Wonders of the World: Discussion

We are now able to built a choice of two wonders. Sun Tzu and the Sistine Chapel.

Here is the list of the following cities (Top 5 shield producing)

• Deux Rivieres: 24spt : 25 Turns
• Groton: 18spt : 34 Turns
• Vandelay: 15spt : 40 Turns
• Bootsville: 10spt : 60 Turns
• Montpellie: 10spt : 60 Turns

I would recomend that DR and/or Groton should build one of the wonders. I would recomend building Sun Tzu to aid us in our conquest in the future wars that we are planning.

I also reccomend the Art of War

The two cities I would strongly build the Art of War is in DR since we can build it much more quickly.

Under my current Micromanagement plan (I'm still the Department of Interior leader. ), DR will be a 26spt city.

I wouldn't mind DR as a wonder city, especially for our barracks. I'm working on tile usage now in order to plan ahead for our core "Power Cities".

You may think "Power Cities" are only around during the Industrial and Modern era, but they can be around in the middle ages, too! With that said, I'm definately for the capital building barracks.

Of about 10 proposed "Power Cities", 6 do not have barracks. By my calculations, DR can finish Sun Tzu in 23 turns. (That's 8 knights, including the one in production). But, I think there will be good benifits. I also have one "work in progress" city that may fill in, and will require many workers on it, since it's in the jungle.

Did anybody check on when the AIs started their builds in the current wonder cities? Did anybody evaluate when they are likely to finish? What about cascades?

IMHO it is utmost folly to use Deux Riviere for wonder building, because we can't switch to Palace for shield storage if we loose the race.

Yes, other civs have started on SunTzu. I don't have an exact date, since we don't keep track of those things.. They're in the logs, but it would take awhile to find them. This is what I always look for in my games, but the demogame is another story, almost a little too reactive.

The civs are:

Germany (New Leipzig - size 2 tundra city)
Russia (Yakutsk - size 2 mountain/hill/jungle city)
Babylon (Lagash - size 4)
Persia (Pasargadae - size 11)
Aztecs (Tamuin - size 6, lots of forest)
Zulus (Isanda-something - size 7)
Greece (Athens - size 6)
Egypt (Thebes - size 8)

Civs are also building the Sistine Chapel.

Egypt's been building Sun Tzu for quite awhile I think.

Personally, I'd much rather rush the 6 barracks in our important cities, and have the extra 8 horses to TAKE SunTzu!

Many civs started SunTzu between 510AD and 560AD (just checked the saves). Egypt started between 560AD and 610AD. Egypt is the 2nd largest of the 2 bigest cities building it, but the Persian city isn't as productive. Do we have a chance? Personally, I don't think so.

I checked through the 610AD chatlog:
greece building sun tzu - IBT turn 1 and turn 2.
greece building sistine - IBT turn 1 and turn 2.
greece building sun tzu - IBT turn 1 and turn 2.
Germany building sistines - IBT turn 4 and turn 5.
Babylon building Sistine - IBT turn 6 and turn 7.

The others have started those wonders before. In the 510AD chatlog:
Persians are building sistine's - IBT turn 3 and 4, turn 4 = 550 AD.
russia is building sun tzu's - IBT turn 5 and 6, turn 6 = 570 AD.
egypt building sun tzu and sistine - IBT 8 and 9, turn 9 = 600 AD.

Egypt and Greece could have a lot of shields built up.

What about the Persians ?
Size 11 city, started about 17 turns ago. This would call for an investigation (or embassy if we haven't send en embassador yet).

Pasagardae (sp) is mostly irragation. About 5spt.

Looking at the save, my best guess on the top wonder building cities is
- Persepolis
- Pasargadae
- Thebes
- Leipzig

For grab are 4 great Wonders: Sun Tzu's, Sistine, soon Leonardo's, some time before the builds are finished Bach's, each 600 shields.

IF we decide to enter the wonder race, I would establish an embassy with Persia NOW to get information on Persepolis and then investigate Pasargadae. If we are able to beat 1 or 2 of them, we should enter the race. This is because we don't want important wonders on the other continent in hard to conquer cities.

We should then push production in Deux Rivieres and Groton. We might loose one race, if bad comes to worse even two, but Groton can store the shields in the Palace for Bach's.

Deux Riviere should immediately get the forest tile from Santa Lucia and the mined desert from Vandelay running 1 turn on food deficit without problem. Next turn it switches from the desert to the mined horse. This way it will have 600 shields in 24 turns.

Groton is a little bit slower; it should be pushed by joining some workers. And even the settler closeby!

Part of my plan (I'm still in the DoI until the end of the term ), is to do just that (max out DR, and build settlers into Groton, and surrounding cities).

should we bother w/ sistine? i personaly don't think so, but it could be used as a pre-build for leonardo, which, when combined w/ sun tzu's, can be a very potent combination

There's also another problem with Sistine. Civs are far enough along that they could easily switch over to that, or even Leo's. I think we really need a plan first. Just what do we want to do with the game? Also, we do need the lands around the Forbidden Palace. We only have half the lands. So, if we're going to have a war with atleast Russia and Babylon, we had better build knights. There's also 6 barracks that I'd like to have rushed, or built in core cities.

SunTzu - 600 shields.
Barracks to equal SunTzu - 15

I don't think we're gonna need 15 more barracks, more like maybe 8-10 at the most. Why build barracks in worker, galley, and catapult factories?

The one argument for Sistine is that we have few luxuries. However, we have 2 negating factors.

1 - We can trade our luxuries (we're close enough to Astronomy).
2 - Sistine requires a lot of expensive cathedrals to be effective.

It's possible to win without any of these wonders. Wonders really slow you down if you try to build too many. This is why we have to decide what we want. We didn't have the greatest start ever, and we can't expect to win by 20k like we wanted to origanally. We're about the same size, or 150% of the size of most civs. (Only Persia and soon the Aztecs will be larger than us). This is monarch level, and the AI has a slight scientific advantage. We need to be larger to keep up. That means taking out atleast Babylon and Russia. In order to do that, we shouldn't waste time on expensive wonders that we only stand a 50% chance of getting. A wonder like Smith's Trade is good, and we could prebuild that in Groton later. For now, we need to PREPARE ourselves if we want to be a science leader, especially to compete against Persia.

To resolve this, I'm planning on polling this as the MIA.

Twice actually.

I'm going to post one poll for DR, and one for Groton. Both of them will be worded the same:
"What use should the city of X be used for?"
-- Building a wonder
-- Building Military units
-- Other
-- Abstain

We're going to go 'round and round on this one - we need to determine our future course right now.

-- Ravensfire, Minister of Internal Affairs