When is Stonehenge a good play?

[guspasho]

Stonehenge costs the same as what, 4 monuments? Fewer if you have stone and/or are industrious. So if you need monuments in 4 or more early cities, it should make sense to build SH, right? Especially if you can chop it out somewhere. But I don't see many people going with SH, so am I missing something? When is it a good play to build SH?

 

[NihilZero]

The problem is that you need to build stonehenge pretty early if you want to have it, whereas you can build a monument within a more leisurely time-frame when it suits you to do so.

Monuments are also very easy to whip or chop, usually in a city that is so young that it's not likely to be doing anything particularly critical anyway, whereas taking your most important city offline for several turns to build the henge at the most crucial point of the game can be a genuine bummer.

 

[Izuul]

SH usually competes too much with higher-priority builds early in the game. It can be a good thing to put a few turns into for some early fail gold though.

 

[Ghpstage]

Stonehenge costs the same as what, 4 monuments? Fewer if you have stone and/or are industrious. So if you need monuments in 4 or more early cities, it should make sense to build SH, right?

This kind of thinking is a trap, it makes the false assumption that maintain their value, so that your 120 now is the same as the 120 it saves later, which it isn't. The spent on henge are worth far more than the return by virtue of coming earlier, and representing a much larger share of your production capacity. This is only made worse by the facts that not every city needs a monument, and building one needs just a 1 pop whip.
Theres also much better things to use those on in the forms of settlers, workers and warriors.

It also throws a spanner in the works when it comes to GPP control, though, its not always unwelcome. If you do build it it should be more for the prophet points and maybe the culture than the monuments and probably chopped in a new city.

 

[mattie_p]

The best play is to let your enemy make Stonehenge and take it from their cold dead hands.

 

[bhavv]

I like to build it when playing CHA leaders as it also boost happiness then.

 

[Fippy]

When is it a good play to build SH?

When you would like priest points, for Theo bulbing or so.
Or if you are under no pressure, and see city spots that will have troubles getting monuments (like sea food all in 2nd ring and your best tiles to grow or build monuments would be empty grass/plains).

Counter example for worst SH situations..deity, you meet nobody and expect barb troubles. Loads of barbs..but you have stone.
Instead of researching masonry quickly and doing only stuff for an early tgw, you waste time on SH (stone bonus too yay..), lose tgw and barbs kill you :b

 

[enKage]

powerful food start of ramesess --> priest economy, AP win

sometimes charismatic leaders, especially Cyrus (Imp + charismatic, quick expansion, more cities will benefit from it early)

very very very rarely Native American


Sometimes OCC with Stone (culture from Stonehenge is extremely powerful early for taking resources earlier and there is no need to build workers and settlers). AFAIK it gives the most culture among all ancient wonders

In any other cases not worth, but nice to put some hammers for failgold in some cases)

 

[FlyingSwan]

De-Gaulle IND/CHA is a good one to build SH.CHA+monuments lets you whip a lot more early on and like Ramasses has TW and AGR so your worker wont be short of things to do while your teching MYST/MAS or MYST/BW.

I rarely build it with Sitting bull unless Im going a wonder spam, you should only need one totem pole and that would be in your production city.

For culture I tend to rely on missionaries and librarys,although not always possible you should be looking to work your initial 8 surrounding tiles anyway.Monuments are a waste of Hammers in most cases imo,your going to need librarys to build Oxford anyway so I usually whip and chop them instead.

 

[Lennier]

Stonehenge costs the same as what, 4 monuments? Fewer if you have stone and/or are industrious. So if you need monuments in 4 or more early cities, it should make sense to build SH, right? Especially if you can chop it out somewhere. But I don't see many people going with SH, so am I missing something? When is it a good play to build SH?

When you would like priest points, for Theo bulbing or so.
Or if you are under no pressure, and see city spots that will have troubles getting monuments (like sea food all in 2nd ring and your best tiles to grow or build monuments would be empty grass/plains).

Counter example for worst SH situations..deity, you meet nobody and expect barb troubles. Loads of barbs..but you have stone.
Instead of researching masonry quickly and doing only stuff for an early tgw, you waste time on SH (stone bonus too yay..), lose tgw and barbs kill you :b

You can't get the stone bonus unless you've teched Masonry! Anything above Prince, and Stonehenge will be gone by the time you hook up stone. But the basic reason why most players don't go for SH is that there are higher priority builds early in the game, and by the time you could spare the hammers in your starting city to build it, an AI will have built it.

 

[Gwynnja]

It's a good play on Prince or so.

 

[Htadus]

SH is a good investment if you have a plan to use it.

If you intend avoid Monarchy and bulb Theo and part bulb CS with G. Priests, it is good.
As others noted already, Charismatic leaders have a good happy reason to build it.
If you are not Creative and want to get cheap expansions to your new cities it is good.
If you want to place culture pressure on AI on a tight map, it is good.

There are many reasons to build the SH and it only get better if you are industrious or know Masonry and have stone attached.

However, will you end up loosing a good city site because of the hammer spent on the SH? Then you need to think more. When these kind of situations pop up, I usually see if my second city take over the building of SH and as an added benefit, I get some land reserved due to the culture growth.

For me, I stopped building the SH once I noticed that on higher levels, the AI build the Oracle much earlier when I build the SH early. Since I value the Oracle much higher, I have backed off or try to build them both at the same time if possible and wanted.

 

[drewisfat]

SH is only efficient for the culture gains (someone mentioned maybe this helping in an OCC) or for the great priest points (to theo bulb, AP cheese, or if you want to goof off and do a super specialist economy).

While it's tempting to see it as a hammer investment over the total number of monuments you would build, that's misleading. It's misleading because all early hammers are expected to pay themselves off many many times, and soon at that. In other words the return on investment is not nearly as good as workers, settlers, warriors, or other wonders. Every time we have a SH topic someone brings up the famed de gaulle (IND + CHA). Even in that situation the ROI is not as efficient as the alternatives for a skilled player.

Even with stone in the BFC, it directly competes with the great wall and mids, both of which give much better returns.

On a more minor but still important note, it makes more sense given early game dynamics, to build monuments in new cities, than to invest all the hammers at once in the capital. Using the capital to build warriors to spawn bust/scout early on is better than using your capital to build all the monuments for your early cities, and using those cities to build warriors.

 

[Solyaris]

Sometimes worth putting hammers into, almost never worth finishing. If you start with mysticism and have commerce poor land, you might need an extra 20-30g or so to finish pottery at a decent pace (AH, agriculture, mining, BW and TW before pottery). In some weird cases you might end up at 2000BC without anyone building it, in which case it could be decent play to finish it.

 

[MegaLurker]

Another vote for failgold.

 

[noto2]

This kind of thinking is a trap, it makes the false assumption that maintain their value, so that your 120 now is the same as the 120 it saves later, which it isn't. The spent on henge are worth far more than the return by virtue of coming earlier, and representing a much larger share of your production capacity. This is only made worse by the facts that not every city needs a monument, and building one needs just a 1 pop whip.
Theres also much better things to use those on in the forms of settlers, workers and warriors.

It also throws a spanner in the works when it comes to GPP control, though, its not always unwelcome. If you do build it it should be more for the prophet points and maybe the culture than the monuments and probably chopped in a new city.

This point is true - OP don't make the mistake of thinking that as long as you have 5 or more cities, SH was a good build. However, there are advantages to building it.

The hammers will come from your capital, which has hammers to spare and already produces culture. You'll be saving hammers in the new cities you settle, which will desperately need to build other things like granaries.

My thinking is that SH is worth it when I plan on doing a REX and I have no other means of producing early culture. Let's say I was playing Victoria of England and saw there was a lot of good land around me up for grabs. In that case I wouldn't mind delaying my first settler a bit to build SH, and then REX like mad. With 8-10 cities and free monuments in each one, that SH will have actually drastically sped up my development, by allowing my cities to immediately start building granaries instead of monuments first.

Another situation when I at least consider building SH is when playing a charismatic leader, because I'll want a monument in EVERY city on that case.

Obviously, when playing an IND leader or when stone is in the capital BFC, SH has a lower opportunity cost and is therefore more likely to be a good idea.

Still, with all that said, I don't build it in the majority of my games. Be careful, early builds are extremely important. Don't build it unless it really will help you win the game.

 

[Kallikrates]

I usually would not build it. Others have explained why the calculation with 4 monuments is not helpful. Up to Monarch one may build it and still get pyramids and oracle with some luck, but on higher levels other choices are usually preferable
Of course this also depends on Geography (resources in first/second ring), but if you build another wonder early in a second city (like the oracle) you will get culture from the wonder or even if you build the oracle in your capital, confucianism may be founded in the second or third (because bias against capital), so especially in cases where one can oracle CoL before/around 1000 one can spread the religion (or hope for autospread) and in the end build only one or two monuments. In an ideal case with Oracle in the 2nd city and religion founded in the 3rd you could send your free missionary into the 4th city (although it is usually better play to send him to a neighbor) and have 4 cities as good or better in culture than with a monument without having build one. (Stonehenge would give you GP points, of course.)

Of course a CHAR or IND leader or one with a monument UB may make Stonehenge a better deal even on higher levels.

 

[bhavv]

With an edited start on Immortal giving myself stone, marble and enough hills for production, I can pull off Stonehenge, GLH, Temple of Artemis, Oracle and Colossus in my capital for archipelago maps, which I use to farm and settle great priests and merchants and later add wall street to keep my tech slider high while expanding all over the map.

Only reason for Stonehenge was that I do this with Hannibal, so I get the extra happiness and can connect up seafoods faster in new cities (anywhere I see a seafood, plonk a city).

 

[Kallikrates]

An edited start should not be used to recommend which wonders to build. These recommendations should rely on strategies that have a decent chance of success in a broad range of condition. Giving yourself all the wonder resources on a map where the AI is handicapped in expansion (I played an archipelago game where Shaka never left his small island and had only 2 cities way in the middle ages), might make all kinds of things possible. Under more realistic conditions one would very probably try to secure Oracle and lighthouse as soon as possible (to be sure to get them) and then take chances with ToA and/or Colossus (with oracling MC and bronze the latter should be quite easy). I think one would have to be rather lucky to get all 4 of them on IMM (unless you edit your opponents to have only those not likely to build wonders) even when skipping stonehenge. And on a continents map one would also have to balance wonders with expansion.

 

[backthief]

- Theology bulb so you have a 900 point tech to trade away for currency, feudalism, metal casting, start a war between AIs....