PhilBowles
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2011
- Messages
- 5,333
I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I want to grow a city I take steps that are more readily available to me like working a couple good food tiles or building a granary trying than trying to get a wonder to do the job. And by the time I even consider getting to currency I at least have gone up to writing and iron working, it would be even more delayed if I need to hook up trapping or calender resources and by then the AI, at least in my games, have already or are in the middle of building it. I see how it can be used to not have to work food tiles as much and focus more on gold and production and when used in combination with things like Tradition and Maritime CS's to grow like nuts, but there are other wonders in the early game that I would MUCH rather try to build.
Indeed, I just went for it and hadn't finished researching Mathematics before the AI (Immortal) got it. But that can happen with any Wonder (and I had a start with no plantation luxuries, although I did need to tech to Sailing for whales) - it also happened with Petra, and since I'd pretty much screwed my economy rushing for that (second city was all desert, with Barringer Crater, a couple of oases, wheat, a couple of hills with sheep, floodplains and incense - downside is that city had no food to grow, and so Petra would have taken over 60 turns), that's game over as far as I'm concerned for that one. Nevertheless, you can do without luxuries at that stage in the game, and I rarely prioritise either Trapping or Ironworking, so it can still be a quick tech progression.
There aren't, however, many other Wonders I'd want to build that early most of the time - you won't get Stonehenge on Immortal either, and often not the Oracle. Certainly not the Lighthouse if any AIs are close to the coast.
The Pyramids is good if you don't go Liberty, but it's on a necessary tech path and the AI never prioritises it anyway, so it can wait a bit and so isn't competition for Hanging Gardens.
Above Emperor, you can guarantee that the Great Library will just slow your tech progression by costing you time you could have spent building a normal library - but even if you get it it's a much less significant boost than the Gardens. And Mausoleum of Helicarnassus doesn't count because it's excluded from this poll...
Great Wall comes slightly too late to usefully stop the early rushes on Immortal, and does very little to help you in general. Colossus and Terracotta Army, as discussed at length here, aren't terribly good. That only really leaves the Theology Wonders, which have the advantage of falling along a very common early tech path but are both prioritised by the AI - and both are only useful if there are still religions on offer by this point in the game.