Wonder discussion thread

[couerdelion]

Since we’ve sort of lost the warmongering subject in the other thread, I thought it might be an idea to extra the “wonder” discussion here. In particular, perhaps it might be a thing for people to mention their favourite wonders and put forward a case for why they are so valuable.

I would have started with Great Library but don’t have time to put together a proper case. So it will have to wait and the floor is now open…..

[jbp26]

my opinion on wonders:

must have:
great library- its cheap, and the two free scientists automatically mean more great scientists- specialists plus the GPP from the wonder. this is powerful early on too, since i can generate GPP even if i want my capitol to still emphasize growth or production.

the oracle- also very cheap and grabbing a deep tech, like CoL, is a good way to grab a religion if i skipped the earlier ones. also, taking that lets me trade for other techs and jump into the lead. great wonder.

the statue of liberty- freespecialists every where, i like this one a lot. however i think this is more for fun than for practicality. the specialists are a nice boost, but i dont ever see a seismic change in power or stability from building this.


good to have-
parthenon, sistine chapel- i feel the same about these. useful wonders, but not worth polluting the GPP pool of a main city with great artist points. if i have a high production city that i dont anticipate using as a GP generator, I'll build these.

the pyramids- good wonder, but only under certain conditions. my main problem is that htey are prohibatively expensive, though the GE points are nice. unless i have stone, industrious, or both, id rather steal them.

i think the map size and kind of game you play also has a huge effect on which wonders are useful. i prefer small maps with 8-10 civs, so great wall for instance, is pretty much useless.

[couerdelion]

I was hoping for a stronger case than this to be put forward. Saying it’s cheap and gives a valuable benefit is perhaps hiding

a) how cheap it is?
b) how valuable it is?

For example, there are many circumstances in which the Statue of Liberty is HUGELY valuable. There are few wonders that can compete with it in certain conditions. Compared to the price, it might be one of the best value wonders around. So is a cost:benefit ratio of 1:3 good or bad? These are the things that we should really know about.

[Kuciwalker]

The Statue of Liberty can also be completely worthless in some situations, too. Like OCC

[jbp26]

ok, well i play pretty casually so i cant give you exact hammer values, but i play enough that i have a good sense of, relatively, how cheap and valuable the wonders are.

i like the oracle a lot. its one of the few wonders i will try to get even if i dont have marble/industrious. if i have stone instead, i may go for the pyramids instead, though the oracle is cheap enough that you can sometimes grab both. another reason im fond of building it is that you need to follow a pretty straight tech path to get it, and by that time my workers have not yet hooked up many resources, so i don thave anything else important to build. in other words, i am losing no other opprotunities by building it, which is the main trade off of wonders. being able to grab that deep tech quickly catches me up on everythign i missed, and can keep me technologically competative. this is one of the few wonders i will pursue on monarch. there are not many situations where i wouldnt build this wonder.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
The Statue of Liberty can also be completely worthless in some situations, too. Like OCC

In the same world, so is State Property, Versailles and Forbidden Palace

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I find SoL to be quite expensive, even with the right resources and traits.

[sjm]

Totally depends on your long term goals.

i.e. if you're going for a cultural victory, hollywood, broadway and rock 'n' roll spread amongst your 3 legendary cities.

Going for diplomatic? Build the UN!

etc.

[jbp26]

Originally posted by sjm
Totally depends on your long term goals.

i.e. if you're going for a cultural victory, hollywood, broadway and rock 'n' roll spread amongst your 3 legendary cities.

Going for diplomatic? Build the UN!

etc.

some wonders are great for every victory type, notably great library, oracle, pyramids, and so on. theres some that i never build in almost any circumstance. notre dame has an ok effect and pollutes with GA points- id rather just steal it. hagia sophia, who cares. GE points, sure, but id rather get htem from specialists. i wont even go out of my way to capture this one.

[zeace]

Some wonders are powerful enough to change your play style. These are wonders that if you don't get them, you have to dramatically rethink your stategy:

Stonehenge: Non creative civ can use best city sites and get extended radius quickly. If you miss it, some of your existing city sites might be bad.

Great Wall: Your "grace period" at the start of the game before you need to build a defense grows considerably. Less true on harder levels where the AI attacks earlier. If you miss it you need to start building a defense quickly.

Pyramids (leading to Angkor Wat, Sistine Chapel, Statue of Liberty): Build them all to get powerful specialists. Forget about cottages and use farms to build your population to it's maximum. If you miss it you're going to need to get some cottages quick, and they'll never catch up to if you'd built them earlier.

Kremlin: Cheap hurry costs make buying things a lot easier. If you miss it you'll have to shift cities towards being better at building things than at making money.

Internet: You can ignore you backwards research completely. If you miss it, you need to research or trade those backwards techs.

Three Gorges Dam: Build this as quickly as possible in one city and ignore building power plants in other cities. On a large continent the savings can be considerable. If you miss it you've got a lot of power plants to start building.

---

The common favorites Oracle and Great Library don't make this list. While I think they're both great wonders, if you miss one you're probably going to play the same game you would have otherwise. The exception might be a deep Oracle slingshot gambit where you get really screwed. In that case you probably restart (or enjoy a challenge )

[CerberusIV]

I tend to skip most of the early wonders. I am usually concentrating on long term city devlopment or early wars so the AI's get most of the wonders.

The two I do like are Hanging Gardens and the Colossus. Both are fairly easy to get requiring techs that are on the way to something else essential. The AI's usually concentrate on other wonders. The pop boost from HG is nice if you have several cities, particularly if you have just captured some from an AI and the health boost can allow all your cities to grow just that little bit bigger and more productive. Not essential but nice.

Colossus can dig your economy out of a hole if you have good coastal cities with seafood. It's relatively cheap to build and, coupled with harbours for trade routes and maybe a few markets, can provide quite a critical economic boost. Again not essential but worth picking up if you get the opportunity.

[couerdelion]

We’re still lacking any coherent argument for the real value of wonders so I will go ahead and state the case for the Great Library

Assumptions: The figures here are all Epic speed with “normal” settings – ie no artificial settings (like OCC, Always War/Peace, No Tech trading)

I will also assume that I have Marble and am running Organised Religion. The former makes GLib cheaper while the latter makes it more expensive. I will also assume that the civ has already generated a couple of GP and has an academy in the city where it is destined to be built.

In order to compare cost to benefit I will be using the simple formulae 2h=3g and 1g=1.2b. These figures are all “post-multiplier” figures. The second ratio recognises that, at this stage in the game, beakers are subject to more multipliers than gold. Since all the benefits of the GL are going to be expressed first in terms of beakers, I wanted to make sure I did not overstate the benefits.

Finally, in the cost:benefit comparison will be made at the time the GL is completed. In order to “capitalise” the value of a stream of benefits emerging after it is finished, I will apply a multiplier to the benefits emerging each turn. I find, at Epic speed, 66.7 is a suitable multiplier which represents average civ growth of around 1.5% per turn.

So first the COST

GL costs 525 hammers but with bonuses, the real cost given up to build it is less if we have wonder production bonuses. In this case, the “real” cost is (525h x 5/9 = 392h)

Converting this to gold gives us a total cost of 588g

The BENEFIT comes in two parts

a) The science benefit is 6bpt + 75% = 10.5b

Applying a multiplier to this gives us 10.5 * 66.7 = 700b which, converting to a gold value gives us 700 * 5/6 = 583g

b) For the GPP benefit I need to make a couple of further assumptions. The first is that each GP will be worth around 2000b. Second, I will value my GPP, not on the cost of the next GP, but on the average cost of the next three GPP. In this case, it will be 600 GPP per GP.

Each GPP is therefore worth 20b/6 so the value of 8 GPP per turn is 160b/6 per turn. Applying then a multiplier gives us a total value of 26.7 x 66.7 = 1777b.

Converting this to gold gives us 1481g

So the total benefit is 1481g + 583g = 2064g


With a cost of 588g, the benefit to cost ratio of 3.4 to 1.

[rjmatsleepers]

Value of Great Library

I have never doubted that the Great Library is worth building - ie that the benefits exceed the cost. The issue for me is about whether I can succeed in building it. In particular, to what extent should I choose my research path in order to be able to build it early.

RJM

[couerdelion]

I tend to interpret a 3.4 to 1 cost/benefit ratio as something indicating the closest thing CIV gets to a "killer application".

In other words, with marble, you go out of your way. Without it, you might not be so easily tempted.

For added value use the next GS for Philosophy to run Pacifism and you are now flying.

[Swiss Pauli]

Great Wonders are all nice to have, not need to have and generally I'll consider building them if I have the production accellerator and nothing better to do. The exception is the Oracle, for three reasons: it's cheap, can give great return on investment, and yields no benefit if captured later.