Roxlimn:
Quit trying to paint me into a corner by twisting what I said. A whopping three threads is < 20% of the threads on the board. Note that when I say higher I mean what I defined for you
one standard deviation above normal; if you have statistical evidence to show that my gut estimates are wrong I will change. Playing with ancedotes like
three threads won't. Most people, when I say this, ask me if they think I'm wrong or accept that my meaning is 'difficulties higher' than most people play. However much you want to quibble about terminology, the point stands - the higher the level you play at, the harder it is to snag both SH and Oracle.
Now on to your lies that I was "appearing to be saying: that it's 'normally' not 'worth it' because 'the monuments are not that important.'" If you are going to quote
yourself cite yourself not me. My ACTUAL QUOTE is:
For its price you can send out 3 settlers to block out vast swathes of land. Monuments are a one pop whip so ANY food surplus makes them almost trivial to get. In many cases you don't need monuments in all cities; only those facing AI culture or in need of quick border pops (otherwise just use religion, libs, slider, or caste artist).
Now did I talk about the value of its GPP per turn? No, because, frankly ALL wonders give the same GPP per turn and hence it can be dropped from a first order analysis. If you WANT to get all prissy about things we aren't talking about; then I'm going to bring up the fact that SH monuments die at Astronomy, prevent you from using whip overflow from cheap monuments, and if memory serves don't properly double in cultural value. All of which
detracts from the value of SH. In addition, by building SH you
virtually garuntee that some AI somewhere gets failure cash earlier (leading to marginally faster AI tech rates). An AI not building SH increases the odds that you will get rushed - given the AI build rates every
not spent on a wonder is most likely going into building some type of unit (and just to be clear it is not that HC will not build SH and rush you, it is that HC will not build SH, builders archers instead, and when Shaka looks at the power graph he decides to thwack you over HC; also recall that you will build it sooner than the AI would, on average, so it is not just ONE AI who stands decent odds to build more troops, but several) also you stand a much better chance to get "our close borders spark tensions" and become someone's worst enemy.
I pointed out that SH comes with a high oppurtunity cost (one which gets higher as you move up the levels), and that monuments are either not needed (due to other culture sources and not needing high total culture or high early culture in all cities) or are easy to build for many circumstances.
Yes, it is. Hence why I specified that I was not talking about those two instances; but all other instances when the "normal" criteria held. Of course with that setup you really ought to consider the ToA instead (far more GPP and stronger effects for an IND cap with plenty of chop).
Simpler and more accurate, don't you agree?
No. Simpler and more accurate is:
SH is normally not worth it. Yes, it is cheap, but its early. For its price you can send out 3 settlers to block out vast swathes of land. Monuments are a one pop whip so ANY food surplus makes them almost trivial to get. In many cases you don't need monuments in all cities; only those facing AI culture or in need of quick border pops (otherwise just use religion, libs, slider, or caste artist).
All of that (minus the settler estimate) is accurate on any difficulty level. On any difficulty barring some specific circumstance dictated by the map, neighbors, my civ, etc. SH is not going to help me more than building (i.e. my cap is close to that of Mali, I'm IND, and I have plenty of trees):
More settlers.
BHPOBA.
A different wonder (GW, Mids, ToA, GLH).
I think you ought to try it a few times, though, just to get a feel for it. Getting GW only or even first is a gamble on Immortal or Emperor. There's always a chance you'd get a string of Great Spies and that would be a veritable disaster. Even one Great Spy is pretty bumming if you're after the Wonder spamming. The value of SH and ToA or Mids depends on the game situation at the point of contention, since the strat values getting as many Wonders as possible, even Chichen Itza!
The strategy doesn't call for that many settlers or even that much blocking since it concentrates on one super-city, not many mediocre cities. For his purposes, the SH is totally worth the Settler cost. Its Culture is important, too, since you'll be partially dependent on the third culture border expansion for early blocking.
Thanks I've done it. ToA is superior as you get more GPP, better return for your investment (it literally pays off the hammers for itself), and I prefer GM to GPr or GE to settle (so I can work more food deficient tiles). I've played the wonderwhoring SSE economy, and nothing in it screams prioritize SH more than any other viable wonder. I've even run differential equations on the various wonders. I suggest
you play it on immortal before lecturing me.
He always went for it though. There's got to be a reason. It's probably the early GPrP. It worked for his game. It was good for that strategy, just as going FS is good for a more CE-leaning strategy.
Wow. How can you miss this? I ALWAYS build libraries in my non-full-production cities (and half the time in those too) does that mean I'm prioritizing building libraries? No. It just means that my priority may be Oxford and this is just a step on that path, or that my priority is actually banks but I don't have the tech yet, or that my priority is getting forges up and the best shot is to whip/build libs so I can border pop and work resource tiles.
Just because a player has a good, valid reason for building something; that does not mean it is a priority.
Look, kid, there is difference between saying the "the Mids are not
required" and "the Mids are not worth
prioritizing". Yes you can do the SSE without the Mids, however it is MUCH harder and weaker without them. I'm going to go out on a short limb here and say that no other wonder does as much for the SSE as the Mids.
Remember many of those games are
proof of concept games. When playing demonstration games players often follow suboptimal paths to show that the strategy is robust enough to handle setbacks. I.e. If you want to show that Monty's Kremlin Whipping warmachine is ownage you might not take and overrun Ghandi early just because you could, but leave him alive to show that you can whip out enough tanks/infantry to blow through his gunships and ATs to show that you get enough hammers to take down AIs with a tech advantage. Likewise, if I ever get around to doing a demo game of the Wilhem/archipeligo/abuse nukes/global warming game I may well not do obvious things (like say build SDI, just to show that the strat works even when the AI can nuke you back).
You need to
learn the lessons of the demo game, not mindlessly parrot it.
It's not that simple, and you should know that. The "vast majority of circumstances" (according to you) doesn't seem to be inclusive of many situations where SH is useful. GLH is not likewise not that useful if you don't have a lot of coastal settlement targets. That's a more common situation around where I come from - which is apparently the land of the Civ-disenfranchised. Mids is not all that useful if you're gunning for Monarchy and not Rep.
Sigh, GLH is useful with >80% of the maps the RNG will give you on shuffle. I'd hazard a guess that >90% of all maps generated with any of the setting gives a strong GLH setup. It may require that you base your strategy around the GLH, but its powerful enough to warrent it. Further, there are FAR MORE circumstances where the GLH is wickedly overpowered than there are ones were it is nigh unto useless. The GLH is useful for:
1. Going for a fast shot to guilds and mass promoting HA to knights/catas for ownage.
2. Pushing out to Astro and libbing Sci Method on the higher difficulties.
3. Pushing for earlier privateers.
4. Doing a SSE economy and working more food poor tiles (thanks to GM).
5. Breaking out of isolation with a kickass economy.
and on and on and on.
The mids helps even if you are gunning *HR* not rep. Why? Because you can run it sooner, you have the option of cycling into PS, US, or Rep if plans change, it allows you more turns of anarchy to stave off insolvency if you are close to killing off an enemy, and it gives GE points (enough that the Mids alone can often net you a free Versaille which is huge for transoceanic warfare if you plan to be in HR). Oh and deprives spec whores from running rep themselves or worse Shaka with PS.
Yes there are circumstances where the GLH isn't worth it and circumstances where the Mids are not worth it. However, are all sorts of things they support (the meaning of the idiom "all manner"); far more than SH or most anything else.
PS: Thank you, dumbass, as I explicitly stated there are a few bits of advise that are not valid for lower levels. However, none of them are what you state.
The advise is not "get archery to stop barbs", it is have enough, powerful enough units to stop barbs. When I play on lower difficulties I do exactly as I would do on higher levels - build enough defenses to keep the barbs at bay, no more no less (for the record I'm a bigger believer in many cheap fog busters or whipped city defenders to archers). Likewise I've had plenty of Immort games with no AI trading (i.e. lonely hearts, only Toko and me on this island, etc.). Asking AIs to attack other AIs is still useful as they still throw away their resources on each other for minimal gain. I don't bring 1/3rd the stack size, I bring 3 stacks and win in 1/9th to 1/3rd as long as my tech advantages last even longer and waiting has a lower oppurtunity cost.
To whit, when I play lower levels, I score better now than I ever did when I was just playing Monarch.
Clearly, the GPP matters, too, so aside from Industrious, a Philosophical leader is another incentive to try out SH for the early expansion support. SH built early times the GP on Philo just right to support an economy on the cusp of a commercial expansion limit - it allows you to expand further without causing strikes.
There is no commercial expansion limit. You can quite easily work cottages in all cities and never go insolvent until you run out of space. If you want to be this precise (timing it "just right") then I'm going to count the knock on effects listed earlier in this post. Of course if you do that your rate of expansion will be slower, but then it will also be slower with SH (by far).
Generally speaking SH is not worth the oppurtunity cost. Far too many people use it as a crutch and no amount of harping about ~40 GPP is going to make it superior to the Oracle (in general) or make the oppurtunity cost that much less.
. Back then it'd have been settler...but not everyone posts over 4000 times in 10 months.
