is the concept of pre-building wonders just plain ludicrous?

[philler]

I happen to think so!

it's like, you want to build the Great Lighthouse.
you're not able to build it yet because you don't know map making, so you start building say, the Great Wall, and somehow, just a few years before this wonder which has required several hundred years of work is complete, you decide to turn it into a lighthouse?!?

Puh-leeeeaaaaze, that makes the least sense in the history of nonsenses.

so ok, maybe it's just a game, but I would find it much more interesting if you actually needed to have the technological knowledge to build something when you start building it.

Or, if several civs are building the same great wonder at the same time, and you're not the one to finish it first, well, too bad for you, you're not changing it to some other wonder or any other building for that matter...
"Well, you know, we were close to complete the Hoover Dam, but then we figured it would make a nice forbidden palace!"

no more stuff like that please.

I could conceive that you can change the type of a building while it's being constructed.
you're building an university and you realize you need a hospital, you can always use the existing infrastrucure that is already built.
A 50% penalty on the already built infrastructre would make sense to me though (as it used to be with Civ 2 if I remember correctly).

but with wonders? 100% shield loss, period.

so, what do you think?

[Spec]

On monarch and higher, until industrial age, it would be really hard to get a wonders, even almost impossible. That's what I think.

[philler]

not necessarily , as all the other civs would be playing by the same rules.

[Spec]

Originally posted by philler
not necessarily , as all the other civs would be playing by the same rules.

Did you ever play on emporor or deity? It doesn't play by the same rules as you do cuz the AI has bonuses and advantages over you. You HAVE to buy the techs from the AI, it discovers them before you (for me, until industrial age where I catch up and take the lead) so they start building them before you.

[Jaguar]

I think it depends. If you're talking about The Forbidden Palace and the Pentagon I don't think it is an issue. You were still gathering building materials/making a structure. However, switching Cure for Cancer to the Pentagon doesnt.

I think you should be allowed to expedite wonder production, though. Not too much, or that would be cheap. I remember in civ2 how whenever I got the message that some other civ had nearly completed something, I'd buy it.

[Seghillian]

Re: is the concept of pre-building wonders just plain ludicrous?

If you knew anything about history you wouldn't ask such a silly question.

It's a known fact that when the Pharoes first ordered construction of the Pyramids, the contractors were ordered to make prefabricated subassemblies which could make up into The Great Lighthouse, The Great Wall, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon(!) or even a Forbidden Palace in case they heard that the Americans had already built the Pyramids before them.

[Spec]

Re: Re: is the concept of pre-building wonders just plain ludicrous?

Originally posted by Seghillian
If you knew anything about history you wouldn't ask such a silly question.

It's a known fact that when the Pharoes first ordered construction of the Pyramids, the contractors were ordered to make prefabricated subassemblies which could make up into The Great Lighthouse, The Great Wall, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon(!) or even a Forbidden Palace in case they heard that the Americans had already built the Pyramids before them.

Everybody knows that!!

[Tarquelne]

Of course it doesn't make "sense" - but no less than many other things about the game. I think switching from amost-desired wonder to a "consolation prize" wonder makes for better gameplay - the "cascade" of wonder building triggered by the completion of one wonder can make the wonder race much more interesting. I suspect that the AI would also do much worse with another system, and I like having to really compete with the AI for wonders.

1) Use of Palace to pave the way for a Wonder - though this isn't a big deal, esp. if the AI does it.

2) Decrease in either the frequency of GL's for Militaristic civs, or a decreace in a GL's ability to rush wonders. I've stopped playing Militaristic civs because the Militaristic + HerEp combination just seems to generate too many leaders. Maybe I've just been lucky, but maybe not.

Greatly increasing the value of armies, or the creation of some other GL use, could also help. Hmm.... how about they give a chance to immedietly take over any non-capital enemy city?

[godinex]

no... thanks, i prefer the actual way

[Technoron]

Ah.


Is it realistic to turn a big huge wall stone wall into a big huge bronze statue? Hardly.

Is it realistic to have two nations racing each other to see who can build a big huge wall first, and the loser has to tear his down? Not really.

Does it make sense to have an empty lot this year and and a massive pyramid next year because George Washington came to town? Uh....no.

I see the ability to switch from one wonder to another as a functional compromise between shield penalties and stockpiled caravans/freight/supply. Taking a big city out of the loop for 35 turns and coming up empty for it would not get any thank-you's from players. Having a bunch of multi-purpose camels sitting around just in case we got the urge to build a really cool statue was kinna strange too.

I think freight was removed to prevent the tech leader from automatically building all the wonders one turn after getting the tech, and leader insta-build was added to create a chance for the guns crowd to take some wonders away from the butter crowd. Dunno. It seems to me the tech leader always has the best units and is therefore the guy with all the leaders too.

Cripes.


Just push the "I believe" button and everything will make sense from now on...

[Aeson]

I think it has more to do with giving the AI a chance. I haven't seen the AI use a palace pre-build for a wonder, but they switch from wonder to wonder all the time. A player can make a reasonable estimate of whether or not a wonder is possible to build. The AI seem to start every wonder available, whether they have any realistic chance to build it or not. Some of those builds end up being switched to save some of the AI's production.

[philler]

how about a 50% penalty when switching production from a wonder to something else then?

come to think of it maybe my 100% penalty suggestion was too radical, as one has to keep gameplay in mind.

[Aeson]

I always thought that 50% was about right for building to building switches. In any project that needed to be scrapped, there would be work done that could be transfered to another project. Organization of a workforce, collection of raw materials, and other things would all be transferable. In some cases the buildings might be similar enough to only need slight modifications. A Library could very easily be converted to a Courthouse for instance. Unless they determined a % for switching from each build to another, there would always be unrealistic results whatever the arbitrary % was set at though. Not much of an Aqueduct build would help in producing a unit of Cavalry. If you set the % low to account for that, then the other more closely related projects would be the unrealistic ones.

[dowish]

If we are going to use commen sense here, it would make sense that if a civ beat you in building a wonder by one turn, you should still be able to finish it, after all, if you translate it to real life, all you'd have to do finish painting or carpeting or whatever. While sometimes I wouldn't mind being able to have a wonder also, I think they did a good job of balancing all the issues, i.e. not wasting resources and turns by letting you switch, keeping wonders special by only letting one exist. I do wish that they would let you rush build by maybe 50%, using say both gold and population.

[Andrew Cory]

In real life, certain wonders spur "copy-cats". Take the World Trade Center, for example. When it was new, it was the tallest building in the world (well, they _both_ were) Then a bunch of other cities built "Twin Towers", so that by the time they were destroyed, the World Trade Center towers were only the 5th tallest in the world. There is no reason that only one civ. would be able to build, say, pyrimids or somthing...

Perhaps the special benifit to wonders only acures to the civ. that builds it first, but the culture of the wonder can go to any civ. that has it under construction when the wonder is newly built...