Natural national wonder pairings?

[Geronimo]

In my first game I ended up minimizing the effectiveness of some of my national wonders by putting a second national wonder in some cities that would have best been left open for a different second national wonder that became available later on.

So what combinations of national wonders usually end up together? What are the best national wonder pairings that have been discovered by those who have played through civ4 multiple times?

So far the obvious choice seemed to be to put wallstreet in any city that had two or more shrines, but in my case that was my capitol. Maybe wallstreet doesn't go best in the capitol and the smart thing would have been to build a palace elsewhere to allow for a normal capitol national wonder pair to be built?

[binTravkin]

Wallstreet goes with shrines, certainly

If you are using bureaucracy (and you should do, up to free speech), Oxford university goes at your capital.

Usually it turns out that your capital has both Wall Street and Oxford.

For a Great People Farm, use National Epic + Globe theatre

For military staging centre (should be good food and high on hammers) use Heroic Epic + Westpoint
For a secondary military/production center, use Iron Works

Hermitage goes where you want your borders to expand towards, or if you are attempting cultural victory, in the 3rd strongest culture city (to boost it).

That's about it I guess..

[Blake]

Here are my favorites:

Oxfords in Capital. This usually makes sense. Often paired up with Heroic Epic to get the HE functioning asap.

Heroic Epic + Westpoint. This is an obvious combo but bear in mind that you might be able to conclude the game long before Westpoint, an early HE in your best city can be very useful sometimes...

National Epic in wonder city. This is usually the cheapest way to get gpp. Don't bother if you have Philo or Pacifism the artist pollution aint worth it (late game when you have like 6 quality gpp sources it's okay).

Iron Works + National Epic. This is good if you didn't bother with an early NE, because the IW makes it possible to run mass engineers and GE's are great in the late game. Or maybe you built your NE in an awesome wonder-building city and saved the other slot for IW.

Ironworks + Globe Theater. This IMHO is the best use of the Globe Theater, it gives you a guaranteed nexus of production, massive war-weariness wont faze it.

Ironworks + Wallstreet. If you massed great prophets and settled them you can end up with a city enjoying both large hammers and lots of gold. Wallstreet is quite expensive so it needs to be built in a strong hammer city.


Remember that Ironworks exists for one main purposes - Cranking out Wonders and SS parts. Make sure you pair it up with a NW which doesn't occupy the build queue with non-wonders/SS parts.

Now for the stragglers:

Westpoint: I rarely bother, to be honest. If I have a dedicated military pump with a lonely HE it goes there. But it's no big loss.
Hermitage : In a city which needs the culture? Or don't bother.
Globe Theater: I don't bother with it unless I pair it with the IW for late game warmongering.
Forbidden Palace: I don't usually bother unless I get a strong production city in a good location. It has very little effect.
Red Cross: Doesn't usually have any impact on the game. Build it in a coastal city so you can get medic transports.
Scotland Yard: I don't bother with it, typically. Just put it in any moderately strong city but don't waste a slot.

[Geronimo]

thanks!

The logic about national wonders that enhance unit production being wasted in the IW city was especially helpful. I have indeed found my IW city obliged to spend nearly all it's time on wonders or necessary improvements for the IW city. National epic has been essentially wasted there.

Forbidden palace doesn't do much?

Is versailles any better?

[zeace]

with binTrakin's ideas:
Red Cross can go with Iron Works to make a 2nd military city.


If you end up with your main holy city not being your capital, you should still put oxford in your capital unless another city is super commercial. I usually end up putting Ironworks as the 2nd wonder there if it has good production, or Globe Theater if it has good food.

The holy city gets Wall Street, and sometimes I'll put National Epic there. This can help the 2nd city keep up with your capital.


You should probably never put National Epic in your capital, as this will cause all your other cities to have a hard time keeping up. If your capital has too many GPP per turn, no other city will ever create a great person so their GPP are wasted. To that end I might disagree with bin's suggestion to add National Epic to a Great Person Farm. In the end you have to decide whether you'd rather have 6 cities making GPs, but each slowly, or a single GP pump making them a bit faster. I find the first approach generally makes more GPs early, but the later makes them more regularly and makes them faster late in the game.

Sometimes you can arrange 3 cities that all produce similar (and high) GPP per turn. Often one will have Ironworks and will build a lot of wonders, the 2nd will have the Globe and lots of food/specialists, and lastly your capital will have some original wonders and a few specialists along with oxford. If all 3 cities produce around the same number of GPP, then they will all be making effective use of those points. Sometimes you have to add the National Epic to one of the cities to get it up to the level of the other 2. That's my favorite use of it.

[binTravkin]

You should probably never put National Epic in your capital, as this will cause all your other cities to have a hard time keeping up. If your capital has too many GPP per turn, no other city will ever create a great person so their GPP are wasted.

Specialising is the key.
If you spread your GPPs over multiple cities, they are much less effective.
A simple mathematical example:
If you're having 3 cities 3 specialists, you are generating 9 base GPP in each of them or 27 in total.
If you now build National Epic in one of them, you generate 36 in total.

Now, with one city + National Epic you only need (36/2)/3 = 6 specialists to achieve the same GPP rate.

[rah]

While oxford is usually a must in your cap (if it's a science city), and has plenty of food, I'll sometimes match it with globe to keep it maxed during war. Wall street is rarely a bad thing for you cap, but I can usually find another city that will almost put it to as good of use. It depends how early I start the wars.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by zeace

You should probably never put National Epic in your capital, as this will cause all your other cities to have a hard time keeping up. If your capital has too many GPP per turn, no other city will ever create a great person so their GPP are wasted. To that end I might disagree with bin's suggestion to add National Epic to a Great Person Farm. In the end you have to decide whether you'd rather have 6 cities making GPs, but each slowly, or a single GP pump making them a bit faster. I find the first approach generally makes more GPs early, but the later makes them more regularly and makes them faster late in the game.

So when my capitol spits out a GP how does that effect the odds of my other cities producing a GP?

What are the limits on GP production?

[rah]

I think the point is.
Let's say the capital is producing 100 gp points
and your other city is producing 10
and you're at the needs 1000 points for next one.

ten turns in your cap spits out a gp
your second city now has 100 pts
It goes up to 1100 for the next one.
your cap will spit one out in 11 more turns. Unless you keep settling them in your cap
your second city is now at 210 points.

Since the level of what it takes keeps going up, it's going to be quite a while that your cap isn't always going to beat the second city to the new level)


But later in the game when it gets to be a ton of gp points needed, those straggler cities that have accumulated points all game may get one in since it's now taking the cap 30 turns.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by rah
I think the point is.
Let's say the capital is producing 100 gp points
and your other city is producing 10
and you're at the needs 1000 points for next one.

ten turns in your cap spits out a gp
your second city now has 100 pts
It goes up to 1100 for the next one.
your cap will spit one out in 11 more turns. Unless you keep settling them in your cap
your second city is now at 210 points.

Since the level of what it takes keeps going up, it's going to be quite a while that your cap isn't always going to beat the second city to the new level)


But later in the game when it gets to be a ton of gp points needed, those straggler cities that have accumulated points all game may get one in since it's now taking the cap 30 turns.

ok so every time any of my cities produces a GP it only increases the "cost" of the next GP in that particular city?

[Shr3dZ]

everytime you produce a GP from any city it increases the cost of the next GP for all cities.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Shr3dZ
everytime you produce a GP from any city it increases the cost of the next GP for all cities.

Ok so do people try to synchronize cities so that you can beat the cap by producing multiple GPs in a single turn or would the cost be instantly increased so that a GP in another of your cities who would have been born in that same turn now has to wait much longer to meet the new cost?

If there is no way to beat the cost like that it would seem that by far the best approach to getting gps would be select a flood plain city to crank out specialists like crazy, use a couple engineers to build a few GP boosting wonders there (as it's hammer production will be almost restricted to specialist contributions) and just let that one city pop out all the GPs?

[rah]

Yes that is considered the best approach early on.
But not only one city will have specialists so later in the game getting one gp or two from the other cities is a nice bonus.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by rah
Yes that is considered the best approach early on.
But not only one city will have specialists so later in the game getting one gp or two from the other cities is a nice bonus.

so multiple GPs produced in a single turn to beat the cap is feasible?

It sounds like a serious pain to micromanage. is it done primarily through specialist assignment?

[Shr3dZ]

if you need 200 GP points to complete your next GP, and 2 cities achieve it on the same turn, you will have produced 1 GP and will then have to wait another 10+ turns before the next city reaches 300 GP points (assuming you play at standard speed).

furthermore, if one of those cities was completely dominant at producing GP points, you would stop its production for one turn, let the other city get you a GP and then resume with the more dominant one.

At which point you may decide to cease all GP production from the less dominant of the two since it may take all game (or never) before it pops another GP.

It would prolly be best to have one city bear the brunt of all GP production, that way whenever you build something that increases your GP points/turn (parthenon? 50% GP points?) it increases a higher total amount.