A new wonder they should have had: The Great Firewall

[Blue Moose]

The Great Firewall:

Requires: Computers
The internet must have been built by someone

Effect: Civilization is immune to all spy operations except sabotage production. This Civilization's knowledge of technologies does not affect the price of techs for others civs. Lastly, this civilization is immune to culture flipping.

Historical Background: China currently has a huge firewall for its country, to prevent their citizens from viewing material that the government disapproves of. Sections of the web effectively do not exist if you are in China..

[ranskaldan]

That sounds like a pretty useful wonder...

P.S. Actually, according to my surfing experiences, all sections of the web (even Falun Gong and Free Tibet sites) exist in China if you know how to use the "cache" function in Google. Too bad they blocked Google just a couple days ago...

[Hagbart]

[ranskaldan]

I'm lucky that I'm in Toronto right now. My cousin, who lives in Beijing, is going nuts about not being able to use Google. He spends all of his free time playing civ3 now instead.

So the "Great Firewall" as a wonder has gotta have some side effect. Like one less happy citizen per city or something. To balance it out you can add some other nice effect to it.

[Hagbart]

The one who builds the Great Firewall should lose some science/gold too.

[ranskaldan]

Well I don't see China losing that much science/gold because people can't visit CNN. Any science/gold lost should be factored into side effects of the governmental system, not the wonder.

So the Great Firewall would:
- cause one happy citizen in each >12 city to become content, two in each >24 city
- more immunity to subversive espionage
- faster assimilation of foreign citizens
- no chance of culture flipping

[Mr. Schwang]

I think this idea is cool in the general sense, but way too powerful. That's like on the scale equal to Leonardo's Workshop from civ2.

[Nubclear]

Re: A new wonder they should have had: The Great Firewall

Originally posted by Blue Moose
The Great Firewall:

Requires: Computers
The internet must have been built by someone

Effect: Civilization is immune to all spy operations except sabotage production. This Civilization's knowledge of technologies does not affect the price of techs for others civs. Lastly, this civilization is immune to culture flipping.

Historical Background: China currently has a huge firewall for its country, to prevent their citizens from viewing material that the government disapproves of. Sections of the web effectively do not exist if you are in China..

WAY too powerful. Plus, do you mean culture flipping as in your cities cant flip to someone else, or someone elses cities cant flip to you....or both?

Also, didnt china release its firewall on many sites.....I remember reading that somewhere.

[Blue Moose]

Well, I've never found much use for the spying abilities...they seem really expensive, so it didn't seem like spy immunity was enough.

As for culture flipping, I meant it would make your people immune to being flipped, but I guess it should probably be a double-edged sword: as far as your civ is concerned, there is no such thing as culture flipping.

[ranskaldan]

Tassadar5000: yeah, there was a release on many sites some time back, but just a couple of days back, there was an inexplicable banning of Google and Altavista.

As for the wonder, we can tune it even more...

1) Makes one happy citizen content in all cities >8, two in >16, three in >24
2) +50% chance of thwarting spy operations
3) +50% speed in assimilation foreigners
4) half the chance of losing a city to flipping

[Panag]

hi ,

since we can have up to 256 wonders , .....

no problem , ....

have a nice day

[XarXo]

This should be a Small Wonder. Is too general and every country is capable to create something like this.

[XOR]

Uses of the Great Firewall:

Security? No.
Surveilance? No.
Censorship? Yes.

The thing is not unique to China. There's similar blocking policies in Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and, I think also Cuba. The results are people from those countries sometimes dont even know about the more recent Celphone technologies or satellite TV.


No added security or espinage capabilities, just, one content citizen (as he fails to know what's on the news about you) and 10% less trade. Congrats fellas.

Gaaaawwwd, how usefull, you want one?

[XOR]

Echelon Project:

Security? No.
Surveilance? Yes.
Censorship? No.

Unique to the US, everone who knows about it dislikes it. 10% more chance of enemy espionage failure, one unhappy citizen each city. For governmental intrussion of people's privacy or whatever.

[sabrewolf]

good one

how about the addition "echelon project":
you can steal techs for a lot cheaper price (or free) from allies.

and then add a spying mission: "expose echelon project"