Beating the AI in Wonder Building.

[Hymie2600]

I'm finally winning a game but the AI almost always beats me to the punch when building Wonders. How do you guys handle rushing a Wonder??? I'm not a big combat guy so I don't actually have any leaders to invest in building the wonders.

Any other hints on rushing a Wonder?

[kmj]

I think leaders are the only way. The only way that I know of. Disbanding units and chopping down trees don't work. Just need a properly situated civ with some good starting tiles: forests and shield-grasslands, maybe mountains after you have monarchy. Remeber that under despotism irrigating grasslands is useless, so you might as well mine them; every shield counts. Best bet is to be first to the required advance and have a shield-powerhouse city.


A possible cheat: I just thought of this, dunno if it would work... If you've got another improvement in your city that requires alot of shields, you could disband units and/or chop down trees for resources, then switch over to that wonder. 'Course, chopping down trees could be counterproductive if you don't have alot of forests nearby. It's cheesy and I don't know if it would work, though.

[eMarkM]

Fohgettabotit on higher levels. Having a leader is the only way. You fall so far behind in tech with Monarch & up that it's almost pointless to even try for them.

Yeah, go get the Great Library or Sistene Chapel. By the time you have the tech to do it, it's already been completed by the AI. Your best shot is to buy techs from the AI if you have the $$ as you have little hope of keeping up in tech race early on. Good luck there, it's tough to negotiate when you have little to give. If someone has been able to build an early wonder on Emp or Deity w/o a leader, we'd love to hear how you did it. I haven't and don't even try.

In a recent Monarch game that I won, the first wonder I was able to build w/o a leader was Hoover Dam! That's how long it took to catch up in tech and actually start one before the AI. After that, I was able to complete most of the other wonders as I finally got a tech lead. But it's super tough in the early game.

OTOH, not building wonders frees up a lot of shields. While they're off using a lot of resources building the Pyramids, build up your military to take it from them when they complete it. Brute force is the only way I've been able to get early wonders. You may have to rethink your pacifist ways, at least in the early game. Seems the best strategies coming out involve being aggressive and going to war very early.

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[MarshalN]

The thing with Civ3 now is that there's no way you can build wonders like there's no tomorrow like you can in Civ2. I've been mostly playing on regent or monarch, and if you have a good city with good tiles nearby (hills, forests) and you make just enough food to keep pace, it's possible to beat the AI to a wonder or two, but that's it. Most of the time, you'll be lucky if you get two. I mostly just get one in.

The best is if your city can survive on one or two tiles of great food production (with wheat and such) and the rest can all go towards shields. In your capital or somewhere near capital with little corruption, this is doable. I don't know about emperor or deity yet since I haven't played them much after I got the game.

No more good old days when you only miss 2 or 3 wonders at most..... sigh

[Garth Vader]

On regent I have 8 and all the Ai's together have 9, I expect I will get the rest(there's not too many left). What I try to do is have a city start building a palace and then switch over when I get the tech for the wonder. I can usually get half finished doing this and it can be enough to beat the AI to the wonder.

[fbitt1]

My current Regent game, I got at least 4 Ancient Wonders (Great Library, Colossus, Great Lighthouse, Hanging Gardens), all but one of the Middle Age Wonders (missed Shakespeare by 3 turns), all the industrial wonders.

High production cities help. Also, I'll start a palace in the city I know will be building a wonder *before* I get the tech. By the time I do get the tech, the development time is greatly reduced. (If by circumstance the Palace will be build before the tech is gain, I'll just change production to all food and/or entertainers to make sure the Palace isn't built.)

[eMarkM]

Regent is not so tough to build wonders since the AI is on par with you, production-wise. Monarch and up, where the AI has production advantage, it's very difficult to build the wonders.

The palace trick does work great, but again, on higher levels this can still be difficult. The AI might have the wonder built before you can even get to the tech that lets you build it. This has happened numerous times to me on Monarch. I mean, you just have no chance since wonders are an AI priority. And then you have a palace 2/3rds built with no wonder to switch to. You can't afford to waste that many shields against the higher levels if there's no wonder to switch production to.

My higher level strategy is to just skip the early wonders and try to obtain one or two later by conquest. Use the shields on military, let them build it and then take out their wonder filled capital by force.

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[solo]

Small wonders are very useful for pre-building larger wonders or spaceship parts, which is the only sure way to beat the AI to these at deity level. Pre-building should be timed to have just 1 turn left on the small wonder (or palace), by the time you get the advance needed for the wonder you really want. Then switch to the wonder. "Battlefield Medicine" works the best, as it can prebuild quite a hefty portion of that wonder with its 350+ shield capacity, and is useless in itself, for peaceful games.

Early in the game, before small wonders are available, it is risky, but you can start on one wonder and shift later to the one you want when its advance is secured. But if the AI builds that first wonder before this happens, then it's bye, bye to most of those accumulated shields!

Pre-building is only partially effective with city improvements, because if you wait until only 1 turn before they are built, the switch to a wonder or palace is not allowed. Even if it is more than one turn is left, if any portion of the improvement was built with lumberjacking, the conversion to a wonder is not allowed.

[Skanky Burns]

If you have the Steam Power tech, and have a city with BOTH coal and iron in its radius, then build the Ironworks small wonder. With DOUBLE your production, it will give you a better chance to build wonders faster than the other civs.
But of course there are problems.
First, you have to wait until the industrial age to discover the tech, so miss out on most wonders before then.
Second, there is a very small chance of getting coal and iron in the same city radius, so a strategy relying on this will fail more often than not.

But hope it helps