Q for Firaxis: Why no speeding of Wonders?

I'm curious - one of the great things about Civ2 was that Wonders were worth competing for; and you had ways to improve your odds of winning the race. They were expensive (building freight etc), but you could choose to use them if you considered that wonder worth the cost.

Now wonders are just gambles. If I start building something, apart from building some more mines around that city, there's no way to speed it up. If someone else builds it first, I've just wasted all those shields.

Is there a way to turn rushing back on? You should at least be able to disband units and rush-build wonders by spending money or citizens. Otherwise it's much too much down to LUCK.

****
I'm most curious as to what this design decision is intended to achieve; and if it is possible to turn it off in options.

Well I'm not Firaxis, but I'll give you my take on it.

You can rush wonders. You need a leader to do it and they aren't common.

I like the new gamble of building a wonder. I think the Civ2 way was to easy. I just lost 240 shields trying to beat the Germans to the Oracle. Oh well I got an expensive settler instead.

I think the main reason that wonder rushing was made less easy was to make the building of a wonder more of a significant game moment. It means a lot more to complete a wonder in Civ III than it did in Civ II.

It also balances out armies quite a bit because when and if you get a great leader you really have to choose what to do with that leader -- army or wonder? An army of strong units can really help crack a well-entrenched city when you need it, but a wonder can help you with other things, so it gives you a tough choice to make.

Dan

I don't know about that - it wasn't so much "easy" in Civ2 as very expensive to rush a wonder. You were choosing to spend all those resources on a wonder: you had the choice. If you couldn't make it in time, those resources were wasted because you couldn't switch between types - so the race was still important. It was just that you actually had some input into the race, which made it fun.

If you're playing peacefully, too, you're not going to get leaders. So Wonder building in this new game becomes nigh-on impossible for a peaceful Civ. You really need to go to war before you can build a Wonder.

Is that the intention? Because it really does kill the peaceful Civ path - the option of which really made Civ2 great.

As the intelligamer reviewer said - decisions like this really massively unbalance the game in favour of the military style of play. It's a shame that Civ3 gives us these peaceful victory options and then snatches them away.

So - I'd still like to ask: Can we have a way of re-enabling wonder rushing, perhaps in a patch?

Well there is a way to get the jump on the other civs. You have an indicator that lets you know how far away from your next tech is. If that tech has a wonder you want/need then start the city of choice building a palace, then switch it to the wonder when you get the tech. I haven't done it but don't see why it wouldn't work.

it can be done kinda by chopping and planting forests but there should be away for peaceful civ to get a leader or equivalent.Maybe a great poet..or scientist..or politician..something.Could be tied into culture and/or tech.

I like your idea Smash.

Dan - can they implement a Great Leader equivalent for peaceful civs? If it's tied to culture, shouldn't be too difficult, surely?

As far as I can see, at present there's a problem:
GLs are almost essential for wonder creation, but GLs ONLY appear if you play as a militarist. If GLs are to remain the only option for wonder rushing - and I don't mind them being rare - then surely you need to be able to get them in another way.

The idea (peaceful spawning of GL's) has been thrown around, but the general consensus from what I've overheard is that any "peaceful GL trigger" would have to be something extremely hard to do, so as not to become an exploit that allows people to crank out GL's en masse. GL's are supposed to be rare to the point where getting one is a big deal, so that's another angle that seems (to me at least) hard to fit into a peaceful GL trigger.

If you have any ideas on difficult to achieve feats that would provide a chance of getting a GL through peaceful means, I'd love to hear them.

I don't think there will be any patch to enable wonder rushing through other means, but never say never

Dan

Unfortunately, in the real world, all the truly "great" civilizations were militarily powerfull and aggressive.

The plunder and enslavement of other nations made them what they were.

Thats life, thats what all the people say...

Well, it'd need to be something that the peaceful player does that the militaristic player doesn't (so the militaristic one doesn't get twice as many GLs).

How about something like having a city reach a certain culture level, dependent on the date?

Something like you'd get a GL if a city had 2000 culture points by 2000BC, after which the GL culture level would rise to 10000 and so on? (these figures are probably not right - I haven't played enough games yet to know what are difficult but achievable culture levels at the various points. But I assume the Firaxis designers do.

Would it be very difficult? You'd just have a "GL culture level" constant which equals a different amount in different eras, and the peaceful civ can concentrate on their peaceful cultural type paths whilst the militarist one can go off and bonk heads but be unable to get the cultural GL because of the resources they'd be spending on war.

Well... it would seem to me that one way to prevent the Great Leader mill scenario would be to tie the peacetime generation of GLs to events that only happen a finite number of times in any given game. Two examples that spring to my mind are completing the construction of a Wonder and researching a new technology. If one or both of these were possible triggers, then there would be little chance for abuse. You could optionally disqualify Future Tech from generating a GL to prevent abuse that way. Each tirggering event would have a certain probability of generating a GL, just like an elite unit winning a combat gets a certain chance to generate a GL.

It further occurs to me that there are seemingly unlimited opportunities to generate GLs through combat -- although in practise they arise fairly infrequently. It might be interesting to try to estimate how many times a player has the opportunity to get a GL by combat. Other peaceful triggers that occur with simmilar frequency might be the expansion of any city radius or the completion of a culture improvement in any city, for example. I'm not sure.

The other thing to consider is the distribution of trigger events throughout the game. The nice thing about Wonders and techs is that they are distributed fairly well over the course of the game. There are more city radius expansions early in the game and less later after cities are well-established and borders more fixed. Completion of improvements probably isn't spread out well in the game either... for example when capturing enemy cities there is often a spree of cultural improvement buying.

Lastly, although it bears more discussion, it would seem to me that the resources devoted to war would tend to reduce both the number of Wonders a player builds and the number of techs a player discovers (since techs you trade for, steal, get from tribes, or from the Great Library would not count).

Well, that's my suggestion.

You can´t pay for the wonders but your Computer-Opponent can´t do it also. That´s one thing which would really suck, if you are way ahead in building a wonder and one of your Opponents just buys it. Therefore I like it.

But as some of you stated, there should be some Possibility for more Peaceful Nations to get a great Leader.
I guess gaining great Leaders by fighting Babarians would be a good start (which is not possible at the moment as to my own observations and the Postings of other Players). Even the most peaceful Player has to fight Barbarians and I think there is no logic Reason, why a great Leader can´t also emerge during a fight with those Bastards.

I got a great leader for the first time tonight...i had no clue what it was....wasted it to build a spearman...bah..

One way to make it possible to get a great leader during peace is through WLTK. Whenever you get WTKD maybe there could be a 1% chance a leader would be created out of it. This would only apply to the turn the city went into WLTK not every turn they are in it.

Of course this wouldn't apply if you were at war with anybody. That way you could have a way to get great leaders during peacetime and in war.

Yes? No? Smoke another one?

Endureth

It would be interesting to have a Failed Wonder wonder. This would be built if the wonder being built was built by another civ before the wonder was completed. It would have to be over 75% complete for this to happen. The Failed Wonder would give 1 culture but no other benifits.

This could prevent the "Great Switchover Effect" when a wonder is built and all the civ's switch build tasks.

I was thinking a peaceful Great Leader could be achieved in a few ways -
You have met every civ, have an embassy with everyone, they are all 'gracious' to you, and you maintain this for a thousand years.
Or,
You have a Great Wonder in eight different cities, and they are all on the WLTKD.
Or,
Eight Great Wonders in one city (Quite doable, I've had a city with a culture of over 100 per turn, I'm sure others have as well)
Or,
You have been first in the world to a 'new age of your civilisation' twice, without fighting.

I think something along those lines, or:
the amount of gold per turn + the amount of production per turn + the amount of reduced corruption per turn, divided by the number of cities. Reach the magic number and you get a Great Leader.

I don't see why peaceful civs should get great leaders. Both uses of the great leader don't make sense for a peaceful civ ...

The creation of an army for being peaceful makes no sense at all.

The hurrying of a wonder seems to be superfluous to me. By being peaceful you already give yourself more resources to devote to research and wonder building, rather than military. Thus you've already got the edge on a war monger civ in the wonder department.

War is a risk and I think it's fair that those who go to war get rewarded, rather than those (like me ) who prefer to sit back and play the peace game.

As to it being harder to win peacefully in civ3 than civ2, in my experience that's rubbish. I've had far more luck playing peacefully (or as peacefully as the other civs will let me) in civ3 than in other games like civ2 or SMAC.

Its easy to make it a one time event.
A certain culture level in a particular city could do it.Pick a number.
5000 overall culture points...
1st to a certain tech(ala philosophy in civ2)
Could be a civ specific ability
A certain population level
could be triggered by a certain number of a specific improvement(like a few small wonders)

Think of them as peacetime leaders.Like an Einstein.A Mother Theresa.A Bill Gates...oops

Or Prince Charles? Ralph Nader?

I don't see why peaceful civs should get great leaders. Both uses of the great leader don't make sense for a peaceful civ ...

Click to expand...

I change my mind, I agree with OneInTen.

Endureth