Most useless wonders in game

CN is only really good if you have a wide culture game, or just a time game when you have 100+ cities. Otherwise useless. Disagree on OP saying Parthenon and Borobudur useless. One of them gives good culture which is useful that early and other is a massive faith saving. Problem with Hagia Sophia is the fact that while it gives Great Prophet, it is often to late to enhance with it and spawning prophet increases costs of future ones if you use it for spreading. Great Firewall, Christo Redemptor, Pentagon are pretty useless simply due to how late they're available. Usually my experience if AI can build Great Firewall, you might as well just conquer them for their great works/wonders as their tech is much too high to enable easy peaceful culture victory. Christo is way too late most of the time and extra saving is small, Pentagon is useless because by that point what do you need to upgrade?
 
I don't understand the point of CN tower. It comes a RIDICULOUS amount of techs after broadcast towers. It's like if pentagon game you free upgrades to all your horsemen so they'd be knights. WOW THANKS
 
It provides ALL of your cities broadcast towers, in a wide game or violent CV, your cities will be missing these buildings, even puppets or cities in resistance.
 
inthesomeday said:
Angkor, Great Firewall, Terracotta, Pentagon, Cristo, Statue of Zeus, Kremlin's actual like effect
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The Great Firewall is a very useful Wonder in my opinion, not sure why this one is considered useless to you.

- 99.9% reduction in effectiveness of enemy spies in the city in which it is built.
- All other cities in the civilization get a 25% reduction in enemy spy effectiveness.
- BNW-only Negates the Tourism bonus from other players' Internet technology.

The Tourism part is particularly effective if you are trying to win Culturally or even just trying to stave off the AI Culture/Tourism
 
inthesomeday said:
I forgot about CN Tower, which is also terrible. There's probably others I'm forgetting for never having built them BECAUSE they're terrible.
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Okay, this is the second time I've quoted you as I am baffled at why you think some of these Wonders are terrible. CN Tower is great for Cultural Victories - come on, a free BT in every City? A population increase too? Okay, people might argue it is late game but I still think it is very handy

Could you elaborate on why you don't like it?
 
Great Firewall: I never go for culture victory because it's useless to try in the game mode I prefer. But when going for culture victory, why do you care at all what other civ's tourism over you is? Isn't it far more important to make sure your tourism over them is greater?
The spy reduction is worthless and is actually detrimental because that means it'll take you waaaaay longer to kill their spies, which is what you want to be doing at this stage of the game; spies barely steal technologies and in my experience are better used to spot things like wonders and unit rush spam. The tourism shouldn't be relevant in a culture game, because winning a culture victory is one of these that occurs independent of if other civs are also pursuing the victory.

CN Tower: If you need broadcast towers, you need them WAY before-- what tech is it-- telecommunications? Broadcast towers are unlocked at radio, and if you have, say, a certain number of cities that have great tourism and you get that freedom policy, then all of those cities should have a broadcast tower loooooong before CN. The population and happiness are also utterly useless at this point in the game.
 
Acken said:
Late game wonders suffer the same fate as late game buildings. Very few of them are useful when the victory is less than 30 turns away. But I agree Cristo, CN and the like are really extra bad.
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And that's kind of OK. We already know what stuff is like in the 21st century. The point of the game is to play through the ages and get the historic feel.
 
The way I tried culture victory was basically to bulb scientists to get internet and CN tower is on the way there so there's no time to build that.

So the order I build things was this:
1- amphitheaters
2- opera houses
3- hermitage in capital
4- buy public schools
5- make oxford, get radio
6- get archaeology
7- spam archaeologists, make museums
8- get plastics, buy labs
9- get refrigeration, make hotels
10- start popping scientists to get national visitor center, then internet

So THEN maybe you can make the CN tower, after you get your musician's guild, while you research radar for airports.
But usually the capital is making statue of liberty / eiffel tower somewhere in there too so there's no time, or I make the towers before I even get to hotels if I have the time and my science is crap.

Just seems to work out that in every game I have towers in all cities before I'd ever build the CN tower.
 
I think we're confusing "useless" here. There are plenty of late wonders that are useful, just too late to help you win any faster. There is a difference I think based on the OP's original post.

CN Tower is really powerful, but mainly for casual games. It definitely won't help you win the game any faster, but it can be fun to get empire-wide towers, free pop and happiness to support it empire-wide, especially on a very wide empire game.

I don't think it's "bad", it's just too late to help for most victory conditions. Maybe if I was running a really late domination of a larger map I might build it but for the most part it's just fun and ends you with a bigger/better empire if you are just playing for the empire experience. I've built it solely for that many games. :) If it came any earlier it'd look a lot better as free pop and culture is always good.

Agree about the great firewall though. It's not really a problem if the AI steals from you because they still will never catch you and in the meantime it's an experience-farm for your own spies. Not like it matters preventing theft anyway right as the game is ending. I could see it hypothetically being useful but not realistically. Like if you had some late-game dom it could be useful for keeping opponents behind so they didn't tech up to XCOMS with you, but how often have you not won by then anyway? On multiplayer humans will be smart enough to avoid the city you are likely to put a counter-spy in so it does have a positive effect if you are playing a game with many smart, stealing humans. But I have yet to see a multiplayer game that wasn't over by dom by then because on small it doesn't' take much to conquer.

Redentor I used to build just cuz I like ending with high culture numbers but yeah, it might get you 1 extra policy at most and there are plenty of wonders that give you free policies late so not really worth it compared to those.
 
Also the pentagon. Why not just build units instead, that's even more money saved! Yay. I can make that, or like 3 bombers. HMM
 
Reading this I'm wondering what wonders are worth building at all.

I've built the Great Lighthouse a number of times. Honestly I can't say it has ever made the slightest bit of difference to any game I've played. Actually I think the Great Merchant point has come in handier for a cash boost than any direct effect of the Lighthouse.

Will say that if your starting terrain isn't suited for a faith pantheon, your best chance of getting a religion is with Stonehenge. That is if you aren't playing one of the civs that get a religion handed to them like Ethiopia or the Celts sometimes.

I guess you could take Piety, but it's hard for me to imagine a payoff from a religion worth the early game problems doing that.
 
The Great Merchant point does more harm than it does good. GL is a fantastic wonder for domination, otherwise not really worth building. Much prefer Colossus.
 
sunbeam said:
Reading this I'm wondering what wonders are worth building at all.

I've built the Great Lighthouse a number of times. Honestly I can't say it has ever made the slightest bit of difference to any game I've played. Actually I think the Great Merchant point has come in handier for a cash boost than any direct effect of the Lighthouse.
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Depends on your victory type or playstyle but some can be especially good and worth the hammers. MOST early ancient ones are NOT worth it unless you can delay and build them late. Why? Because you can't afford to waste turns building a wonder when you should be getting settlers out as quickly as possible. If you build it, the effect has to be better then settling all your expos late, getting late workers, getting late caravans/ships, building growth buildings to grow faster, etc. After the first few expos though some wonders become worth it if they are still around. You might start thinking about this turn 55+ if you settled fast and have everything else critical. Usually National College is better then anything you have to build but there can be exceptions. Maybe you are still waiting on some libraries, or, in the case of liberty still settling late but have a dip in happiness and have to stop for a bit. A wonder can fit here.

Here's some I routinely consider worth it if I can get them, and note on Deity you don't have the opportunity to get many early as they are gone fast. But for the sake of all difficulty levels I'll include some of those I don't try for on high levels. For instance, I actually never build stonehenge but it has more to do with difficulty level. On Deity all the religions are founded by the time I could consider building stonehenge and then use it to get to 200 faith. I'm playing a Deity game right now where every religion in the world was founded by turn 60 and I was 6th at turn 54. Stonehenge was gone like turn 35.

Good in general: Notre Dame, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Collossus, Petra, Oracle, Chichen Itza, Eiffel Tower,

Wide empires: Pyramids, Sistine Chapel, Machu Pichu, Forbidden Palace, Big Ben,

Tall empires: hanging gardens, Statue of Liberty,

For religion: Stonehenge, Borabadur

Multiplayer: Great Wall, Pyramids, Alhambra, Neuschwanstein

Good for domination victory: Statue of Zeus, Alhambra, Prora

Science Victory: Hubble Space Telescope,

Culture Victory: Eiffel Tower, Broadway

Diplomatic: Forbidden Palace
 
poxpower said:
Also the pentagon. Why not just build units instead, that's even more money saved! Yay. I can make that, or like 3 bombers. HMM
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It's been said that it's probably better to lose Pentagon and use its gold to upgrade your units.
 
danaphanous said:
Depends on your victory type or playstyle but some can be especially good and worth the hammers. MOST early ancient ones are NOT worth it unless you can delay and build them late. Why? Because you can't afford to waste turns building a wonder when you should be getting settlers out as quickly as possible. If you build it, the effect has to be better then settling all your expos late, getting late workers, getting late caravans/ships, building growth buildings to grow faster, etc. After the first few expos though some wonders become worth it if they are still around. You might start thinking about this turn 55+ if you settled fast and have everything else critical. Usually National College is better then anything you have to build but there can be exceptions. Maybe you are still waiting on some libraries, or, in the case of liberty still settling late but have a dip in happiness and have to stop for a bit. A wonder can fit here.

Here's some I routinely consider worth it if I can get them, and note on Deity you don't have the opportunity to get many early as they are gone fast. But for the sake of all difficulty levels I'll include some of those I don't try for on high levels. For instance, I actually never build stonehenge but it has more to do with difficulty level. On Deity all the religions are founded by the time I could consider building stonehenge and then use it to get to 200 faith. I'm playing a Deity game right now where every religion in the world was founded by turn 60 and I was 6th at turn 54. Stonehenge was gone like turn 35.

Good in general: Notre Dame, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Collossus, Petra, Oracle, Chichen Itza, Eiffel Tower,

Wide empires: Pyramids, Sistine Chapel, Machu Pichu, Forbidden Palace, Big Ben,

Tall empires: hanging gardens, Statue of Liberty,

For religion: Stonehenge, Borabadur

Multiplayer: Great Wall, Pyramids, Alhambra, Neuschwanstein

Good for domination victory: Statue of Zeus, Alhambra, Prora

Science Victory: Hubble Space Telescope,

Culture Victory: Eiffel Tower, Broadway

Diplomatic: Forbidden Palace
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I feel a few wonders are missing here, but what I am really curious about is why you rate Big Ben a wide instead of Tall wonder. I always considered it as a tall wonder to help with rush buying buildings, but I guess it can be nice together with the Order policy for reduced building cost.

Generally tall does much better in producting gold imo so that is why I'd rate BB more tall than wide.
 
yung.carl.jung said:
I feel a few wonders are missing here, but what I am really curious about is why you rate Big Ben a wide instead of Tall wonder. I always considered it as a tall wonder to help with rush buying buildings, but I guess it can be nice together with the Order policy for reduced building cost.

Generally tall does much better in producting gold imo so that is why I'd rate BB more tall than wide.
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Big Ben is wide because of Liberty > Commerce > Autocracy purchasing strat, which is stronger than tall version because there's more cities to buy out of. Example: This turn, I need to buy 7 XCom because my stealth have reduced every capital down to nothing. Alas, I have only 4 cities! Oh, woe is me. The amount of gold generation really doesn't matter, the point of the strategy is making things dirt cheap, so any substantial gold production is plenty, and any civ can get substantial gold production.

Plus, Order building purchasing really isn't a thing. And order is better for tall empires IMO, while freedom is better for wide. Statue really belongs in wide, I think, because more specialists in more cities equals more hammers. If Kremlin was any good it would belong in tall; a flat hammer bonus vs a hammer modifier is wide vs tall at its most apparent.
 
There are probably a few more that are useful that I missed. In my experience those are the ones I get the most use out of though.

Big Ben is probably good with either strategy but given that the prerequisite to buy with is commerce you need to open commerce early, maybe second tree, to really get full use out of it. With wide/liberty games I almost always have 1-3 extra points to throw somewhere before renaissance and opening rationalism. I also tend to feel like I need to buy more when I have a large empire vs. a smaller one though this may be playstyle. My big cities are usually fast enough and I'm buying to make the mediocre ones keep up. Big Ben synergizes with the 25% cost reduction from commerce and either the military purchasing of autocracy or the building cost reductions in order. In the case of order I use it to cash-buy things like research labs and hospitals and stuff way earlier then I otherwise could get them all over the empire. All in all I just have a lot more to buy with a bigger empire. I will probably attempt the same strat in my Shoshone series if I have the chance to get the wonder. I usually get the money to do this around the same time Big Ben becomes available. The gold output from city connections and cities overcomes their maintenance cost and I end up getting solid gold, especially in the case of a tithes religion if I get one, though you don't always found.
 
HughFran said:
The Great Firewall is a very useful Wonder in my opinion, not sure why this one is considered useless to you.

- 99.9% reduction in effectiveness of enemy spies in the city in which it is built.
- All other cities in the civilization get a 25% reduction in enemy spy effectiveness.
- BNW-only Negates the Tourism bonus from other players' Internet technology.

The Tourism part is particularly effective if you are trying to win Culturally or even just trying to stave off the AI Culture/Tourism
Click to expand...

HughFran said:
Okay, this is the second time I've quoted you as I am baffled at why you think some of these Wonders are terrible. CN Tower is great for Cultural Victories - come on, a free BT in every City? A population increase too? Okay, people might argue it is late game but I still think it is very handy

Could you elaborate on why you don't like it?
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I think the issue here HughFran, is win times. If a game is over in 250-300 turns then the hammer cost of late game wonders is just not worth paying. Even if they only take you 7 turns to build, that is 7 turns of the city not building Science.

Don't be offended but it comes down to how well you understand the game mechanics and what difficulty you mostly play on. In your example about the great firewall, let us assume you are going for a culture victory. If some AI has researched internet, you have either already lost the game at that point, its well over 300 turns or you haven't killed off the AI.
Same with the CN tower which you noted yourself as 'its late game', which is exactly the problem. Late game should be about adding the finishing touches to your stratagem as opposed to still working towards it.
 
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