Wonders o' the world... the root of all evil?

[MidKnight Lament]

This probably isn't going to be terribly constructive, but I'm not all that opposed to the old system. It is true that wonders help unbalance the game, but I'm not sure that that's where the balancing needs to be done. To me it sounds a bit like treating the symptom rather than the cause.

Plenty of other ideas were also raised to try to make sure that civs don't just run away with the game. I don't know that I'd be happy if I couldn't build half the wonders.

- MKL

[TheLimey]

If you've not tried it... how do you know?

[Chuckles]

Of all the ideas floating around this one is really good. It would be exciting to play a game where you only get one wonder per age.

[Palpatine]

Chuckels is right. With one wonder every epoch you really have to decide which way you are going to take through history.

And in real history. Which nation built up more then one "wonder of the world"?

-The power of the dark side is with him-
Emperor Palpatine

[DiscoveryOne]

Another idea which I thought might be neat would be that each civ has the ability to create the same Wonders, which might cut down on a player having an extreme advantage.

Perhaps for each age, each civ could build three Wonders -- for the ancient age (as for example), a Great Temple, a Marvelous Tomb, and a Book of Wisdom. These Wonders would all have the same bonuses, and the player could name them (or the computer could, with default names) to match the civ that they play, much as one does with the ruler's name. If I am Greek, they'd be The Parthenon, The Mausoleum at Hallicanarsis (sp?), and The Odyssey.

This might prevent the aforementioned lopsidedness possible with Wonders, while retaining (and enhancing!) the "feeling" of running a unique civilization. Plus, these would be things that all civs would have. Didn't most ancient civs have a Great Temple of some sort?

There might also be Unique Wonders (such as The Lighthouse) with unique characteristics that you could also name with an appropriate title, but they might be fewer and more expensive.

BTW, several civs had multiple wonders in the real world; it just depends on what they considered wonderful!
[This message has been edited by DiscoveryOne (edited June 27, 2000).]

[TheLimey]

I agree, D1. We should include both ideas in a mod... play it out and see how it works.

The standardized effect wonders sound like they would work great in a multiplayer game.

[Pintello]

Hi Palpatine,

You asked what civilization ever built more than one Wonder of the World, there are many answers. The first answer is the Greeks who built the Colassus of Rhodes, the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Great Statue of Zeus as well as the Great Library of Alexandria. They also built the Parthenon and maybe one or two other Ancient Wonders, I don't remember, but their seems to be a few more.

Another civilzation to have built more than one Wonder is the United States of America. The Americans built the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, the UN, the Empire State Building, the Panama Canal, and the St. Louis Arch. All of which have appeared on one or more Wonders of the Modern World lists. Then there are the Wonders of the World that don't appear on any list that the US is also responsible for. Those are the Interstate Highway System, the US Constituion, on which many of the world's other constitutions are based on, the Internet, the cure for Polio and many other world affecting diseases, probably even AIDS and Cancer in the not too distant future. Also, lets not forget the Apollo Program. There are many other things that the US has done that would also qualify as World Wonders.

Come to think of it, the Egyptians are responsible for a couple of World Wonders too. Those would be the Great Sphinx and the Great Pyrimids. I am sure that if we kept thinking, we could come up with some others. The Babylonians for example who create Hamurabi's Code, the Hanging Gardens, and the Ishtar Gate. Or how about the Romans. They build great Aqueducts, the Colosium, the first Empire Wide Road System, call it the very first Interstate Highway System, and they created the Pax Romana. The only 200 year stretch of history that saw no wars in Western Europe and whole Mediterrainian World.

So as not to be completely Western centric here, lets also consider the Chinese. They built the Great Wall and the frist true nation state in the full sense of the word. This is what the Confusius Academy represent in CTP.

The point is that many civilizations have built mutiple things that could legitimately be considered Wonders of the World, whether they appear on any list of Wonders or not. These Wonders that different civilizations have built are what helps give them their national character.

When you think of the Chineese, what is one of the first things you think about? Yep, the Great Wall. When you think of the Egyptians what do you think about? The Pyrimids and the Sphinx. When you think of the Greeks what do you think of? The Parthenon and if you are familiar with their history, you also think of the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Great Lighthouse. When you think of the US, you think of the Apollo Program and many other of the amazing feats of engineering that the US is responsible for such as the first working airplane.

Having a nation build multiple Wonders if it can afford them is entirely consistent with history. Historically it is the most powerful nations of their days that build the Great Wonders of the World and those wonders give the nations who built them character. After all what would the Egyptians be with out the Pyrimids and the Sphinx, or the Romans be without the Colosium and their roads?

I think CTP and its Wonder system should be left alone as it is. If you want something different, St. Swithin has already told you that you can change it with slic. After all, what would any Civilization Game be like without Wonders to build?

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

[DiscoveryOne]

I agree that there is some imbalancing with Wonders, but I don't really like limiting them too much. Tim is right when he outlines the many Wonders that some powerful civs have had. (BTW, thanks for mentioning my hometown's Gateway Arch -- take that, Atlanta!)

I think that the method that I outlined above would be an effective compromise. Probably half of all real-world Wonders are just variations on a theme; nearly all cultures have made at various times Great Temples, impressive tombs, road or canal works, and important religious books. But as I'm sure Tim and many would agree, many Wonders are quite unique! (How many Great Walls are there? Hadrian can't touch that one!) I think that no matter what is done with Wonders, some unique ones must remain (although I'd like to have names reflecting the building civ).

Trivia time! (I just learned this.) What real-world civilization made the largest pyramid of all time?

[St Swithin]

The Aztecs. It's in Cholula, MX.

[wheathin]

Glad to see the support for the X-wonder-per-age idea!

I recognize that the building of "Wonders" is central to the Civ franchise, and I enjoy trying to crush the world and collect every possible Wonder. I too would be reluctant to set the defaults in the game to "No, you can't build them ALL." - it would piss off too many die hard Civers at first and give you totally terrible initial word-of-mouth.

But I like the idea that it is implementable in SLIC (although I don't see how, myself).

D1 - If every Civ builds the same WOnders, it reduces the re-playability of the game and the sense of many different paths or options. I like choosing between Labyrinth, Stonehenge, or Ramayana depending on the game, the enemies, and my particular situation.

While each civ hay have a historical Wonder (China's Wall, England's Stonehenge, etc.), trying to force players down one specific road seems too limiting, and not at all in the wide-open tradition of Civ. If the Chinese lived in a land of small islands and dense jungles, would they still have built a Great Wall? Of course not - so why force a human player or AI to do the same? "Ramayana of London" and "Confucius' Academy in Oporto" are what make the game fun and thought-provoking!

Allowing numeric limits on Wonders forces players to adapt to their surroundings, as well as enhancing the balance between human and AI.

[TheLimey]

Pintello>

This is a serious suggestion, because serious players recognize it as a game inbalance.

We're not suggesting the loss of all wonders, just a limit.
[This message has been edited by TheLimey (edited June 28, 2000).]

[DiscoveryOne]

St. Swithin

Nope. It's the White Pyramid, in China. Second in height is the Great Pyramid of Khufu, and second in volume is the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan.

[Big Dave]

quote: Originally posted by St Swithin on 06-22-2000 08:08 PM Making it so that a civilization can only build 1 wonder is totally doable in SLIC. You can also create "requirements" which would complete a "wonder" - for example, if the ISP improvement were built in every city, the civilization would achieve the Internet wonder. This can also be done via SLIC.

St Swithin,
What I'm asking may be alittle harder, but if a line of forts were build across a land mass or around the current border(with a minimum of (for example) 15 forts) could this be construed as a Wonder by the game, e.g. The Great Wall? And could a 2nd, lesser wonder be achived by the same feat, e.g. Hadrian's Wall?

I guess what I'm trying to find out is do the "agregate wonder" components have to be in a city, or could they be outside a city but within a civ's borders?
Thanks,

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Big Dave

A bad pun is its own reword.
[This message has been edited by Big Dave (edited June 29, 2000).]

[meriadoc]

Since there are times that I play Civ and try to get all of the wonders for myself, there are times that I don't go for any of them, and then there are times where I only go after one or two, I think that the game would be ruined if you couldn't go after all of the wonders yourself. However, having an option to limit the number of wonders that you could get might be interesting - as an option.

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The Electronic Hobbit

[WesW]

I like the option of linking wonders with SLIC. Say, you set up a group that would allow you to build a unique unit. Ancient armies tended to specialize in unique units before gunpowder started homogenizing armies. This forms the basis for Age of Empires, Starcraft, and other games.
With SLIC, you could write it in so that, if a civ builds a Wonder that gives it a unique unit, it would be unable to build the others that give specific units, at least in that age. You could also group things by land, sea, special attack, etc.
I would also like for this concept to apply to happiness Wonders, for example. If you build one of these, it gives a good benefit, if you have more than one in effect at the same time, you run into the concept of diminishing returns. Grouping wonders would force the AIs to spread out their wonders' effects over different areas, and therefore maximize them. This could apply to gold, science, and other categories of wonders.

Another really neat thing would be the ability to "turn on" wonders dependent on the number of civs and the map size you are using. If you have a game with few civs, fewer numbers of happiness wonders would be available, for example. Mod-makers could play with this, and expand it if they want to play with, say, 24 civs on a custom-sized, XXL map.

I hope that the Activision guys are still reading these forums. I plead with you guys to give examples of as many SLIC triggers as you can in files that are specifically for mod-makers. That way, we can cut-n-paste our unique ideas into the standard examples you give us, like the way we study problem examples and imitate them to learn math.