Sun Tzu's Art of War is the Worst Great Wonder in The Game
- Thread starter Spoonwood
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The Great Wall is better in a 20k game than Sun Tzu's easily.
For a 20k there's lots of low priority wonder clutter. If you even have the option to build Great Wall then it's likely you might as well go for all of them. Usually, because you've prioritised other AA wonders, the AI civs will pip you to TGW, meaning you might as well use it as a pre-build for Sun Tzu's. The scenarios where you actually build TGW invalidate the idea that you wont have time and space to 'might as well' build Tzu's.
Regardless of any of that, Leonardo's Workshop would easily be lower priority than Sun Tzu's.
Regardless of any of that, Leonardo's Workshop would easily be lower priority than Sun Tzu's.
Never really thought about, which wonders are "worst" or "best", much of that really depends on the situation. (On an archipelago map, where you intend a fast military victory, the Lighthouse may be the "best" wonder, enabling a victory date a couple centuries faster than anything else you could build instead...!)
But now that I think about it, I think I never built Sun Tzu's myself. If I capture it from the AI, it's nice to have, as it saves 1-2 handfuls of gpt and may allow upgrading&healing units right at the front line (a military game should be decided before railway), but I wouldn't build it myself. I'd rather take 8 Knights or 20 Horsemen instead.
So not sure, whether I would call Sun Tzu's the "worst", but it's pretty low on my priority list. However, I in fact built it in one of my recent 20K attempts, simply because the AI was so slow - both in research as well as in building wonders (for some reason they started their wonder builds either in corrupt size-1 towns or I managed to capture their core towns, before those were able to finish anything...). As you know, there is the long "wait time" between Universal Suffrage and the juicy modern wonders, where no new culture building becomes available for a long time. I was able to build it during that time, since no one had completed it yet.
Another point, why Longevity is in fact harmful instead of useful (unless in 20K): first of all, by the time Longevity can be built, all my cities already have reached max size long ago! Usually some time in the industrial age, my workers (and 100s of captured slaves) are done with building rails, and then I only keep a few stacks for pollution control and add the rest to the metros. So Longevity is pretty useless, as my cities have maxed out approx. half an era earlier...
And then it is harmful, because it kills We-Love-The-King-Day! As already outlined earlier, with Longevity there are inevitable a long periods with negative food, and when a city is starving, it loses WLTKD. This significantly reduces commerce and may make it difficult to maintain 4-turn research! (Especially on higher levels.) So when going for a space victory, I avoid Longevity, even if I could build it, e.g. if Genetics can be traded from an AI. (Of course in a space race game, I wouldn't research Genetics myself, as it is not needed for the spaceship.)
But now that I think about it, I think I never built Sun Tzu's myself. If I capture it from the AI, it's nice to have, as it saves 1-2 handfuls of gpt and may allow upgrading&healing units right at the front line (a military game should be decided before railway), but I wouldn't build it myself. I'd rather take 8 Knights or 20 Horsemen instead.
So not sure, whether I would call Sun Tzu's the "worst", but it's pretty low on my priority list. However, I in fact built it in one of my recent 20K attempts, simply because the AI was so slow - both in research as well as in building wonders (for some reason they started their wonder builds either in corrupt size-1 towns or I managed to capture their core towns, before those were able to finish anything...). As you know, there is the long "wait time" between Universal Suffrage and the juicy modern wonders, where no new culture building becomes available for a long time. I was able to build it during that time, since no one had completed it yet.
Another point, why Longevity is in fact harmful instead of useful (unless in 20K): first of all, by the time Longevity can be built, all my cities already have reached max size long ago! Usually some time in the industrial age, my workers (and 100s of captured slaves) are done with building rails, and then I only keep a few stacks for pollution control and add the rest to the metros. So Longevity is pretty useless, as my cities have maxed out approx. half an era earlier...
And then it is harmful, because it kills We-Love-The-King-Day! As already outlined earlier, with Longevity there are inevitable a long periods with negative food, and when a city is starving, it loses WLTKD. This significantly reduces commerce and may make it difficult to maintain 4-turn research! (Especially on higher levels.) So when going for a space victory, I avoid Longevity, even if I could build it, e.g. if Genetics can be traded from an AI. (Of course in a space race game, I wouldn't research Genetics myself, as it is not needed for the spaceship.)
Unless you are referring to gold from producing wealth this is not true. The WLTKD day has no effect on corruption on commerce, only on shields.
Also it is an option to draft away excess population and disband the units where you need shields.
BlackBetsy
Emperor
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ut now that I think about it, I think I never built Sun Tzu's myself. If I capture it from the AI, it's nice to have, as it saves 1-2 handfuls of gpt and may allow upgrading&healing units right at the front line (a military game should be decided before railway), but I wouldn't build it myself. I'd rather take 8 Knights or 20 Horsemen instead.
I think @Spoonwood would disagree that a military game needs to be decided before Steam Power! He likes to start his wars with Cavalry on rails!
It's probably the case that the biggest offensive advantages in equal tech game are catapults / swordsman on spears and cavalry / cannon on musketeers/ rifleman. Replaceable Parts keeps the balance about the same by adding Infantry to defense but artillery (higher offense and longer range) to offense but also speeding up workers (great for offense). Rail makes it so you can have success with a much smaller army as you move limited artillery back and forth to defend or bombard cities. Especially in my recent Deity game, I'm learning that hordes of workers (slave or otherwise) are just as important to war as a huge artillery stack.
Motorized Transportation / Flight can really muck up a game.
Well, it depends on whether you are playing for highest score/fastest finish date or for fun...
But Spoonwood has quite a number of very fast finish dates in the HoF tables, so I expect he also did some successful pre-industrial warfare!
(In any case, it is quite difficult to achieve a BC domination/conquest victory, if you sit idle twiddling your thumbs while waiting for Steam Power to be discovered...
Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar didn't wait for Steam Power -- they conquered the world on horseback!
)Yes, I did some pre-industrial warfare for my HoF games. Also, when I play Always War.
When I did large Sid Conquest games, I think I started with knights or riders. But, even then if I could have, I wouldn't have built Sun Tzu's. I would have built riders or knights.
Well I think it's artillery proper and cavalry on infantry proper. Thing is, border shifting with settlers makes + extra range makes everything much faster. Bring in your settler to make a fort with infantry or rifles or an army as defense, send the workers to engineer roads, roll in the guns, fire, and charge ahead. Several cities can get captured a turn that way, and infantry and/or armies that aren't too wounded but don't have much movement left or something can defend workers if needed. Honestly, the pace of conquest for my games tends to go quickest if we get to Replaceable Parts. I honestly think that bombers would be slower, because I'd have to rebase them every so often, which isn't the case with artillery guns.
BlackBetsy
Emperor
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I'd also point out that Cavalry = Military Tradition = Military Academy = more armies. Armies are powerful, move fast and allow you to crush an enemy's economy by disconnecting their resources with impunity. I was surprised / pleased in my current game that I was able to take out the last 4 enemy (Babylon) cities over a pretty broad tile span in a single turn because I had 8 cavalry armies ready and cracking the first city with some artillery gave me movement to wipe out the remaining cities even with a couple of infantry defending each.
Let's not forget that Sir Pleb famously used rushed armies to become essentially invulnerable to enormous Sid AI armies in his famous Sid game chronicled here.
I think all of the Huge Sid histographic games have cash-rushed armies. I remember having more than 40 of them before the conquest phase finished in my games.
Arguably the large majority of their soldiers were on foot. Civ3 seems to misrepresents the economic drawback of horses. Horses need to eat and if this seriously competes with feeding your human soldiers, then the rational thing to do is quite different from Civ3.Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar didn't wait for Steam Power -- they conquered the world on horseback!
