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The effects of wonders are determined by the needs of game balance. Their powers are not logical, and often its hard to take them seriously. If Trekkies and other crazy fan communities can have fun creating contrived and farfetched explanations of various improbably or impossible situations (beyond the usual “a wizard did it”) in the shows and books they adore, why can’t the civ community?
Several wonder effects are quite logical, some are plausible. We are going to start with those and work our way to the silly ones. Criticize my explanations add your own, the best ones will be added to the list. If all goes well after a few pages we will have a full explanation of all the wonders.
All the world wonders can be put into three broad categories.
The first is clear effect wonders, building the wonder is gaining the benefit (like The Manhattan project, Space Elevator or perhaps the Great Wall).
The second kind, are enablers, they are not built to gain the benefit, the benefit is spin off. A unintended result perhaps because of the needs of the vast project or the prestige it gains you. (The Statue of Zeus was not built to increase foreign war weariness, but if the other civ has a bigger and better temple to their god than yours you may feel a bit demoralized)
The third are indicator wonders these do not provide the advantage themselves and do no produce it as spin off, per se, but are more of a sing, a symptom if you will of a certain kind of society. The Colossus is build because of the commercial success of maritime trade. Maritime trade does not happen because you have a big shiny statue in one of your cities. But you could argue that the “indicator” still has a psychological effect powerful enough to be considered an “enabler”, this introduces a little bit of ambiguity.
Sometimes the divide is clear, other times it is not. Many wonders are both enablers and indicators. Truly clear-cut cases are few, since most wonders arguably have elements of at least two categories.
I’m going to start out with a few modern and ancient examples, later I’ll edit in the best explanations and put them in their proper era, like renaissance.
Several wonder effects are quite logical, some are plausible. We are going to start with those and work our way to the silly ones. Criticize my explanations add your own, the best ones will be added to the list. If all goes well after a few pages we will have a full explanation of all the wonders.
All the world wonders can be put into three broad categories.
The first is clear effect wonders, building the wonder is gaining the benefit (like The Manhattan project, Space Elevator or perhaps the Great Wall).
The second kind, are enablers, they are not built to gain the benefit, the benefit is spin off. A unintended result perhaps because of the needs of the vast project or the prestige it gains you. (The Statue of Zeus was not built to increase foreign war weariness, but if the other civ has a bigger and better temple to their god than yours you may feel a bit demoralized)
The third are indicator wonders these do not provide the advantage themselves and do no produce it as spin off, per se, but are more of a sing, a symptom if you will of a certain kind of society. The Colossus is build because of the commercial success of maritime trade. Maritime trade does not happen because you have a big shiny statue in one of your cities. But you could argue that the “indicator” still has a psychological effect powerful enough to be considered an “enabler”, this introduces a little bit of ambiguity.
Sometimes the divide is clear, other times it is not. Many wonders are both enablers and indicators. Truly clear-cut cases are few, since most wonders arguably have elements of at least two categories.
I’m going to start out with a few modern and ancient examples, later I’ll edit in the best explanations and put them in their proper era, like renaissance.
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