giza better night or day

[puzzlereed]

ive seen many players play both but which one is better? personaly i play day and have won almost all with it.

[jjgllg]

in my opinion heavily situational. Most people seem to play night a lot but i take day quite often. Depends on what type of strategy you will push, and what resources the others are likely to have. to me probably most common deciding factor is the availability of paper: you dont want to play a paper usually, but you would often play the loom. so if you know paper will be available, night might be better, if you are not sure, day is easier. basically you dont want to have to play more resource cards on night than you would on day. wonder stage gives points, it is an insurance, but it is also a card away from playing something else, and sometimes you would rather skip a stage, even if you could play a stage. but i consider giza one of my worse wonders so my advice might not be good. in my opinion giza is tricky as it lacks the obviously advantageous path: starting resource does not get you a neither red nor green, so it feels like you start from the back of the grid. But sometimes you get massive wins with it.

[Lukov]

I personally see Gizah as either second worst or worst wonder. It is a close match with the new version Alexandria which was intentionally ruined.

I usually tend to pick side B (night), but I don't always pick it. I will sum it up like this: B side is for strategic hate drafting as you have an extra wonder stage.
A side has a better play overall.

Have in mind that hate drafting is usually a strategy to make sure the green player doesn't win. What ends up happening in these situations is that you hate draft and someone goes full greed because you are doing your part and the greedy player wins. This is also why Gizah in general is a bad wonder. Your "strong suit" is helping someone else win.

[Ratincage27]

I slightly prefer Giza over Olympia and moderately prefer it over Alex. I like that it's easier to pivot strategies to adapt to opponents with Giza than with Olympia.

My suggestions are tailored for 3-player, but I'd note that resources per player are most bountiful in a 4-player setup, which tends to strengthen Giza night in particular.

My default is picking night side; I need to find reasons to pick the day side and probably find a good enough justification about 20-30% of the time. Factors that make me more likely to take day side:

• When there is greater risk I'll need to take 2 cards to have enough access to grey resources (e.g., Alex will probably play night side, neither Babylon nor Hali is in the game)
• When there is a greater risk no one besides me will be motivated to take double brick because my opponent might hide that card in Age II (discard or use to build wonder) and, also, it's typically bad for Giza to play two brown cards to get 3 brick themselves. Giza wants to rely on gold or the caravansary for at least 1 brick because it has too many other pressing needs in the first two ages. For example, Carthage night, Alex night, and Ephesos night are all unlikely to want double brick and present a heightened risk for hiding it.
• The polar extreme in the opposite direction: both opponents might be highly motivated to take brick resource cards (e.g., Carthage day & Olympia day). This situation can easily create a gold shortage for Giza night when they end up in a situation where they don't have a trading post for the opponent with brick, resulting in needing to pay 2 gold any time they want to build a card requiring two brick and need to pay 4 gold for the 3rd stage of the wonder.

[losbrugno]

in my opinion giza is tricky as it lacks the obviously advantageous path: starting resource does not get you a neither red nor green, so it feels like you start from the back of the grid. But sometimes you get massive wins with it.

I personally see Gizah as either second worst or worst wonder. It is a close match with the new version Alexandria which was intentionally ruined.

I usually tend to pick side B (night), but I don't always pick it. I will sum it up like this: B side is for strategic hate drafting as you have an extra wonder stage.
A side has a better play overall.

Have in mind that hate drafting is usually a strategy to make sure the green player doesn't win. What ends up happening in these situations is that you hate draft and someone goes full greed because you are doing your part and the greedy player wins. This is also why Gizah in general is a bad wonder. Your "strong suit" is helping someone else win.

I don't think Giza is tricky, it's designed to be one of the easiest wonders to play, if you talk to a new player you'll often hear something like "I need a lot of resources here" and that's fair, you do actually need quite some to get all 20 wonder points. The subtle advantage here is that you can generally only focus on points and you will always get a decent score; Giza is not strong because you can explode in points, it's good because it's solid, is incredibly solid, and I'll rather take 50 arena games with Giza than with Rhodos, Ephesos, Olympia or Alex. Yes I think Giza is overall one of the best wonders, it has been growing up on me and I'm always fine playing with it in every player count, because it benefits from every double brown, from having often trading posts pointed at with different type of scoring points.

Also Giza is incredibly strong in denying points, it's the best in the game indeed: you can be right after the green player, and score a lot in age 3 but still hide green cards age 2; you can be last from the green player, and still score high if you pick early blue points. Remember that when you hide something you are scoring points, whilst others aren't. It's not necessarily hate drafting (that is often a guaranteed loss), that's just strategically know when to play a good card and when to hide it. A common mistake is to delay too much wonders stages because of the greed of scoring points and the feeling of being behind, but that's not how the pyramids were actually built! Be patient and play your stuff, try to generally be at the end of age 2 with at least 2 stages built, and you'll be surprised about how well can score Giza.

I slightly prefer Giza over Olympia and moderately prefer it over Alex. I like that it's easier to pivot strategies to adapt to opponents with Giza than with Olympia.

My suggestions are tailored for 3-player, but I'd note that resources per player are most bountiful in a 4-player setup, which tends to strengthen Giza night in particular.

My default is picking night side; I need to find reasons to pick the day side and probably find a good enough justification about 20-30% of the time. Factors that make me more likely to take day side:

• When there is greater risk I'll need to take 2 cards to have enough access to grey resources (e.g., Alex will probably play night side, neither Babylon nor Hali is in the game)
• When there is a greater risk no one besides me will be motivated to take double brick because my opponent might hide that card in Age II (discard or use to build wonder) and, also, it's typically bad for Giza to play two brown cards to get 3 brick themselves. Giza wants to rely on gold or the caravansary for at least 1 brick because it has too many other pressing needs in the first two ages. For example, Carthage night, Alex night, and Ephesos night are all unlikely to want double brick and present a heightened risk for hiding it.
• The polar extreme in the opposite direction: both opponents might be highly motivated to take brick resource cards (e.g., Carthage day & Olympia day). This situation can easily create a gold shortage for Giza night when they end up in a situation where they don't have a trading post for the opponent with brick, resulting in needing to pay 2 gold any time they want to build a card requiring two brick and need to pay 4 gold for the 3rd stage of the wonder.

I agree with almost everything, there's nothing wrong here, just in my personal experience, I never play Giza day, I think it defeats the entire purpose of Giza. I can't find a world where day side is best for reds than night side:
you need the same exact resources but you miss 5 wonder points which leads to worst arena, worst builders guild (I hope it's the correct name, the one which scores points based on every wonder stage completed), and generally worst points;
you can play reds efficiently with night side as well, no need to rush resources immediately;
you should never worry about grey resources, you already need a lot of stuff and you should never play them regardless, so you might as well let others play that;
talking about clay, yes it's scary to think about it in 3p, but imo the reward of just having 3rd stage available, even if you only played 1 clay, is extremely powerful, not playing for it feels just bad (personal opinion).

Lastly, stone is not a bad starting resource, and by the time someone snatched you double clay, you should realistically have walls available, and in 3p that's just incredibly powerful.

[Ratincage27]

I agree with almost everything, there's nothing wrong here, just in my personal experience, I never play Giza day, I think it defeats the entire purpose of Giza. I can't find a world where day side is best for reds than night side:
you need the same exact resources but you miss 5 wonder points which leads to worst arena, worst builders guild (I hope it's the correct name, the one which scores points based on every wonder stage completed), and generally worst points;
you can play reds efficiently with night side as well, no need to rush resources immediately;
you should never worry about grey resources, you already need a lot of stuff and you should never play them regardless, so you might as well let others play that;
talking about clay, yes it's scary to think about it in 3p, but imo the reward of just having 3rd stage available, even if you only played 1 clay, is extremely powerful, not playing for it feels just bad (personal opinion).

Lastly, stone is not a bad starting resource, and by the time someone snatched you double clay, you should realistically have walls available, and in 3p that's just incredibly powerful.

Yeah, we mostly agree. It is obvious that the upside is greater with Giza night in every situation. To reword my opinion, my argument is that the risk of getting an atypically low score is substantially greater in some situations. Just plugging in some hypothetical numbers that seem plausible, if taking night side gives me a 30% change of scoring more than 65 points (my average over last 500 games is around 58.5 point in 3p) but also a 20% chance of scoring fewer than 55 points, I'm not inclined to take that tradeoff because one often wins 3p with 60-65 points.

For a plausible comparative estimate of probabilities, maybe A side gives me only a 20% chance at more than 65 points, but reduces my risk of fewer than 55 points to 8%.

you should never worry about grey resources, you already need a lot of stuff and you should never play them regardless, so you might as well let others play that;

For sure! I want to avoid all grey cards and get my grey resources affordably by taking either the market or the forum. But Giza night gets hurt more than Giza day when I fail at that goal or succeed but still need to take a grey card just to have access to all three grey resources (when this happens, the most common cause is Alex night burying a key grey to harm both opponents). I think that might be an issue as frequently as 25-35% of games in which Alex is an opponent. Olympia day and Alex night as opponents is the riskiest scenario because both want to avoid grey cards.