no transfer of production!

[Mahdimael]

Originally posted by sophist
That's the point. In the game, there are some small risks and some big risks. Small risks have small payoffs and big risks have big payoffs. If a Wonder is so powerful that it makes or breaks your game, then it's probably too powerful.

Besides, giving everyone the ability to derive some fraction of a Wonder benefits erodes their purpose. I get Pyramids 1, so I get granaries in all my cities. You get Pyramids 2, so you get granaries in half your cities. Someone else gets Pyramids 3, so they get granaries in a third of their cities. etc. At the end, everyone has some number of free granaries. Might as well give free granaries to begin with and skip all the jumping through hoops.

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument, but I do think that something should be done to alleviate the problem of someone building a wonder. Early on, a wonder can take upwards of 40 turns to build- the wonder itself may not break the game, but it can certainly set you back. That's not to say that the risk shouldn't be there-just not have the penalty be so dire. Hence a primary and secondary bonus for the wonders- enough of a gap between them so that not being able to make the Wonder first is a blow, but not enough that getting the secondary Wonder is basically the same thing as getting the primary.

Hence my example- the primary builder of the Pyramids would get free granaries and upkeep, while a secondary builder would only get a reduction in upkeep. It might even change the person's strategy; for example, if that player didn't have any granaries, it might provide impetus to do build them

[Kuciwalker]

Both of these changes are very good, though perhaps there should be some decay of shields held towards something not currently being produced.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Oh, I think the previous example of 'Space Program' is a poor one to justify having pre-builds for Wonders. After all, in Civ3 the Space Program is a Small Wonder-and thus obtainable by all nations. Its a very different story for a great wonder like the Colossus, which we know was done only the once. The way I see it, in realism terms, might be :
Advisor-'Sire, we have almost finished the Colossus, but have yet to do the head and arms. We have just found out, though, that those wicked Greeks have beaten us to it'.
You-'Oh well, we don't want to seem like Copy-cats. We will just demolish it and sell the second-hand bronze for scrap...In fact, I could probably use that cash to buy those triremes I was after...'

Oh, two other points though. First, this change might be evidence that they have changed the way that Difficulty levels work, as an AI production bonus at higher levels will just majorly suck from a Wonder-building perspective. So, I wonder how difficulty will work now??
Secondly, don't forget that certain types of alliances (I think) will allow civs to share Wonder effects-thus taking some of the pressure of needing to build them yourself!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Dis]

perhaps there should be civ specific wonders. That only you can build, but the AI can't build. or perhaps regional wonders, like north african civs can build the pyramids.

This would alleviate 2 people building the same wonder at the same time (which is kind of silly if you ask me)

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Doesn't bother me at all, Dis. Its one of those 'Gameplay trumps realism' things, IMHO.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Mahdimael


I don't necessarily disagree with your argument, but I do think that something should be done to alleviate the problem of someone building a wonder. Early on, a wonder can take upwards of 40 turns to build- the wonder itself may not break the game, but it can certainly set you back. That's not to say that the risk shouldn't be there-just not have the penalty be so dire. Hence a primary and secondary bonus for the wonders- enough of a gap between them so that not being able to make the Wonder first is a blow, but not enough that getting the secondary Wonder is basically the same thing as getting the primary.

Hence my example- the primary builder of the Pyramids would get free granaries and upkeep, while a secondary builder would only get a reduction in upkeep. It might even change the person's strategy; for example, if that player didn't have any granaries, it might provide impetus to do build them

AFAIK Great Wonders give you the Primary Effect, as well as a cultural Bonus or the city they´re in.
So why not giving the Civ which finishes the wonder first the primary effect and the cultural bonus, whereas each Civ which finishes the wonder second, third ... receives "just" the cultural bonus for the city (or maybe half of the cultural bonus the first builder of the wonder received)

[LDiCesare]

I think decay of projects not underway would be good (lose 1 hammer per turn for instance is simple enough ro code and understand).
As for wonders, I like it the way they are doing it, i.e. like galciv. Galciv had one interesting thing, though, which was trade goods. They were basically wonders whose effects you could trade. That would be nice to have. Silk is a typical example of a trade good (kept by the Chinese for long, and once given/sold to others, the monopoly is lost). This approach allows to trade wonder effects when you were beaten to one of them.

[Risa]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Keeping fro more than one turn would make for a great way to prepare and launch hidden alpha strikes:
Build a cavalry in every city. Stop when there's one turn left.
Build an infantry in every city but stop when there's one turn left.
Build and artillery everywhere and stop again.
Build something else.
When you need your units, you may have them in 3 turns, without having paid maintenance cost for them in the meanwhile.
Look, my neighbour is weak. Let's attack him.
Next turn: How's that, one infantry in every city?
Next turn: Where do these artilleries come from?
Next turn: He's actually striking back with cavalry?
We'll see if that can be pulled off. Maybe you can use conscription at the same time to augment the size of the army even more.

A simple solution: just let all negative effects (maintenance, unhappy face, negative health, etc.) take place from the beginning of training/building, not at the completion of it. Then all the above trick achieves is surprise. You won't save a single penny.

[LarryLard]

Originally posted by patcon


May be too late for initial release inclusion, but what about patches or mods? Will we at least get a warning that another civ has started a wonder?

Such warnings exist in Civ1, 2, 3, right?

Here's an evil plan, assuming that you'll get a warning message that another civ is about to finish a wonder

Such warnings were in Civ 2 if memory serves, but weren't in Civ 3 I think. Personally, I would welcome their return.

[Mahdimael]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


AFAIK Great Wonders give you the Primary Effect, as well as a cultural Bonus or the city they´re in.
So why not giving the Civ which finishes the wonder first the primary effect and the cultural bonus, whereas each Civ which finishes the wonder second, third ... receives "just" the cultural bonus for the city (or maybe half of the cultural bonus the first builder of the wonder received)

That works too. The point is that you're not penalizing the person who doesn't build the wonder- they're just not getting the extra bonus the wonder provides.

[Tattila the Hun]

Originally posted by Risa

A simple solution: just let all negative effects (maintenance, unhappy face, negative health, etc.) take place from the beginning of training/building, not at the completion of it. Then all the above trick achieves is surprise. You won't save a single penny.

That could also faciliate unwanted wars, because of perceived military weakness.

[patcon]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
AFAIK Great Wonders give you the Primary Effect, as well as a cultural Bonus or the city they´re in.
So why not giving the Civ which finishes the wonder first the primary effect and the cultural bonus, whereas each Civ which finishes the wonder second, third ... receives "just" the cultural bonus for the city (or maybe half of the cultural bonus the first builder of the wonder received)

Giving the culture bonus and not the primary bonus seems the opposite of what it should be. China builds its Great Wall first and gets a nice defensive bonus and the culture of having the world admire its great accomplishment. Now along come the Romans and they build their "Great Wall" (Hadrian's Wall) - they still get a nice defensive bonus, but the world (who knows of China's Great Wall) doesn't bow at their feet saying "Ooh, look at the unique thing you've done, let's value your culture," because they view the Roman Wall as just a Semi-Great Wall.

How about this? If you build a wonder, you get the primary benefits - Ancient Cavalry every 5th turn, free granaries, etc. If you are the first (as far as you know) to build a wonder, you get the culture bonus. But as soon as you become aware that another civ built it before you did (either by direct or indirect contact) you lose the culture bonus, and possibly a small negative culture "bonus" for the disappointment your people feel at realizing they weren't the first. (Remember how you felt when your girlfriend told you that you weren't, as Star Trek put it, "going where no man had gone before"?)

"You get the culture as long as you think you're the first" presumes that there are no warnings about other civs starting or finishing a wonder. This always struck me as odd, when a message appeared that "The Zulus have begun the Colossus" when neither I nor any of the civs with whom I have contact even know of their existence. My response is "Who the heck are the Zulus and where are they????"

[TomVeil]

Originally posted by yin26
Here would be a compromise: The entire value of a wonder is that, well, it's so unique in the world. I say, therefore, that if Civ A and Civ B both develop Great Pyramids...they both get to keep them but at only half the benefit. To make it even better, I would only cut these benefits if CivA and CivB, either through direct knowledge of each other or through an intermediary Civ, could logically know about each others accomplishments. Then both populations say: "Well, our Pyramids are still Great, but I guess not so great after all."

This process would continue. So if CivC also built them and was aware of Civ A and Civ B (everybody knows everybody), then the benefits drop to 1/3rd for each civ. This has the following plusses:

1) Anybody can still build any wonder and get at least some benefit.

2) Remaining an isolationist would have at least one small benefit.

3) Building wonders now also serves to detract from your enemy's power. You can now strategically match his building prowess and leave his people less impressed with their own wonders.

In other words, player control and strategy.

I wholeheartedly agree. No one in history has ever said, "we'd better cancel our grand plans; it looks like the foreigners have finished their grand plans." If it's too late to code this in, then there should at least be a sliding-scale percentage of retained shields (e.g., 90% of shields working on a University retained when switching to Copernicus; 80% switching to Cathedral; 20% switching to Rifleman)

[Mahdimael]

Fractional bonuses are ok, but they complicate the issue tremendously.

The idea about giving only wonder benefits is ok, but then a wonder simply becomes another city improvement. Not to mention that some wonder benefits have nothing to do with the wonder- Granaries from the Pyramids, for example.

The easiest idea would be just to let/force people to sell partially completed wonders for gold, reflecting the value of the materials used.

Another idea is to be able to sacrifice population to finish a wonder- raising the unhappiness rate and lowering the population, of course

[sophist]

Originally posted by TomVeil
I wholeheartedly agree. No one in history has ever said, "we'd better cancel our grand plans; it looks like the foreigners have finished their grand plans."

That's because they all had different grand plans. That suggests a different solution to me, namely one of greatly increasing the number of Wonders while substantially decreasing their effects. Most Wonder effects are weird anyway. The Pyramids?