I had read many posts in this forum and saw that many view the temples very negatively.
I usually play on monarch or emperor and find these improvements so useful that they are present in almost every serious city i have regardless of corruption because the following reasons.
1) Anyone should prevent riots at any cost and there are several known ways to do that: luxury resources, luxury slider, entertainers, MP, improvements and wonder. If WLTK is not sought then the only advantage of happy face against content face is score. each of them equals 1 gpt.
2)Temples at core cities: Using lux slider is very crude way of managing happyness because it's one fit for all cities and cities are different from each other. deciding to build happiness improvements is a way to efficiently micromanage hapyiness and tailor approach for each city. Each temple costs 1 gpt and compensate for 1 gpt not spent on lux so there is no net loss of gpt, cathedrals are even more efficient (2 gpt gives 3 gpt unspent on lux).
3)Temples in corrupt cities: Corrupt cities produce so little commerce that using the slider doesn't matter. The only ways to pacify them are resources, improvements and specialists. If lacking resources then building the temples allows turning one entertainer to taxman thus yielding 2 gpt at cost of 1 gpt (net gain per city).This alanysis works for other improvements in large corrupt cities.
4) Temples and warmongering: Temples aid war in direct and indirect way, Directly rushing temples in conquered cities usually prevent flips, I never saw any of my cities that have 10 culture flip (probably because to flip you need foreign tiles in city radius which disappear after first radius expansion). Temples also work to limit rioting as said earlier The indirect effect comes from the fact that building temples and similar improvements create high culture rating for your civ thus limiting flips (chances depend on relative culture also), limiting resistance (less resistors and faster quelling), increase territory (for domination VC) and probably improve foreign leaders attitude.
5) Production issues: The only problem with this strategy is production time or using pop/gold rushes but I think that these are still controllable. The most important thing is generating commerce, commerce gives you trade options and techs while shield don't. You can convert shield to commerce only at unfavorable ratio of 4 to 1 using wealth so wasted "production commerce" is only 15 gold per temple for nonreligious civ.
6) To sum up: temples are must for cultural VC and important for conquest/domination VC they are the best pacifying method available and the production cost is managable, especially on archipelago. This also works for any mod that contains similar structure and even assuming the "doubling" wonders are not owned by the player.
I usually play on monarch or emperor and find these improvements so useful that they are present in almost every serious city i have regardless of corruption because the following reasons.
1) Anyone should prevent riots at any cost and there are several known ways to do that: luxury resources, luxury slider, entertainers, MP, improvements and wonder. If WLTK is not sought then the only advantage of happy face against content face is score. each of them equals 1 gpt.
2)Temples at core cities: Using lux slider is very crude way of managing happyness because it's one fit for all cities and cities are different from each other. deciding to build happiness improvements is a way to efficiently micromanage hapyiness and tailor approach for each city. Each temple costs 1 gpt and compensate for 1 gpt not spent on lux so there is no net loss of gpt, cathedrals are even more efficient (2 gpt gives 3 gpt unspent on lux).
3)Temples in corrupt cities: Corrupt cities produce so little commerce that using the slider doesn't matter. The only ways to pacify them are resources, improvements and specialists. If lacking resources then building the temples allows turning one entertainer to taxman thus yielding 2 gpt at cost of 1 gpt (net gain per city).This alanysis works for other improvements in large corrupt cities.
4) Temples and warmongering: Temples aid war in direct and indirect way, Directly rushing temples in conquered cities usually prevent flips, I never saw any of my cities that have 10 culture flip (probably because to flip you need foreign tiles in city radius which disappear after first radius expansion). Temples also work to limit rioting as said earlier The indirect effect comes from the fact that building temples and similar improvements create high culture rating for your civ thus limiting flips (chances depend on relative culture also), limiting resistance (less resistors and faster quelling), increase territory (for domination VC) and probably improve foreign leaders attitude.
5) Production issues: The only problem with this strategy is production time or using pop/gold rushes but I think that these are still controllable. The most important thing is generating commerce, commerce gives you trade options and techs while shield don't. You can convert shield to commerce only at unfavorable ratio of 4 to 1 using wealth so wasted "production commerce" is only 15 gold per temple for nonreligious civ.
6) To sum up: temples are must for cultural VC and important for conquest/domination VC they are the best pacifying method available and the production cost is managable, especially on archipelago. This also works for any mod that contains similar structure and even assuming the "doubling" wonders are not owned by the player.
