National Wonders: what to do?

[Pantastic]

What I do:

Heroic Epic goes into my best production city or best-but-not-capital production city. I try to build it fairly early on, though sometimes I have to wait until the reinaissance to build it; I'll definately have it in place before pumping out large numbers of macemen or knights. I place it based on what has the best production now and for the near future, I don't really care if there's another site that will end up better once I have biology to work a bunch more land, I want good production now. This city is going to produce some basic buildings for health and happiness, maybe a monastary for culture if it's on a border, and then keep a steady stream of units churning out aside from when it needs more health/happy buildings.

Usually West Point goes with HE, it lets me pump out a steady stream of units with 3 or 4 promotions. Often I end up producing a lot of CR3 macemen here for later upgrade to rifles/infantry. West Point is painfully when you build it, but has great benefits. Being able to pop city raider 3 units for attack and later upgrade, or city garrison 3 units for a key city, or formation units (as a non-aggressive civ), etc. is extremely nice. And while it's just one city, it's one city that is pretty much continuously building military units - it's not uncommon for my HE city to have built 1/3 to 1/2 of my active army.

Ironworks goes into my best production city other than the heroic epic city. For IW, I do worry about which one will be my best down the road, and it often ends up being a captured city. This city generally will end up not producing many military units at all, it will focus on pumping out wonders - things like eiffel tower, three gorges dam, the various entertainments, etc. It tends to end up standing on its own or getting paired with red cross for medic units.

National epic goes into my great person farm, most of the time I don't consider this all that important and won't build it until a good bit later. If I'm going for a lot of GPs then, of course, I'll build this as soon as possible. Globe theater makes a nice pair with it, so that the city can grow as large as food and health allow. Sometime I might try making a whip/draft factory like people talk about, but that's not my playstyle so far.

Oxford goes into my strongest research city, which is usually my capital, and this city should always have an academy too. Sometimes I'll build Wall Street in the same city, it depends on how the holy cities have turned out. If I don't have WS in the city, then it often ends up paired with scotland yard since there's usually some production here (especially if it's a capital).

I don't use hermitage much, occasionally if I have a border that's folding and don't want to war with the person on the border. I think it's pretty much just there for cultural victories.

 

[Calder]

Oxford doubles the output of research. Building this in a commercially dominant town will reap rewards, e.g cities in gold-rich areas, or coastal commerce-rich cities.
Wall Street should be built in the city that's making the most gold so that its making twice as much gold.
I always couple these two together for maximum research benefits.
I'm confused by a lot of people posting saying they build Wall Street in their Shrine City. The Holy Shrine, as far as I've ever known, produces 1gpt for every city that shares that religion, not just the shrine city. So as long as your Oxford/Wall Street city shares your state religion, it too will get the 1gpt benefit.

 

[Stormreaver]

Oxford doubles the output of research. Building this in a commercially dominant town will reap rewards, e.g cities in gold-rich areas, or coastal commerce-rich cities.
Wall Street should be built in the city that's making the most gold so that its making twice as much gold.
I always couple these two together for maximum research benefits.
I'm confused by a lot of people posting saying they build Wall Street in their Shrine City. The Holy Shrine, as far as I've ever known, produces 1gpt for every city that shares that religion, not just the shrine city. So as long as your Oxford/Wall Street city shares your state religion, it too will get the 1gpt benefit.

Yup, 1gpt for every city with the shrine's religion, but all the gold is earned in the shrine city - hence maybe 20-30 (or more, if you've spread the religion(s) around a lot) gpt, that is doubled by WS.

As long as you are still researching heavily (I'm normally on 90% science mid-to-late game) that's a bigger benefit than any commerce-heavy city will give you.

[Edited for clarity]

 

[Pantastic]

Calder, the holy shrine produces one gold per turn for every city that has that religion - but it produces that gold in the city with the shrine, not spread out over all cities. Go look at a city with a shrine in the city window, you'll see line for something like +39 GPT in that one city. Then look at a non-shrine city, you won't see any +1 gold from shrine in it.

Some people build a shrine (or better, 2 shrines) in a city and use it as their main source of income. If you have your science slider up at 80-90%, and especially 100%, wall street isn't doing anything in your highest commerce city, but it will work wonders in your shrine city. I don't tend to do this, I will expand a lot plus I want cash for building things like city raider rifles/infantry so my science rate tends to be more like 30-50% if I'm running specialists or 50-70% once I'm on towns.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I'm confused by a lot of people posting saying they build Wall Street in their Shrine City. The Holy Shrine, as far as I've ever known, produces 1gpt for every city that shares that religion, not just the shrine city. So as long as your Oxford/Wall Street city shares your state religion, it too will get the 1gpt benefit.

If shrines worked the way that Spiral Mineret does, you would be correct.

 

[acidsatyr]

Both combinations HE+IW & HE+WP have their strong and weak points, and there is no BEST choice here, no matter how smart you may want to sound. That said, imho, in 99% of the time i prefer HE+IW - rarely, if ever you'll have an overflow, and, it is almost always better to have 20 units with 6XP than 10 units with 10XP, this is especially true if you'r playing with aggressive civ (you get amphibious with 6XP for example). On high levels rarely will your IW be "busy" with building wonders and if you ever need nukes you'll be glad you have that combo. Recently i found that WP+GlobeT. works extremly well as well. If you are going for domination it is unlikely that only one of your cities will be assigned to produce military, rather it will be several. So it doesn't really matter is 10% of your units will have those extra 4 xp.

 

[naterator]

it is almost always better to have 20 units with 6XP than 10 units with 10XP

but what about the other 10 that my ironworks/red cross city made? don't forget them. it'll take longer for me to build 1 unit, but you longer to build 2.

 

[pigswill]

If I remember correctly ironworks adds 100% to base production (with coal and iron) as does heroic epic for military. So 2 cities with say 40 base production: IW+HE gives 120in one city, 40 in other. If in seperate cities then get 80 production in both, so no net difference (except you don't pair up west point). If I've got this wrong I'm happy to be corrected. It's only if you had one city with substantially more production than anywhere else then it would benefit from IW and HE together.

 

[naterator]

to me, it's more a question of flexibility. you can have one city pumping out a unit a turn (hypothetically), or 2 cities, making a unit each every 2 turns. one will have 4 extra experience, one will have a free medic I. the unit numbers are the same, but the unit quality isn't.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

to me, it's more a question of flexibility. you can have one city pumping out a unit a turn (hypothetically), or 2 cities, making a unit each every 2 turns. one will have 4 extra experience, one will have a free medic I. the unit numbers are the same, but the unit quality isn't.

Yep. And also remember: If you are going for a spaceship victory, you probably want your ironworks city producing spaceship parts. And if you are on a map that requires strong sea defences, the chances are you didn't build your heroic epic on a coastal city (because in the early game it's rare to find a coastal city that gives you a high enough base production to justify putting the heroic epic there) so you may want the ironworks in the coastal city to help naval production. And of course if you want any of the late game wonders, you probably want the ironworks to help build those. All those scenarios imply putting IW in a different city from HE so your HE city can get on with churning out lots of military.

A factor that is often decisive for me is the ironworks takes a lot of hammers to build. Very often, I simply can't afford to divert my heroic epic city away from military production for long enough to build the ironworks. (Sadly, that issue often prevents me building west point in my heroic epic city too, even though I'd ideally like to ).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

One of the ironies I've always found with the heroic epic is you need a 10-xp unit to build it. When are you likely to first get a 10-xp unit? When you're in the middle of a war. And when you're in the middle of a war, do you really want to cut off half your military production for 10 or 20 turns so you can build the heroic epic...?

Often leads to me building the HE a lot later than I really want to. I also often find I'm in a war zone, my best offensive unit just gets promoted to 10xp - and its the unit that above all else should be out there taking out the enemy coz he's so strong with his 10xp. And what do I do with this unit? Yep, I rush him straight back to the safety of my homeland coz I absolutely don't want to get him killed (well not until AFTER the HE has been safely built).

As an aside, I'm always curious: If halfway through HE production, you lose all your 10xp units in battle, does the game tell you you can't build the HE any more, the same way it does with wonders you've just got beaten to, or units that you've just lost the resource for? I assume it does but have never wanted to risk testing it

 

[naterator]

Yep, I rush him straight back to the safety of my homeland coz I absolutely don't want to get him killed

it's recently been called to my attention that as long as you have a unit reach level 4 at any time, you can build the heroic epic, same with lvl 5 and west point. even if they die the turn after they're promoted.

 

[uberfish]

(all you need to enable HE or WP is you had a unit of level 4 or 5 at some time in the game, it doesn't matter if it died)

I usually split HE and ironworks, I would rather have the flexibility that comes with having two major production centres most of the time and I don't like tying up the HE city forever building IW. In space race games even at high levels, I find that the ironworks city tends to have little time for military because it's either building wonders, Apollo or space parts. I'm quite happy for it to stand alone.

 

[DaviddesJ]

69 isn't 74 though. To get to 74, you'd probably need to catch a lucky extra resource, or some food and the Angkor Wat, or attach a Specialist or two.

It really makes no difference whether you have 74 hammers or 69. If you have 74, then you get 15 Modern Armor in 15 turns. If you have 69, then it takes 16 turns. So what?

Getting to the level of putting out one unit per turn was very important in Civ3, because of no production carryover. But it's almost irrelevant in Civ4.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It really makes no difference whether you have 74 hammers or 69. If you have 74, then you get 15 Modern Armor in 15 turns. If you have 69, then it takes 16 turns. So what?

So 15/16, which may well be good enough, doesn't meet the challenge as set forth by Crumbs. Shrug.

 

[Pantastic]

One of the ironies I've always found with the heroic epic is you need a 10-xp unit to build it. When are you likely to first get a 10-xp unit? When you're in the middle of a war.

This is a good reason not to bust too much fog at the start; I usually get my first 10xp unit either from animals + an experience hut or from fighting barbarians. I consider it one of my significant early game objectives because heroic epic is such a nice toy. The 17xp unit for west point is the one that requires wars, I make a point of coddling a high XP unit to get it up to 17 unless it's obvious several are going to hit it.

And like someone else pointed out, you only need to have had a 10/17xp unit at some point in the game, it doens't have to be alive. I always thought it was silly that a unit that did great deeds and finally died wasn't considered appropriate for a heroic epic.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

it's recently been called to my attention that as long as you have a unit reach level 4 at any time, you can build the heroic epic, same with lvl 5 and west point. even if they die the turn after they're promoted.

Ooh thanks naterator (and everyone else who's made the same point). That knowledge certainly will change my tactics a bit - give me one less thing to have to plan for!

 

[cabert]

i'm with pantastic here.
the 10 xp's unit is easy to reach!

the 17 xp's is a lot harder, but given the fact to you did build the heroic epic before you need this special unit, and given the fact that you can churn out catapults very fast with it, you can build a bunch of 8XP (CR 2 is my personnal favourite) cats going on suicide runs, with high xp if lucky win

 

[Zombie69]

That said, imho, in 99% of the time i prefer HE+IW - rarely, if ever you'll have an overflow, and, it is almost always better to have 20 units with 6XP than 10 units with 10XP, this is especially true if you'r playing with aggressive civ (you get amphibious with 6XP for example).

Even assuming a city with no production bonus whatsoever besides those wonders, if you made 10 units with HE, then you'll only make 15 units with WP+IW, not 20. (300% production instead of 200% = 50% more units, not 100% more units). In the more probable scenario where the city has 100% bonus besides the wonders, you'll only get 13 units instead of 10 (400% is only 33% more than 300%). This is very poor use of the Ironworks. Even if you didn't want to use West Point and Red Cross at all for whatever reason, you'd be better off separating them, because you could then get 10 units from one city and 10 from another, instead of 13 from one and 6 or 7 from the other (assuming 100% basic production bonus, with less it gets worse).

West Point makes it so there's no comparison at all. Also the fact that you can use IW for other purposes. Having HE and IW in the same city is just plain dumb.

 

[acidsatyr]

I don't think it's dumb. But I do think that people who think that only one strategy is good are.
I was typing that post in the rush, but you’re right in that its not exactly 100% more production. Still, I prefer IW in the city with HE instead of WP. Since I rarely go for the boring space race, I rarely see a better use of IW here. Not to mention that there are cases where WP is harder to get by than IW. I still prefer speed over those 4XP, even if it means making 15 units instead of 10. There are other advantages of that combo and one is faster nukes as I said before. Like I said before, there are cases where one is better than the other, but claiming that one is always better than the other is simply not true.