Civ always beats me to World Wonder

[Possum Pie]

So in Civ II (my favorite civ game) It would warn that another civ was 1 turn from building a wonder. You could sell off things, pay gold, change production shields, etc. to beat them. In civ 5 this is not possible (I'm ok with that) BUT many/most wonders that I'm 1 turn away from completing are completed by another civ (Iriquois). After 50+ turns working on the Leaning Tower of Pisa, it was completed one turn before me. I went back 2 turns and changed production from 15/turn to 21/turn for the city and reran it. They still beat me. I went back 4 turns, changed production to 21/turn, and they still beat me. I went back 5 turns and was still beaten.
Question: is there any other way to speed production other than the way I did it? Iraquios MUST be tweaking something to always beat me by one turn. I can't see that they are working on it, how can they see that I am? I really don't want to go back 10 whole turns and go through everything again, but I will if I have to. This is the 3rd or 4th wonder that they beat me on and I lose all of those production shields...

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Chop forests?

 

[Possum Pie]

Chop forests?

Thanks, in that particular city I have only 2 forests and one has a lumber mill. I didn't think of cutting the other one down to increase production it would have added 15 or so production. I ended up going back 8 turns and beat the Iraquios finally. It is a huge penalty to 1. not know anyone else is working on a wonder and 2. lose all of the production points over a HUGE number of turns. At least they give you some gold as a consolation prize.

I've played Civ 2, 4,5, and 6 and all of the add-ons to them. I wanted to like 6 but it is too quirky and nearly impossible to attack cities past the ancient period. I've played it 5-6 times and always got bored with it after 200 turns or so. I like 4 especially with Leonard Nimoy doing the readings, and I must say that after 250+ turns, civ 5 is better than civ 6.

 

[GeneralZIft]

I don't know what difficulty you're playing on, but it's pretty standard for AI to beat you to some Wonders and also vice versa.
Maybe the enemy AI there had a lot more production going on.

In both Civ5 and 6 I would say early attacks are both pretty possible. Actually it's the opposite for me, in Ancient era is a bit harder than Classical or Medieval for me...

At least 6 has the Under Siege feature.

 

[phillipwyllie]

The Wonder Race mod on steam will level the playing field as the AI knows whether it's winning or not.

 

[raider980]

Civ 2 was my favorite too, and I loved that feature! But I guess I can see where its a little too much of an advantage for the player. I do want to rage quit every time I get beaten by like one turn. And it happens way too often to be coincidence, the AI probably has that Civ 2 feature but we don't!