Building Wonders

[Kre]

When one are building a wonder, how come somtimes a message is popping up telling you that the building of the wonder can't continue, and the production will be switched to something else.
Why is this happening?
Is there something I can do to prevent it?

[TheStinger]

NO other than winning the race to build it first. There can only be 1 great wonder.

[Wazell]

Exactly. Someone else got it first, and there's nothing you can do about that anymore.

[Alex]

In order to avoid this (it happened a lot to me when I first started playing Civ2), you have to start building something expensive before you have the tech needed to build the Wonder. You can use the Palace for this intent. Pick up one of your most productive cities, order it to build a Palace and then wait for the Wonder to come. Check the city regularly to make sure it doesn't build the Palace before you discover the Wonder tech and when the tech is discovered, bam!, change the production in that city to the Wonder and you'll have a significant advantage over your enemies.

[Wazell]

I agree that prebuilding is always effective, though if you have a lot of wars in Civ3, you have a significant advantage with great leaders. But in Civ2 when somebody was about to complete a wonder, you got a message at previous turn, and if you were building it too, you could finish it by rush-building or caravans/freights. And this is not possible in Civ3 anymore. There's not even a warning before another player takes it, so you'd better have some other wonder available in which you can switch without wasting all shields.

[TheStinger]

Originally posted by Alexnm
In order to avoid this (it happened a lot to me when I first started playing Civ2), you have to start building something expensive before you have the tech needed to build the Wonder. You can use the Palace for this intent. Pick up one of your most productive cities, order it to build a Palace and then wait for the Wonder to come. Check the city regularly to make sure it doesn't build the Palace before you discover the Wonder tech and when the tech is discovered, bam!, change the production in that city to the Wonder and you'll have a significant advantage over your enemies.

I do this sometimes but then I think is it an exploit

[pedrojedi]

There were a lot of times that my Great Library suddenly turned out to be Hanging Gardens. All those shelves must be pretty good for planting.

[vmxa1]

I treat it as an exploit, because the AI will not do it. I sort of hedge here a bit as I will switch a current build of say a troop to a wonder, but it is never more than a few turns. I am not starting a palace with no intentions of actually build the palace.
No need to defend the practice as I have no problem with others doing it.

[Alex]

It certainly is an exploit, but look at it this way: in the hardest difficulty levels, the AI gets a lot of production bonus and you have to use such tactic in order to at least be on par with the AI's productive capacity.

But, of course, there is always the militaristic way, as Wazell pointed out. Wage war, use a lot of elites and get tons of GLs to help building the Wonders. As for the problem of not getting a warning when another player is about to build a wonder, just do some espionage. If you have the option to show "Initiated Wonder" pop-up (or whatever its name is) on, you can pretty much calculate how long the other player will take to build it, and plan accordingly.

[Panag]

Re: Building Wonders

Originally posted by Kre
When one are building a wonder, how come somtimes a message is popping up telling you that the building of the wonder can't continue, and the production will be switched to something else.
Why is this happening?
Is there something I can do to prevent it?

hi ,

most of the times thanks to the fact that an other civ has completed it

try to plan your wonders a bit in advance in a high shield production under a republic or democrazy gov , that helps a lot

and play a bit with your "F" keys , .....

have a nice day

[Ismelstar]

Originally posted by Alex
In order to avoid this (it happened a lot to me when I first started playing Civ2), you have to start building something expensive before you have the tech needed to build the Wonder. You can use the Palace for this intent. Pick up one of your most productive cities, order it to build a Palace and then wait for the Wonder to come. Check the city regularly to make sure it doesn't build the Palace before you discover the Wonder tech and when the tech is discovered, bam!, change the production in that city to the Wonder and you'll have a significant advantage over your enemies.

Has anyone had the problem of NOT being able to change production to a wonder when "prebuildng" to gain some extra shields before you have the tech to build a wonder?

I had my capital start building a colleseum for a few turns while I reasearched Astronomy for Cop's Observetory. But 4 turns later, when I got the tech, the Observitory was greyed-out in the production menu. I couldn't select it to change my production. Does anyone know what the deal is?

[vmxa1]

I answered this in the other thread you created.
You can not have any shields from rushing or chopping trees as part of the prebuild and then switch to a wonder.
The other way is if you had a city building that wonder already. Unlike civII only one city can work on a given wonder at a time.

[TheArsenal]

I don't really think its that much of an exploit. The AIs will build, say, the Pyramids, get beaten to it by another civ, and switch wonder production to something else. If I don't pre-build, then I beat to everything. Although I have never built a palace with the intent to switch. Generally its an early wonder with the intent of swapping to the GL.

[bobbo008]

"Has anyone had the problem of NOT being able to change production to a wonder when "prebuildng" to gain some extra shields before you have the tech to build a wonder?

I had my capital start building a colleseum for a few turns while I reasearched Astronomy for Cop's Observetory. But 4 turns later, when I got the tech, the Observitory was greyed-out in the production menu. I couldn't select it to change my production. Does anyone know what the deal is?"

a few games ago, i was doing that preparing for the hoover dam. when i was finally able to build the hoover dam, i could build a hydro plant in the city but not the hoover dam

[vmxa1]

bobbo008 did you check all of your cities to see if one was already building Hoover?
What can happen is a city will finish a build on the turn you learn the tech and the city Gov will start the wonder.
Now you fail to notice that and try to select the build in another city and it will be grey.