Should a change be implemented to the Great Wall?

The purpose of this thread is to facilitate a coherent discussion of the pro's and cons of considering things that we might do to increase the the strategic value of researching the ancient age technology of construction.

Through testing across many games we have developed a strong indictment that says construction holds little strategic value except as a stepping stone to eventually get into the middle ages.

The primary lack of strategic value seems to be in the relatively low power of The Great Wall great wonder that provides little or no benefit under most game circumstances.

The question here is: Should we entertain the option of doing something to increase the strategic value of the Great Wall and if so what should that or those options be?

NOTE THAT THE POLL ABOVE IS A MULTIPLE-CHOICE POLL

The 50% extra defense or aqueduct in each cities sounds good to me, especially the aqueduct choice. That would spare me the extra thought on city placement.

I voted for putting walls in every city on the continent. The aqueduct idea sounds good too, but you would have to change the name of the wonder I would think.

I voted for wall in every city on the continent. I think that is the one that makes the most sense.

A free aqueduct in every city that is just to good. Then I get nothing for having bothered to smartly place my city by a river or water deposite. Not to mention I don't see the connection to the great wall of china with an aqueduct. Then a barrack or a granary in every city would make the same amount of sense. Actually more sense then the aqueduct if you ask me (but then we already have two other wonders that grant that).

I don't know where the exact thread is, but I think Sirian on the RBCiv forum noticed that the Great Wall does, in fact, give the bonuses for walls when the city has grown beyond size 6. This is a reason to tweak the wonder in and of itself, since most people are unaware of this bug. (It is a bug, as the documentation states that cities lose their wall bonus and get the larger bonuses at size 7 and up instead.) Is this fixed in 1.21f?

I think that giving free aqueducts would be extremely overpowered, especially in corrupt cities, and upset the balance of the game considerably. Of the other choices, eliminating the option of forcing you to build walls would make this wonder more useful for non-militaristic civs, as the decreased shield cost is removed from the equation.

I don't know where the exact thread is, but I think Sirian on the RBCiv forum noticed that the Great Wall does, in fact, give the bonuses for walls when the city has grown beyond size 6.

Click to expand...

I think that's what Cracker was referring to by the "double walls bonus".

I do agree that having it put aqueducts in all cities would be very powerful, but I'm not sure it would be any more powerful than the Pyramids are. The biggest reason not to implement that choice is because it's The Great Wall, not the Great Aqueduct System. Personally, even if you make it give 200% defensive bonus to cities I probably would not build it. It's very very rare that the AI ever attacks my cities. I make sure to take the wars to them.

Don't have it here but what is the amount of shields required for an aqueduct. It's more than barracks and granary that is for sure. Yet the great wall in itself is not that expensive a build. Wouldn't this cause a balance problem if there was a handout of free aqueducts? The wall on the other hand is quite cheap in its shield cost.

I would give the Great wall the effect of Universal Sufferage in addition to its current effects. Perhaps you could justify it by saying that the people feel confident about warfare behind their massive stone walls. The effect would still expire at Metellurgy, so Universal Sufferage would retain its value.

Edit: I wonder what would happen to a size 10 city if the aqueduct expired?

Granary = 60 shields. Aqueduct = 100 shields. But depending on how many rivers/lakes are on the map, usually only half of your cities require aqueducts, while they all benefit from granaries. Also a granary helps a lot more than an aqueduct does over the course of the game. I don't think anyone will argue with that.

edit: I don't like the Universal Suffrage idea. There's already too many things in favor of going to republic instead of monarchy as your first government switch. If you could reduce the already low war weariness in republic there'd never be any reason to switch to monarchy instead.

I voted for no change.

I don't think the strategic value of Construction is that low. Aqueducts alone make this tech worthwhile, especially when you compare it to an empty tech like Polytheism (for non-religious civs).

Also, one could argue that since the effects of walls last even when towns grow to cities, the Wonder is somewhat useful. You just have to build walls before your towns grow to become cities.

Finally, I don't think GOTM games should be played with modded rules. Minor changes now will bring more changes later (I can already suggest a boatload of no-brainer changes that would increase strategic choices). As a result, some people will avoid participating in GOTM games because of their understandable hesitation to study the modifications and their effect on gameplay. If GOTM hopes to retain this high level of participation from the casual player, it has to keep stock rules. I am a big fan of trying to give more strategic choice and improving the AI by modding the game, but not for GOTM.

On the other hand, I see the reasoning behind wanting to change the Great Wall. As it is now, it only serves to hamper the AI, who doesn't know not to build it, and when it does, it doesn't know how to make good use of it.

I too voted for no change.

Mainly because I'd rather GOTM stayed as true to the original Civ (or PTW) as possible.

I totally agree with Alexman's "thin end of the wedge" and "alienating new & casual player" arguments.

regards

Ted

I agree with alexman and TedJackson.

I'm not against mods to the game where they are either cosmetic or they correct a great imbalance (e.g. the mods for some of the clear imbalances in PTW.) But I see this Construction / Great Wall issue as at most a minor imbalance, perhaps not even that. And in such cases I think it is far better to stay in step with the out-of-the-box game, to keep the barrier to entry for new GOTM players as small as possible.

I vote to leave it as it stands. I like some of the changes to the game as most of them are cosmetic. I don't mind the changes to the maps as well because they force you to be more strategic, but I don't like the idea of changing the flavor of key elements.

I have never liked the great wall, but so what. Who likes every wonder? Some of them fit in your style of game play and others don't. If we changed them all to what we liked then the AI would die much too easy. The aqueduct idea is way too powerful!!!

So please leave it as it is.

Just like the four posters before me I am against such an important modification of the original Civ for the reasons stated by them. OTOH I would not mind taking the Great Wall out of the GOTM as it is almost useless.

I concur with the no-change-opinion. GW requires only 200 shields just like Colossus, whereas Pyramids is 400 and GLib is 400.

Giving it more power would require to make it more costly. Thus we can leave it as it is.

I think Firaxis should have made the Great Wall give all your towns on the continent a free wall, as that would make it a much more valuable wonder than it is now. I never build any walls, so the way it is now, it is useless to me. With free walls, I probably would build it more often (right now I only build it if I get a leader and no better option is available).

But I agree, that any changes like this would make it more like a mod, and then we'd have to start referring to games as using the 'CF mod', like Apolyton uses the AU mod. And new players would have to study even more read-me.txt files to know what is going on (they already have enough to read when adding in the units).

Like one of the above posters said; remove it completely from the game. The AI will then be more capable to make rassional choices in early game. Actually I think most changes should be made to coach the AI to be a more competent oponent. The difficulty level really doesn't improve the AI, it just handicaps the player and gifts the various benefits. So any changes that channels the AI to do more logical tasks would enrich the singleplay experience greatly.


I'm a bit opposed to limiting the frames of GOTM rules to be 'simplified to please the great masses'. The lowest ability of reading readme files should not be holding back the possibilities of what GOTM can bring to the civ community. We need good games, not games that the most lazy fool can follow with a minimum of effort.

The Great Wall looks just fine to me. Like the Lighthouse, it will not often give a really great benefit, but it will be vital if circumstances are right. Making it stronger doesn't change that.
If any change is to be made, I'd go with Bamspeedy's suggestion.

Why should the strategic value of construction be increased? When looking at the tech tree, there are loads of other techs that merely function as a stepstone to get to other techs/eras. And, if there would be any need to change a wonder to increase the corresponding tech's strategic value, I'd say change the Shakespeare's Theatre as well.

As for the Great Wall, it's nearly useless, and to make it worthwhile would require an enormous change in it's effectiviness as walls do not have any substantial impact on the game, like granaries or barracks do. And I'm personally against making modifications to the game as it is programmed unless it something that has to be done to prevent gamebreaks, like removing mobilization. Firaxis has programmed the AI to function according to rules as they have made them, changing them should only be a last resort.

I vote to leave the Great wall as it is, it still functions as a trigger for AI civs to get their GA on.

I also feel there is more and more a tendancy towards "modding" the game which is quite negative. Already now the AI just can't handle some of the changes.
I will stop playing GOTM is those changes occur more and more...