Value of Stonehenge

[Kallikrates]

If there is stone and one has time to research masonry, there are better wonders to build, I guess. I don't think I have ever build the Wall, not really having understood espionage and even less a great spy and always having something better to do. Also, relatively speaking the Wall is often the earliest wonder to be built by the AI, that is it is the first or the second after SH and with a non-starting tech and more hammers still very early.

 

[SnipedSoul]

I think the potential fail gold from SH is worth more than the wonder.

I love to whip a settler with max overflow into Stonehenge. It makes getting pottery/writing pretty much guaranteed before I go broke. SH is also pretty consistent in how early it gets built. Other wonders like TGW and mids can take ages before the AI completes them.

 

[sampsa]

I love to whip a settler with max overflow into Stonehenge. It makes getting pottery/writing pretty much guaranteed before I go broke. SH is also pretty consistent in how early it gets built. Other wonders like TGW and mids can take ages before the AI completes them.

Converting 1 into 1 sounds pretty meh to me. Going broke pre pottery/writing takes some extreme expansion, too.

 

[MegaLurker]

Converting 1 into 1 sounds pretty meh to me. Going broke pre pottery/writing takes some extreme expansion, too.

I can see that being a good play on a map with lots of room to expand. I often find myself with a city or two with nothing good to build in the early game if the tech path doesn't get me to pottery quickly.

 

[sampsa]

I can see that being a good play on a map with lots of room to expand. I often find myself with a city or two with nothing good to build in the early game if the tech path doesn't get me to pottery quickly.

Ok, I can see how it can be a decent play in some spot, but for example working non-lighthouse non-financial coast in a way converts 1 into 2.

 

[MegaLurker]

Fair enough, and that requires no worker turns. Other times you might want to be avoiding growth, and/or have a riverside mine available that gives you a better total yield.

Obviously it's a different story if you can settle on stone and go for masonry early for whatever reason. To get the Great Wall, early start on the 'Mids, etc.

 

[SnipedSoul]

I play on huge tropical maps where expansion is entirely limited by economy. I have to get bronze working first because if there's no copper, I absolutely must build TGW. Spawn busting huge maps is impossible unless you're on a peninsula with lots of mountains.

The other thing about tropical maps is that they give you a ton of food. +10 food is plenty to whip a couple times without a granary. I don't like to fail gold TGW because I either need it, or it's a total crapshoot as to when the AI will build it. I've seen it as late as 1200 BC. I've seen mids go at 350 BC!

The only thing I don't like about tropical maps is that they either give me zero gems or 3+. I don't like being able to Oracle civil service with ease, but I also don't want to have zero commerce for centuries .

 

[kingbeef]

I play on Emperor mostly and find Stonehenge to be pretty decent. Obviously a larger map makes it better since you'll get more free monuments, and you'll have plenty of room left to settle even with the slight delay. I really like using it with charismatic leaders though, since you get +1 happiness in every city which, on top of the +1 happiness you get as standard with CHA, can give you a massive economic boost early in the game.

 

[Kallikrates]

For charismatic and especially de Gaulle it is decent and the happiness boost is more important if one has no early happiness resources and/or limited trade options. There is still the problem, probably already on Emperor that it can go away quite early so one has to sacrifice some early expansion because the capital would otherwise have built a settler or even two.

 

[Dewii]

One point to note is that although Stonehenge might save you hammers across the civilization compared to building monuments the hard way, an extra settler in a good city site will give you additional hammers (or food to whip).

 

[Kallikrates]

As far as I remember I rarely built stonehenge even on lower levels. I recently built it twice on immortal, once with Bismarck, once with de Gaulle. In the second case the happiness was helpful because I had no early happiness resources (except fur but it was not that early because an otherwise not too appealing tundra+fish site I settled only as 6th city or so) and my only neighbor before more extensive workboat exploring was never-trade Togu.
Except for particular situations I'd probably not build it with a non-IND leader because one can very often get along with less than 4 monuments (on normal maps). (I remember that I sometimes thought about building the Zeus statue and realized I had only one or two monuments...)
Either picking up religions or building another earlyish wonder in the second city or even oracling CoL and switching to Caste. For a PHI leader a library is only 1.5 the hammers of a monument, yields pops in and can be chopped/whipped. If one wants another of the earlyish wonders (Wall, Lighthouse, Oracle) this often has to be made a priority which again speaks against Stonehenge.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Building Stonehenge is situational. It is more importnant on Marathon speed where the first border pop takes 30t, assuming no other culture is present (such as religion). Even on Deity level, it should be strongly considered when the game speed is Marathon.

A method of precisely predicting AI Stonehenge (or other wonder) completion dates:

Static espionage can be used to determine the precise size of AI builds and thus which builds are almost certainly Stonehenge based on the technologies AIs are likely to have. At turn 0, one knowns exactly which technologies the AI has and in a few turns what their tech rate is. The demographics window also gives some about information about tech rate. Just extrapolate forward. When an AI completes a technology, the score will jump up slightly. In the case of Stonehenge, we first need to know which AIs complete Mysticism. Don't forget that some AIs start with it. It will be key to explore all AIs cities ASAP, because one can't see its static espionage until the city's location on the map has been found.

Now track all big builds in AI cities using static espionage. Those AIs that know or researched Mysticism might be building Stonehenge. Note that a Settler build might at first look like Stonehenge, but the food adds hammers, so the hammer rate is slightly higher than expected. The AI is unlikely to use Stone to accelerate build rate, since that would require Masonry and settling on Stone or a Stone Quarry. Thus, the only likely Hammer rate increase is the Industrious trait. So now one can track the build rate and predict when and where the AIs are building Stonhenge. Now, one just needs to decide whether to allow the winning AI to complete SH and capture it or chop SH just in time to beat the AIs.

It may not be possible to track all AI cities this way, so espionage tracking may not work, but most AIs will not get Mysticism early enough anyway. Tracking via the Demographics window is not as precise and requires more calculation, but it can be done and does not necessarily require that AI cities are revealed.

 

[Kallikrates]

I am confused: Without contact to the AI one cannot even know which ones are in the game, even less if one (who does not have it at the start) researches Mysticism?

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I am confused: Without contact to the AI one cannot even know which ones are in the game, even less if one (who does not have it at the start) researches Mysticism?

I believe that contact with the AI Civs is required for espionage tracking, since it requires cities to be revealed. Even a Spy or Great Spy revealing a city or even its culture would cause contact with the owner of the city. This could be considered a bug, if the Spy is not compromised such that its owner is revealed. A Great Spy can never be comprised and really should not cause contact with the AI, but the game does cause such AI contact.

Without contact with the AI, one can still learn about the AIs one is up against; in particular what the strongest in any demographic is and the weakest. One knows what units each AI starts with at a particular skill level and can look at the power demographic to deduce whether their are skirmishers; if so, one AI is known to be Mansa Musa. I believe their is also a demographic similar to score that will allow one to deduce with unique starting technologies they have such as Mysticism. Based on skill level Monarch to Deity, all AIs will have Archery (Monarch) to Archery, The Wheel, Agriculture and Hunting (Deity). So, the demographic will also reveal the starting technology of Fishing, but Fishing is cheaper than Mysticism, so those two unique starting technologies are distinguishable.

Of course, without contact with the AI, very little can be determined about them, beyond what I mentioned above. A little knowledge can be enough to predict how early an AI could build Stonehenge and thus aid in building Stonehenge oneself at the latest possible turn that should beat the AIs best possible date. The more information one has, the better one's AI Stongehenge date becomes, but that usually means contact with the AI and it's cities. Without contact with AI, very little about one's AI opponents can be determined, but it can be enough to make a ball park estimate of Stonehenge based on whether any of the AIs starts with Mysticism as revealed in the demographics.

If one tries to be a Sherlock Holmes, it is quite amazing what can be deduced from the demographics tab without any AI contact at turn 0, turn 1, turn 2, etc. You can track the various demographic values, make hypothesis and often either prove or disprove them as the game slowly moves forward turn by turn. Even spreadsheets and scripts can be applied to the demographics to reveal information that one thought was impossible to know. Such effort is probably not warranted in even competitive venues like SGOTM (some teams do it though), GOTM and HoF; it is definitely over kill for games played for pure enjoyment, unless one likes to solve "unsolveable problems".

To clarify, nearly everything I stated prior to this post assumes contact with most or all AIs and the locations of their capital and other early cities capable of completing Stonehenge first. With such knowledge, one can track the build progress of each city (with no spies!) by taking the espionage needed to destroy progress on the current build for a particular AI city, multiply that value by 108, divide by the espionage needed to Support City Revolt in that city, resulting in the Hammers invested (rounding up to the nearest whole number). I have personally verified this computation dozens of times in many different cities and it exactly matches the value as revealed by World Builder or having enough espionage on the city to actually look inside the AI city directly in-game.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

This could be considered a bug, if the Spy is not compromised such that its owner is revealed. A Great Spy can never be comprised and really should not cause contact with the AI, but the game does cause such AI contact.

A good Spy will be able to blend in with another society, but is unlikely to own an invisibility cloak. A good spy will also be able to pass on contact information without revealing his or her identity. Just because another Leader cannot see your Spy or Great Spy Units doesn't mean that those Units are unable to initiate contact with that Leader's Civ, however surreptitiously that contact may be arranged.


So, given a belief that an AI is building Stonehenge, what would be your plans for using that knowledge? Plan to rush that AI such that your army would be able to capture the Wonder shortly after it was completed? Plan to declare war on that AI and threaten the City that was building a World Wonder with a Unit of yours (position the Unit 2 squares or less away from that City's City Centre square) to encourage the AI to switch to a different build item, such as a Military Unit or a City Wall, so as to delay when an AI completes the Wonder? Or, simply to do your best to complete Stonehenge before the AI's estimated completion time given your tracking of Hammers invested each turn by the AI using mathematical calculations (albeit simple ones) and your estimation of future turns spent earning more Hammers as that AI City grows in size, while also being aware of the possibility of the AI whipping the Wonder to completion?

I'm not sure that delaying Stonehenge until the last possible moment is the best play--if the Culture, and the potential Happiness for Charismatic Leaders, can be used earlier, then if you're planning to complete the Wonder, you could just aim to complete it earlier, which will also net you more Great People Points earlier.