Sistine Chapel -- +2 culture per specialist I don't see as much of a game-changer. Not unless each and every border city is a food-farm.
Sistine is up there as a TOP wonder. Reasons:
1. If you build it, it nerfs the bejeezus out of AI culture attempts. An AI that might have won it in the early 1800's won't even have 3 legendary cities by 1900 AD. Ouch. Building it essentially buys you extra time to either win or intercept a to-be-legendary city.
2. Unparalleled culture pressure. Not only do specs get 2
, but each of the religious buildings get a heap of
too, and the BONUS doubles along with those buildings themselves after 1000 years. Think zara's borders are rough on a non-CRE leader? Not when you get sistine chapel and wind up flipping one of his cities.......
3. It's obviously very strong for culture wins.
I usually stay in Organized Religion for the duration of the game after that opens up for me
No pacifism, one of the strongest civics in ANY tree? OR is good too...but seriously...
Angkor Wat -- I'm usually trying to spawn Scientists and Engineers for obvious reasons, and at least one Merchant for Sid's Sushi, late-game. Conquered holy cities usually already have their shrine, so once my holy city (usually Confucian) has its shrine, GPs become little better than GAs. Not much call to flip those specialists anymore than I would artists.
AW makes priests a top specialist; I've seen some crazy things using them from Kesshi back in the day.
3 Gorges Dam -- Power without the extra unhealthy from coal plants? And the reason I don't want that is ...?
You already have power in all of your cities (usually). You're sinking a LOT of
into what equates to a health boost. While this can have merit in a runaway tech game, it's usually not so hot.
Pentagon -- have my Organized Religion cake and eat Theocracy XPs too. That's how I roll.
??? The pentagon has 2 votes on this list. It also comes with a top notch technology that happens to speed the construction of everything. I don't see this as an unpopular wonder on the forum and the poll certainly doesn't suggest otherwise!
Space Elevator -- my typical victory is space race
And your result is to slow down your space time every time you bother building this trash................if you were to run the #'s on every space win you've ever played in BTS, MAYBE builing space elevator speed up your victory in one game. Probably not though. Building it slowed you down in all of the others. You're free to build this trash wonder if you like it (it's a fun concept for real life to have a space elevator), but don't think for a second it's actually helping your launch time.