Urge to kill... rising...

How is it that the AI can complete so many wonders within one turn of you completing them? I swear... it has happened four times in this game. Had I been building another wonder, it would have been completed. Great Library, Mosque, Hagia... others... one after another after another.

somuchrage.

Have you ever had that game with the perfect Petra spot only to have an AI build it first?

ragetokill.

Play Olaf?

On higher difficulties you almost never get GL anyway.

"Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover."

Were you thinking of that Simpsons episode with the title?

I think we've all had those games. The ones that get so aggravating, you just have to turn the game off.

OP doesn't post what difficulty level he's playing.
If he's on Emperor level (or below), it seems he's starting the wonders one turn too late.

But on Immortal, its more likely he's trying to build some wonders he shouldn't, and is "lucky" he's only getting beat out by one turn instead of five.

But on any difficulty level, if you've gotten beat out to a wonder, its a bad idea to start one that's been available for a long time; chances are high some other AI already started building that AI while you were in the middle of building one.

joncnunn said:

OP doesn't post what difficulty level he's playing.
If he's on Emperor level (or below), it seems he's starting the wonders one turn too late.

But on Immortal, its more likely he's trying to build some wonders he shouldn't, and is "lucky" he's only getting beat out by one turn instead of five.

But on any difficulty level, if you've gotten beat out to a wonder, its a bad idea to start one that's been available for a long time; chances are high some other AI already started building that AI while you were in the middle of building one.

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Or tech that's been available for a long time. Especially when you get to the Medieval or Renaissance Eras, the AI starts eating up every wonder along the tech path they're on. Goodluck getting any of the Theology or Architecture wonders if the AI rushed the tech first.

There's a few wonders that are quite powerful that the AI doesn't usually bother with. Mausoleum and Leaning Tower come to mind. Basically it comes down to three things:

Difficulty level: On Immortal it's extremely difficult to get wonders outside of the ones you rush tech for. Deity it's borderline impossible, you'll need a GE to get any wonder the AI considers valuable.

Production: Hills, Forest, Marble; can be the difference between an 8-turn wonder or a 30-turn one. In my experience if a wonder takes more than ~15 turns to build you're wasting your time. But I've had hilly starts on Immortal where I've been able to consistently spam wonders every eight or so turns.

Enemy civs: Often overlooked, many civs have a predisposition towards building wonders (or certain wonders). Scouting is important, since it's unlikely you'll be getting anything you don't GE if you're playing a Deity game vs. Egypt, Ethiopia or India. Common runaways like Napoleon, Alex or Hiwatha will also start devouring wonders once they get their empires running.

Cheat...

Use the in-game editor

Zaimejs said:

Have you ever had that game with the perfect Petra spot only to have an AI build it first?

ragetokill.

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Kill them all and let heaven sort it out

Yeah, this happened to me SO frequently on Immortal when I first stepped up from Emperor. And I agree with what's been said above. I just want to add that to survive and ultimately dominate at that level--I've never even tried Deity yet--you've got to play the reality of the game at hand and not the one you wish you were in. This means not even thinking about going for GL like 99% of the time, of course, but also letting your available resources dictate Wonder construction to a big extent in Ancient and Classical eras. If you've got Marble and a couple of Stone tiles, say, and you open Mining-Masonry, then in all likelihood you will easily beat the AI to Pyramids. But if you open Mining-Masonry, you can forget about Stonehenge, for example. There are also certain early Wonders, however, that the AI rarely seems to prioritize: the Great Lighthouse and the Oracle, for instance. But the GL and Hanging Gardens are hot ticket items.

joncnunn said:

OP doesn't post what difficulty level he's playing.
If he's on Emperor level (or below), it seems he's starting the wonders one turn too late.

But on Immortal, its more likely he's trying to build some wonders he shouldn't, and is "lucky" he's only getting beat out by one turn instead of five.

But on any difficulty level, if you've gotten beat out to a wonder, its a bad idea to start one that's been available for a long time; chances are high some other AI already started building that AI while you were in the middle of building one.

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This.

I play a lot on Emperor and a bit on Immortal, and I can atest to joncnunn's advice as being pretty solid advice. I would add this, however:

On Immortal/Duel maps (and sometimes Tiny maps as well) it's possible to hard build most wonders after the classical era (GL really is tough because of the AI tech advantage that lets them start in on it way before you can catch up in techs, so even on Duel there's still going to be a few that are virtually impossible on Immortal. ToA is tough to get as well, even on Duel or Tiny). On Immortal maps bigger than those, it's tough to hard-build wonders until fairly late, and there's a lot better chance that there may be 6 or 7 different civs all working on different wonders (with probably some overlap).

Even on Emperor, if you play Huge maps, it's a lot tougher to hard-build wonders, because there's just so many more civs to be competing with in the wonder-building race.

TL;DR -- Map size impacts wonder-building, too. The more civs in a game, the riskier it is to hard-build. I often check the demographics screen in big games to see where I rank both in tech as well as production before starting in on a wonder, and if I'm not close to the top in both, I often will reconsider hard-building the wonder and will try to get a GE. Even on Emperor, where it's still possible to hard-build most wonders, bear in mind that the more civs there are, the riskier it gets (a fact that is true on any diff. level, to some extent).

Lol the one game freakin Attila kept Wonder sniping me. At least I was racking up the gold At least I've never used a GE then gotten sniped, or I would throw my laptop out the window.

Ha. That would be awful. My question is how is it always 1 turn... .1 turn! I can stand getting sniped, but it's like the computer knows that there is one turn to go.

I'm only playing on King now. I suck.

Zaimejs said:

Ha. That would be awful. My question is how is it always 1 turn... .1 turn! I can stand getting sniped, but it's like the computer knows that there is one turn to go.

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Make them all go to war with each other while you quietly build the wonder...

Are you chopping trees and allocating your citizens to work the most hammers possible? Those two things can make a huge difference when trying to build a wonder.

No TV and no beer make Homer something something.

Carazycool said:

No TV and no beer make Homer something something.

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Go crazy?

ahawk said:

Go crazy?

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Don't mind if I do!

Even worse when you have used a GE to speed up the building process. Can't remember which Wonder I was building, but I was very pissed.

If you use a GE for a Wonder and get sniped, just load your auto save from 5-10 turns ago.

KGPurrs said:

If you use a GE for a Wonder and get sniped, just load your auto save from 5-10 turns ago.

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Set the auto save option to every turn so you won't have as far back in time to go.

If you can't compete efficiently it's often better to give up early and just attack, the placement's not so good, but it's satisfying.