Wonder building

[Yuufo]

Hi,

I'm a kind of wonder-addict. I can't help building a nice wonder, even when there would be a lot of things much more interesting to choose.

There is a major difference about wonder building in Civ 4: it can be sometimes very quick. For example, you see a place where there is Marble, you found a city there, chop two forests, and the Oracle is yours.

Chopping, traits and double-production resources are essential to build quickly. Thus, it is essential to research Bronze Working! However, don't use Slaves to build wonders because I think they provide less hammers than they do for standard buildings. Furthermore, Metal Casting can be very useful, both for building a Blacksmith, and to get engineer - great people from specialists.

That's why I would like to develop a research order aiming to Metal Casting; with the idea of building a blacksmith, putting someone at work in it, and use my civ's first great engineer to build the Pyramids. Later get Hanging Gardens, and add another engineer-producing wonder to my city.

Does this kind of strategy look realistic to your eyes?

And what is your opinion about my rule of thumb "Wonder construction should be allowed to begin, only if it can be completed within 12 turns" (including lumber chopping - doubling production)?

[khumak]

Re: Wonder building

Originally posted by Yuufo
And what is your opinion about my rule of thumb "Wonder construction should be allowed to begin, only if it can be completed within 12 turns" (including lumber chopping - doubling production)?

I don't think you'll be building many wonders if that's your rule of thumb. If you're industrious and have a resource that doubles production you'll get some of them that fast or even faster but most are going to be longer than 20 turns. Some games you just flat out won't have any stone or marble for thousands of years. You may not have any copper either for a long time. I usually play continents and I've started on several continents that were totally lacking 1 or 2 of those and a couple times all 3.

In most of my games my first couple of cities wind up being my most productive so they build about 95% of all of my wonders and most of the great prophets and great engineers get added to those 2 cities to further boost production. The best way to make sure you're able to build as many wonders as possible is to make sure you're one of the first to discover the tech that unlocks it and don't trade it away until you've built the wonder.

[Bobby Chicken]

You cannot possibly be as big a wonder fanatic as me. I build them ALL. I love them. Is start the game off by building stonehenge. When a wonder appears on my production list, cease all, wonder time. 12 turns? I would build a wonder if it took me 112. I had about 30 of them 1 game. All seven other civs had 2 together. In Civ 4, wonders are so easy to get when you have an industrious society (go Indians and Chinese). Wow, its hard to believe I used to be a warmonger. I don't have time to build units; every city is building a wonder; sometimes I have five or six going at once.

[Yuufo]

Yes Bobby Chicken, but on Monarch it's... hard :-)

Especially in the beginning of the game... once you have taken a tech lead you can build almost all wonders. But for example in my last game I could only have Oracle, Colossus, Great Library in Ancient Age!

[khumak]

Yeah on the harder levels it's pretty much impossible to build all of the wonders like you can on Noble or below. On Noble I generally am able to get every single wonder. The AI doesn't get any at all. As soon as I jumped up to Prince I had to let some go and pick the most important ones for myself. I'm sure it only gets worse from there. I imagine on Deity you'd probably have to save up some Great Engineers to rush wonders with if you wanted to beat the AI to any.

[Stageon]

I just played a 4 vs 4 multplayer game and even though I was raking in the wonders at first and was still able to do so from a production standpoint, suddenly it didn't let me build anymore.

I know there are limits to how many national wonders a city can build, but are there limits to the world wonders as well? Like maybe 5? If so, does this mean I could still build more, just in another city?

Thanks.

[V3nom]

You cant get every single wonder on higher difficulty levels, but you can pinpoint and grab the key ones you want for your strategy.

In my current Emperor level difficulty I have snarred the following: Pyramids, stonehenge, the great lighthouse, Angkor Wat, The Great library, The Pantheon.

I am currently at 1350AD so there are more I hope to get yet.

As you can see I've targetted wonders with a certain theme to them to suit my strategy. (basically get specialists as powerful as possible). That is the key on higher levels, KNOW what wonders you want.. then go for them ASAP before the AI can get them before you. You wont get them all, but you can get most of the really important ones.