Building the Hypogeum

 

East Germany now knows the secret of Ceremonial Burial and this unlocks several happiness generating buildings. Temples - or the Sauna Temple in this particular game - are the usual choice for keeping people content but there is an early small wonder one may want to build if there is no need for bronze and phalanxes. That's because bronze obsoletes the Hypogeum. Phalanxes are great defenders but one can defend with a warriors or with veteran warriors. The veteran warriors are almost as good as green phalanxes. And from the tech costs I can see no one has horses and will not be able to send any here for at least 3-4 turns after discovering the tech so I'm safe from those and there is time to react.

Building the Hypogeum can really boost the production in the city it's built in. It's usually built in the capital but in some cases it may make sense to built it elsewhere. Hypogeum adds lux to the city it's located in. Enough lux to make a size 3 - 6 city to celebrate. Cities celebrating get rid of the -1 penalty despotism has for tiles producing more than 2.

 In this picture you can see how Hypogeum is being produced. The city will grow to size 2 next turn and then it will take 3 more turns to grow to size 3. That's when I want the small wonder to be finished. Next turn is T5 and at that time the city has 9/20 towards Hypogeum. The granary will have 7/14 food and since the city doesn't have two food specials it will be getting 3 food each turn. That means it needs 3 + 3 + 1 food for growing to size 3. This mean that for one turn it makes sense to use a production tile giving more than 1 shield. The coal tile is a perfect one for that. It's also possible to irrigate one of the 1/1/1 tiles before those are needed.

That way the city should have Hypogeum ready by the time the city grows to size 3. It's of course possible waste and corruption kicks in with some surprises but I didn't really bother to optimize this that far. If I would really have to get the building ready at time and the city would be short of few shields it might make sense to accelerate the production by disbanding a warrior in the city. Disbanded units give 50% of the shields back to production and with a warrior that would be 5 shields. It's sometimes worth it.