Wonders you never build

The only ones I've never built are Great Firewall, Pentagon and Prora, the last cause I haven't gone Autocracy.

The military wonders are my least-built, though, since I usually do peaceful builder games...although I'm sure once I move up a difficulty level or two I'll need to fit them in.


...Actually, I can't recall if I ever built the CN Tower or Ankor Wat either..

The only other ones I can't remember building are Borobudur and Great Mosque of Djinne

Borobudur is damn amazing if you've got a religion you want to spread.

Aea said:

Borobudur is damn amazing if you've got a religion you want to spread.

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I'm sure it is, and it's one I will eventually get around to building. I just realized that I hadn't ever done it before. The thing is, I normally don't use missionaries. I typically just save up for a GPr. By the time GPrs start costing 1200 then I'm ready to buy a GE and save the rest for GSs.

Neither do I (unless I'm really drowning in faith and can avoid getting a prophet by buying 1-2 missionaries). Borobudur compliments this because you can spread your religion fast without any real faith cost.

Great position in the Tech Tree too.

sixty4half said:

I'm sure it is, and it's one I will eventually get around to building. I just realized that I hadn't ever done it before. The thing is, I normally don't use missionaries. I typically just save up for a GPr. By the time GPrs start costing 1200 then I'm ready to buy a GE and save the rest for GSs.

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Spawning a GPr increases the cost of the next one, but getting 3 free missionary doesn't increase the cost of future ones, so it's by far more efficient. You only need to spawn 2 GPr to enhance religion, then you stop spawning them until much later in the game, or if you build Hagia Sophia, use it to enhance. Also missinary at the point in the game should be enough to convert all self founded cities.

Borobudur is unique in that it allows you to put religious followers in several cities at once - which gives one an amazing headstart over other religions.
From there the religious pressure takes over. So if even if someone else uses Great Prophets to try to convert those cities away - you will still have enough religious pressure from all the surrounding cities to hold your religion.

Although Great Mosque is probably a better option (if you can't get the two).
Great Mosque gives you an extra missionary spread so essentially spending 400 faith gives you 6 missionary spreads (equal to 600 faith normally). Additionally the Great Mosque gives you a free Mosque so that is a free 200 faith there. So one only only has to realistically spend 200 faith to get the equivalent value of Borobudur.

Additionally the Great Mosque gives you an engineer point and some happiness and culture and slightly more faith then Borobudur.

And then there is a hidden benefit. If you buy Great Prophets from the Industrial era in the city with the Great Mosque he will get an extra religious spread. You even use the Prophet to spread a religion once and then still plant him as a holy site. So imo the Great Mosque provides better utility although one has to open the Piety tree first.

The idea is to build the Great Mosque of Djenne first, and then the Borobudur. If you don't generate a lot of faith, the combination is very strong.

That's probably not going to happen though. They both appear at the same tech and both must be built in the same city.

The highest diffiuctly that is reasonably possible to get both I reckon is Emperor - any higher and you really have to pick one of them

Great mosque is effectively out of question on deity, as a lot of deity AI loves piety. Sometimes even Borobudur is difficult.

Sclb said:

Great mosque is effectively out of question on deity, as a lot of deity AI loves piety. Sometimes even Borobudur is difficult.

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You also have to beat them to Theology, which is usually regarded as poor play.

Plenty of piety type civs will rush straight to Theology, which doesn't hurt an AI at all, but you can't delay Civil Service that long and still be competitive on growth.

Either way, not much chance at all of doing 2 Theology Wonders on any difficulty worth talking about.

Sclb said:

Great mosque is effectively out of question on deity, as a lot of deity AI loves piety. Sometimes even Borobudur is difficult.

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Not always - I got it on the Community Diety game as Ethiopia.
I think only one other civ went Piety. Out of all the early social policy wonders, the Great Mosque comes the latest so you know how much competition there will be and also you can keep an eye on that AI capital to see when they are building it.

Chum said:

Plenty of piety type civs will rush straight to Theology, which doesn't hurt an AI at all, but you can't delay Civil Service that long and still be competitive on growth.

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You can - Theology isn't too much of a detour - And it's still on the way to Education. good players will be able to make up the difference. Either way it is through Philosophy so that takes you through the NC - Once your NC is up, you'll get to Civil Service quite quickly.

The pay-off is that if you are able to spread your religion further then well maybe you'll get better founder benefits and some help to diplomacy - like everything in the game religion is simply a trade-off. In this case one is just deciding whether I should invest more in a religion to get more out of it. Which may in the long term be more valuable then getting to Civil Service slightly earlier.


Although if you are trying to aim for a sub t250 SV then certainly beelining Theology will be sub-optimal.

I've always found that I never really seem to build Notre Dame. It seems like the benefits are pretty baller, but I think that Physics is a pretty unsexy tech to get early, and when I do go down that side of the tree early, I'm going Domination where I never really build wonders (obviously I capture it a lot). It also seems pretty popular for the AI to get early.

Terracotta Army. With the 250 hammers it takes to build the Terracotta Army, you could just hard-build another Archer (40 ), Spearman (60 ), Horseman (75 ), Catapult (75 ), and Composite Bowman (75 ) for a total of 325 without the risk of failure. The 75 hammers saved by the Terracotta Army is like getting a free Horseman. Is that free Horseman worth the risk of losing out on the Wonder? Uh... no.

If you saved them, you might also be able to get an extra Warrior (40 ), Scout (25 ), or Chariot Archer (56 ) for a total of 446 of free units... but those extra units aren't even worth keeping one of, let alone getting a second to drain your unit maintenance coffers.

Other than that, I guess it also gives you +1 too.

I almost never build cultural wonders such as Louvre (unless I am going for cultural victory). Terracotta army is blah (I never have enough units to make it worth it). Great library is impossible on anything above king. (and not even that great). Pentagon would be awesome if it came an era earlier (by the time it comes around I have done 99% of upgrades. I never build religious wonders because it seems I'm always playing against the Mayans and he builds them so freaking fast

I have built every wonder before, back on Prince when it made sense to actually open trees just for the wonder for some reason. On multiplayer, I have never built any of the cultural wonders or forbidden palace, although the palace is much better than it may seem because of the early world religion etc. I imagine if going futurism, some of the spawning cultural wonders like globe theater, uffizi, or even the louvre are pretty good, and in single player they're amazing if you're going for tourism win, but in the majority of multi strats they really don't make any sense.

Angkor Wat I think is a little bit underrated, but only because some people call it the worst wonder in the game. It's fairly mediocre and doesn't usually make a huge difference, but it has the possibility to be nice for doing something like planting a defensive city and then buying out to somewhere to plant a citadel, but overall it tends to be just an engineer point to funnel hammers into. I don't think it's as terrible as people say, even with the opportunity cost, because typically there will be six turns somewhere to just sort of let it happen, after universities and before you have physics or printing press. I suppose you could fill those turns with crossbows, but if in a pretty safe position it's not an entire waste of hammers.

I think the Mausoleum is much worse, especially for the great merchant point, as is terracotta. Most of the modern wonders besides Hubble are pretty useless in multi, and autocracy tends to be underwhelming unless you've already been in a war for a long time, in which case of course Prora is excellent; it just rarely gets built because autocracy isn't great for the ideal science victory. Prora's one that doesn't get built even though it's wonderful, much like Neuschwanstein, just because there's never really an opportunity.