Wondrous Improvements

I think there should be ‘Wondrous Improvements’ that can be put where the player wants. This way not only do you have wonders within the city but also exciting landmarks on the terrain that can be the focus of war campaign or defensive or secretive. These Wonder Improvements should be built like normal wonders at first, this is where the GP and culture will be gathered after completion. Upon completion within a city the player gets a 'great workforce' that is charged with the task of construction of the Wonder Improvement. You set then to work on whatever tile or length of tiles and whatever turns later it is built and the great workforce dissappears. The turns are half wonder, half improvements. If you fail to get it completed in the improvement stage, you get money from incomplete wonder and a couple of free workers out of your ‘great workforce’. That sounds fair consolation.

Here are a few ideas for ‘Wondrous Improvements’:

Great Wall of China: bound to be in the warlord expansion pack in some form. ‘Great workforce’ fits the wall onto map like a river, between the tiles, anywhere within their own cultural territory and act as defensive terrain (I'd say 100% defence bonus except gunpowder) AND a +2 gold bonus for any tile that it borders for nearby cities radiuses to exploit (the Great Wall functioned as a giant tax turnpike also). The tech should be masonary (obviously), defensively obsolete at gunpowder and the tile bonus made obsolete by Banking.

Secret Underground Base: Sort of 'Area 52' Undetectable by enemy units, save for spies who must actually walk onto them to locate them. Simply adds a lot of extra beakers to research like a super-super-specialist. This could be a sort of ‘national wondrous improvement’.

Mountain Top base: the same as before, just hidden in IMPASSABLE mountains, that are in fact, passable by owner of base. If only there were volcanoes (see below) in Civ 4 so you could have proper James Bond Volcano Bases.

Nuclear Missile Silo: I'm no expert but I'm certain government try and keep their nukes out of sprawling urban areas. Much like the 'underground base' but you can build as many as you want whereever you want as long as it is not in another person territory except if your allied with them . you can only launch nukes from silo or submarines. This idea would emulate the 'Cold War' senario of counting nuke sites with spies and targetting for massive retaliation.

You get the idea. I think the ‘Great workforce’ concept would create more entertaining maps for exploration, for warfare both attacking and in defence and increased need for espionage in the late game. You can find a use for those desert tiles or small inacessable off shore islands too. It would add a kind of story telling aspect to the game without interfering too much with the main game dynamics.

I never thought of wondrous improvements, or the like before. Seems like a cool idea, although you're Great Wall is somewhat overpowered since the gold provided would give the builder such a massive economic advantage early on in the game.

Point taken. Perhaps I should mention the length of the wall would be limited, maybe 10-15tiles, perhaps variable on map type, Lets say ten, So that'll make for a strip of twenty +2 gold bonus tiles, ten either side of the wall. A 'fat cross' city radius if placed right beside the wall on a strip can only exploit 10 tiles. Thats a +20 gold bonus, with two city thats a maximum of +40. But bear in mind population growth is not so great to start off with, terrain may not always be suitable for full exploitation and the defensive placement of wondroud improvement is important too, especially interms of raging barbarians and agressive civs. Also, with wondrous improvements, aside for the 'expertise bonus' of GP and culture in the city that builds the 'work force', it is the person that controls the territory of the wondrous improvement that controls the wonder, they don't need to flip your city or conquer to reap the benefits. So its about the same as, I think its the collosus I rarely build it, that gives your sea tiles extra money.

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Here's one: A CANAL! From any body of water to any other body of water within ten (or some other number) tiles of each other. Functions as both a land and water tile. It should be EXTREMELY costly and time-consuming, so that it isn't abused to allow ships anywhere in the empire.