Natural Wonders balanced?

Wuddel

Warlord
Joined
Sep 7, 2010
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290
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Zürich, Switzerland
So Spain is one of my go-to-civs. It occured to me that the new wonders are much more powerful than some of the vanilla ones.

King Solomon mines vs. Grand Mesa or old faithful for example. I think it is time for some rebalancing. Either bring the old ones up or tone the G&K/BNW ones down a bit. Bringing them up seems the way to go. Making NW so good that it is actually worth fighting over them seems fun.
 
I agree, there's no point in gunning for Old Faithful, even as Spain the only yield you'd get a need for in those cases is the double +4 faith from NW pantheon.
 
They're very much unbalanced. Makes for a real rollercoaster ride.

Btw, do or don't all natural provide bonus happiness if they're within your borders?
 
Btw, do or don't all natural provide bonus happiness if they're within your borders?

No only Old Faithful (so it is actually not that bad. Its a free city happiness wise), Fountain of Youth, Mt. Kailash and Sri Pada.

All of them give one happiness when discovering them.
 
In regards to Old Faithful, I think you're forgetting that having it in your borders gives you +3 happiness. Considering that happiness is pretty difficult to come by, and science yielding tiles are not all that common, I'd say Old Faithful is still a good deal.

Grand Mesa has always been underwhelming, but did get a small buff from the fact that gold producing tiles are now uncommon in BNW. Still, when an improved Gems resource produces a tile that's as good as (and with later techs becomes better than) a Natural Wonder...I have to agree with OP that Grand Mesa should see a direct buff to bring it in line with the other Wonders.
 
Hahaha yeah. Some of those old stinkers aren't even worth it with Spains doubling bonus. That is just how bad they really are.

Old Faithful: +2 Science, +3 Happiness
The Happiness is nice, but I think each natural wonder should be worth it to be actually worked. And that is difficult to achieve without the tile giving neither food nor production.
3 Science, 4 Culture, 3 Happiness.

Barringer Crater: +2 Gold, +3 Science
I can see some straight early Tourism bonus for this one.
3 Gold, 4 Science, 3 Tourism.

Grand Mesa: +2 Production, 3 Gold
Simple giving it 3 Production and 3 Gold will make this worthwhile. Not as much as Solomons Mines, but it still is like a Mined Hill then with a 3 gold on top, so that's nice to have. Or 4 production and 2 gold. Either way would work for me.

Krakatoa +5 Science
Hard/near impossible to get it into city range in the first place. But if you do... then it should at least be kinda like an academy to be worth it. 10 Science is appropriate imho.

Mt. Fuji: 2 Gold, 3 Culture, 3 Faith
Not horrible, but would you work it (if you already got a pantheon)?
3 Gold, 3 Culture, 3 Faith, +2 Great Writer Points.

Rock of Gibraltar 2 Food, 5 Gold.
Why does it need a tiny little buff? It's only 1 gold more than an improved Cotton tile. And it robs your city of an extra workable tile.
2 Food, 6 Gold.
 
I would say that the Grand Mesa, Barringer Crater, and Krakatoa are worst, but not super bad. I wouldn't stretch my empire to include them. And Krakatoa is on the list because it is damn near untouchable without mods.
 
Overpowered to the point that I restart if they are near my start:
Fountain of Youth, El Dorado, Kilimanjaro

Overpowered:
Faith producing natural wonders, (excluding Fuji), GBR

Better than normal tiles, but not opressively strong:
Solomon, Victoria, Cerro de Potosi

The others are varying tiers of decent or meh. Every G&K and BNW NW breaks the game if Spain finds them, which is why I hate the Spanish UA.
 
Hahaha yeah. Some of those old stinkers aren't even worth it with Spains doubling bonus. That is just how bad they really are.

Old Faithful: +2 Science, +3 Happiness
The Happiness is nice, but I think each natural wonder should be worth it to be actually worked. And that is difficult to achieve without the tile giving neither food nor production.
3 Science, 4 Culture, 3 Happiness.

Barringer Crater: +2 Gold, +3 Science
I can see some straight early Tourism bonus for this one.
3 Gold, 4 Science, 3 Tourism.

Grand Mesa: +2 Production, 3 Gold
Simple giving it 3 Production and 3 Gold will make this worthwhile. Not as much as Solomons Mines, but it still is like a Mined Hill then with a 3 gold on top, so that's nice to have. Or 4 production and 2 gold. Either way would work for me.

Krakatoa +5 Science
Hard/near impossible to get it into city range in the first place. But if you do... then it should at least be kinda like an academy to be worth it. 10 Science is appropriate imho.

Mt. Fuji: 2 Gold, 3 Culture, 3 Faith
Not horrible, but would you work it (if you already got a pantheon)?
3 Gold, 3 Culture, 3 Faith, +2 Great Writer Points.

Rock of Gibraltar 2 Food, 5 Gold.
Why does it need a tiny little buff? It's only 1 gold more than an improved Cotton tile. And it robs your city of an extra workable tile.
2 Food, 6 Gold.

Good suggestions. Early 10 science (20 as spain) might be slightly game breaking. The same with Tourism. I would always work culture NWs, since it is hard to come by early game (so is faith), and you want border expansion. Actually, I think Fuji is one of the best NW in the game. Got get some extra gold though.

Rock of Gibraltar need 3 Food 6 Gold. They also should get rid of the 500 gold from El Dorado and rework it. 4 gold 6 culture. I restart my game when I find El Dorado early with the 500 gold from it, as any civ, and obviously as Spain.

I never understood why NW are not woked into the tech tree. Especially now in BNW. They could provide different amounts of tourism at certain techs. eg. +1 tourism for Printing Press, Flight, Radio, Telecommunications etc. Either if worked or in the border.

Or make it even NW specific e.g. 6 tourism for El Dorado upon researching Archaeology
 
In regards to Old Faithful, I think you're forgetting that having it in your borders gives you +3 happiness. Considering that happiness is pretty difficult to come by, and science yielding tiles are not all that common, I'd say Old Faithful is still a good deal.

Grand Mesa has always been underwhelming, but did get a small buff from the fact that gold producing tiles are now uncommon in BNW. Still, when an improved Gems resource produces a tile that's as good as (and with later techs becomes better than) a Natural Wonder...I have to agree with OP that Grand Mesa should see a direct buff to bring it in line with the other Wonders.

In my last game, Old Faithful was surrounded by nothing but snow, 3 fish and a crab. The crab tile was the only source of crab on the entire map.
I settled my 3rd city right next to it and those +7 happiness were extremely useful. Also, that city slowly grew and had a good science output later on in the game.
 
fountain of youth is completely broken.

First, it doesnt require anyone to work it. Just have it in your borders for 10 freaking happiness.

Second, it gives anyone that rest next to it for 1 turn to gain a permanent buff that increases their healing by 100% FOREVER. In enemy territory you heal like it's friendly. In friendly, you can't be killed.

Its completely bonkers OP.
 
fountain of youth is completely broken.

First, it doesnt require anyone to work it. Just have it in your borders for 10 freaking happiness.

Second, it gives anyone that rest next to it for 1 turn to gain a permanent buff that increases their healing by 100% FOREVER. In enemy territory you heal like it's friendly. In friendly, you can't be killed.

Its completely bonkers OP.

How often do you have the FoY in your games? This is so rare in my games, it might as well not even be in the game. I doubt that it has been in more than 5 of my games. I am right at 650ish hours played.
 
I think some of the old NWs are underrated because people think about them in late-game terms. The ones with science, culture, and faith yields are especially powerful in the early game, when those yields are very rare. Unless you're Babylon, you're not going to have an Academy until, what, turn 70? Later? If you could ever actually get to Krakatoa, having that 5 :c5science: in your second city might be a 50% boost. Fuji can double your early Culture.

Old Faithful is just a mistake, though. They obviously used a total yield of 5 as a starting point for most of the original wonders (pre-G&K Fuji added up to 5; I think Gibraltar and the Great Barrier Reef—easily the best of the original NWs—are the only exceptions), but since you don't have to work Old Faithful to get the 3 :c5happy: you're left with an essentially unworkable tile. 5 of anything is usually worth working (without a bonus from a UA, a pantheon, a Granary, or whatever, no tile will yield more than 4 until you get to Civil Service), but 2 of anything hardly ever is.
 
How often do you have the FoY in your games? This is so rare in my games, it might as well not even be in the game. I doubt that it has been in more than 5 of my games. I am right at 650ish hours played.

I got one as china, then had an immortal army marching on the enemy with a 10 happiness gap that didn't require a civilian.


When it is in the game, it is broken as hell. Even more so then 500 gold el dorado
 
wonders should scale as the ages progress. A mountain doesnt give faith. The faith comes from the culture. Thus when the culture advances, the stats increase.

THe only thing that shouldn't scale is food. As food doesn't change on unimproved lands.

But how does science not improve on one of the rarest sites in the world?
 
It's ridiculous how NW's are completely irrelevant to tourism.
I mean, Mt. Kilimanjaro has to be the single most visited tourist site in subsaharan africa.
 
I do like that you can make any wonder useful now with the +4 faith pantheon and the +5 culture world congress proposal.

I'm currently playing as Portugal and I got Krakatoa within three tiles of a city (I know! Right?) and settled another near Grand Mesa. Both pretty terrible but after some work, they together produced 10 culture, 8 faith and 5 tourism (more when I get to airports).
 
Of course there are some exceptions (and like Randall Flagg I never got FoY), and yes the NW are unbalanced between them, but what actually matters is the global balance including the surrounding terrains. And from what I've seen that's been taken care of. When there is a NW there's less ressources around making the area equal to settle vs other good positions. For sure the algorithm they use for map generation cannot be perfect and you may have stumbled on overly good positions with powerfull NW and good ressources, but in my experience it is far from common.

Ok I didn't (yet) played hundreds of games so that my observations aren't completely significant, but have you come across so much unbalance so often ? (that is the question !)
 
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