Ratheus, Sacrificial Altar or Ziggurat?

Which courthouse do you prefer?

  • Sacrificial Altar

    Votes: 18 43.9%
  • Ratheus

    Votes: 9 22.0%
  • Ziggurat

    Votes: 10 24.4%
  • Plain courthouse

    Votes: 4 9.8%

  • Total voters
    41

reddishrecue

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For courthouse, which one do you prefer?
Holy Rome's Ratheus, Aztec's Sacrificial Altar or Sumeria's Ziggurat?
 
Ziggurat, of course! It comes way earlier.
 
I love how the sacrificial altar being in italics...:)
Whip, whip it until your hands bleed...and the pop barely care about it.
 
Oh, Reddishreque : the plain courthouse option is a bit... superfluous.
 
Courthouses are fairly weak builds early game, esp when not ORG, so the Zig is meh. 33% off is ok, but not enough to make it compare with the others.

The sacrificial altar is very tempting. Whipping is very powerful, and more whipping is good. It's certainly the best of the three strategy wise when used right.

I like the Ratheus though, it makes corporations broken late game. It's certainly not the best since it's not game-changing, but its fun to abuse.
 
Fairly weak? Fairly weak? They are some of the best building in the game, IMO, as they, together with currency, allow unlimited expansion.
 
I think the nice thing about the Ziggurat is that it allows you to ignore CoL, which is expensive, in favor of other techs and still leverage the vulture to take some cities in war. You get a bunch of cities and can easier build courts.

That said, it hink the Rathaus is one of the best UB's in the game, on it's own, so i'd say that...
 
Well placed cottages or well organized specialists allow unlimited expansion. Courthouses in core 6 cities only saves 3ish gpt, and even in 'second captials' you take in a rush you only hit 5-6gpt. It doesn't give you anything that another pop point wouldn't give you better. Workers are better, temples are better, specialist slots from libraries are better, granaries are hands down better...

For builds that are normally around their time markets are better if you're % is low, and generally better long term investments (for % and :) ) Colosseum are better (1 well placed river cottage gives food and commerce, or you can run another merchant for GPP and commerce) Just plain getting currency is often almost as good as getting a courthouse in every city (if you have trading partners in a small empire) for 0 hammers...

How are they not fairly weak early game? Until you get enough cities that maintenance is over 10gpt they are a waste of hammers. Your core 6 shouldn't fall in that category even on higher levels until your per city maintainence starts racking up (12-20ish cities, depending on level), and you probably need units or workers or just plain settlers more than a few gpt per turn.

Late classical they start looking nice if your expanding and waring a lot, but by then the Zig is just a 33% cheaper courthouse. If you're running a small empire with specialists or going for culture courthouses are never really worthwhile builds unless you get corps...

The only place a Zig is nice is if you're running an EE based on Great Spies, and I do like them in that case.

Island or Fractal maps might be an exception to that though, colonial costs and all.
 
I think the nice thing about the Ziggurat is that it allows you to ignore CoL, which is expensive, in favor of other techs and still leverage the vulture to take some cities in war. You get a bunch of cities and can easier build courts.

That said, it hink the Rathaus is one of the best UB's in the game, on it's own, so i'd say that...

I agree with everything except the final decision. The early game is so important and the Ziggurat allows you to get going faster and it synergizes well with the Vulture. With the reduced cost, early availability and ability to avoid COL I vote Ziggurat. With another UU I might vote differently.

Rathaus is one of the best UB's in the game as is the Sacrificial Altar. If you have a very food-heavy start the Sac Altar might be the best but overall I'd go for Zig. All of the courthouse UB's are extremely good and nobody who plays the game should vote for regular courthouses.
 
Ziggurat does not really come that much earlier than the CH and CoL is generally something you don't want to avoid...it's a great tech that opens a great civic. Rathaus is okay if you actually need to build CHs.

Sac Altar is borderline OP.
 
If I don't have the pyramids and my pop isn't massive I don't mind avoiding CoL. 5 specialist slots from Lib\Market\Forge is OK for a pre-epic GP farm IMO. I generally want Civil service soon than later though.

Its good to get CoL after astronomy in a multi-continental game, or after education otherwise.
 
Problem with ziggurat is that when I get a new city I do not think "oh I must get a courthouse here asap". My usual trail of thought is "i need a granary, monument and library". A city working a few cottages will usually get far more from library then a courthouse, especially early game when it's not going to be very far away from palace. By the time I start thinking about courthouses is when CoL is around. Rathaus all the way.
 
Zig tied for first is a bad joke :p.

It's useful but courthouses are so-so in terms of priority early improvements and the hammer savings are on sac altar also. Usually you don't build them before granary/monument/library anyway, not to mention workers/settlers/units...
 
It's rathAUS, by the way, not Ratheus. As someone who talks a related language this is quite irritating me ;)
 
Would have preferred the traditional :banana: option on this poll. Never build courthouses :)
 
I voted rathAUS :) Only because the poll asked which you prefer, not which is better. I agree that Sacrificial Alter is better.
 
it's a Rusten sighting! and sanity reigns once again :D
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