Wonders and their wanna-bes

[don Don]

Yeah, those auto-bureau-cratic types loved grand projects regardless of human cost. I dunno about the lack of steam shovels, that terrain is so unstable you really have to excavate it faster than it can collapse. Brute labor even at that at that scale might have simply lost the battle of hauling away the landslide debris fast enough for there to be a continuous canal capable of handling seaworthy vessels!

The Chinese would have settled for a goods transfer canal rather than a through passage. It would've been no more significant than the Erie Canal; no small matter, but no WOW either.

Fifty years earlier the same non-transit compromise would be sought, except that a RR would be the efficient goods transfer solution.

When the French tried it just a few years earlier it was Malaria that made it too costly in human lives.

[Kull]

LGJ: I see from the "Map" thread that you're moving ahead with the Wonders concept. Some of my thoughts on the issue of "Wonders":

1) They are definitely one of the "fun" parts of Civ2, so it's a good idea to include something similar in Clash.

2) As is true with everything else we are doing, let's not copy the concept but rather improve upon it.

3) You're mention of "Natural Wonders" is a nice idea, and definitely meets the spirit of item 2.

4) A long time ago, someone (Dominique?) suggested the use of "Masterpieces". These would represent some of the Great Works of Art created by individuals down through the ages. Not monumental art such as the Mausoleum or Parthenon, but small items such as statues, paintings, and tapestries. What distinguishes Masterpieces from other Wonders is that they are a) Portable and b) they can be "lost" or destroyed. So when your civ conquers another, you have the opportunity to loot their masterpieces. Likewise, there is always the chance they could be lost or destroyed in the fighting.

4) In the earlier discussions we talked about some kind of random generator or "confluence of factors" that would cause a civ to produce a masterpiece. But I see a much better way to generate them. Create a tie-in with the Characters model! A masterpiece (or the chance to develop one or more) can now be the logical by-product of receiving an "artist" character.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Everything u've said is going to be done in 1 fashion or another and more, except that "wonders" and such will be much easier to destroyed than in civ and civ2 (ie i played several hundred games counting both games and there was only 1 wonder ever lost (Collosus) 1 time). I think this shows u how much I think this is stupid if i can remember what it was which game it was (org civ) and how it was destroyed (only way to do it is to destroy the city itself).

[alms66]

I definately like the idea of natural wonders and that other wonders can be destroyed much easier. But I think we should include no more than 30-40 wonders period, natural or not. Wonders are just that, wonders!, and having too many, a la civ, destroys the concept.

Another thing you must consider about wonder destruction is the actual feasibility and desire to remove it. Take the Great Wall of China for instance, the desire to remove it was there (at least for the mongols), but if you destroyed it, what the Hell where you going to do with all that stone? Because all throughout history people didn't destroy without taking something away (the stone in my example), what would really be the point?

So What you really need is a very sophisticated system to simulate the importance of wonders. Yes they may generate money, but nobody cares to destroy them, unless (like the Great Wall) they offer some sort of strategical advantage. So the Colossus, while splinded, would not generally require destruction, where as the Great Wall would.

Just something to consider!

[Harun ar Rashid]

Hi,

here are some comments on the wonder issue:

Many of the wonders in civ and civ2 weren't really wonders IMO. You could build them like any other improvement and they sometimes had unbalanced effects.

• The completion of every wonder should result in general benefits like improving national pride and gaining international prestige (also envy). A wonder would also affect tourism in a province.
  Large projects like the construction of wonders also have effects during build time. Many laborours, engineers, scientists, artisans etc. are probably needed for such a project, so there could be a decrease in unemployment. Undesired side effects on the civ's economy like lack of employees could also occur.
  
• What are wonders? IMO it is not desireable to have a premade list of wonders. The Egyptians didn't build the pyramids because they were on the list of wonders of the world! There are many reasons why a ruler/government decides to build a wonder: religious reasons, megalomania, large scale improvements of infrastructure, impress foreigners, ...
  But how to achieve these goals?
  If you want to show the power of your god(s) to the rest of the world you might want to build a huge temple/church/mosque/synagogue. It would be great if the player may decide how big and beautiful (i.e. how expansive) his/her wonder will be. There should be minimum conditions in terms of costs and also the possibility for other players to surpass an existing wonder.
  
• Suggestions for wonder categories:
  tombs (mausolea, pyramids, ...); only ancient
  temples and statues (depending on religion); only ancient and medieval
  infrastructure (lighthouses, excellent road and rail networks?, large dams, large walls, canals?, bridges?, ...); no temporal restrictions
  city beautifications (palaces, colossus, hanging gardens, skyscrapers?, ...); no temporal restrictions
  research (MP?, Space Program, Human Genome Project, large particle accelerators (sorry that's only a rough translation I fear; do you know what I mean?), ...);no temporal restrictions
  
• Miscellaneous:
  Why isn't there King Richards Crusade, Women's suffrage, .... The crusades were one of the darkest periods of Christianity. I strongly object to considering the slaughtering of people as a wonder like in civ2 with King Richard's Crusade. Some might think the same about MP. Women's suffrage isn't a wonder but a matter of course. It could be handled in the social model.

What do you think about my general approach to wonders?

[This message has been edited by Harun ar Rashid (edited February 28, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

TK:

Your also fogetting other means of distruction. Collusus was destroyed because of an earthquake. Many of the wonders were destroyed when the city was ransacked, but the entire city might not be destroyed.

Also as to the number of wonders your right and i already have a method of dealing with this. It is in relavince to levels, FE many creations are very high up there, but not ness wonders. Yet these do have vast effects also. Anyway these will be included in there but there effects will be less than others. Also some of these lesser achievements will have there effects disappear over time. Also because rarely, if ever, does a government try to create a wonder, I have devised a forula for creating such things based on additional resources you put in. Even then ur not guaranteed a "wonder," but will have a great chance (depending on how much resources extra u devote) of getting something better than normal.

[Yakopepper]

I wanted to make a point on the destruction of wonders. The Great Library(which has never been proven to even exist) was burnt to a crispy pile of rubble by outside raider(i forget who), but only because they didnt know the full importance of it(or may not had appreceite it). They torched it cause it had no meaning to them.

Wonders may not mean the same thing to diffrent cultures. Is it possible that when ransacked or occupied, wonders be destroyed because it woundnt benefit the new owners. This would apply to religous building mostly --i guess. Natural decay and natural disasters was the No1 cause though.

I never could understand that when i built the lighthouse in an inland city it benefited ocean movement. And that why it was built directly on the coast in real life. Natural erosion caused the lighthouse to naturally sink into the ocean. Now historians believe they found the base of it in shallow waters of the coast.

There are many was wonders are destroyed, and I hope you can accuratlly portray this.

And for all my other feeling on wonders read the first post in this thread.

Daniel

[Krenske]

Yakopeper

history lesson on

From the number of contemporary references to the library it certainly did exist and it probably contained the vast majority of mediteranean written works at its peak. There were no less than four seperate destructions of the library. (It involved several large buildings.) The first was a flood and only a small number of original works was lost. The second was a fire that destroyed at least one of the buildings (it was a large destroy part of the city sort of fire.) The third was a attack from a christian sect that attacked and destroyed one of the buildings, possibly one containing books of magic. The final destruction was after the Jihad over ran the city. The commander asked the caliph what to do with the library. The answer was "If the books support the Koran they are superfalous if they oppose the Koran they are blasphemous." There fore the library was destroyed.

history lesson off

The pick of the ideas from the Civ3 threads on wonders are as follows -

Natural wonders - Naturally occurring wonders that have a mostly tourism value.

Works of man - Artistic works of man, happiness and trade effects.

"First" Improvement - The first of each improvement is renowned as the first and has a double or 50% bonus on its normal effect. (The old "yeah they may have a temple but they are just copying ours" effect.)

"Greatest" Improvement - For each improvement you have the option of making the basic improvement or the greatest of its type. The greatest has a double effect and costs more. It lasts until someone else builds a greatest of the same improvement. The cost is 50% more than the previos greatest. After being superseeded they still give a +1 trade/tourism/happiness benefit.

Standard Wonder - The normal civ2 style wonders.

Social advances - These are the cultural advances that are in the civ 2 wonders list. These include all the things normally considered concepts. eg. Suffrage, etc.

These are some of the ideas that have already been kicked around there. I like most of them especially the "first" and "greatest".


[This message has been edited by Krenske (edited February 28, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Krenske (edited February 28, 2000).]

[Lord God Jinnai]

The "Greatest" although a good idea isn't practical for game usage. Its too unbalancing as it breeds too much competition and can lead to too much complexitiy. FE 2 places are attempting at the same time to have the "greatest temple." Civ A is in the lead by a short amount of Civ B. Civ A finishes first and has the "greatest temple." So then what of Civ B? Should it get second best because it is later. That doesn't make sence since Civ C make make a "greatest temple" later. So should Civ B get the "greatest temple?" Again its not really fair to Civ A if it beat and say Civ B was only a turn behind. Not only this but lets say Civ B gets the "greatest temple," then Civ A has to spend more money to make its temple better and then so will Civ B most likely. Then what happens if Civ D wants to join the race. It becomes extremly hard, if not impossible because the amount of resources required keeps getting higher thus all but eliminating a civ that may have had some other needs for its resources at the time from getting in on the act.

This is really the only thing that won't work so far that I've seen proposed and considered a good idea by many people.

Also, natural wonders could also help with (maybe) more naturalistic religions as well as with conservation and enviromentalism.

[Krenske]

Often though there was that degree of competition. During the middle ages cities all over europe were attempting to make the best cathedral. These took up to 100+ years to complete and many were certainly not the greatest once completed. ( I believe a pope ordered a stop to the race by requiring the designs to be checked and possibly vetoed by the vatican.)

Later similar things happened with parliaments and opera houses and palaces etc.

[roquijad]

This is one of those threads that never dies....

1) LGJ: Are you in charge of WW?
2) The example by LGJ about "the greatest" is really good and convinced me about not going for it.
3) The comments by Harun ar Rashid are really good and certainly I share his view about the social wonders like crusades or women's suffrage. What's the importance of WS for chinese? What's the "wonder" about being able to build an atomic bomb? As I putted it a long time ago in this thread, a wonder of the world should be a wonder OF THE WORLD, or simply something more local and specific. Wonders and culture should be more related. The pyramids are awesome for all of us, but the wall of the destroyed jewish temple in jerusalem has a really low attractiveness for most non-jewish, but it works like a wonder for jewish...
4) Something simple after a really long time becomes attractive, reminding us of those ancient times...
5) Destroyed cities could be rediscovered after archelogical works having tourist effects.