Most useless wonders in game

I think defensive wonders are useless in singleplayer, building units instead is just so much better.

There is one thing people forget with Cristo Redentor is that it provides a flat +5 culture. If you have cultural Heritage Sites that will boost it to +8. A Hotel & Airport & National Visitor Centre will convert this to a healthy amount of tourism - about as much as a Archaeology site will.

Now while it's not amazing it still provides a bonus to tourism and for that reason if you're able to build it I'd still recommend it for a culture victory.

x2Madda said:

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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It should be noted that most of the posters here, especially the "elite" players play easier gametypes like Standard/Standard and therefore never play much of an "endgame" to begin with. If you can end the game by turn 270 you aren't even playing the endgame. In fact you often hear about players ending the game with Crossbowmen...no endgame at all.

When you play on Huge maps the late game wonders become essential to winning the game. The core players of the Civ 5 community have decided that Standard/Standard is the "standard" gametype, perhaps rightly so, however this causes late game play to be considered somehwat of an afterthought because nobody every actually plays it for very long at high levels.

So when you read through most of the threads you have to remember that your map size and speed DIRECTLY influences most of the strategies you read about here. If you play other map types they can be varying degrees of useless.

On huge maps, Christo Redentor and CN tower are much more useful...in fact essential. If you are going for CV and somebody else gets the CN tower? You're in trouble....especially considering an AI left alive in a 12/24 Huge map game by the time CN tower comes out is going to have ~20 cities. GM bombs might not even break through that Civ's culture...and if they are on the other side of the world and it takes 18 turns just for your GM to reach their borders...well you get the idea

Emphasis added:

inthesomeday said:

Great Firewall... 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?

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Yes, it is far more important to make sure your tourism over them is greater. And if you are playing for a peaceful CV then having the most resistant AI build GFW is fairly devastating! So building GFW yourself becomes a priority because it is important to deny it to the AI.

adsin15 said:

It should be noted that most of the posters here, especially the "elite" players play easier gametypes like Standard/Standard and therefore never play much of an "endgame" to begin with. If you can end the game by turn 270 you aren't even playing the endgame. In fact you often hear about players ending the game with Crossbowmen...no endgame at all.

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I do so enjoy the endgame ... but I think that is because I cannot reliable finish much before T350.

I disagree with your characterization that Standard/Standard is easier than Huge/Marathon. I do not know of objective evidence for that whatsoever! Sure, Huge maps take longer to finish. But that only means that they take longer, not that the AI has a better chance of winning. Maybe, by definition, a DomVC is harder with more AIs? So put more AIs on Standard/Standard if making the game harder is what you are looking for? Or are you playing Huge maps at Standard pace?

I agree that Huge maps are different, and I have not tried them myself, but I don't find the prospect at all appealing. It is quite clear that the devs tuned everything for Standard Pace / Standard Size. I would much rather play more games than fewer slower (and more tedious) games. I am not temped to go the other way because quick pace or smaller maps are quite broken, and certainly more games that that are faster but much less interesting is not appealing! So it is Standard/Standard not because I am an “elite” player -- but because that the only combination where the game is well balanced.

If my play improves to the point where I never see a GDR, maybe then I will try Large/Epic? Or maybe try advance start? I love the late game. But I love the early game too. But, of course, I want to play more games than fewer games -- with those games each being as engaging as possible. So Standard/Standard is the sweet spot.

inthesomeday said:

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.

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Why is BB under wide when you are advocating a Autocracy purchasing strat? It should be under domination then, not under wide.

Also this strategy works much better with Trad since your goal is not to get maximum gpt, infact, gpt will almost always be high enough to buy units in either your capital or your most faraway annexed city. Your key goal is to get to your desired tech as fast as humanly possible, which if you are aiming for Artillery or Bombers then Tradition will almost always be faster, while if you are aiming for XCom or Nukes it comes down to how good your cities are. Liberty is definitely competitive, but I think Tradition will still be a little faster since this is not about having the highest lategame bulbs (Liberty does), it is about getting to one single tech asap.

Also, purchasing strats should be used in conjunction with either Alhambra or Brandenburg for maximum promotions out of the gate and maximum utility of your gold. Having both WW will allow you to recruit Blitz XCom, which can land and attack the same turn.

The good thing about purchasing is that you can buy one unit from the capital every turn, that is why you want to stack those promotion bonuses in the cap.

Obviously getting Alhambra or Brandenburg is much easier with Tradition since those wonders come way too late for the free Engineer from Liberty.

Also, LCA is essentially just a lesser version of HCA in my opinion. I think Honor in this case will almost always outperform Liberty when it comes to total war plus it yields gold for kills and Tradition will almost always outperform Liberty when it comes to rushing to Arty/Bombers/Xcom. Also look at the paragraph on how gold is relative I wrote in answer to danaphonous. Tradition will almost always have lower gpt than Liberty will, but gets more use out of spending gold.

On Order and Freedom I completely disagree, too. It has been proven time and time again that Freedom will give you just slightly better finishing times with tall empires than Order. That is of course if you have the gold available. That is due to many reasons, one of them being the Factory tenet of Order not working with all the multipliers. For example, it does not account for +10% science while the empire is happy and vice versa. If you want hard evicence you just need to look up HOF records.

I do think wide Freedom is underrated and yes, wide empires do have more specialist slots available. That is true. However, they work them later because of the lack of food. Tall will always have more TR for each city, always a growth bonus from the Trad finisher, will have to share fewer tiles because cities are settled further apart et cetera.

Order however offers almost nothing for tall, seeing as most of the time you want to rushbuy your factories anyway instead of building them, meaning the 50% off of hammers are lost and because most of Orders bonuses scale much better with # of cities than they do with pop. Also Order offers the most happiness and often times the least ideology unhappiness, which is very advantageous for wide empires. Tall usually does not have that many problems with lategame smiles from my experience. Also, Wide grows much faster in the lategame than tall does, just due to sheer city size. So wide empires will need to stock up on happiness in the lategame, while Tradition probably isn't bothered all that much, especially with every 2nd pop in the cap being free.

Socialist realism, Young Pioneers, Academy of Sciences and Five Year Plan all scale indirectly with # of cities or size of your empire. Party Leadership scales directly with # of cities.

Freedom's best tenet on the other hand scales with # of Specialists worked in each city. Even in my best Liberty games where my border cities surpass 20+ pop I am often not able to work all specialists including Factories, Windmills and Stock Exchange without the city starving. In my average Tradition games I work all my specialist slots after hitting Plastics. It's no contest in my mind.

Once again I am not saying wide Freedom is bad, it honestly probably gets better finishing times for SV than wide Order does. But that's just due to Freedom's nature, not because it is particularly good for wide empires, it isn't.

danaphanous said:

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.

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With almost all games you have one or three SP between your opening Tree and Rationalism, especially with Tradition where you not only get much more culture much earlier in the game, but also usually close the tree out the fastest because you'll have both, your cities and your monuments up earlier than Liberty does.

Last time I checked Commerce was the single most viable choice to do before transitioning from Trad to Rat, with Patronage clocking in at second.

Of course you have more gold with a big empire, that is for sure. But you also pay more maintenance, work less gold specialists and have a smaller capital, which will cost you gold. 200 GPT is not much when you have rushbuys to do in 10+ cities, it is a lot if you only have four. Do you see where I am going? It's not about numbers, it is about relative strength of gold.

For Tradition gold is really strong because every single Public School or Lab or Uni you buy will give you higher science than the Liberty equivalent, just because your pop will be slightly higher. Therefore your gold used for rushbuying is a little more effective. But it does not stop here. City State allies are much stronger for Tradition than they are for Liberty, especially Cultural CS, just because they don't scale with empire size while Social Policy cost does. All buildings that work with modifiers: Workshop, Factory, Market, Bank, Stock Exchange, all science buildings will work better with tall empires than with wide ones. A Factory in a 100 hammer city will give you more hammers than a Factory in a 80 hammer city.

Are we going to make this thread yet another trad v lib discussion? I have no idea where a lot of misconceptions about areas tradition is better come from. For example: working specialists, and scientist generation. With statue and freedom policies and secularism, which are easier because you get more social policies as wide, every specialist has 1 food, 1 hammer, .5 happiness, and 2 science attached to it, plus whatever the specialist yield is. Of COURSE I'll be working these amazing slots in every single city, and if I'm starving it's because I didn't settle in an area with sufficient food, or because I'm being stubborn and working mines. And there are 0 bonuses in tradition to great person generation, so that's a weird misconception without a root.

Commerce and Big Ben are strong for both then, you've convinced me. I was under the impression that with tradition you rushes into opening renaissance for rationalism and invested in commerce later, so you had less extra points to spend around the time of Big Ben and it would be your ONLY purchase cost reduction as a result. If you regularly open more of commerce early I may be wrong.

With wide I can get down to the 25% cost reduction before Big Ben, especially with a cultural religious building (my own or neighbor), because I'm not entering the renaissance as fast, and build Big Ben, and get 33% off buildings from order all around the same time for a 73% off of all buildings.

I tried to match wonders with the playstyle I thought they best synergized with or buffed. To me, the fact that you have lower gold midgame and more to buy in a large empire is the reason why Big Ben is more valuable for it. Yes, you can also use it to good effect for tradition, and the effect of buying stuff in smaller cities is less, so I totally get your buying power point. However, I think of it more in terms of saved time. those same tradition cities could just build a university in 8 or less turns. So you save whatever it gave you times 8 turns. Now, My terrible production jungle/mountain cities in a sprawling liberty empire would take 20 turns to build their universities and later research labs and that is only if I nerf growth to work hills which wastes even more science when I finally get the university, so the net immediate effect is smaller but in the wide case I've gained that amount times 20 turns.

So to me buying power matters yes, but also the amount of saved turns for whatever playstyle you are going for. I feel purchasing cost reductions make a larger difference to finishing faster with wide vs. tradition because in the case of tradition you buy a bigger effect but you save LESS turns off hard-building. Big Ben comes right at the time I'm entering the industrial and have way too many valuable buildings to build in my big empire so it just feels like it is much nicer wide. It might be an illusion but the relative effect seems greater to me. It's nice with tradition but not nearly as high a priority, but that might be my playstyle, maybe I should've tried for Big Ben more often with tradition games!

inthesomeday said:

Are we going to make this thread yet another trad v lib discussion? I have no idea where a lot of misconceptions about areas tradition is better come from. For example: working specialists, and scientist generation. With statue and freedom policies and secularism, which are easier because you get more social policies as wide, every specialist has 1 food, 1 hammer, .5 happiness, and 2 science attached to it, plus whatever the specialist yield is. Of COURSE I'll be working these amazing slots in every single city, and if I'm starving it's because I didn't settle in an area with sufficient food, or because I'm being stubborn and working mines. And there are 0 bonuses in tradition to great person generation, so that's a weird misconception without a root.

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I'm sorry but did you read my post? I specifically said that Liberty is better because you get to work more Specialist Slots in comparison to Tradition, but you have to do it much later in the game because

1) Your cities do not have Growth bonuses from Tradition
2) Your cities will not receive nearly as much Caravan food since Caravans do not scale with empire size
3) Your cities will likely be settled closer, therefore share more tiles. This means less Civil Service tiles to work per city

So while Liberty will end up working more specialist tiles later in the game which results in much better endgame science and very strong endgame bulbs your way from National College to Plastics will be slower because settling additional cities will slow down your social policy generation, tech rate and growth rate until your wide empire will inevitably start outperforming a tall one.

What this means is that Tradition will likely generate the great scientists slightly earlier than Liberty will, because you simply cannot work University, Public School and Research Lab slots in every single city as soon as they come up (which Tradition can) without sacrificing growth. Not every Liberty city can and should have perfect terrain, that is just how it is.

Also, there are many additional factors why Tradition will get its great scientists faster, but will end up generating fewer in total, which are:

1) Taller cities have an easier time fitting something like Gardens in their build order, Liberty cities have a lot of catching up to do. Taller cities, especially plains cities, usually have better production than wide cities, even with all the hammer bonuses towards buildings from Liberty.
2) A tall setup will inevitably end up building the National Epic much earlier than a wide empire will, since it costs less hammers and is available literally instantly after getting the tech if you do not exceed five cities.
3) Because of the tech penalty tall empires usually reach Ideology a few turns faster than wide empires do, since wide empires don't really catch up until Public Schools and don't outperform until Plastics. Getting to Ideology earlier means getting a 25% boost to specialist generation earlier.
4) Because of the culture penalties for settling more cities and because of the fact that culture from city states does not scale a Tradition empire will usually fill Rationalism a tad faster, meaning an earlier boost to great scientist generation.
5) It can often be hard to get Leaning Tower of Pisa with a sizeable Liberty empire just because you are lagging behind a bit in both science and centralized hammers, in this case in the capital.

I find your argument a little silly to be completely honest. Yes, of course a Liberty empire will be working specialist slots after getting Statue of Liberty, but the game typically ends twenty to thirty turns after getting Statue of Liberty if you play your post-plastics phase right, so in my opinion that is hardly an argument.

A much more solid argument would be for example that Liberty can make much better use of both the Civil Society and the Universal Suffrage tenet, because you can micromanage way better with 7 or 8 cities than you can with 4. These two tenets alone can allow your empire to grow when you would normally be in negative happiness, while also increasing your science.

danaphanous said:

Commerce and Big Ben are strong for both then, you've convinced me. I was under the impression that with tradition you rushes into opening renaissance for rationalism and invested in commerce later, so you had less extra points to spend around the time of Big Ben and it would be your ONLY purchase cost reduction as a result. If you regularly open more of commerce early I may be wrong.

With wide I can get down to the 25% cost reduction before Big Ben, especially with a cultural religious building (my own or neighbor), because I'm not entering the renaissance as fast, and build Big Ben, and get 33% off buildings from order all around the same time for a 73% off of all buildings.

I tried to match wonders with the playstyle I thought they best synergized with or buffed. To me, the fact that you have lower gold midgame and more to buy in a large empire is the reason why Big Ben is more valuable for it. Yes, you can also use it to good effect for tradition, and the effect of buying stuff in smaller cities is less, so I totally get your buying power point. However, I think of it more in terms of saved time. those same tradition cities could just build a university in 8 or less turns. So you save whatever it gave you times 8 turns. Now, My terrible production jungle/mountain cities in a sprawling liberty empire would take 20 turns to build their universities and later research labs and that is only if I nerf growth to work hills which wastes even more science when I finally get the university, so the net immediate effect is smaller but in the wide case I've gained that amount times 20 turns.

So to me buying power matters yes, but also the amount of saved turns for whatever playstyle you are going for. I feel purchasing cost reductions make a larger difference to finishing faster with wide vs. tradition because in the case of tradition you buy a bigger effect but you save LESS turns off hard-building. Big Ben comes right at the time I'm entering the industrial and have way too many valuable buildings to build in my big empire so it just feels like it is much nicer wide. It might be an illusion but the relative effect seems greater to me. It's nice with tradition but not nearly as high a priority, but that might be my playstyle, maybe I should've tried for Big Ben more often with tradition games!

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You make a very good point there. I would add to that the fact that Big Ben's purchasing power completely falls off for Tradition after you got your four Research Labs online while it will stay relevant for a Liberty empire throughout the entire game.

Just out of curiosity, what do you go for between Tradition and Rationalism in your tall games? I honestly cannot think of anything good besides Patronage and Commerce. Sure, I love Piety, but that investment is only worth it in one out of twenty games maybe.

Hmmm, a few different ones. I personally don't go commerce very often but I realize you could definitely have some savings there with the purchase cost reductions on parts. I usually just saved/borrowed my way through the 2 last critical parts and payed more but I realize in hindsight I probably lost some science rate since I had less cities on research. Come to think of it I've never played an optimal tradition SV with commerce as I've seen other players describe it.

There are a few trees I play with tradition. I usually only had about 1 point to put somewhere before I rush-opened renaissance for the rationalism opener, 2 if I got oracle, then it was straight through the tree till ideologies and I continued to buy ideology tenets till the end of the game as I like a lot of the freedom ones. Since I couldn't get down to 25% reduced purchase costs or extra happiness from luxes commerce looked weaker to me but maybe it would have been better if as you say I had forgone some mediocre freedom tenets to fill in more of commerce just before the parts.

The trees I throw the 1-2 points into after finishing tradition vary. I've done patronage for Forbidden palace and better CS relations. I have dipped into commerce but never very far. I've also gone into piety for the reformation belief if I was feeling creative, and aesthetics if I was culture or tourism focused. To be honest I never really thought the filler tree mattered that much unless I was playing culturally or diplomatically but maybe I should rethink this. In the latter case I would mix rationalism with the other tree of interest instead of focusing on it solely between renaissance and industrial.

adsin15 said:

Terracotta army...you gotta have a large army in the first place for it to be useful...but if you have a large army your production and infastructure are probably terrible meaning it will take 26 turns or something to build it and you will never get it.

If you focus on your cities and getting production to build it in a reasonable amount of time...you won't have an army worthy of doubling.

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This post and others mentioning Terracotta Army (TA) make me think that people don't understand what that wonder does. It does not Double Your Army Size. You do not need to have a premade large army for TA to do what it does.

Terracotta Army gives you 1 Military Unit for each TYPE of military unit that you own. So if you own 4 Swordsmen, 3 Pikemen and 7 Crossbows, then you will only get 1 Sword, 1 Pike and 1 Cross. HOWEVER; if you have 1 Warrior, 1 Archer, 1 Composite, 1 Pikeman, 4 Swordsmen, 1 Chariot Archer and 5 Crossbows, then after TA is built, it will give you 1 of each of those types for a total of 7 units.

Really, all you need is a (not-completely-upgraded) mix of units that are large enough to defend your territory. Pretty much what you're going to have anyways. Let's say, you build this when you're at 3 cities. You'll want to have an Archer, a CBow, a Chariot Archer with a Warrior, Spearman and a Swordsman. That's enough for 1 Ranged and 1 Melee unit per city. Then when you build TA, you get 1 of each of those units from TA. You can sometimes delay this until Longswords/Pikes/XBows and get one of each of those, as well as a horseman. It's not feasible to get after XBows as the AI will have made it by then. Probably likely you won't be able to get all 3 that I listed in that group too.

So, now that we have an understanding of exactly how it works, I'll explain why it's still not good.

1- Besides the units, TA gives you +1 Culture. No GP points. Nothing, just 1 culture.

2- TA costs 250 Hammers.

Units (on Standard) cost=
Archer-40
CA - 56
CBOw - 75
Spear - 56
Warrior - 40
Above Units - 267

Sword - 75
Pike - 90
Above Units - 432

XBOW - 120
Longsword - 120
Above Units - 672

So, in order to draw even you need 1 each of the first 5 Units. Well that's nice, but all I'm getting is 17 Hammers and +1CPT. I could have built those 5 units across my 3 cities and let the city that WAS GOING to build TA build better infrastructure or some mix of that. At this point it's the opportunity cost that gets you the most because you're basically breaking even on Hammers.

3- At the next level of units you're definitely getting some value Hammer-Wise. However; now you need to upgrade 2 Warriors, 2 Spears, and 2 Archers or you're just stuck with old units. Since you just added the maintenance of 7 New Units you have to ask yourself, Will I have the money to upgrade these units within a time frame that makes it worthwile?

4- Now, once you get to XBow and LSwords the hammer value goes through the roof. But at this point your problems become more-so than with the last level of units. You've now got 10 Units that you need to upgrade and 6 of them need to be upgraded TWICE to get to the current level of Military Tech. In Addition to this problem, you are waiting way late in the game to try to get this building. At this point you're in a hard race against the AI. Since the building is only worth 250 Hammers the Fail Gold you get won't even be enough to purchase a XBow let alone enough to upgrade all those units you've been putting off upgrading.

I didn't even mention upgrading your Chariot Archer to a Horseman (which I avoid doing until Knights anyways because I like the CA better) so there's more upgrade gold.

Now, if there are UUs involved, maybe TA is worth more. This assessment was done using basic units.

The Great Library is definitely the most useless great wonder because it almost belongs into the realm of AI. You could have amazing start and make no mistakes and have built time of 9 turns for great library, the AI will build it on 8th turn.

Every time I had an incredible start and try for it. I always fail.

And then there is those times where Great library don't get built for 100 turns. I Wonder why it hasn't been built. I start building it and then it gets built by the AI in 1-2 turns after I start. I'm like "...".

Only time I ever get to build the great library is when I play on Prince difficulty which I don't play on anymore lol.

Angkor Wat, Big Ben, Cristo redentor.

A.W - Bleh.
B.B - By the time it comes around the bonus doesn't matter, unless you are really behind.
C.R - Who cares?

orasis said:

Angkor Wat, Big Ben, Cristo redentor.

A.W - Bleh.
B.B - By the time it comes around the bonus doesn't matter, unless you are really behind.
C.R - Who cares?

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Big Ben is the key to several strategies, such as HCA, freedom SV.

Plus Big Ben comes right dead in the middle of mid game, and it's a pretty massive bonus coupled with Mercantilism and Mobilization.

inthesomeday said:

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.

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If you need broadcast towers, you need one or two way before Telecommunications, but you don't need them everywhere. A free tower in all your puppet cities (even without an opera house or museum) is huge. The extra happiness is nice too.

There's no extra happiness, it adds a population point to every city and the happiness comes to counter the resulting unhappiness. Plus, why do you ever need culture buildings in puppets? It's a big hammer investment when hammers normally need to be doing something else for a return that is not needed, and wasteful at best.

inthesomeday said:

There's no extra happiness, it adds a population point to every city and the happiness comes to counter the resulting unhappiness. Plus, why do you ever need culture buildings in puppets? It's a big hammer investment when hammers normally need to be doing something else for a return that is not needed, and wasteful at best.

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What else am I going to do with that late-game Great Engineer?

zxcvbob said:

What else am I going to do with that late-game Great Engineer?

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Use it earlier on Statue of Liberty or another good Modern/Atomic wonder. Alternatively, use it on hubble.

inthesomeday said:

There's no extra happiness, it adds a population point to every city and the happiness comes to counter the resulting unhappiness. Plus, why do you ever need culture buildings in puppets? It's a big hammer investment when hammers normally need to be doing something else for a return that is not needed, and wasteful at best.

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Unless when you play as India where the happiness of 1 is a net gain for most cities. This wonder is really strong for India and I had a 500+ happiness game with them recently.

zxcvbob said:

What else am I going to do with that late-game Great Engineer?

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Generate a scientist instead. If you're getting engineers lategame it better be on purpose, and for a very specific reason, not the kind of thing where you get one by accident and need to find a use for it. And CN Tower is nowhere near as good as, say, an ideology wonder, or Hubble. Or realistically, even something like Sydney Opera House, considering you'd get Telecommunications way later than those other wonders.
It's just not worth the hammers. Even if I had an empire with 40 cities, an extra 40 pop and 40 broadcast towers at telecommunications is no longer useful to winning or would give me any edge over other players for victory. It would be more akin to wasted hammers that could've been several paratroopers, or a spaceship part.

Sclb said:

Unless when you play as India where the happiness of 1 is a net gain for most cities. This wonder is really strong for India and I had a 500+ happiness game with them recently.

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But what is the utility of this gain at telecommunications tech? Finishing with 500 happiness and 0 happiness are no different, unless you pop a golden age that gives you exactly how many hammers you need to build a part one turn earlier, or something as absurd as this. This is the problem with CN Tower. Imagine if its effects came at something in the Renaissance? Or even at, say, electronics tech. Then it would be a top tier wonder. But CN Tower is at telecommunications, a tech you bulb through in the practical last 10 turns of a game. 500 happiness and a billion pop don't help you on the way to victory, realistically. I could see the argument that rushing internet with Media Culture might get you some tiny window to make it useful but I know that if I wanted to attempt hard tourism victory this way I would want towers in every major tourism city immediately after teching Radio. Enough to purchase, even.

CN just never has an opportunity to be worth the hammers. It's like the Pentagon, the tech is just too late for optimal science, and for the vic-specific purpose of either it even still comes too late (whether for the freedom broadcast towers, which you already would've built or bought, or for upgrades to a key unit like Stealth, when all hammers will be towards units and all GPP towards scientist bulbs).