Worst wonder?

What is the worst world wonder?

  • Angkor Wat

    Votes: 24 4.6%
  • Broadway

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • Chichen Itza

    Votes: 181 34.8%
  • Cristo Redentor

    Votes: 18 3.5%
  • Hollywood

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • Mausoleum of Maussollos

    Votes: 9 1.7%
  • Notre Dame

    Votes: 1 0.2%
  • Rock 'n' Roll

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • Shwedagon Paya

    Votes: 25 4.8%
  • Stonehenge

    Votes: 6 1.2%
  • The Colossus

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Eiffel Tower

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • The Hagia Sophia

    Votes: 36 6.9%
  • The Hanging Gardens

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Parthenon

    Votes: 1 0.2%
  • The Pentagon

    Votes: 5 1.0%
  • The Space Elevator

    Votes: 113 21.7%
  • The Spiral Minaret

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • The Statue of Zeus

    Votes: 11 2.1%
  • The Taj Mahal

    Votes: 7 1.3%
  • The Temple of Artemis

    Votes: 10 1.9%
  • The Three Gorges Dam

    Votes: 3 0.6%
  • University of Sankore

    Votes: 4 0.8%
  • Versailles

    Votes: 12 2.3%
  • The Internet

    Votes: 44 8.5%

  • Total voters
    520
Hagia Sophia for me. Obsoletes too quickly, can use those hammers to simply build more workers if your land isn't improved enough.

Can someone explain how Taj has 5 votes? The only situation I think it would be poor in is if you have a tiny empire, no marble, and are spiritual. The number of hammers needed to build it should be recouped in the subsequent golden age, and being able to switch civics anarchy free is such a nice bonus. Maybe not the top wonder, but so so far from being the worst

In a game where thing are breaking right, I can stockpile GPs that are otherwise less than useful (post-shrine prophets, the GA from Music, the GM from Economics, etc) combine the Taj with MoM, and start a chain of Golden Ages. Very nice.

The Hag has Great Engineer points, and those are few and far between, so it's not the worst.

The Paya is useful, and has saved my game, when surrounded by dueling religious blocks; early Free Religion can be a diplomatic godsend.

Only the Space Elevator has no redeeming value whatsoever, and not a single situation in which it can be considered useful, ergo, The Worst.

Who voted for the Three Gorges Dam? Large empires on a big continent make out like bandits with this thing.
 
I think the 3GD is overrated. It comes far too late compared with plain coal plants. Sure, it's +4:unhealth:, but what is that? -2 citizens? I'd much rather get that +50% production as soon as possible, churn out tons of cavalry, infantry, tanks, etc, and take over someone else's empire.

The only reason I'd build 3GD is to either power my National Park city, or so that new additions to my late game conquering spree get online faster.
 
3GD is generally a weak wonder because you don't want to wait that long for power.

However, there are times where one doesn't have coal and can't trade for it (rare but happens) and even if you do, building it can be seen as a massive health boost to the continent...often not worth the :hammers: but sometimes, especially if the empire is that massive anyway :p. It's rarely a great wonder but isn't a realistic candidate for "worst".
 
Agia Sophia is the one I always avoid. I can't believe the AI even beelines it so hard, but Firaxis never thought any of that out. I'm sure they still think it's an amazing wonder.
I was playing a Civ 4 Vanilla game recently and a lot of the AIs in my game seem to love running Serfdom. If an AI builds the Hagia Sophia, they can have both the value of their beloved Serfdom plus they will get to use Slavery.

In other words, yes, the AIs are programmed to think that it's an amazing Wonder.
 
I was playing a Civ 4 Vanilla game recently and a lot of the AIs in my game seem to love running Serfdom. If an AI builds the Hagia Sophia, they can have both the value of their beloved Serfdom plus they will get to use Slavery.

In other words, yes, the AIs are programmed to think that it's an amazing Wonder.

To be fair, it's tied to the single most brokenly good wonder in the game for BTS.
 
Can someone explain how Taj has 5 votes? The only situation I think it would be poor in is if you have a tiny empire, no marble, and are spiritual. The number of hammers needed to build it should be recouped in the subsequent golden age, and being able to switch civics anarchy free is such a nice bonus. Maybe not the top wonder, but so so far from being the worst

They may not know that it does not increase cost for later golden ages. If you start a golden age, the next GA usually takes one more GP to activate it. The Taj Mahal's GA does not count for these purposes.
 
To be fair, it's tied to the single most brokenly good wonder in the game for BTS.
Oddly enough, with the AIs' tendency to avoid being the 2nd player to research techs that have a Religion associated with them, they are probably more likely to delay building The Hagia Sophia in BtS, where the Wonder is attached to the Religion-spawning Theology tech (as you are implying) as opposed to how it was attached to Engineering in Vanilla and Warlords.


They may not know that it does not increase cost for later golden ages. If you start a golden age, the next GA usually takes one more GP to activate it. The Taj Mahal's GA does not count for these purposes.
Another possibility, besides people voting intentionally goofily for the fun of it, is that those who voted for The Taj Mahal often lose out on that Wonder to an AI.

Whereas most Wonders can still give you their benefits if you capture them, if an AI beats you to The Taj Mahal, you will be unable to benefit from the resulting Golden Age, at which point you might start wishing that the Wonder wasn't available to build in that particular game.

I know that I certainly regretted trading Nationalism to Monte when it turned out that that bugger had been saving up a Great Engineer just for the purposes of tricking me into giving him that tech! "Give me Nationalism or prepare to face my massive hordes!" Sometimes the AIs can be sooooo devious. :D
 
I know that I certainly regretted trading Nationalism to Monte when it turned out that that bugger had been saving up a Great Engineer just for the purposes of tricking me into giving him that tech! "Give me Nationalism or prepare to face my massive hordes!" Sometimes the AIs can be sooooo devious. :D


And by doing so uses the GAge to build more units so that he can send even more massive hordes? Nothing makes me laugh more than hearing about the troubles of fellow players, thanks for that.
 
I'm one of the few votes for Versailles. It's late, it's ridiculously expensive, and by that part of the game I'm too busy on other things to build it. Some Wonder Boy gets it anyway.

Actually, come to think of it, it's not a bad wonder for someone else to build.
 
I voted for the Shwedagon Paya. Plenty of others aren't worth the hammer investment, but this is usually useless even when I conquer it (and not by design - holding that against the Taj Mahal would be unfair). For much of the game, I prefer Organised Religion over the rest anyway.
If I want Pacifism early, chances are I want to prioritise Philosophy anyway to steer the AI along a preferable tech path.
Very occasionally the ability to run Free Religion early is useful... but only if I don't have to pay anything for it. If I have gold, I'd rather take the failure cash.

Ethiopia can use theocracy for drafted oromos (they NEED formation) to not give up a bureaucracy capital. Theology is a pointless tech. That's a special case that can use this wonder well. Culture and GPP are also factors, and it's not at all hard to build before the AI gets it.

Civ V :lol:......

:lol:
 
Space Elevator. Way too late for usefulness. As several people said earlier BTS has nerfed this majorly.
 
I'm a huge wonder addict, not even a recovering one, still current. I know it hurts my game play. I guess part of it is ego and I see every wonder build as a race, a statement that not only did I discover the tech first, but I managed resources better in order to build it, "and you DIDN'T so take that Monty! Hahahahaha" ... and then it's DoW time and I'm wondering why his army outnumbers mine 50:1, duhhhhhh. (I still usually win as I'm higher tech than him, but the numbers make it stressful going at first.)

The wonders I usually don't bother building are:

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.

Shedwagon Paya -- I usually stay in Organized Religion for the duration of the game after that opens up for me, unless I'm Spiritual and get hit with a sneak attack (switch all production queues to units for the war, then flip back to buildings).

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.

The unpopular ones I still go for are:

Chichen Itza -- it can be helpful to have that extra city defense when you get backstabbed as often as I do, which is because I'm about as diplomatic as W. Bush on steroid rage.

Space Elevator -- my typical victory is space race (after a bit of conquest to allow enough production cities to parallelize production).

3 Gorges Dam -- Power without the extra unhealthy from coal plants? And the reason I don't want that is ...?

Pentagon -- have my Organized Religion cake and eat Theocracy XPs too. That's how I roll.

=========

Much as I love making a run for building wonders though, the two that are deal-breakers for any game I play are Oracle and Great Library. It's just too crippling a blow not to have them, which is why I consider marble a "strategic" resource. And of course while I have marble (thanks axemen!) might as well go for such shinies as Hagia Sophia for extra engineer points, etc.
 
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 :culture:, but each of the religious buildings get a heap of :culture: 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 :hammers: 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.
 
I'm about as diplomatic as W. Bush on steroid rage.

:lol::lol:

3 Gorges Dam -- Power without the extra unhealthy from coal plants? And the reason I don't want that is ...?

Pentagon -- have my Organized Religion cake and eat Theocracy XPs too. That's how I roll.

I get extremely annoyed if I'm beaten to these two. Those cities are then top of my "shopping list".
 
AW makes priests a top specialist; I've seen some crazy things using them from Kesshi back in the day.

At the expense of getting prophets instead of scientists. :mad: Even if you do run lots of priests (expensive in the first place for non-spiritual, and probably pointless for charismatic guys with no happiness problems), it takes so long enough to pay back the cost of AW.
 
:lol::lol:



I get extremely annoyed if I'm beaten to these two. Those cities are then top of my "shopping list".

Pentagon is a pain if you don't get it. Very good wonder. I disagree on 3 Gorges - I'm not patient enough to wait for it and I usually have most health resources so I can afford early coal plants.

Space Elevator is seldom worth it. There are a few situations where it's good. I never build Chichen Itza because I prefer to wipe out enemies in the open rather than giving them initiative against my cities and having them pillage me.

Sistine is one of the great denial wonders. If you're able to snag the AP or one of the other religious wonders you'll really enjoy the hurt you can put on neighbors with Sistine.
 
What I do like about TGD is that it provides power to a bunch of minor cities that would otherwise never get it. Now, those cities aren't producing enough for it to matter, not really, but it always makes me happy when they light up.
 
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