As I'm slowly moving up the difficulties I'm getting a firmer grasp on city specialization and, in particular, the power of the national wonders, which are in essence huge, one city boosts of specialized :gold:, :hammers:, :science:, :gp:, or :ar15:.

Take a hypothetical game where the land dictates a good CE civ. I'll have 1-3 Production cities, a super science city, GP farm, and a shrine/merchant gold city. Each of these specialized cities gets the appropriate National Wonders (NW), and the rest of my cities become fillers that just cottaged commerce cities.

When I get all the National Wonder's built, the specialized cities start rocking. The problem is, sometimes it takes forever to get those awesome NW's built. My super science city in my current game is 3 grassland gems, a food source, 2 hills, and the rest cottages. Oxford is taking FOREVER (i lack the +100% :hammers: for Oxford). I've got the same problem with my military city. It has about 5 mined hills iirc, but West Point is taking a lifetime when I should be building units instead for the war I'd like to make soon. Same with Ironworks. :(

Are there tricks to building the national wonders faster? Oxford, Ironworks, Westpoint, Heroic Epic, Wall Street - they all rock! Maybe I should save some forests to chop some of them out in low production cities.

I'm the kind of player that is very picky about building world wonders (only want to invest in exactly what I need). However, the past couple games have made me consider trying out Industrious, a trait I never use, just to get the awesome National Wonders at +50% :hammers:.

Thoughts?

Well, the only way I can think of is playing an industrious leader.

I try to have more than one city for producing military, then I can take one out of service for upgrades without sacrificing unit production completely.

Early on my military city will be a city with a couple of hills and a food source and maybe a metal, helped out by the Capital.

Later I'll add a GG to one of these - I try not to make it the capital as I usually wind up taking that off mil service completely, wasting the GG, but sometimes I can't get the alternative going adequately.

My best early/midgame mil city will have Heroic Epic, maybe Moai, and the one or two GG's I've gotten so far. Then all I do is set it to build units, with the odd interlude for aqueducts, factories, etc.

later on the Ironworks gets built elsewhere and maybe also goes military, depending on circumstances. I hardly ever build westpoint or penatgon, but I'm funny that way....

You already mentioned resources, forests, and industrious.

Oxford: Switch to Universal Suffrage for the bonus hammers.
Heroic Epic, Iron Works, West Point: Build while at peace.
Globe Theater: Use overflow from whipping units.

West point and ironworks are not always worth building as they come very late... It might be better to just build units..

Some tips I do, but remember you do not have to always work those tiles specific to the city (you can work mines for a science city to build oxford).

1) HE: Generally it's the best early production city therefore this one is easy.
2) NE: 90% of the time in the capital. Since I have to wait until Lit which is not far off from CS, I generall wait until Burecracy to speed it along. Plus capitals generally have decent production.
3) Moari: Take the longest as I usually place them in off-coast islands or heavy coast tiles. Patience here as even workhouses may not help. Try to have at least cows/jumbos or a hill or 2 present.
4) Oxford: 80% of the time with the NE in the capital, same thing here, utilize Bur.
5) IW: yes it takes time, but I build it usually on a river after Steam Power and building a leveee. Also make sure you have a Forge.
6) WP: Honestly I do not build it often as I don't attach GGs for the super-medic much anymore. Still it generally goes in my Maoria city for the extra benefit to naval units and another stronge military production city to go with the IW city and HE city (capital too if still in Bur.).
7) WS: this can be a pain. If not on a levee'd/cottaged river running US I generally wait until I have factories/plants.
8) NP: is in a heavily forrested city, so there ar eplenty of hammers there.
9) REd Cross: By that time I have factories/plants and I am building hospitals for health, thus production is not an issue.

I seam to be missing one at the moment.

EDIT:

10) GT: city has a strong food-base for drafting, so whipping maybe half of it helps.
11) Hermitage: Never seams to be a problem as it's cheap.

Try to get the bonus production resources, chop as much as possible, if you get any great engineers save them for national wonders (they can finish most early and mid-game wonders in one turn). If it's late in the game, consider Universal Suffrage to buy your wonders. Other than that, browse the War Academy here for more information on increasing :hammers:.

You could spend time in Organized Religion for the 25% bonus (it applies to National Wonders, right?). If you've built a forge in the city, be sure to run an engineer (if there's not enough high hammer tiles to just work those) instead of merchants/scientists/artists.

If I build Maori on an island or other hammer-poor location, I usually use whip overflow from small infrastucture such as monuments/temple/library/etc. to get as many of the hammers as possible into the

Also, I usually start a hammer-intensive production wonder such as HE, WP, IW as a current war is shifting down, say as I start bringing down city defenses in the last city I plan to take with the stack right outside.
Reason being, those last 4-5 units won't impact the war anyway (they probably don't even arrive in time), and other cities can build a couple city defenders if needed to move into the new lands. The extra turns into it mean the wonder is completed faster and therefore ready right away when its time to start churning the next military-era units.

You could spend time in Organized Religion for the 25% bonus (it applies to National Wonders, right?).

Good call, OR works on any building, including National Wonders and World Wonders.

Good tips, but I cant see great engineer mentioned, so I'll add this. It sounds like a waste, and most times it is, but in some games can be a good move, if you need a critical national wonder immediatelly. If you pop an engineer in industrial era and you do not plan to found corporation, rushing IW is usually the best.

some very good suggestions. In my current game I was already in OR - the main issue was that I lacked both Stone and Marble (neither on my continent). Usually I'll have one of these, speeding along about half of the national wonders. Lacking both just makes all of them seem to take so much longer.

I'm gonna try an Industrial leader next, (thinking Augustus, Bismark, or Stalin), and see if I notice a big difference in getting them online. Getting those 4-5 really good specialized cities online with national wonders boosting them really skyrockets my teching and production through middle and late game.

Oxford makes a nice home for settled great people (see Representation), and a number of them deliver hammers every day.

It can be worth it to temporarily make what is usually an imbalanced trade deal for stone or marble just to get one of the national wonders built faster. Check the other civs and see if they have them on offer. Check your cities' happiness and health levels to see if you can afford to give up any resources of which you possess only one instance. Again, if you make it temporary, it's short-term pain for long-term gain.

If you set certain world wonders as strategic targets, it is often worth fighting a war or settling a non-optimal city just to obtain the resource that accelerates the wonder build. Once you have it, the resource will accelerate national wonder builds. For example, I'll often strive to claim a source of marble to accelerate the build of the Great Library; once it's complete, I usually build the National Epic in the same city, and I now have marble to accelerate its build.

Settle any Great Prophets you get in your Wall Street city (after building the shrine, of course - usually WS goes in a holy city). They will get it built faster and earn more gold after it's built. Settling GE and GS in your Oxford city works in a similar manner, but these GPs are usually better put to other uses.

One trick I sometimes use in my non-cottage cities in the mid/late game is to transform farms to workshops and windmills to mines when I have an urgent need to build something fast (usually spaceship parts but it ought to work with wonders, too). A decent-sized city can usually run a food deficit for several turns before risking population loss.

Once the National Wonder is built, you can convert the workshops and mines back to farms and windmills. In this way you are shaving time off construction while delaying your next population increase, which may not be much of an issue if

a) the wonder is very useful independent of population, like Wall Street in the Shrine/Corp HQ city, or

b) the city is bumping up against the happy/healthy cap anyway.

Moari on a one square island with a bunch of seafood is normally the real pig to get and whip overflow is your friend. Remembering to settle it while you still have lots of whip-time left is key, then building moari and whipping everything the island needs after one turn.

I finished my current game. Sis pointed out a trade option to consider and that ended up being what I needed. One AI civ had stone for trade which I did (for 2 :) resources) until West Point and Oxford were done, then I cancelled trade.

Whip overflow is a trick I often forget about.

I'd still like to try Industrious for my next game just to see if I can get them out even faster.

Moari on a one square island with a bunch of seafood is normally the real pig to get and whip overflow is your friend. Remembering to settle it while you still have lots of whip-time left is key, then building moari and whipping everything the island needs after one turn.

I don't know why everyone gets so hung up on getting a location like this for the Moai Statues. I guess it maximizes the output from the statues, but it doesn't make for that great a city; 2F/1H/1 or 2C per tile is a pretty mediocre yield. And having only a couple of base hammers to work with means the statues take forever to build. And how much will that island city really contribute back to your civ as a whole? Between the difficulty in transporting units there and the additional maintenance costs, is it really worth it? I usually prefer to let the AI found dumpy little cities on one tile islands.

My own preference is to put Moai in a good coastal production city along with one of the military wonders such as Heroic Epic or West Point. With HE or a military academy, the water-based hammers from Moai are getting multiplied, and thanks to the coastal location, the city can produce both land and sea units. And with more good production tiles, it gets built faster (that's my token attempt to stay on topic).

Moai's a nice national wonder, but it's not nearly as important or as useful as the Heroic or National Epics or the Ironworks; it's not worth founding a mediocre city to get the most out of it.

I don't know why everyone gets so hung up on getting a location like this for the Moai Statues. I guess it maximizes the output from the statues, but it doesn't make for that great a city; 2F/1H/1 or 2C per tile is a pretty mediocre yield. And having only a couple of base hammers to work with means the statues take forever to build. And how much will that island city really contribute back to your civ as a whole? Between the difficulty in transporting units there and the additional maintenance costs, is it really worth it? I usually prefer to let the AI found dumpy little cities on one tile islands.

My own preference is to put Moai in a good coastal production city along with one of the military wonders such as Heroic Epic or West Point. With HE or a military academy, the water-based hammers from Moai are getting multiplied, and thanks to the coastal location, the city can produce both land and sea units. And with more good production tiles, it gets built faster (that's my token attempt to stay on topic).

Moai's a nice national wonder, but it's not nearly as important or as useful as the Heroic or National Epics or the Ironworks; it's not worth founding a mediocre city to get the most out of it.

Co-signed on this. Maybe its a PNW thing.

I don't know why everyone gets so hung up on getting a location like this for the Moai Statues. I guess it maximizes the output from the statues, but it doesn't make for that great a city; 2F/1H/1 or 2C per tile is a pretty mediocre yield. And having only a couple of base hammers to work with means the statues take forever to build. And how much will that island city really contribute back to your civ as a whole? Between the difficulty in transporting units there and the additional maintenance costs, is it really worth it? I usually prefer to let the AI found dumpy little cities on one tile islands.

My own preference is to put Moai in a good coastal production city along with one of the military wonders such as Heroic Epic or West Point. With HE or a military academy, the water-based hammers from Moai are getting multiplied, and thanks to the coastal location, the city can produce both land and sea units. And with more good production tiles, it gets built faster (that's my token attempt to stay on topic).

Moai's a nice national wonder, but it's not nearly as important or as useful as the Heroic or National Epics or the Ironworks; it's not worth founding a mediocre city to get the most out of it.

I dont go looking for a location like this, but when you have an island near your capaital that can claim 3-4 seafood you otherwise wouldnt get - perhaps even a seafood resorce you dont have access to - you are going to build that city. Without MS it's going to be awful. With MS it's going to be a good allrounder, esp with financial.

I dont go looking for a location like this, but when you have an island near your capaital that can claim 3-4 seafood you otherwise wouldnt get - perhaps even a seafood resorce you dont have access to - you are going to build that city. Without MS it's going to be awful. With MS it's going to be a good allrounder, esp with financial.
A good point; but locations with more than 2 seafood other than capitals are rare.

In that case try to whip temples, a forge, and only then the statues if you don't have stone. I rarely build the statues in places like that, since waiting for years and years to build them to get the maximum number of improved water tiles gives me less than building them much earlier in a city with a decent land base. 8-10 sea tiles cities are a pretty good use for the statues in my opinion.

IMO, the ideal place for Moai statues is a city on the end of a peninsula:

2-4 land tiles which are mined/workshopped
and
2+ seafood resources (for whipping granary, forge)

In that way, the Statues can be built soon enough to get a benefit from them in a reasonable time, but you aren't wasting them in a city with relatively few water tiles.