Burning a Great Engineer for Little Reward

my memory is hazy, but didn't the really old Civ versions have a global warning if a civ was about to complete a wonder? would be nice to have that again.

kb27787 said:

That's because the AI always sees your cities and your tech (cheating);

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A buddy pointed out to me (because I play in strategic mode) that in standard view, you can see the foundation of any building that any city is building as long as you have LOS on said city... And if you know your wonders you can see with your eyeholes who is building what so of course the AI gets a similar effect. Same goes for regular buildings too, the AI knows you have writing already because it can actually SEE your library.

Karmah said:

For those who said it never happened , they either played a few games or never past king.

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Well, I'm afraid that's just false. I've played many hundreds of hours--I shudder to think how many--and I usually alternate between Prince, King, and Emperor. And, as I've said, I'm always wonder-hungry. I don't always get all the Wonders I want, of course!, at least not on Emperor, but I've never once been beaten to a Wonder after burning a GE for it.

I was playing a sandbox experimental game to try strategies for getting one of the renaissance wonders (forget which one). Cathy beat me by 1 turn, so I reloaded some turns back and added another hill to finish a turn early, and she beat me by 1 turn again. So I reloaded to the turn I started on the wonder and full hammer focused on it. Cathy blew an engineer on hers...

The AI does watch you with spies, and will change their tactics to make you waste maximal turns on a woder

Part of game;

Is equally the same level of frustration as finishing the wonder the same turn and not getting it, and can happen statistically significant amount of times for about the same reasons: "wonderwhoring" and lack of scouting/analytics.

Callonia said:

This happens to me plenty of times.

But once, this was the worst ever. I didn't pop a great engineer. I played on king.

I pop Masonry, Pottery and writing from ancient ruins and enough faith from ancient ruins which gave me monument to the gods I wasl like oh my gawd are you kidding me, Grassland GOld mine and marble.. Plus aristocracy.

I took 12 turns to hardbuild the great library and then when there was one turn left, I got beaten to it by one turn. Goddammit AI, why can't you just let me have it at least once. Was turn 30-40. I ragequited but then I changed my mind immediately.

i wanted to return the favor to the guy who beat me to the great library by one turn.. by beating the AIs to every single ancient/classical/medieval wonders.

I was enjoying bright red "we covet your land and wonders negative modifiers from the AI" :3

Then i declared vengeance accomplished and quit. Yes I even got stuff like Petra, Alhambra, Parthenon, etc the wonders that humans normally never get only AIs.

Sure they beat me to the great library but in return i beat them to every other wonder at great expense.

My cities be rolling in bling and there's nothing that great library AI hogging can do about it.

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Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time the AI beat me to the GL by one freakin' turn...if you're not finishing it before 30 on Emperor, then there's no way. Usually around 26-28 with 22 civs.

Helmling said:

Oh man, if I had a dollar for every time the AI beat me to the GL by one freakin' turn...if you're not finishing it before 30 on Emperor, then there's no way. Usually around 26-28 with 22 civs.

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You must be playing on Quick, correct? Because it usually goes at about 30-32 on Deity.

I had a game once where I was wondersniped at least three times with one turn left, and one was after i burned a GE Then the other game where every time my spy warned me of a wonder, I immediately rushed it and beat them

I don't want to sound like a smart ass, but you people need to choose the fights you fight better. I've never lost a GE to that and I have over a 1k hours on emperor/immortal. The only real chance to get a wonder comes from technological advantage. In other words, don't count on GL (it's not worth the effort anyway), focus on the upper part of tech tree and go only for the wonders AI is unable to reach. With this approach, I'll most likely never build the Great Wall, Alhambra or the Red Fort, but as I said, I've never lost a single GE.

I've had this happen multiple times. Worst was when I burned two GE's and still lost it by a turn. Damn low production cities.

Happens to me and is really annoying, think it should be changed.
Use engineer and get the wonder immediately!

... You call nothing at all 'little reward'? Do you live in North Korea by any chance? (In fact it's worse than nothing, much worse, as you just increased the Great People counter for no benefit...)

I agree that this needs to go, the sooner the better. It shouldn't have come about in the first place. Stupid mechanics are unfit for life, it's sad but true.

@Makavcio: Or maybe you need to stop excusing bad game mechanics. I do mean to sound like a smart-ass. It's like people defending lack of commas in the Diablo 3 online auction house. 'Just learn to count the zeros before you place the bid!' Umm no, just add the damn commas and remove the whole issue. To go back to Civ, each GE is so valuable that to have the possibility of them fail to get the wonder should never happen... You got that GE to assure the wonder, so it damn well better *be* assured.

EDIT: I never go for the GL after I saw it go on turn 27 on Emperor. It is rare but it can happen. Iirc it was a world map with 22 civs. On Immortal it goes around 30-35 every game (with 8 civs). The upside of the AI always pursuing the same wonders is that you actually can get some of the non-prioritized ones even on Deity... If they pursued wonders more randomly, you could never even try to build Ancient or Classical wonders. It's not an ideal situation, but it could be worse imo.

I always save the game before I use a GE because I end up rage quitting if I do lose the wonder

eldiablonoche said:

A buddy pointed out to me (because I play in strategic mode) that in standard view, you can see the foundation of any building that any city is building as long as you have LOS on said city... And if you know your wonders you can see with your eyeholes who is building what so of course the AI gets a similar effect. Same goes for regular buildings too, the AI knows you have writing already because it can actually SEE your library.

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no, not only that, the AI "sees" your research bar (it always knows what turn you are going to finish researching the tech; sometimes it will finish the wonder the turn you finish the tech and if you were stupid enough to burn a GE on it right away, it will get wasted), and it sees exactly how many turns left to complete the wonder, way before spies become available.

The way AIs do it is if they beat you to the tech, they might devote some turns on the wonder, then go produce military or other things whatever... but it always calculate that it will beat you by one turn. (so it can be foiled by GS+GE one-two combo, or tree chop, or interfaith dialogue)

joshua43214 said:

I was playing a sandbox experimental game to try strategies for getting one of the renaissance wonders (forget which one). Cathy beat me by 1 turn, so I reloaded some turns back and added another hill to finish a turn early, and she beat me by 1 turn again. So I reloaded to the turn I started on the wonder and full hammer focused on it. Cathy blew an engineer on hers...

The AI does watch you with spies, and will change their tactics to make you waste maximal turns on a woder

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trust me, they do this even before Renaissance and spies the AI cheats

Easily foiled by a well-timed forest chop(s) though. (they think you have 2 turns left but that last forest chop tipped it over to 1 and even if they burn a GE it's too late). The AI does not seem to be able to calculate forest chops for some reason. You can abuse this even in Renaissance (just make sure the AI thinks you have 2 turns left, even if that last turn is only half a hammer, then use a well-timed forest chop)
I was a wonderhog in my GnK days and I've observed all the AIs shenanigans

A lot of occasions they simply get their wonders up before you finish the tech nothing you can do there except GS+GE one-two punch.

Johnnymac1418 said:

I always save the game before I use a GE because I end up rage quitting if I do lose the wonder

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I have the game set to autosave every other turn because of all the ways it makes me rage quit. Mostly bugs related to moving my settler directly towards a barb when I was trying to move him the other way.

There should be some kind of undo button for these cases. I mean only allow to undo one action per unit seems ok

Great Engineers should be put in line with other great people - you get their respective bonuses immediately when used, not in next turn. If you bulb your scientist the right way you can finish one technology, bulb second one and start researching the third in same turn. Why do those damn engineers leave the last brick to be laid by ordinary workers?

Did devs ever speak why is it working that way? I can't see it being reasoned with balance or something like that.

Likely just an oversight that nobody's complained about, until now. The game's in pretty good shape when people complain about the little things. Means all the major ones are ironed out.

kb27787 said:

no, not only that, the AI "sees" your research bar (it always knows what turn you are going to finish researching the tech; sometimes it will finish the wonder the turn you finish the tech and if you were stupid enough to burn a GE on it right away, it will get wasted), and it sees exactly how many turns left to complete the wonder, way before spies become available.

The way AIs do it is if they beat you to the tech, they might devote some turns on the wonder, then go produce military or other things whatever... but it always calculate that it will beat you by one turn. (so it can be foiled by GS+GE one-two combo, or tree chop, or interfaith dialogue)

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If that were the case then most people playing on Emperor-Deity would be similarly beat to Wonders in virtually every game and that is simply not the case. I think you're a bit paranoid, no offense.