Favourite national wonder set-ups

Recently I've been putting Ironworks and Oxford Uni in my capital. This seems to work really well when I set the city up with only food and hammer tile improvements, build lots of wonders there, settle lots of great people there and run Representation.

Also I like to put Maoi Statues in the city with the most water tiles (of course), and combine this with the Heroic Epic, also settling my early great general(s) there for a city that can rapidly produce high experience troops and boats. A later military city can get West Point and Red Cross.

Wall Street of course is saved for a shrine city if I manage to get one, and National Epic goes on a city which can be farmed to oblivion - sometimes these coincide.

As for the other national wonders, I usually just stick them somewhere and forget about them. I think I could make better use of Globe Theatre and National Park though...

What are everyone's favourite combinations of national wonders? Also, in a wonderspam + settling GP capital, do you go with Ironworks and Oxford, or swap one of those for National Epic?

Hi

Usually NE goes into my cap just because early on it is doing the most gp points already and it just seems to help out more earlier than waiting for an IDEAL gp farm to build it. AFter that if it also has a shrine then it gets Wallstreet or if not the usually Oxford. If Oxford or wallstreet both end up in cities other than my cap then sometimes ironworks.

I usally like ironworks in combo with west point or redcroos though so it can help build higher level units out the box. Usually try for combos like Ironworks/Westpoint and Maui/redcross and then those two cities along with my HE city end up being the unit producers.

Since I try so hard to get militray producing cities going I dont hardly ever draft so I never really have made a draft city using globe. Most times globe and hermitage get saved for border cities that are in culture clash with a neighbor. Or if I am trying for a culture win they get put in the lowest culture of the 3 I am trying to get to legendary.

National Park SEEMS like nice idea but in practice it really comes too late to be anything more than fun novelty city. Yeah you CAN get tons of specialists going there but by time you do (ideally) you will have sooo many cities that have been generating gp points for so long and total is so high that I dont think I EVER had a gp spawn in NP city.

Usually some older cities that have been running anengineer since the BC's and been slowly building up points will start poppping gp's before the nat park city. Which restest counter to zero and makes total HIGHER which means older cities that have been making wonders and can make TONS of GP's will pass the NP which resets again which means most likely another old city will probably be closer and on and on and NP city just never has chance to catch up. But they are neat to build but it more just a side project than anything that will actually help you win. And if you ARENT that big by time NP rolls around you probably have other issues to deal with game wise and spending time on a NP city wouldnt be as helpful as just making units and trying to get your empire bigger.

Also forest presverves seem like such a waste of nice forest tiles. Chop em for the hammer boost and then farm/mine/watermill/cottage or what have you will help you more. And even if I decide to keep the forest then I will sawmill it and rarilroad it if I can. Mostly if my empire is near one of the poles with TONS of tundra forests and not much else I will stick a city there to try and make it a np city just for fun but thats bout it. Best way to do it is plan it early since NP cities are IDEAL with as many forests for preserves as possible so unless you find place with that many otherwise usless squares with forrests already it means putting city there build preserves where you can and then wait and no roads/rr's and definitly no imporvements on other squares you hopping will grwo a forest then when/IF one does you send workes to preserve it. Meanwhile that city not doing MUCH else than just sitting there and babying it to try and get it going (things like sushi and mining inc help LOTS) probably not going to be mian priority if like shaka or somebody is breathing down your neck.

Its like one of those deals where if you are ahead enough in game that it wont hurt you spending time to make it then it probably not gonna help you but could be fun seeing how big you can get it. And if you are behind at stage of game where you can build it and it COULD help you once you got it going then you probably gonna want to spend time on more efficient ways of trying to get ahead since other civs might not be likely to give you time to grow a NP city if they are ahead of you.

Kaytie

Oxford/NE/NP/GT/IW obv

NE + M. Statues - Extra hammers for spamming wonders, NE for double GPP from the wonders.

The city had 3 food resources, was coastal, had 4 plains forests, 2 hills, and grassland copper.

Needless to say this city was a Wonder Monster. Later I settled some Generals there and the city could 1 or 2 turn build any military/naval unit in the game (gamespeed EPIC). Easily the #1 city in the world on the "top 5."

GT+NE for a monster GP farm. Although GT is very good on its own in a city that'll draft forever. (no reason to put a second national wonder in such a city as you'll want it at pop 6 for most of the game)

HE+WP: hard to argue with that one, producing most units from the HE city it only makes sense to make them the most promoted. Alternatively IW+WP if you're going for domination/conquest - otherwise IW city will at some point build wonders (Broadway, etc.) or Spaceship parts and WP would be wasted in there.

NE+Oxford if in "full-SE", although most of the time I conquer heavily cottaged cities from the AI and Oxford is probably better in one of those.

NE+NP: In one of my last games I think I had around 15 specialists in that city. It's still giving me great persons at a good rate even very late in the game, and I needed them. More flexible than NE+OX as you can change the specialists around without making the other wonder (OX) less useful. So I can get different great persons for golden ages or GMs for upgrades, both in the late game. You also get to skip health buildings (well, you still want a granary for growth and grocer for boosting merchants) and get some happiness from the forest preserves which pretty much assures that that city won't have any problems at huge population.

MS is probably overrated. It is just one hammer per tile after all. I'd rather have it in a city that already has good enough production and maybe 7-8 water tiles with a few fishing resources among them, to make best use of all the tiles. Compare a city with 20 water tiles: 20 hammers, maybe 40 commerce if all are coastal (or maybe half coastal and colossus or financial) versus a city with towns and Universal Suffrage/simply a levee. There's no question who wins.

IW, city on a river, and plenty of grassland river tiles makes a monster production city on its own with State Property.

I agree with Carl about Moai Statues. Unless financial, water tiles aren't very good. An additionnal make them ok.

I like building the Moai in a coastal city with 3 or 4 lake tiles in the BFC. Lake tiles with lighthouse+MS yield 3 1 2 . Now it's worth it building the Moai Statues.

Also I like to put Maoi Statues in the city with the most water tiles (of course), and combine this with the Heroic Epic, also settling my early great general(s) there for a city that can rapidly produce high experience troops and boats.

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I did this with my second city as the Vikings recently. It was a glorious city. It had three mined hills, three lake tiles, three farmed grasslands, two wooded tiles (reserved for health and lumbermills) and the rest were either coast and a couple oceans.

My only regret was that I had a semi-isolated start and a terrible continent for cottaging. By the time I got up to Astronomy, I was hopelessly behind. My maces and fast galleons were fantastic against the other hopeless civs, but the big-boys decided to send gunpowder units my way. Yeesh. That sucked.

I put NP in a tundra city with lots of forest if I can. Sometimes I don't even build it.

GT goes with Oxford so I can work all 20 tiles as soon as possible.

NE goes with WS if the city has lost of food. Max out merchant and priest specialists and settle them back into the city.

Moai is good to build early because it gives 10,000 soldiers to my power rating, discouraging any nearby warmonger. Sometimes I pair it with HE, but not on a pangea map.

WP goes with IW or HE.

Red Cross blows.

It's so situational, I can't say I have a standard setup. But it is important to take stock of your empire early on and plan out where everything will go.

--National Epic almost always goes in my capital where I like to wonderspam.
--Wall street goes in a city with a shrine (or the best shrine or ideally multiple shrines if I'm so blessed).
--Oxford goes in the city that generates the most commerce. If my capital has decent commerce and I'm settling some GP, I often double up NatEpic and Oxford there.
--Heroic Epic goes in a good, solid production city where I don't plan on building any of the above.
--Moai obviously goes in the city with the most and the best coastal tiles. This could be the wonderspam capital or the heroic epic maybe
--The ideal spot for national park is an opponent's capital who starts with the all-forest start. Sometimes you can steal a couple of workers before he chops his forest and keep him choked down for a while. You don't have to bother actually taking the city for a long time. Then you turn it into mega-national park. I have had national parks good enough to pump out a couple GPs.
--If I have time to build west point, I'll double it up with heroic epic if that's available. Otherwise something else.
--Iron works fills in any good production city that has room. If my capital doesn't have anything but national epic, that's ideal. If not, maybe with heroic epic or on its own.
--I've never bothered with red cross.
--Occasionally I'll build the globe and make a drafting city. Best spot is some nothern tundra city with a few fish and a deer. It can be high food for low pop.

National Epic + Globe theatre for cultural wins. Sometimes the Epic's already been built and I might go for the Hermitage there.

Munch said:

Also I like to put Maoi Statues in the city with the most water tiles (of course), and combine this with the Heroic Epic, also settling my early great general(s) there for a city that can rapidly produce high experience troops and boats. A later military city can get West Point and Red Cross.

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I've been enjoying a bunch of coastal starts recently and I love Maeiou statues in my capital with Bureaucracy and a couple of decent land tiles to get the city running properly. I've actually found it worthwhile to let the culture slider rise to 20 percent with a Coluseum and Theater to grow a couple of extra tiles with this delightful city.

I had one occasion to build Maoi statues and also get Temple of Artemis in my capital with Great Lighthouse and Colossus in other cities (a couple of lucky huts helped a lot here). I didn't have a lot of land accessable and I figured I might as well build the wonders if I had to wait for a key tech to take out the neighbor that was locking me in place.

Wall Street of course is saved for a shrine city if I manage to get one, and National Epic goes on a city which can be farmed to oblivion - sometimes these coincide.

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I've also been finding recently that Wall Street and Iron Works go together nicely because either I found a religion in my second city which is usually a good production city or I capture a religion in a neighbor's capital and enemy capitals are usually good production cities too.

The statues are great, if placed correctly. Water tiles are food neutral after a lighthouse. With HR, you can work every water tile. With the collosus, those tiles are even better providing extra commerce. Coastal cities have higher health caps to go with the unlimited thanks to harbors. Put it all together and you've got a huge city that works every tile and has some food leftover for engineers and priests for even more hammers.

my last game had 7 coastal tiles. That's 7 base hammers, grinding through numerous multiplies such as:

+25% Forge
+25% Factory
+50% Power
+25% Org Religion
+100% Wonder with bonus resource
+50% Military Academy

This won't be the best production city in the history of civ but it'll be a damn fine coastal city making good use of a coastal national wonder. In the game I was referring too in my OP, this city just happened to be the best city in the game, in large part, thanks to the Statues.

Hereditary Rule said:

+25% Org Religion
+50% Military Academy

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Here I say you cheat

He's not adding them. He just provided the different multipliers.