When is Stonehenge a good play?

[6K Man]

Settle on Stone... maybe.

 

[Dragonxander PR]

With a mining-mysticism starting tech combo it may be a good option--just make sure to have stone and enough forests to boost the build.

 

[backthief]

Build Worker
Worker
Settler
Stonehenge

Research mining
wheels
Agriculture
AH
Pottery
Writing
Aesthetics

Shuffle Aesthetics for Polytheism, Budism, Priesthood, Monotheism, trade for Alphabet, Iron, with some luck Monarchy/Math/....

Great Prophet is on? Bulb Theology (immense chance you get the religion)

You can shuffe Theology for Currency/Metal Casting/Calendar....maybe Feudalism etc etc...



The strategy works on most cases for me. As i play i make decisions to trade or not to trade new techs, since the game can become a Rifleman war by early 1200 on my fault.

 

[dohh]

Always war games, for statue of zeus,maybe when aiming cultural victory.

 

[blunderwonder]

I just read through this. SH for failgold is the usual, but often times you can even get it in your 2nd or 3rd city through chopping... going off and messing up your initial settling can be a disaster, but on certain settings SH is an incredible build. Take for example a HUGE map, its likely that you will be able to settle 15 cities all by your lonesome. And if your capital has the most food, it may very well become your NH spot as well... Culture to start off with helpful if you start nearish someone, GPP points are very welcome in an NH city, even if theyre from wonders, and if you end up settling 15 cities, and conquering 100 more..... the question isnt did it pay off, but how many times did it pay off. It doesnt just save you the cost of building a monument either, it gets those new cities up and running quicker if they better tiles are in the 2nd ring, this is especially true on some water maps, where it might take you 20 turns to grow, just to whip a monument that will take another 10 turns to pop.

Playing a HUGE map, with a charismatic leader and lots of 2nd ring water or land bonuses, and the NH city being the one you built it in... SH is obviously a great choice Oo

 

[elmurcis]

I have built it few times even with CRE leader (basic condition - no need for The Wheel to connect stone.. settle on it or riverside resource). Reason is strong culture pressure for 1/2 of game... and with Pyramids (pretty logical choise if have stone so early) prophet becomes more attractive settled specialist (playing with no tech trading option, so payback time for things is longer). Still it can cost 1 good city place if AI ir near.. so still risky even if can get it safely

 

[vranasm]

in SSE games for sure, since it generates GPriests which are a good thing to settle .

Charismatic is another "obvious" consideration.

Mostly fail gold after you build couple of first settlers if it's still up.

 

[ohjames]

I'll only do this if I want to bulb Theo, and I only want to bulb Theo because I'm bad. It's not a great play.

 

[Pisskop]

I like stonehenge in any close-quarters game where I likely wont be clearing out all of my opponents at once. Like terra. Its also easy to chop out if you have a decent production value and if you do go for a religion or aim to take one early its helpful to have. Its fairly easy to build it in a second or even third city, with a little oversight and planing. Also nice because stone isn't a requirement to build it, and by the time you get stone its likely its only of nominal help as well.

 

[M3dge]

I've been building Stonehenge almost as a side effect of a Quechua rush. Because the starting city has to have a 3-hammer tile to crank out quick units, when SH comes available it's relatively cheap. I generally start building it right after I've put out my 5th or 6th quechua and I'm guaranteed victory over my nearest opponent. They have often founded a religion, so the early GP and holy site is a bonus.

 

[civtilidy]

All your info about when its possible to build is worthless if you dont mention what difficulty it is.
I usually build it on immortal to found cristianity, build a shrine, trade theology and controll AP wich is great for production and diplomacy. If its possible to found cristianity with it , I think its almost always a good build.

 

[Al Capone]

This is quite circumstancial, as I see it. First of all, as you said, it depends on the number of cities you are planning to build or that you eventually have already built.
However it is a nice feature if you are playing on a crammed map (as I like to do), since it is essential that your borders expand early so that your cities can culturally concur with your neighbours'.
In the end, to me it mainly depends on my capitals industry; if it produces relatively many hammers (due to resources or its expansion), I can calculate with not wasting too many turns to build SH, which makes it rather affordable and ease the pressure out of younger, less developed cities to build a monument, a building that is, from a military and economic point of view, quite useless.

The fact that it centers the world map is neglectible. Usually you will know from vegetation, where you are located anyway.

 

[thbrown81]

If I have stone and a Monument UB or Charasmatic leader. Otherwise, not a priority.

 

[rah]

AT what level of play do you play? At higher levels it's very difficult to connect stone before the AI has already completed SH.

 

[FlyingSwan]

AT what level of play do you play? At higher levels it's very difficult to connect stone before the AI has already completed SH.

If stone is on a river and connected to the capitol,or even better you settle on top of it stone henge is easy to get with very few hammers,at higher levels the stone resource does,nt come into it,you gotta chop it out.
IF your Wang or Ghandi-masonry first can come up if you have a 3F tile...

 

[drewisfat]

Having a very productive capital vs unproductive border cities seems to be a common reason to centralize production in the capital by way of building SH instead of monuments.

This is actually a huge trap in reasoning. New, small cities have basically nothing else to do at the start of the game except produce warriors before granaries come online. Too early for barracks. Settlers / workers are weak builds in a city just getting started (need to grow on available tiles, low hammers means stunting this growth for a long time). You only need so many warriors to spawn bust, so it's nice to have another option.

The other main trap in reasoning is thinking "well I'm going to build at least 6 monuments this game, so a SH will save me hammers". Everything you do is an investment that will pay itself off, but the returns from a settler and worker are astronomically more exponential than SH. So much so that this remains true even if you want monuments in all your cities (char), start on stone, are IND, etc.

Going for SH only really makes sense if some of these conditions are met, and SH goes very late, the odds of which depend on the difficulty level.

 

[Strickl3r]

Having a very productive capital vs unproductive border cities seems to be a common reason to centralize production in the capital by way of building SH instead of monuments.

This is actually a huge trap in reasoning. New, small cities have basically nothing else to do at the start of the game except produce warriors before granaries come online. Too early for barracks. Settlers / workers are weak builds in a city just getting started (need to grow on available tiles, low hammers means stunting this growth for a long time). You only need so many warriors to spawn bust, so it's nice to have another option.

The other main trap in reasoning is thinking "well I'm going to build at least 6 monuments this game, so a SH will save me hammers". Everything you do is an investment that will pay itself off, but the returns from a settler and worker are astronomically more exponential than SH. So much so that this remains true even if you want monuments in all your cities (char), start on stone, are IND, etc.

Going for SH only really makes sense if some of these conditions are met, and SH goes very late, the odds of which depend on the difficulty level.

You are overthinking it. It's bad in general and even in a wonder spam game it's bad. because that is when you want to get your settler out asap to get all those other wonders after having your 2nd city online.

 

[drewisfat]

Countering someone's point and explaining briefly why it's bad in general is not overthinking.

 

[Fippy]

Rather than mentioning Cha i would connect it's usefulness more to map types.
On island type maps SH can be great to have cos what slows many cities down here is being unable to reach seafood in 2nd rings fast.
Who does not know tiny islands that have no good tile they can use until another city built workboats for them and they got their border pop?
In this case SH can be much better than a settler or worker, that would bring me to it's other usefulness..could be built (or tried and if not fail gold) while your capital grows.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

That's a decent point, never considered Stonehenge on a water map. It makes sense, those cities can be very useful, but oh so slow getting started. My biggest concern would be that it might slow getting the GLH, which is about the most important goal for the early stages on a water map.