Wonder Economy

The basic concept of Wonder Economy is selling unfinished wonder to fuel a 100% tech rate in early game. There are several key points to run a successfully wonder economy.

1. You will need marble or stone near you. With resource, forge, organized religion, and industrial, to conversion with be 3:1.

2. You can build one wonder in ALL of your cities. Say building Pyramid, the trick is to cancle Pyramid in one city and the production queue, then you can build it in another city. The won't be lost. In this way, you can stockpile the extra from over whipping (like after whipping a swordsman) and from chopping. All will be easy . Your could easily get 1000+ gold when someone else finished Pyramid.

3. Your capital will be your only cottage town and most of your until around 1500 AD. You should try to build as many cottage as possible. Don't work on Villages until you get printing press or there are no hamlets left. Town won't give you much bonus. Get an early scientist and build academy there. Try to get Civil Service and Education ASSP both will improve by 50%

4. Use Monary instead of Representative. You won't be running many specialist. A specialist will only give you 6 and 2 , compared to 12 if you work on a hill. 1 could equal to 2~3 Since one could be transformed to 2~3 in your capital, while it takes much investment for one to transform to more than one . Another benefit of Monary is that your capital could reach a higher population limit. your other cities don't need to have a big population.

5. It's best your capital isn't at your border, you don't want your villages pillaged. Don't be afraid to expand, you maybe running at 20%, but as soon as you get that first bucket of gold, you will run 100% for the rest of your game.

6. After Biology, your National Park and National Epic will supply you with Great People to find coporation, which give you . This could be a good time to transform to Normal Cottage/Specialist economy.

I'm not sure if this is what everyone means by wonder economy. It's also a bit more of a trick than an economy, like chopping overflow for cash pre-wealth.

Nice idea. I assume 2.5 = 1, so if you can get 3:1 it makes sense to abuse it.

Does it work? I can see it generating lots of gold, but how do you translate that extra gold to gain advantage? Is it just to run 100% science or is there more that you are expecting the gold to do?

If you are industrious (which I think you need to be for your ratios to hold) then would this be better than building the wonders and reaping the benefits of the wonders - if so how?

It's an interesting idea, and I could see how you could win a game this way. A few problems though.

-Stone and marble are necessary for a third of your income from hammers.

-Your research is very uneven. You will spend important early turns with no economic benefit from your hammers at all. Once a wonder is unpredictably cashed in, you still can't convert the gold to research all at once.

-You need mines to get anywhere near the economic potential of a rep specialist, and you're ignoring that commerce and specialist outputs go through multiplier buildings. You've accounted for your own multipliers of stone, industrious, and OR.

-If your production cities are producing your research, where is your production coming from?

Anyway, creative idea. I think you should try to beat a game on your normal difficulty with this strategy using no cottages, scientists, or merchants.

Its a good advantage of the IND trait, but I generally don't have so much need for gold. Its easy enough to get gold from the AI through trading.

In other words, although you are getting a great gold ratio (one of the best), I'd rather have hammers than gold.

Cheers,

Dai

Hasnt this stuff been obvious for a long while ? And besides its just as good if not better in some ways to overslave walls with stone for cash,since you get the cash when you want it and get free walls to boot. Allowing you some extra trade with castles when they arrive. (especially if protective.) Anyways its good to put this knowledge out here on the forum for the new people who havent seen this before.

Willburn,

I think I remember someone talking about getting cash from production overflow... (but I have a bad memory) What do U mean with "overslave walls". Could you explain more ?

Tecibbar said:

1. You will need marble or stone near you. With resource, forge, organized religion, and industrial, to conversion with be 3:1.

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Technically, this isn't quite true. It is true that you are getting a +200% production bonus to wonders and thus you are getting 3 gold per base hammer your city produces, but at minimum, if you produced anything else, you would be getting 1.25 hammers per base hammer your city produced. So it is more along the lines of 3:1.25 since you are sacrificing at least that much potential production.

What do U mean with "overslave walls". Could you explain more ?

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In Warlords and BTS, excess hammers left over when finishing production are applied towards the next build if not in too much excess, but in extreme cases, some of the hammers are converted to gold. Production multipliers help here, and so generating lots of excess hammers on a protective stone walls can create massive amounts of gold. This is most easily done using a combination of whipping/chopping right when the walls are very near completion.

For more details, you could check out the hammer overflow article in my signature.

I would rather have the long term benefits of early representation you can get from the pyramids. Plus the 3 . With hereditary rule for happiness you have to build 15 units to balance that. Even if they are warriors at epic that is 450 hammers added to the mids cost. and then the maintnance for those units starts to build up. 15 gold per turn eats into your hammer cash pretty quickly. Sixty-seventurns will cost you 1000 gold. Run one merchant specialist in each of those 5 cities for sixty-seven turns and you gain 1000gold plus 400GPP, PLUS 1000beakers. So after 67 turns you have spent your cash and now need to PAY 15gpt to support.
I still don't see how you got 1000 gold to begin with. You say you build the mids to within one turn of completion then cancel it in your queue so you can start it in another city. What difficulty are you playing where you can build the pyramids twice in a row before the Ai finishes it? Do you hand select your opponents so none of them are Ind? And use the world builder to make sure they do not have stone?
You are also assuming that an AI civ will complete a wonder shortly after you stop working on yours. Which is unlikely since you are industrious and have the bonus resources available. So you start losing hammers to hammer rot. If i have stone and am industrious, you better believe I am building the hanging gardens and the mids. they will both be in play for a long time. 400-500 turns on epic speed. That is 1600-2000 GE points.
Not only are you losing out on those benefits but you are giving them to your rivals. If you can build a wonder build it.
If you want to convert hammers to gold. Build 15 swordsmen, then go to war. You will get your 1000 gold from conquering cities. Just leave them undefended so the Ai can take them back. You get gold everytime you take a city. Usually 100+ per city. And the swordsman hammers are reusuable. If you want to pay 15gpt for units, then at least get 15 units that can pay for themselves. The gold for missing a wonder is meant as a second prize. The wonder is almost always worth more.

CivCorpse said:

You are also assuming that an AI civ will complete a wonder shortly after you stop working on yours. Which is unlikely since you are industrious and have the bonus resources available. So you start losing hammers to hammer rot.

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I was under impression that build decay didn't apply to wonders, but couldn't find real confirmation with forum search.

Babibo said:

Willburn,

I think I remember someone talking about getting cash from production overflow... (but I have a bad memory) What do U mean with "overslave walls". Could you explain more ?

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Vale explains it exellent. As he said in this thread and can be seen in the post: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=218272

The trick for exchanging wonder production for gold has been kicking around for a long time now by industrious players on the super high levels. But I think the examples here are going a bit crazy, and the ends do not justify the means.

It is no secret that Obsolete cancels certain wonders such as the UN on the last turn, but the main reason is completining that wonder often causes a player's downfall.

The only other wonders he's also done this with have been those with very little benefit, and had the problems of causing artist pollution.

As mentioned, the example with the Pyramids is just terrible. It is more valuable to complete it instead of exchanging it for gold. Early rep not only gives extra science but also opens up your population giving faster builds and MORE gold as well.

If you think of a big wonder, with lots of overlay for gold the SoL may come to mind. Many hammers needed, and with the copper resource, there is another 100% production boost. But that is also flawed, becasue a free specialist in each city (also boosted by representation), gives more value to you over the game than does the temporary cash you will get from not completing it.

There are more issues too, such as GP collection, and preventing the AIs from gaining those wonders. I just do not see using an industrious trait to make gold this way as being +ev.

For those of you who haven't tried this yet, you will not understand the beauty of it compared to a normal specialist economy. The Pyramid really isn't that useful. I won on immortal without Pyramid half of the time (the other half I won with Pyramid )

Some more things I need to add:
1. Wonders you should consider finishing: Stonehenge. Oracle and Great Light house depending on map and your research pass. If your capital is on coast, TOA may generate 10 more , which would be 30 more

2. In all your cities other than your capital, build only granary and forge. The other building doesn't worth the .

3. You don't need to build wonder all the time, a standard army is needed.

4. Play defensive in the begining, Tech lead is the . I usually fought my first offensive war when I get cannons.

5. Mori Statue is good for some early cash and easy to control, so is national epic. Heroic epic is too valuable to delay.

6. Spread religion isn't a good way to get

7. Again, this works because your capital can run research at 100% with beauacracy, academy and later oxford. Your capital should have some health problem

Plus the 3 . With hereditary rule for happiness you have to build 15 units to balance that.

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Actually its 10. Plus you can get a much higher population in the capital, and 1 in capital is 4.5

HR to cottage the capital, which makes pyramids less useful. Everything else builds units instead of specialists.
So let's see, high pop cottage capital with academy and library (presumably) and later oxford and bureacracy, most cities build granaries and forges (why not if you're industrious) and either units or wonders. Sometimes build oracle, stonehenge, great lighthouse, or temple or artemis.
Maybe wonder economies also have a GP farm with great library and national epic and they beeline liberalism? And sell tech for cash with currency?

You don't need to be industrious or have a resource or have organized religion. You just need some of those and you still get a decent bonus. Though if you're going to spread religion for the OR bonus, you might consider the shrine if diplomacy allows.

Seems to me that after 2 expansion packs the devs have toned down most of the extreme gameplay options out there.

So I like to incorporate a little bit of each idea in a very toned down way. For example I have a production city building a not-crucial-but-nice-to-have wonder while I'm expanding - if I get it great, but I can always do with the gold at that stage in the game

Tecibbar said:

Actually its 10. Plus you can get a much higher population in the capital, and 1 in capital is 4.5

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on a standard size map you get 5 cities with +3 . That is 3 units per city under HR. 3 times 5 =15 Unless you are using the fuzzy math mod.

If you are going for Domination wins on small maps, then this strat might work. But on larger maps you need to develop an economy.

CivCorpse, love your sig! I too fall in that realm

CivCorpse said:

on a standard size map you get 5 cities with +3 . That is 3 units per city under HR. 3 times 5 =15 Unless you are using the fuzzy math mod.

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Perhaps you are forgetting that you already have 1 unit in all your cities, providing basic defence. You need that unit under both civics. That unit gives you +1 happiness under HR, so Rep will only add another 2 in your 5 largest cities, hence his assertion that it is +10 happiness. That is of course assuming that you have exactly 5 cities if you have more cities and add a few units (needed to boost the power graph anyway) then HR will soon give more happiness.

Representation is very over rated in the early game. You get a limited +3 happiness which is not enough for a good city (like your capital) and too much for a poor one. You get +3 beakers at a time when you can't afford to run a lot of specialists just for the beakers, the GPP points are much more valuable and can be shown to provide several times as many beakers with some elementary maths. HR is often a better option for a SE (and certainly for a CE) and is easy to research in time to make use of it.

UncleJJ said:

Perhaps you are forgetting that you already have 1 unit in all your cities, providing basic defence. You need that unit under both civics. That unit gives you +1 happiness under HR, so Rep will only add another 2 in your 5 largest cities, hence his assertion that it is +10 happiness. That is of course assuming that you have exactly 5 cities if you have more cities and add a few units (needed to boost the power graph anyway) then HR will soon give more happiness.

Representation is very over rated in the early game. You get a limited +3 happiness which is not enough for a good city (like your capital) and too much for a poor one. You get +3 beakers at a time when you can't afford to run a lot of specialists just for the beakers, the GPP points are much more valuable and can be shown to provide several times as many beakers with some elementary maths. HR is often a better option for a SE (and certainly for a CE) and is easy to research in time to make use of it.

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I stand corrected with regard to the number of units. I did forget the lil warrior guy from 4000bc . A scientist specialist under representation provides as many beakers as a riverside fully developed town prior to Printing Press at 100% research rate. That is really strong in the early game.

That being said, i think like all strats, this one is situational. You can't really start to plan your strategy until you see the lay of the land.