The Pyramids: the great debate of cost vs production

[brades]

Another thing to keep in mind is whether or not you have the food to support specialists. Generally, you will be building the mids in your capital, if your land is food poor (like most tectonic maps) you may not be running a lot of specialists to make it worth your while.

 

[Laurwin]

isnt stonehenge pretty good for civs like ethiopians and egyptians who get basically their UB free in every city, fast culture and so on...

 

[mboettcher]

@Iranon

Fantastic point about denial for the mids. About the only times I've seen leaders like Ramsess become powerful is when they build mids or some other super-wonder (due to its cost and game-changingness the mids qualifies as a super wonder).

Mids can give you unholy teching powers and can prevent some other Ai from out teching you. The wonder scales beautifully with both small and large empires, makes marginal cities more powerful and yadda yadda yadda.

Sometimes it doesn't require that much of a settler rex to block off a good portion of land. A single settler pump placed else where is often capable of this while the strong prod city builds mids. 4-5 more settlers later one can block off often enough room for 10-15 cities even on standard. If not chances are opportunity for an early war is there to take the cities by force. And war is a much more cost effective way to expand as not that many units are lost and one doesn't have to spend the hammers building settlers and time/maintenance building up new cities. Plus you make a profit with the sacking gold. Why not start small and efficient and go big later?

However they are just so expensive. I guess I would build them if I had stone but wasn't ind but the only certainty of building them is with both.

 

[Crusher1]

Keep in mind that the Mids has the potential to lead to a much more substantial amount of production. The 1st is obvious - more farms always leads to better, more frequent whips, and the ability to work more mines.

The second is a style preference - super tight settling. And I don't mean just a few tiles overlap. I'm talking very aggressively - say perhaps a city every 3 tiles. This takes away some of the potential headaches in the decision making process when people have the Mids too.

Do I run Pacifism? Do I run Org religion? Do I run Caste? Should I be whipping more or should I be running more specialist? Etc, Etc. With many tight cities you can keep it very simple. Run 2 scientist, plus whip and build things as normal - this is a huge help because lets be honest, how many maps even have enough food to run many more than 2 scientist in every single city while still growing and doing other stuff?

Also, many tight cities has the ability to greatly increase your production. Would you rather have 1 size 12 city, in Caste, running 4 scientist, with only enough food left to work 6-8 hammers?

Or would you rather have Two size 6 cities, in Slavery, running 2 scientist each, and both working 11 Hammers - 3 farmed FPs, 1 plain hills, and 2 grassland hills. The real issue becomes affordability and ORG shines. Of course, leaders in OR with forges can whip stuff quick enough.

It doesn't make a lot of since to be in caste and lose slavery or be in pacifism and lose OR just for one very good GPF. Stay in slavery and OR the vast majority of the time with the exception being during GA or a few well timed GPs.

 

[Wlauzon]

One reason not mentioned to build the pyramids is that it gives a big boost to Great Engineers.