When are the Moai Statues worth it?

sinimusta

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Before coming to these forums my method for deciding the site for Moai was simply calculating the water tiles and then checking if the city had some slowbuild production. Back then I clearly overvalued this wonder and nowadays build it later if at all. Moai coast tiles give the same yield as a grass forest plus the extra commerce, so I think these are tiles to be whipped away.

Perhaps better way to decide a good Moai site would be counting the sea food tiles and lake tiles. These are tiles that will be worked almost all the time. But still it's 250 hammers without stone, with 5 seafood for example it would take about 50T to pay back, taking only the seafood tiles into account and not the possible growing onto sea tiles. When is it worth it? Definitely not in the expansion phase or when waging war.
 
Good thing to put whip overflow in, at some point you can build it, get failgold and have a decent coastal spot.
Building it with whip overflow is better than slowbuilding it the whole way.

Also Moaui/Heroic Epic might be a somewhat usefull combo on a coastal spot with a couple of hills/a strategic ressource nearby for some initial Hammer potential.

Of course it's of much more value when you have stone and/or you are Industrious.
 
Well I'm sure the more intellectually rigorous will come in and give great analysis to your question but I'll throw in my views until then. Firstly, I like the thread.

But to your question, basically I am bit like you were and take a simplistic approach and probably over-value the wonder. However my heuristic is basically, do I have stone, do I have a coastal city with at least 10 hammers of slow build production. If yes to both then basically I build the Moai, providing its still in the BCs and I'm not fighting any wars.

I should point out I always play FIN leaders so its 2F 1H 3C for coastal tiles with Moai which I find to be profitable working tiles. I also have an unhealthy Colussus fetish which probably doesn't help.

The reason for no wars is fairly obvious, I'd much rather the cities hammers and whip potential be used to fight the war. The reason for BCs is basically, I like to make my Maoi city a commerce city and use the hammers to build science infra while minimizing whipping so it can grow quite big, I like to make this investment early enough so I get a good return. I find this can work quite well. As a side note, I have built the occasional, FIN Moai bureau capital which have served me nicely.

Whether any of this is optimal play I am too intellectually lazy to actually try to analyze but I eagerly await other people's takes on this question. Thanks to you for asking and to them in advance.

EDIT: Strickl3r, you got in as I was typing. Whip overflow is a good suggestion, I should use that more effectively.
 
When you have stone, obviously. Then you should be building it in every coastal city that doesn't need any more infrastructure.

When you have a city that has ~10 or more coastal tiles with a couple food resources you would consider building it entirely with whip overflow, particularly if you're financial.

Several times on immortal playing a financial leader I've ended up with a Maoi city with 3 seafood resources, at least a dozen coastal tiles, and the Colossus. Such a city becomes a pretty powerful Treb/cannon/cuir/cavalry/whatever pump and contributes a lot of commerce, particularly if it's on an island.

edit: generally on Deity though I've found myself always with more important things to be building, though once in a while you get the perfect spot early enough. If you won't have it built in time to have a granary/forge/library and ideally barracks built to start producing your breakout cuirs or cavalry or cannons or whatever (or, better yet, units to be upgraded) then IMO it's too late to be worth it.
 
I too used to overvalue it but now am more reasonable. Many games if I don't have stone and not industrious, I don't even build it. If I'm going to be at peace for a bit and figure I can get the payback vs just building wealth and have an appropriate city, I'll build it. Or sometimes when playing a Pangaea map and I found a small island that I want to use to boost trade I'll whip overflow it there. And with COL in a nice wet cap when I'm financial I'll usually give it a run.
 
It's very simple:

If MOAI = 300H

Devide 300H / # of Seafoods.

Then you get the time after which MOAI generates a surplus.

Building MOAI in every city before finishing it is often advisable too.

Generally, that wonder is very weak and way too expensive for how early it comes.

It does has it's use though when i. e. having tripple Seafood (lighthouse lakes count too) or for Failgold reasons.

Last situation I could imagine would be a city having some inital production but mostly coastal tiles and when being FIN, but that's very specific.

I usually also only build that wonder in Space-Races. Cultural needs different things, Domination / Conquest troops are more valuable and founding costal cities isn't desirable in both imo. In Highscore games, MOAI probably even has a little higher value than in Space-races. Diplomatic obviously doesn't need MOAI again, while Religious obviously requires them even less.
 
Yeah, thinking about it (and reading what you guys are saying), without FIN its a pretty dubious wonder build. Yet I also agree that when the conditions are right for it, it can be a beast.

I like your point about using it for fail gold Seraiel, I assume that its because it comes quite early and that's a good time for fail gold? Does this require stone to be worthwhile? I run the assumption that wonders require their accelerant to be worth building.

With FIN, I don't think it needs heaps of coast. Probably 4 would be enough for me, ideally I want a couple more though.
 
Even in space races, I tend to ignore the Moai because it is rare to find a suitable spot for it (a 3 seafood city with some lakes AND has a decent production before Moai). If I do find this spot, this is usually my GP city first (and I build NE/NP on it, no space for Moai). Then again, I don't usually bother with National Wonders.
 
Moai shines in GA. So, for whatever the reason you decide to build it, finish it before your GA starts.
 
I think it's a weak national wonder and used to build it rarely, but recently I've found it has some use. :hammers:-wise it more or less simply loses to whipping, so paradoxically the reason to build it is to win :commerce:. That is, you build it since you have to get :commerce: from somewhere and have to work several coastal tiles anyway.

Getting some failgold out of building it (put whip overflows in other cities to it) is also close to necessary for building it to be beneficial. Still, the sooner you finish it the sooner you get the failgold plus the natural moai benefit, and 400:gold: 1AD might be better than 800:gold: 1000AD so I wouldn't needlessly delay finishing it. Depends a lot on the specific situation, of course.
 
Don't forget that if you're the Dutch you can eventually build a dike and get another hammer from every water tile on top of getting 3C from coast. This can result in a very strong city by the industrial era with all the hammer modifiers stacking up. 10 coastal tiles are then giving you 35 hammers in a city that can grow to a huge size.
 
I build the M. Statues in a future coastal production city, the one that will eventually be building my navy. It's pretty simple - if I see a coastal location with lots of hills and food, such as seafood, I'll build them there.
The thing is, in the early game there are times at peace when there is nothing to build, other than building wealth, and I don't play pangea maps so my games don't end early, so the M statues are always worth building for me.
 
This wonder also gives 10 iPower somethinf the ai uses to evaluate your strength. Barracks give 5 each and walls only 2. So its a indirect way to build defence for your enpire early on ib the game.

I think its still anyway. In my mod I made it give a extra commerce to ocean tiles as well. Then made colossus give General points instead. And i still dont build it often.
 
Even in space races, I tend to ignore the Moai because it is rare to find a suitable spot for it (a 3 seafood city with some lakes AND has a decent production before Moai). If I do find this spot, this is usually my GP city first (and I build NE/NP on it, no space for Moai). Then again, I don't usually bother with National Wonders.

What's NP? National park? Why would you build the NP in a city with a lot of water tiles and grassland forests which you will want to replace with farms?
 
Moai is interesting in a couple of unusual spots - there's the fish/production/big-coast spot Serail mentioned above, and the even rare big fresh water lake beside an ocean coast, which even a day of Mapfinder won't find for me.

In 'normal' cities Moai is usually overpriced. If I'm really flush with Great Engineers in the late game, sometimes I'll drop Moai onto one of those one-tile-island cities... and it'll still be a bad city. I've tried rushing to Sailing, chopping Moai, and using the Great Prophet for things... that's abysmal too.

I like the idea of Moai but often I will just never build it. In my opinion its only good use is to generate a bunch of failgold.
 
It is quite expensive and that's why I often don't build it right away. I usually build it in that awkward lull between your first war with catapults and your second war - when you're growing your cities too large to use slavery and maybe you need to run caste anyway, and there's a coastal city with some good production and food.
 
What's NP? National park? Why would you build the NP in a city with a lot of water tiles and grassland forests which you will want to replace with farms?

I don't use NP for the bonus specialists with forest reserves. I use it to remove unhealthiness associated with population that comes along in Sushi Games (thus I only bother with NP when going space). Almost all of my forests in established cities before RP (GP farm with NE is no exception) are cut off, thus making it unlikely to find the "ideal" NP spot

Building Moai in a GP farm doesn't make sense either when specializing cities. A GP farm doesn't need that much production. Necessary buildings can be whipped if under slavery and if under Caste, only Granary/NE/Forge are necessary.
 
I don't use NP for the bonus specialists with forest reserves. I use it to remove unhealthiness associated with population that comes along in Sushi Games (thus I only bother with NP when going space). Almost all of my forests in established cities before RP (GP farm with NE is no exception) are cut off, thus making it unlikely to find the "ideal" NP spot

Building Moai in a GP farm doesn't make sense either when specializing cities. A GP farm doesn't need that much production. Necessary buildings can be whipped if under slavery and if under Caste, only Granary/NE/Forge are necessary.
Rush buying the NP in an all-preserved-jungle spot settled late can be very strong. Imagine 15+ specialists for free.... (you need Caste System or rush-buy other buildings obviously)
 
At the risk of starting the obvious, the more sea-tiles a Maoi works the better so combining the Maoi with the Globe can work well and it can also double up as a decent temporary rifle drafting site with the excess sea-food allowing the site to grow back again quickly afterwards.

Health really shouldn't be an issue for a Maoi site with improvements like Harbors and I'm not sure what the benefit of combining it with a NP is (not that I generally build a National park anyway, so maybe I'm missing something here?)
 
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