I've seen some disagreement on this around the forum, but stonehenge is very buildable on Deity, and I'm gonna show you how!
Its pretty similar to multiplayer wonder races if you are familiar with multiplayer. Its actually how I came across this specific build, me and friend often play together, he loves his stonehenge and I love denying it to him. The important thing to remember, its a race. That means every time you make a choice to slow down you decrease your odds of winning. I think that is what some people might miss, if you want it you have to give up a lot to get it, if the other guy gives up more, he will get it. Deity tends to push the same way, any wonder is buildable, but the costs are very high.
Here is a start I rolled as Arabia. I had to reroll once to get a starting position I felt could win the race. That doesn't mean the other start was bad, I would have happily played it. But it didn't have the tools needed to win the race for stonehenge.
This is an average desert start in my opinion. Being on an Oasis is nice, but gold isn't very important for this build (unless you get enough to invest stonehenge, but that takes goodies usually). Desert tends to work pretty well for building Stonehenge, but you can win the race on other terrain as well. The important thing is I have a 3 food tile, and multiple 2 hammer tiles, this is the bear minimum to build it. You can definitely get a much better start than this, copper and marble hills for example, or culture tiles.
We start by queuing a monument and moving the warrior. Our goal with the warrior is to go in a circle around our city, and hopefully find a few goodies. Our warrior has to find culture if we do not have a culture tile. Your tech order is pottery first (duh). I find its okay to queue pottery for a few turns, then shift to a different tech if you realize it isn't the time or place for stonehenge.
For social policies, progress is impossible without an absurd start, its all about hammers. Authority can build it, but in my opinion shouldn't. The opportunity cost is really high, you will likely be better off building military units. That leaves tradition, who does it best. The tradition opener provides food, which can help us grow a turn or two earlier, which can be another few hammers. Generally I'm at 4 population when I get stonehenge, sometimes 5. For your second policy, choose the engineer. This policy grants +3 production, and you can work the engineer for another 3.
The next question is culture. We need our first policy unlocked fast, if you have a tile with starting culture, great problem solved. If not, we need to find some ruins or a CS, so get that warrior moving. Don't go too far, a single barbarian raid can ruin your chance to win the race. If you don't get the culture, then you don't get the wonder, thats life but you should be fine . Like I said above, its ok to change your tech queue and gameplan if you realize stonehenge ain't gonna happen. The worst thing you can do is try to build it when facing certain failure. I found some culture ruins, so right now everything is going according to plan.
When Pottery completes, take the monument out and queue the wonder. It is very important that you don't finish the monument. Right now you likely have an absurd build time, I had 25 turns. This is what makes stonehenge a really tricky wonder, you grow so much between starting and finishing it that its hard to guess your finish date.
When you hit 70 gold, invest in the monument and put it back in the queue. You will have overflow, this is the key. When I say overflow, look at the production tooltip. It reads 44/32, that means it will save that 12 hammers plus whatever we produce this turn, and it will be available for whatever is in the queue next turn. Basically what this will let us do is move production from before we had pottery and let us spend it on the wonder. Because I started on an Oasis, I could have invested much earlier, but that would have been a big mistake, when you overflow all those hammers get spent the next turn. We need to overflow into stonehenge, not a shrine or warrior. If your monument is about to finish, take it out of the queue and let something else build, then return it once stonehenge is available and you can invest (this is better value than investing directly in stonehenge, which you rarely get to do). Typically you overflow about 12, which usually shaves 1 turn off your finish time.
On Deity I always overflow, on other difficulties you don't have to. You can overflow using a shrine if you want, but the monument gets that second social policy earlier, which is worth a few hammers (and food).
Its worth noting that if you have no extra gold at the start and you find a 15 culture ruin, you need to invest the exact turn you hit 70. If you wait, you miss your second social policy by 1 culture, that 1 turn delay costs up to 6 production.
As you can see here, I am letting my city starve. It won't actually drop in population number, but I need the Oasis off and that mine on for a few turns to shave off a turn. Sometimes you can avoid doing this, but this start isn't great so its the right call.
Finally, I am about to finish on turn 24, which is about right. Lets cross our fingers and see what happens.
Wonderful. Generally I like to finish by 23, 24 is alright but past that gets risky. Egypt is of course faster. Carthage is also faster since they can invest in it every game, but it doesn't fit their playstyle all that well IMO. If I wasn't making a tutorial or I was in multiplayer I wouldn't have attempted it here, the start just isn't quite strong enough. Changing one of the mines to have a culture or hammer would have really helped. Obviously its possible to do something different and still build it, but if you miss by one turn because you chose not to stagnate growth, you have no one to blame but yourself.
The other thing to note is unless I capitalize on my wonder, this start isn't very good, and most pantheons won't do much immediately when coming from stonehenge. Its also slows down improving resources by a lot, I could build worker next but thats really greedy, I could easily get conquered and even barbarians are going to be tough to fight soon. If I wanted Spirit of the Desert, really shrine + worker would probably work better. In fact I actually find stonehenge fairly weak, its something I'd only build if I have a special reason to. If I had done a more normal build order, I would probably be at 5 population, and have a shrine, worker and extra warrior. I also usually go for tradition's artist first, which provides lots of faith and keeps me much more relevant in the culture race for later, more powerful wonders. Additional wonders will be much more difficult to get, I probably wouldn't go for another wonder until Hanging Gardens or Oracle in this situation. Maybe Petra, it has less competition typically.
Hope y'all enjoyed. I remember learning the monument overflow trick as a moment where my civ gameplay really improved, not just because of the trick itself, but because its useful for thinking about priorities. Hopefully it can do the same for others.
Its pretty similar to multiplayer wonder races if you are familiar with multiplayer. Its actually how I came across this specific build, me and friend often play together, he loves his stonehenge and I love denying it to him. The important thing to remember, its a race. That means every time you make a choice to slow down you decrease your odds of winning. I think that is what some people might miss, if you want it you have to give up a lot to get it, if the other guy gives up more, he will get it. Deity tends to push the same way, any wonder is buildable, but the costs are very high.
Here is a start I rolled as Arabia. I had to reroll once to get a starting position I felt could win the race. That doesn't mean the other start was bad, I would have happily played it. But it didn't have the tools needed to win the race for stonehenge.
Spoiler Starting Position :
This is an average desert start in my opinion. Being on an Oasis is nice, but gold isn't very important for this build (unless you get enough to invest stonehenge, but that takes goodies usually). Desert tends to work pretty well for building Stonehenge, but you can win the race on other terrain as well. The important thing is I have a 3 food tile, and multiple 2 hammer tiles, this is the bear minimum to build it. You can definitely get a much better start than this, copper and marble hills for example, or culture tiles.
We start by queuing a monument and moving the warrior. Our goal with the warrior is to go in a circle around our city, and hopefully find a few goodies. Our warrior has to find culture if we do not have a culture tile. Your tech order is pottery first (duh). I find its okay to queue pottery for a few turns, then shift to a different tech if you realize it isn't the time or place for stonehenge.
For social policies, progress is impossible without an absurd start, its all about hammers. Authority can build it, but in my opinion shouldn't. The opportunity cost is really high, you will likely be better off building military units. That leaves tradition, who does it best. The tradition opener provides food, which can help us grow a turn or two earlier, which can be another few hammers. Generally I'm at 4 population when I get stonehenge, sometimes 5. For your second policy, choose the engineer. This policy grants +3 production, and you can work the engineer for another 3.
The next question is culture. We need our first policy unlocked fast, if you have a tile with starting culture, great problem solved. If not, we need to find some ruins or a CS, so get that warrior moving. Don't go too far, a single barbarian raid can ruin your chance to win the race. If you don't get the culture, then you don't get the wonder, thats life but you should be fine . Like I said above, its ok to change your tech queue and gameplan if you realize stonehenge ain't gonna happen. The worst thing you can do is try to build it when facing certain failure. I found some culture ruins, so right now everything is going according to plan.
When Pottery completes, take the monument out and queue the wonder. It is very important that you don't finish the monument. Right now you likely have an absurd build time, I had 25 turns. This is what makes stonehenge a really tricky wonder, you grow so much between starting and finishing it that its hard to guess your finish date.
When you hit 70 gold, invest in the monument and put it back in the queue. You will have overflow, this is the key. When I say overflow, look at the production tooltip. It reads 44/32, that means it will save that 12 hammers plus whatever we produce this turn, and it will be available for whatever is in the queue next turn. Basically what this will let us do is move production from before we had pottery and let us spend it on the wonder. Because I started on an Oasis, I could have invested much earlier, but that would have been a big mistake, when you overflow all those hammers get spent the next turn. We need to overflow into stonehenge, not a shrine or warrior. If your monument is about to finish, take it out of the queue and let something else build, then return it once stonehenge is available and you can invest (this is better value than investing directly in stonehenge, which you rarely get to do). Typically you overflow about 12, which usually shaves 1 turn off your finish time.
Spoiler Monument Overflow :
On Deity I always overflow, on other difficulties you don't have to. You can overflow using a shrine if you want, but the monument gets that second social policy earlier, which is worth a few hammers (and food).
Its worth noting that if you have no extra gold at the start and you find a 15 culture ruin, you need to invest the exact turn you hit 70. If you wait, you miss your second social policy by 1 culture, that 1 turn delay costs up to 6 production.
Spoiler Starvation :
As you can see here, I am letting my city starve. It won't actually drop in population number, but I need the Oasis off and that mine on for a few turns to shave off a turn. Sometimes you can avoid doing this, but this start isn't great so its the right call.
Finally, I am about to finish on turn 24, which is about right. Lets cross our fingers and see what happens.
Spoiler Last Turn :
Wonderful. Generally I like to finish by 23, 24 is alright but past that gets risky. Egypt is of course faster. Carthage is also faster since they can invest in it every game, but it doesn't fit their playstyle all that well IMO. If I wasn't making a tutorial or I was in multiplayer I wouldn't have attempted it here, the start just isn't quite strong enough. Changing one of the mines to have a culture or hammer would have really helped. Obviously its possible to do something different and still build it, but if you miss by one turn because you chose not to stagnate growth, you have no one to blame but yourself.
The other thing to note is unless I capitalize on my wonder, this start isn't very good, and most pantheons won't do much immediately when coming from stonehenge. Its also slows down improving resources by a lot, I could build worker next but thats really greedy, I could easily get conquered and even barbarians are going to be tough to fight soon. If I wanted Spirit of the Desert, really shrine + worker would probably work better. In fact I actually find stonehenge fairly weak, its something I'd only build if I have a special reason to. If I had done a more normal build order, I would probably be at 5 population, and have a shrine, worker and extra warrior. I also usually go for tradition's artist first, which provides lots of faith and keeps me much more relevant in the culture race for later, more powerful wonders. Additional wonders will be much more difficult to get, I probably wouldn't go for another wonder until Hanging Gardens or Oracle in this situation. Maybe Petra, it has less competition typically.
Hope y'all enjoyed. I remember learning the monument overflow trick as a moment where my civ gameplay really improved, not just because of the trick itself, but because its useful for thinking about priorities. Hopefully it can do the same for others.
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. Through rationalism, working all scientist slots, and stealing a few techs I usually become the tech leader during industrial.