I hate when this happens (losing 560 shields of production)

[Redstone]

That's the spirit! In my current game the Aztecs beat me to the Sistine Chapel but I'd already identified them as a potential target and was planning to attack anyway. Them finishing the sistine chapel just sealed their fate.

A few centuries later and the Greeks have built Universal Sufferage. It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine!

[Carver]

Originally posted by Palleon
Start up a city improvement that costs a lot of shields, pay to rush it, then switch to the wonder. Haven't tried this on 1.29 though.

This probably falls under "cheat/exploit" , but I'm still gonna have to try it.

[Aeson]

You won't be able to switch to a wonder after doing any sort of rushing (forest, disband, or gold).

[Arrian]

Theseus,

Too answer your "huh?" the Palace does indeed get more expensive the more cities you have... though I think it caps off at 1000 shields.

-Arrian

[dunk]

Originally posted by The_Hawk
I'm not sure if people have found better strategies, but there are a couple of things i've done to reduce or gain a 2 turn lead in production.

1. Clear Forest. Every tile within a City radius of Forest that's cleared by a Worker produces 10 shields of production. So, if your City is producing 24 squares, you have to clear 2-3 tiles of forest to get a 1-turn gain. I'm not sure if a patch fixed this issue, but you can simply reforest the tile and have your workers chop it down again! I still have the 1.17f patch (I'll install 1.29f when I finish my current game) and it still works for me!

2. Disband Units. Pick some units, especially units that may be obsolete at the time, if any. Move them to the city building the GW and disband them! Depending on the unit you can get a number of shields from this as well.

I know that military units are precious commodities, but so are GWs. and they can only be built once! I've caught up on a 4 turn gap using just the 2 techniques above! I was not playing a Civ with a military trait, so going to war to try and get a GW was not an option. The city building it was on another continent and at the time the biggest boats were Caravel. So, I improvised.

You can do some other minor things to maximize your production in that city as well, but these are more obvious (placing city workers on all production based tiles,etc.) Even if your city's surplus is dwindling, you might be able to time it for a few turns where you plan to lose some food in storage to gain more production. Just an idea

Anyway, that's some stuff that I do to speed production. Any other ideas?

You can't do anything to "rush" a wonder save using a leader. If you cut down trees near the wonder city, the bonus 10 shields are lost. If you disband a unit in the wonder city, the shields are lost.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

The best approach is to build a phony palace, then switch production to the wonder the turn before you would complete it.

If you consider this unfair play, then you must resort to checking intelligence while you construct it. Otherwise, don't build a wonder unless there are two available - if you miss one, switch to the other and hope you don't lose that race, too.

If that happens, you are screwed.

Redstone has the next best approach. Use those 600 shields to build a huge invasion force! Don't forget to thank them for building you the wonder.

[reefer addict]

i rarely build any wonders before theory of evolution. the ai bonuses will screw you over and over and losing 550 shields just plain sucks. by the industrial age i have built my cities up to compete with ai production and can safely join the wonder building cult. by i still do the f7/investigate to make sure there are no surprises.

has anyone seen the ai rush a wonder with a leader, i havent yet

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I think that the colossus is a wonder you can get easy. I usually play monarch, and i chose a city with lots of grassland and shielded grassland, and you mine all of them, and let the city grow to size 6. It'll be done in no time, and lasts you until flight.

[Konquest02]

The worst thing happened to me. I was building Leonardo's Workshop when I got a message that someone had built it before me. When I looked in my city panel, I realized that I only missed 1 shield to complete it. No other wonders were available so I had to change to university, losing 399 shields. It is mostly my fault (for not having checked) but it is still really annoying when this happens...!

--Kon--

[Blake]

The "best" solution is possibly to make it so that a city building a wonder, which has already been built, stops accumulating shields. Instead it acts like wealth (which should be made better, too). So you keep the production, get some resources out of the city, but cant do bizzare pre-building. This IMHO is no more unrealistic than being able to switch from one wonder to another.

And I totally agree about the research beaker things, better yet the excess beakers should just accumulate for the next tech (and if it would cause techs to arrive more quickly than 1/4 then the cities which research would be wasted should be converted to 100% taxrate - just turning beakers to gold could allow exploits by going science crazy and using your science producers to generate money)