The main problem with this article is that it's only half done. It only discusses the value and impact of Great Wonders when you build them, and you often don't. What this article misses is the impact of Great Wonders in the hands of enemy players and AI. Moreover, there are some uses that aren't mentioned. Temple of Artemis, for exmple, is invaluable not as a peacetime project but as a warmongering project! The instant temple increases captured city productivity, reduces culture flip and expands your borders faster than anything else can, allowing you more room to maneuver and invade in. This value is what makes the Temple worth the sticker price, not the fact that it reduces temple building costs early on.
A very good middle to late Ancient Age combo is Temple of Artemis + Statue of Zeus. You use the Temple to quell captured citizens and exapnd border while you use Statue of Zeus to fast-track an instant boom in military strength. Ancient Cavalry, of course, having few equals in the Ancient Age as a unit.
About the worst way in which this review falters is in the way it neglects which Wonders receive greater priority for capture and why. There is a strategy in which you farm out Wonders for building by a civ that you hope to imminently invade. This is useful because it both weakens your target civ's military and it saves you the time and effort of building the Wonder. In effect, you just appropriated the shield building capacity of the city that built the wonder right from the time you gave the tech to the AI, or the time it acquired it and started the project. It's like invading extra early.
The wonders that are prime targets for conquering are especially the most expensive wonders for their age that don't give an immediate wartime advantage but that give one as you're invading (because you typically should be on the winning end). Timing the gathering of a Swordsman+Ancient Cavalry group just as a Temple of Artemis finishes and capturing that can very well give you the momentum to capture not one, but two civs (and keep them happy, too!)
Depriving the AI of immediate use of his Wonders is especially important. For example, Sun Tzu's War Academy isn't really immediately useful. You can use it to heal troops, sure, and produce veteran units, but most of the time, the cities you're going to have to invade to get to it already have Barracks anyway, and the ability to always generate Veterans won't impact for quite a while. Timing your approach correctly, you should skip STAW completely and engineer an advantage for your neighboring civ such that one of his closer cities finish it (you did plant a town near his bigger producers, right?). You can do this by declaring war against rival civs together with your erstwhile ally, not giving the Feudalism tech to other civs (if you're actually that advanced for some reason), or refusing to renegotiate important luxury deals with the rival civ, among other things.
Near STAW's completion or when it completes, you need to arrange for an up to date force for invasion. It's really a lot better if you can angle for Leonardo's. While your ally is busy with STAW, you net Leonardo's and receive the advantage of a more deadly up to date force, which you then use to take STAW from him, as well as most of the rest of his empire.
Both Knights Templar and Statue of Zeus are especially dangerous Wonders to be handing to the AI. Dangerous in that they can occasionally use these Wonders to wipe other AIs off the face of the planet, making them that much more dangerous to deal with. You should pay especially close attention to the map, Diplomacy Screens, and power graphs whenever these Wonders are completed. Sometimes you can't do anything about it, but occasionally, you can preserve balance of power by supplying key strategic or luxury resources to the underdog civ.
In favor of these Wonders, they're often very key to a massive offense. You really should never set your sights on "peacetime" or "wartime" footings. The game will occasionally force you into actions you don't prefer, just to preserve yourself. Statue of Zeus, if you have Ivory, and Knights Templar are good alternative Wonders to segue into when you find rival builds are going to beat you to a Wonder (using the Investigate City function, of course), and there's nothing else you can do about it. This is quite a major setback, so you should try to angle for eventual war at this point to make the most of a bad investment.
Crusaders are actually a very decent unit. In particular, Crusaders are better "shock troops" than Knights are at cracking particularly difficult defense points. They're slower, it's true, but they are palpably more powerful on the attack, which is useful for attacking high defense points. They're definitely a cut above MI and Longbowmen. At the very least, it reduces the necessary Trebuchet count. The best thing about Crusaders is that they translate what might be lost production into decent up to date units. Together with normal city production, they allow you to amass a force of very up to date units very quickly. Think of it like a reverse Leonardo's that gives you a better than average attack unit.
I do not agree that either SoZ or KT "dictates" strategies, especially if built proactively. Building one of these in the first place represents a serious bid at a military offensive soon after completion. If you built them because you were timed out of a resource, you're making the most of a bad situation, and whether it's a Wonder direction, or a forced War from powerful strategic or luxury resources (or a perceived weak military) is much the same thing.
A Mausoleum of Mausollos is a questionable investment, in general, but it can be especially useful in particular situations. Honestly, I usually try to get a rival to build it to weaken his military, but sometimes, the 200 shields for 3 happy faces is actually worth it. This is unusually true in a city with high number of uncontrollable happy faces, typically a city in which I place Mountain production at a premium, something with Iron or Gold. If timed correctly, the added production and commerce will make up the cost because of timing. The added production (from not having to make up to 2 entertainers) can boost a military builup at the correct tech level (early MA) or catapult into another Wonder. Typically, the city that produces the Mausoleum also produces the ST. The 11 happy faces helps keep the city always productive and the lift off the population cap helps it to grow sooner than other cities.
The Great Wall is a problematic Wonder. On the one hand, you usually don't want to be building it yourself. Even for defensive purposes, you're usually better off actually building Walls where they're needed and/or real troops. On the other hand, allowing a rival civ to capture it can make invading it difficult, sometimes impossible. Great Wall + Temple of Artemis is sometimes a good enough reason to start invasion. If you can capture the ToA quickly (and an enemy weakened himself long enough to make ToA and you can finish GW soon after), then going to war to angle for the combo for use in invasion may be worth it. Great Wall is a good counter to a warmongering neighbor who's positioned to acquire both ToA and SoZ. It depends on how much of a prebuild you've got and everyone else's got.
Hanging Gardens is a questionable acquisition for me. I would really rather work to net a luxury resource, which never expires, and grants me more happy faces with Marketplaces. It's the same as Mausoleum at the city where it's built, but the additional cost renders it questionable for point use. On the enemy's side, it's not really a huge acquisition. The only time when it might be useful is to push a large empire into less corruption, or to counter a lack of luxuries. Neither are spectacularly powerful effects you should really worry about.
The Oracle is a great Wonder to build when your position is chock full of inland lakes and rivers, you're Agricultural, or when you have lots of river cities with Flood Plains. You want to position these cities a little further apart than usual and maximize that 12 size ASAP. You cannot do this reliably without the Oracle. Doing this significantly reduces build up time (because you don't have to build so many Temples and Settlers), for Monarchies, reduces police and, for everyone, defense support requirements.
In this case, you do not want the Pyramids. They will only mistime your population growth and lead to a lot of unhappiness problems. Even if your opponent builds those Pyramids, you may want to hold off on acquiring them until after you build (or acquire) the Oracle. Assuming you stand a good chance of acquiring the Oracle (no massive multiple AI prebuilds on various Wonders that are about to finish, up to date tech from trading, no better competition), you still need a bit more planning than usual. You will usually want to have most if not all of your cities on Rivers and Inland Lakes to maximize the benefit of Oracle. Typically, you only want one core city to have a Granary - the one producing the Workers and Settlers. The rest should be busy building Temples and possibly Colesseums. Celts fare especially well here, being both Agricultural and Religious. For cities that are a bit behind in food power, you want Granaries there to standardize growth levels. For excess cities, producing extra Workers sometimes works, but developing Hills and Forests to make use of excess Food is usually more advisable, IMX.
Once the Oracle is finished, remove all stops from population limits and angle for Construction ASAP. You want all your cities at size 12 to maximize Oracle. The increased city size so soon powered by your powerful food production can exceed expansionist Pyramid style population farming in terms of speed in population growth and the reduced Temple requirements can often power a boost in Science or wartime spending. You can even afford to build Libraries (instead of the extra Temples) early on to power a Culture surge.
This is nothing that can't be done with enough luxuries and Marketplaces, but it's faster and subs for luxuries when you can't acquire them.
I don't agree that Oracle is problematic with Theology. With Military or Marketplace prebuilds timed correctly (augmented by judicious Forest boosts where needed), you can have Cathedrals up in important cities very soon after Monotheism and well before Theology kicks in. You need to time the effect right, but then, most of the really powerful Wonders require deft use anyway.
It's actually the Sistine Chapel which I find very questionable. Sure, it doubles Cathedral happiness powers, but with Sanitation more than an age away, can you really ever make use of it in a time sensitive fashion? If you lack at least 3 luxuries, I feel that you should be gunning for those instead. Between 3 luxuries, Marketplaces, Temples, and Cathedrals, there should be few, if any happiness issues. In addition, I do not at all agree that a Sistine is great for a Democracy setting its sights on a Cultural win. For these players, early Colosseums across multiple cities boost overall Culture much more dramatically, and it's the Culture that matters here, not the happiness. Oh, and military units don't contribute to happiness in representative governments.
For Research Victories, passing Sistine to aim for Copernicus on a Colossus equipped city is really the big fish to land. If you can manage it, a Colossus equipped Mausoleum/ST powered Observatory city on Gems or Spices is da bomb for Research maniacs. Even if you aren't in a tight race for tech, Observatory is often a natural extension of either Mausoleum/St on a massive city or Colossuss/Mausoleum, if you can manage it. Angling for Colossus and settling for Mausoleum is often acceptable if the city in question and grow large enough soon enough and has enough Gems, Spices or other commerce increasing resources in its radius. An Observatory City can actually power a tech bid for ToE later on which can allow you to trade for tech parity or lead in a game where you're technically behind on all fronts.
I would say that the Sistine Chapel is mainly a balance player's bid. This is the kind of player who isn't playing a Religious civ but still plans on mixing war and peacetime building anyway. Acting as a kind of early Universal Suffrage, the Sistine can ameliorate Republic WW quite significantly, though I'm hard pressed to find a use for it elsewhere. You can, I suppose, trigger a GA with in on a Religious civ, but frankly, there are more cost effective ways of doing this.
JS Bach's is actually, for me, lumped with Sistine in that I can't find a particularly good use for it. It's a nice city thing to capture (have your enemies build it to weaken them), but not really essential to anything or most situations. You can use JS Bach's to further ameliorate WW and try to war more or less constantly with a Republic Gov, but why bother? Just get Monarchy and more directly powerful Military Wonders. For a continental war, of course, JS Bach's is the superior, as it does not require a Cathedral to be effective and thereby reduces culture flips more immediately.
I honestly have never felt a great effect from either Wonder at any time in any time, and I often regret ever building any of either JS Bach's or Sistine's when I could be building troops or real improvements.
Magellan's Voyage is really mainly a Seafaring Civ's military Wonder, for transporting troops and for attacking cities from the sea. Especially dangerous in the hands of a Viking player.
Newton's Univ is the second stage of a rocket boost bid for ToE. Newton's and Copernicus Observatory are spaced far enough apart that you can immediately prebuild for it after gaining Observatory with a moderately producing city and still expect a reasonable chance of gaining it. It's also one of two Wonders that you can aim for at the late Middle Age to boost Colossus and Observatory to the levels you need to get Scientific Method in a timely manner. In the event that you don't net Newton's you should at least plan to net ST for sure. Newton's is preferrable for the immediate boost, of course, but ST is an acceptable consolation prize. Both Mausoleum and ST benefit this particular city because it typically won't have time to build even a Temple. You should probably rush-build a Marketplace but no more if you want the tech slingshot. Some people prefer ST to Newton's for particular situations.
Smith's for me is a non-issue. It's a very good Wonder to acquire for Nonrepresentative governments with armies so vast it has trouble maintaining them, but otherwise, not that good. Most builder civs usually have enough of a gold excess to not need it but it can seal the victory when you're already winning. Of course, the excess cash can be used for a lot of things, but you should already have thought of specfic uses and alternative uses for them before you make a bid for Smith's. Otherwise, you could be stuck with a lot of cash you don't really have an efficient use for.
I actually believe that ToE is more useful than either Hoover Dam and Universal Suffrage. Suffrage's functions can be subbed with Sistine and JS quite effectively, and you can usually capture these Wonders quite easily, if you plan for it, but ToE's tech slingshot has no real equal. I don't agree that you should 0 your tech investment when you bid for ToE. In fact, I believe that you should be angling for the best tech position in which to use it. Obviously, you should 0 the tech slider if the ToE is going to finish before the next tech comes along, but really, never before then. It's sometimes advisable, even, to purposefully delay your prebuild just enough so that you can acquire a key boost when you need it, and not before. Of course, default Atomic Power - Electronics is always a nice choice. However, if you can trade Scientific Method and some cash to acquire Steel and Refining, you can often gun for Combustion and Replaceable Parts straightaway paving the way for a mass upgrade to Infantry and Artillery following a Leonardo's capture (followed by mass continental war). Alternatively, you can trade Replaceable Parts for Mass Production heading into Motorized Transportation to wage a limited war against a neighbor using both Artillery and Tanks against whatever he's got.
Hoover Dam is really a prime candidate for farming out, just because it's so expensive, and because it doesn't really matter much if you build it personally or not. I only opt to build it if I'm already leading, or the AI's building it somewhere not on my continent. Otherwise, farm it out and take it.
United Nations is the primo Wonder to build if you're a Warmonger because you don't want your enemies to seal a Diplomatic Victory against you. Aside from its defensive uses, the United Nations can afford you a surprise victory win even if you're 3rd or even 4th most powerful. Capturing it or building it is a must for those situations.
SETI Program is the worst of the 3 100% Science boost because it doesn't segue into anything useful. Internet is really preferrable.
Cure for Cancer is a score building Wonder. Get it if you care for the score.
Longevity is actually a useful wonder to get if you're Religious, as it actually allows you to use Facism usefully. Typically, you'll prefer Communism, but there are occasions in which Facism is much better to wage war as, and Longevity significantly eases the bad effects that balance Facism's numerous disadvantages. The 2 growth not only offsets the initial population decrease more or less completely, but it also ensures that newly acquired cities quickly acquire new citizens of your nationality majority very, very quickly.
the choice of atomic theory to electronics is perfect but i like to rush straight for scientific method then when i begin to build ToE go down industrialization path usually cranking out 2 techs then depending on production time of ToE switch to atomic theory and drop science bar to zero also after gaining the free techs and begin building Hoover Dam first tech researched should be radio seeing as how it is the most expensive tech in age and the cpu will trade you huge for it also the turns of zero science production should afford you the gold to max out science bar and take a loss in GPT to make researching radio a little quicker> 
but I HAD to capture OIL access or be a military gimp 
.. so I found a way to do a CULTURE SMOOZE and as soon as my influence took OIL they attacked me!! 
