Strategies for the Angkor Wat?

[Hawe Hawe]

I think the Angkor Wat is a dangerous wonder. It seems good on the first view:
500 hammers
+1 hammer from Priest in all cities.
Can turn 3 citizens into Priest
City more likely to generate Great Prophet
Can only be built on Medieval and earlier starts
But i think it has two serious disdvantages:
1. The price: 500 hammers is a lot in the medieval era. And most important effect you get in return are hammers. So you are concentrating hammers in one city to later distribute them among many. So if you calculate the hammers you have to run for example 10 priest-specialists for 50 turns just to get the investment back. l doubt that this is efficient.
3. The specialists and wrong Great Persons: going for the Angkor Wat only makes sense if you run those priests and the governer will automatically assign priests instead of others, especially engineers because they seem better. Conclusion: Angkor Wat leads to a Specialist Economy heavy relying on priests. But who wants all those Great Prophet points? When you have built the Angkor Wat most religions are usually founded. Prophets don't bulb useful techs apart from that and later they can't bulb any. Only purpose could be shrines, but do you have so many religions founded? Normally you will want mostly Scientists and Engineers (i love Merchants too) when you run a SE, but the Angkor Wat leads your GP-strategy on the wrong path.
So, my question is: Are there strategies that make good use of these effects? I could imagine strategy that focuses on founding/conquering many early relgions including fast research to philosophy for taoism and angkor wat and build all the shrines later. But that sounds like a hard work, neglecting other important research paths.

 

[oyzar]

ankor wat is indeed used mostly if you want those late shrines and is mostly running scioentists and merchants. As it is hard to get enough priests assigned otherwise ankor wat is good if you have an overwhelming specialist production of scientists and merchants so you can build a couple shrines.

 

[Zombie69]

Another way to use it would be to settle lots of Great Prophets in your Wall Street city, and run at 100% science with money to spare.

 

[svv]

It's pretty good if you are running a cottage economy, but have the statute of liberty and are running mercantilism. Most cities will only be able to have 1 engineer for a long time. This way you can also get two hammers out of your second specialist. With just the two specialists, the type of great person generated will be unimportant because all your great people will be generated in your GP farm and/or other specialized specialist-heavy cities.

 

[Hold The Onion]

Another way to use it would be to settle lots of Great Prophets in your Wall Street city, and run at 100% science with money to spare.

agreed. Settled prophets in a shrine city with bank, market, grocer, wall street makes for a sweet universal suffrage economy.

 

[vormuir]

"500 hammers is a lot in the medieval era."

If you're Industrious, it's only 334 hammers.

If you have Stone, it's only 250.

Industrious and Stone both, 200.

Heck, just having a Forge in your city lets you build it for 400 instead of 500. And by the time you're building Angkor Wat, you'll almost certainly have Forges.

"And most important effect you get in return are hammers. So you are concentrating hammers in one city to later distribute them among many. So if you calculate the hammers you have to run for example 10 priest-specialists for 50 turns just to get the investment back. l doubt that this is efficient."

It depends on the size of your empire, but potentially it's very efficient indeed.

Angkor Wat is a long-lived Wonder -- it lasts until Computers, which in a normal game is at least a couple of hundred turns. Let's say 200 turns, though it will probably be longer than that.

Let's say your empire averages ten cities in size. Not very big, right? And let's say you run an average of one priest per city.

That's ten hammers per turn x 200 turns = 2,000 hammers.

But wait! Those hammers will get multiplied -- by Forges, Factories, Organized Religion, and so forth. So we're really talking 2,500 or 3,000 hammers.

Even granting that a hammer today is worth two hammers a hundred turns from now, this is still a pretty good deal.


Waldo

 

[vormuir]

The big negative to Angkor Wat is the Great Prophet points. Prophets are wonderful in the early game, but almost useless by the time you reach the modern era.

There's not a lot to say here. If you want that extra production -- and Angkor Wat can really give you a lot of production -- you have to accept extra Great Prophets.

They stop popping for techs after Divine Right, and you probably won't get more than one late shrine. After that, your options are limited. You can settle them, or you can keep them hanging around for a Golden Age, or... well, you can settle them.

Not so great, no. But many people think the extra production is worth it.


Waldo

 

[Hold The Onion]

The big negative to Angkor Wat is the Great Prophet points. Prophets are wonderful in the early game, but almost useless by the time you reach the modern era.

There's not a lot to say here. If you want that extra production -- and Angkor Wat can really give you a lot of production -- you have to accept extra Great Prophets.

They stop popping for techs after Divine Right, and you probably won't get more than one late shrine. After that, your options are limited. You can settle them, or you can keep them hanging around for a Golden Age, or... well, you can settle them.

Not so great, no. But many people think the extra production is worth it.


Waldo

this seems to be a popular opinion since most people use the same basic strategies (or so it seems), but great prophets are fantastic when applied to many strategies- late or early game. However, I do realize they get in the way of the traditional "power" strategies and thus your point is totally valid. Seems me and you would have no problems playing together cause I'd take Angkor and let you take the Great Library. Don't get me wrong, I like and use many of the same things everyone else does, but I have to change it up pretty regularly to try new things and keep things fresh.

See, it's good to disagree. I play hotseat with my friend all the time and there is always tension over who builds the wonders or gets the freebies.

 

[mice]

.., but great prophets are fantastic when applied to many strategies- late or early game.

Can you give some idea of what you mean here? Especially mid-late game. How can they be used well?

 

[Ecofarm]

agreed. Settled prophets in a shrine city with bank, market, grocer, wall street makes for a sweet universal suffrage economy.

Many cities for shrine. Windmills, watermills, and state property. Production ftw (military).

 

[Hold The Onion]

That adds up and multiplies quickly. You can keep your science slider high or use it for universal suffrage. Also, the hammers are great and multiply and add up quick.

 

[Chillaxation]

Eh, whatever, you rotters.

I just do it because I want to be able to put it in my GPP city and generate a prophet at a time of my choosing. Early coin from a shrine is defintely worth two coin later.

 

[kniteowl]

Well... there are many different strategies you can use Angkor WAt, it really depends what National Wonders you combine it with.

I generally try to build my Angkor in a Food Surplus City, even my GPP City sometimes, When I'm not aiming for a Purist GPP Strat. That City usually ends up being my 2nd Production City Generally aimed for Military and any Spare Great Prophets are settled for the extra 2 Hammers.

I usually like my Angkor Wat Cities in Holy Cities so I can Assign extra Priest from the Shrines.

Heroic Epic - Combining this with Angkor Wat will make make it into a Mad Military Production City with the Extra Great Prophets going as Super Specialist You'll be pumping out units every 2nd turn and overpower your opponents with shear numbers

National Epic - Usually combined with Heroic Epic, while you're using your Priest to produce hammers, you also get that Great Prophet twice as fast for the extra 2H which will slowly acculmulate.

Wall Street - Generally only build if the Angkor Wat City is also on a Holy City, for the benefit of the extra gold from shrine and MANY Settled Great Prophets. This generally work well with National Epic as you usually have twice as many Settled Great Prophets.

Iron works - Late game National Wonder, I usually build it with Angkor Wat if my Heroic Epic City has already been built else where, and usually becomes my 2nd/3rd Military Production City, I usually build Angkor Wat and Ironworks in the Front lines of a Captured Capital City and Use the Powerful Production for Military builds and with Biology all those Priest and Engineer Specialist +100% to hammers just make it SICK...
Later with State Property you can Repalce all your tiles with Watermills and Workshop and Increase the Hammers to even Higher Heights of Production!!! :S
Also on slower Speeds like Epic and Marathon, combining Hero Epic and Ironworks is Good for rushing Units every turn. It isn't necessary on normal speed as +100 is usually enough.

 

[futurehermit]

Meh, I've never built the Angkor Wat because I don't see the benefit really. Prophets are ok when settled or for lightbulbing very early (theology) or for building shrines. But missionaries are so freakin' expensive that even if I have a shrine, I don't end up spreading the religion extensively anyways.

Production is always good, but I'd rather whip than run priests and risk getting prophets when I want scientists, engineers, or merchants.

The only time I could see going for prophets is if you're planning on leveraging prophets, but really you would want them earlier than the medieval era to do that...

 

[uberfish]

It's not the most popular of wonders and most people won't consider it without stone, but it has its uses

1) it lets you run extra priests, which can be useful if you want to build a shrine for one of the later religions

2) for spiritual civs running a specialist economy (which tend to have quite a few temples around) the upgraded priests are quite decent for converting food into production without the need to be in Slavery

 

[Thorrez]

In my opinion, Angkor Wat does not generate extra hammers!

Sure, the priest get 2 instead of 1. But the engineers you would have use without Angkor would have given you 2 hammers anyway. So what Angkor really do is to making engineers generate cash for the prize that there is no chance for GE.

Sure you can with certain strategies get more priests than engineer, but claiming Angkor generate 2500 extra hammers is just not true.

When again, Angkor is a kick ass place in RL, so might be worth building just for that reason

 

[Poodlebrain]

The big negative to Angkor Wat is the Great Prophet points. Prophets are wonderful in the early game, but almost useless by the time you reach the modern era.

There's not a lot to say here. If you want that extra production -- and Angkor Wat can really give you a lot of production -- you have to accept extra Great Prophets.

They stop popping for techs after Divine Right, and you probably won't get more than one late shrine. After that, your options are limited. You can settle them, or you can keep them hanging around for a Golden Age, or... well, you can settle them.

Not so great, no. But many people think the extra production is worth it.


Waldo

Great Prophets can be lightbulbed for Future Techs. I learned this near useless fact today. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the lightbulb highlighted when one of my cities defied the odds and generated a Great Prophet instead of a more desirable GP.

 

[cabert]

you want a strategy for the ankor wat?
- first don't build it. It's just as good captured
- second, whip temples in you new cities (built or captured) to open up the priest slots. Remember that whipping a temple doesn't generate any happiness issue, so if you have multiple religions, you can whip multiple temples.
- after that, you can use the priests for hammers at you own leisure (very helpful for captured cities with only a handful of workable tiles)
- finally, you settle the great prophets in your IW city or into your wall street city. If you abuse ankor wat, it may be helpful to combine IW and WS.

 

[UncleJJ]

Angkor Wat has 2 main uses in my games.

1) If I have avoided religion early in the game I often pick up Philosophy first and hence Taoism. But since I have already produced 3 or 4 GSs it is going to be very difficult to get GProphet for a shrine using only 1 priest from a temple. And if I want to run Pacifism I'll need to spread a religion and not having a shrine makes that less synergistic. The solution is to build Angkor Wat and run 3 priests plus the 2 GPPs from the wonder. Once the shrine is made then I can run 3 priests there as well so no need to tie up the Angkor Wat city for long. The nice thing about this is that cost of the wonder is partly offset by the GPPs it produces (remember we want GP GPPs in this case) and the extra hammers.

2) Another time when Angkor Wat is part of my long term strategy is when I go for a SE domination win and I am not Philosophical or even Industrious. I could be Spiritual but it would also work for other traits. Without Philosophical you pretty much have to rely on either the Parthenon or Pacifism to drive the SE. With marble you can build the Parthenon fairly efficiently. But with no marble it is tough.

With stone another more complicated strategy can be made. Here you rely on spreading a state religion (for Pacifism) and building temples and monastries of your religion in many cities and then getting at least one of the University of Sangkore or The Spiral Minaret and preferrably both. It takes a big effort to pull that off but it is made worthwhile if you also have the Holy Shrine of your religion. Again Angkor Wat helps you get the GP for the shrine and also makes the priests you can run that much more effective.

Now when you capture a new city in your domination run you introduce your religion and whip out a temple and monastry for early free beakers and gold You can run a free priest (with Mercantilism) in the new cities and the culture needed for border pops is being produced. The new cities thereby pay for themselves very quickly (once courthouse is installed) and allow you to concentrate on building troops in your core cities. So it allows a rapid conquest.

With the reliance on income from temples and monastries some people might consider the economy I described above to be a hybrid one instead of a SE and that is fair enough since I don't care too much what the name is. But it is very effective with good synergy between what is built, the income in gold to fund the costs of expansion and beakers to continue research at a good rate. Admittedly the Angkor Wat is just one small part in the overall strategy but it is more than icing on the cake.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I would've named Angkor Wat the worst wonder in the game, even worse than Chichen Itza, if it weren't for the fact that it obseletes with computers. That's a lot of hammers invested for very little return, but for a long time. It's not so much hammers invested, but where the hammers end up being. Newly conquered cottage cities or great person farms are great, but you can never get any infrastructure in place. That priest hammer is a life saver.

But still, I don't ususally build it. It's just lower down in the list of powerful strategies.