National Wonder question

ackoman

Chieftain
Joined
Jan 8, 2016
Messages
75
Hello all,

Is it best to keep your number of cities small until you have built some of the key early National Wonders?

If you settle a new city once a National Wonder has been completed, does that render the National Wonder ineffective?

Thanks,
Ackoman
 
Once the NW is built, it remains effective for the rest of the game. If you lose the city where you built the NW, you can build it again in another city. Building additional cities does not affect the function of NW.

As to your first question, the stay small strategy is somewhat debateable. Certainly you want to get your National College up as early as possible in most games, but does this mean 1 city, 3 cities, or more? I think there are plenty of opinions on this topic and in most cases it is situational.
 
I think there are a couple of pieces of conventional wisdom, some of which are a little in conflict with each other:
  1. National College is very strong, so should be ASAP.
  2. Cities should be started early, or don’t bother.
  3. Tradition does not much benefit from more than four cites.
  4. Liberty needs at least six cities to be competitive with Tradition.
So, taken together, generally people (1) complete NC after their second or third expo (third or fourth city); (2) any other cities are founded after NC; and (3) all NW are after expos are planted. Besides NC, none of the NW are strong enough to warrant delaying expos. It is best to keep your number of (founded) cities small, regardless. Puppet cities do bump up the cost of building NW, but that is not a good reason to delay your conquests. Annexed cities make NW difficult, so I would recommend delaying annexing until you are done with NW.
 
I think it's best to address it as and when, if you are planning to build or are part-way through building a NW it's best not to plant a new city (unless you want to quickly build or buy the building needed) or it will delay the NW.

If you want to build a new city and would naturally complete the building needed for the NW before getting round to the NW then go for it.
 
Usually only NC is worth delaying planting a city for, and it's very situational since it depends on your gold and how much hammer the city has.

Also Razing a city will also delay NW and if the city being razed doesn't have the prerequisite building, it will also stop the construction of NW.
 
  1. National College is very strong, so should be ASAP.
  2. Cities should be started early, or don’t bother.
  3. Tradition does not much benefit from more than four cites.
  4. Liberty needs at least six cities to be competitive with Tradition.

Yeah I think that it sums it up. Other than National College, other wonders are not that important, just plan them and build then as desired.

I think liberty is never able to be competitive against tradition, is very rare that you can get more than 5 cities developing at full speed on standard/normal, and most often than not, 4 cities will be your number. Of course you can get those cities from other players... But also with tradition.
 
Liberty is undervalued on this forum and it is possible to get enough cities out to be competitive but mostly the land/lux availability will be the constraint. Add to the fact that AI hates player if you expand faster than they do. You usually need at least 6 liberty cities. With Spain you can get lucky and buy 2 settlers and push the number to 8 or more if you conquer and it will be extremely strong game provided you can keep up with happiness.

Usually NC is the only required wonder. Oxford is usually build only for a very late game tech, and NVC for CV. Ironwork should be built before industrial, National epic should be built as soon as you finish settling cities with monuments, Circus Maximus may be needed before ideology for happiness. Usually I never build any other national wonders unless I have spare hammers with nothing more important to build.
 
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