What do you think the strongest UB is?

[Anvari]

i'll vote for the stele for guaranteed first religion. also, you can get them for free with tradition.

no love for the ceilidh hall? +3 happy from any building is pretty damn powerful, and you can get 4 for free as well.

Stele isn't a guarantee for the first religion. The Celts get them first if they don't start in a ridiculous place like a desert.

 

[chazzycat]

first pantheon maybe, but in my experience the ethiopians catch up & pass the celts before the first religion is founded.

 

[Babri]

first pantheon maybe, but in my experience the ethiopians catch up & pass the celts before the first religion is founded.

Ethopia can get about 3 faith per city. Same for Celts. However Celts can start their capital city with 2 faith unlike Ethopia who will get a delayed start in faith + with pictish warriors u can go & kill some barbs for some extra faith. Overall Celts would win religion race.

 

[chazzycat]

thats true if cities have 3 forests surrounding, but that is not the case most of the time. some of your cities may have no forest...and the ones with 3 are not likely to be great city spots. It seems more common to get just the 1 bonus faith as the celts, but I've only played one game with them so its early to say.

good point about the pictish warrior, not really relevant to UB discussion but definitely part of the overall picture.

i've noticed ethiopia tends to start near a religious natural wonder a lot of the time...wonder if that is part of the start bias. maybe luck has been a factor in my experiences so far.

 

[Anvari]

In the end, its mostly luck who can get a pantheon first, thanks to the dice when creating a map. But i think you should exclude the random things here - natural wonder, city states and ruins.

Even if you start Stele first into Shrine, you have a lot of turns without any faith. And it seems i dont have your "luck" with celtic starts. Just started 20 games (Pangea or Continents, all sizes) and got 16 times 3 Faith.

 

[AriochIV]

The Mayan Pyramid is pretty formidable, especially since you can get an additional +1 Culture with the Ancestory Worship pantheon belief, and even more goodies with later Follower beliefs.

 

[mposyncckh]

I always liked satrap's court because of extra gold and happiness (+ 2 happy and gold in addition to the plus percent of gold regular banks get.)
But my favorite UB is the Bazarr extra resources to trade yes please. For trading civs If would take Arabia over the Dutch because although early game Dutch is great in the long run I feel Arabia is better.

 

[chazzycat]

In the end, its mostly luck who can get a pantheon first, thanks to the dice when creating a map. But i think you should exclude the random things here - natural wonder, city states and ruins.

Even if you start Stele first into Shrine, you have a lot of turns without any faith. And it seems i dont have your "luck" with celtic starts. Just started 20 games (Pangea or Continents, all sizes) and got 16 times 3 Faith.

right for the first city, which is most important for pantheon beliefs. but to get first religion and enhancement, the next cities are also critical. getting 2 *guaranteed free* faith in each of these 4 cities is very strong. maybe I am incorrect that Ethiopia will generally beat the Celts to religion, but if it takes an entire UA+UU to compete with one UB, that's a pretty good argument right there for the stele.

 

[Pandolphin]

I agree, Mayan UB is amazing. It and the UU can both make you leap ahead of AI civs in the early game. I haven't lost yet with them.

 

[Halcyan2]

1. Bazaar for the immense amounts of gold and trading possibilities it allows

2. Stele since it helps guarantee an early pantheon/religion, especially on higher levels

3. Floating Gardens for population growth. Also allows Watermills to be built on non-riverlands (if next to Lake).

4. Long House for the sheer amount of base production it can offer (in the right, forested cities).

5. Pyramid for the early science boost.

6. Coffee House. Most importantly, allows Windmill equivalents to be built on hill cities. Extra Great Person points stacks well with all the other modifiers (Gardens/Leaning Tower/Freedom opener/Friends with Sweden). Main problem is it comes so late.

In the past, I liked playing with Kreposts. It was better pre-G&K when purchasing tiles was expensive. It's much weaker now that you can purchase more easily. However, it can be very useful to grab those tiles 4 or 5 hexes away. In order to build Heroic Epic, I often have to build Barracks in cities which don't intend to build military units, so I like the idea of Kreposts that the Barracks do something else. In pre-G&K, they were one of the few ways to expand early on (after you get Monument/Temple). With G&K there are so many additional ways to get culture that the Krepost expansion is not really needed any more.

 

[Halcyan2]

I thought the coffee house was a little underwhelming. It's just a windmill with 5% extra production and +25% great person generation.

My understanding is that the Coffee House has no terrain limitation (unlike the basic Windmill, which can't be built on hills so most of my cities normally can't build them).

 

[Adjuvant]

I feel stele is best because it's just a dramatic bonus in a "no-brainer" mechanism (tradition w/ethiopia and minimal cities for UA, guaranteed religion, guaranteed faith production without burning early production on shrine or pantheon choice on faith plots).

Even tho Arabia is one of my chosen civs I don't choose it best because, playing as Harun alot, I know the benefit is pretty situational. Sometimes you play standard or smaller maps without tons of people with whom to trade, or sometimes the people who can use "your types" of luxuries don't like you enough to give good money for your duplicates, if at all.

 

[Princeofnigeria]

I vote... KREPOST!!!


























Just kidding, I vote steele.

 

[Thry]

It's a tie between the Floating Gardens and the Pyramid.

+15% Food vs +2 Science.

If you're playing as the Aztecs and your capital city doesn't have at least 50 pop by the end of the game, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

 

[rsadiwala95]

haha, bazaar anyday, double the number of resources can help greately,
2nd wud be mayan UB, early science and faith...kool, religion goes for science beliefs, ull surely win science,

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

No UB is the strongest as I know and non of them is the weakest. Its the situation which decide which one that is usefull and which is not. Each ub replace a building and I would probably not build the ub if I would not build the building the ub replace in that situation.

 

[Dogmouth]

Bazaar, floating garden, and stele -- in that order.

 

[tyrael233]

No UB is the strongest as I know and non of them is the weakest. Its the situation which decide which one that is usefull and which is not. Each ub replace a building and I would probably not build the ub if I would not build the building the ub replace in that situation.

C'mon now, many UBs are thrash compared to the Bazaar or Pyramids.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

C'mon now, many UBs are thrash compared to the Bazaar or Pyramids.

Bazaar may give you alot of gold if you are able to trade all the lux it gives you but many times a bazzar is not better then a market. The pyramid may lock very good but 2 science is not that much and 2 faith is not that good if you miss a religion which you maybe do not as mayans. I haven't talked about the other buildings but they may be good or not good depending on the game.

 

[chazzycat]

Bazaar may give you alot of gold if you are able to trade all the lux it gives you but many times a bazzar is not better then a market.

wouln't the only situation where a bazzaar is not better than a market is if you have zero luxes in that city, or zero trading partners? maybe in a couple cities it wouldn't matter but overall the impact of free luxuries to trade is...very significant.

The pyramid may lock very good but 2 science is not that much and 2 faith is not that good if you miss a religion which you maybe do not as mayans. I haven't talked about the other buildings but they may be good or not good depending on the game.

2 science is a LOT for a really cheap buiding you can spam after only 1 tech. And the 2 faith makes it pretty easy to get a religion...if you don't get a religion as the Maya you're definitely doing it wrong.