really need", like the National College.