Idea: No World Wonders (Kind of)

[Anondod]

I've never been fond of the world wonder mechanic in the civ games, mainly because I find it odd that a nation would set out to create something magnificent only to cancel the idea when someone else did it first. It's extra weird when that other building project was completed on the other side of the world by someone you have never met. From a game-mechanical perspective it's just a gamble: if you finish it first anyone else who was working on it gets a kick down, not just because they didn't get the wonder but because it would have been better for them to not have tried at all and built something useful instead, but I don't mind that as much. (Except when you get beaten to the punch by one or two turns... that's just hella annoying.)

My idea to change this is to replace the world wonders with national wonders that are essentially enhanced versions of regular buildings but giving world wonder-type bonuses to the first such building completed. This way losing out on finishing the Great Library won't mean your investment has been for nought (except for the fail cash), it just means you get a run-of-the-mill, plain ordinary great library instead of the Great Library.

Taking the Great Library as an example, you could start building a Great Library (which would perhaps give +1 Great Scientist point, or perhaps everything but the culture bonus - the point would be for it to give a bonus that would be kinda-sorta worth it compared to the cost of the building if you don't get all the benefits) in any city where you have an ordinary library. If someone else finishes a Great Library before you, fine, all you get is that regular Great Library. But if you finish yours first, yours counts as a World Wonder, essentially becoming The Great Library.

This way, if you're the first to build a Great Library your gamble pays off and you get the big bonus, but if you're second (or third etc) you still get something other than that weird cash payout. It would still be odd that only one nation could create that particular wonder, but in my mind I could rationalize that as the enhanced bonuses being some form of retroactive recognition.

I know that apart from the technical issues on how to implement this, and I'll gladly admit I don't know nearly enough about CiV modding to judge if it's even possible with the tools we currently have, there are also balance issues to consider, but right now I'm mostly looking for feedback on the idea itself. Does it make sense? Does it make things too not-Civ? Does it create new issues that are worse? Would it be more or less fun to play with?

 

[Spatzimaus]

I know that apart from the technical issues on how to implement this, and I'll gladly admit I don't know nearly enough about CiV modding to judge if it's even possible with the tools we currently have, there are also balance issues to consider, but right now I'm mostly looking for feedback on the idea itself. Does it make sense? Does it make things too not-Civ? Does it create new issues that are worse? Would it be more or less fun to play with?

The technical side would be a definite problem. You can change the buildings to National Wonders easily enough, but there's no "built it first" mechanism in the XML, and it's a pain to add something like that through Lua because there's no OnBuildingCreated event. Through creative application of the save/load logic you can figure out who built it first, but the bonuses wouldn't kick in until the following turn.
So in your example, the Great Library might give the free tech to all players, and the +1 scientist point and +1 culture as well, but the first player to complete it gets a +100 culture bonus to their empire (and/or the city) or free Great Scientist or something the next turn, to represent word getting around that they've done something new and special.
Obviously, this'd require some serious rebalancing. Many things can't be easily awarded through Lua, so it might be best to keep it something consistent (like that culture bonus, with the amount only depending on the cost of the Wonder or something to keep the early ones manageable).

As to the rest, I do think this would be an improvement in gameplay, but not because of what happens when you get beaten by 1 turn. No, I'd worry more about the runaways. Specifically, on lower difficulties (Prince and below), a competent player will have a 20-30 tech lead over his competitors by the end of the game. At that point, you're completing Wonders before the other civs even unlock them. And that means that the civ with the tech lead is accumulating all sorts of powerful bonuses that the other civs will never get, which only makes their lead even larger. National Wonders are a nice way around this; even if you're not the leader, you'll still have the ability to get those special one-city-only effects.

That's why, in my future-era mod, I added a LOT of National Wonders (many of which were originally going to be World Wonders), quite a few of which mimic the effects of earlier World Wonders. So you got beaten to Himeji Castle, but everyone can built the Citizens' Defense Force, which has a similar effect. That sort of thing. Using more National Wonders (and not of that stupid Civ5-style "must have X in all cities") helps even the balance of the game, since civs a few techs behind the leaders can still get the bonuses eventually.
And you don't have to just copy world wonders to get this; for instance, in my mod one of the National Wonders is the Planetary Datalinks, which automatically gives you a non-Disabled tech (no research needed) as soon as 4 other empires (not city-states or barbarians) know it. Obviously, this doesn't help the tech leader (although the wonder also does other things that make it worth building), but it really helps civs trailing the pack keep from getting out-teched too badly. So these sorts of National Wonders can definitely help improve the long-term viability of the gameplay.

But if you do this, I'd highly suggest either capping the national wonders per city, or making some of them mutually exclusive so that you can't stick them all in a single city. (See the Nuclear Plant/Solar Plant for how mutually exclusive groups are declared.) Otherwise, some wonders that affect a single city (like the Colossus, Stonehenge, etc.) would stack up too well. Or you'd see people putting all of their Great Engineer point buildings in one city, all their Great Merchant point ones in another, and so on, so as not to "waste" those points on cities that'll only ever generate the other type of specialist.

 

[Mylon]

Wonders are weird, I agree.

In my old civ4 mod, I added a special building called, "World's Tallest Building." It could be built multiple times, each time getting more expensive to build. It granted a wonder-like bonus to the person that held it, and if someone else built it afterwards, the old "Tallest Building" became a relatively ordinary economic building "Skyscraper or some such". I thought it was a fun mechanic.

 

[Deep_Blue]

From technical part I dont think that is possible from lua or xml part, I can make code with lua that checks if a nation has a particular wonder but I cant negate the effect that was awarded. This can only be done with the source code which was promised to be released by the developers at some point.

About the idea I dont agree with it, because I cant imagine more than one copy of the Pyramids in the world for example. But wonders can be made special for specific civilizations, for example the Egyptians only can build the pyramids, this way no more than 1 civilization can start building the Pyramids. But this will raise a huge balance problem in which some civilizations get great advantage over others.

So I believe the current system is much better than other alternatives.

 

[Anondod]

Spatzimaus: Very good points on runaway leaders (and overall)! (I generally only play a game until it's clear I will win or lose and nowadays mostly on Emperor so I don't experience that as much.) Very useful input on the tech side as well - awarding the bonus a turn late is quite alright I think.

Limiting the number of wonders per city sounds like a good idea. (I've considered trying to add some kind of benefit to having multiple types of GPP generated in the same city, like a general bonus to GPP growth that increases with the number of types or a special type of GPP that creates more powerful GP but grows only as fast as the slowest of the, say, top three types of GPP, but that's not really relevant here.)

Mylon: That's an interesting variant! I could definitely see something like that for several types of "competing" wonders, like the greatest library, greatest church/temple, greatest fort and so on.

Deep Blue: I'm not very well versed in the technical side here - so far I've only tried XML modding - so it's quite possible this can't be done satisfactorily before the dll is available (if that ever happens).

I think your point regarding the Pyramids is interesting, as there actually are pyramids in other parts of the world, most famously the Americas. With this model those would be "generic" great pyramids while the Egyptians finished theirs first (or, with the competition idea from Mylon, built the most expensive version) and hence got the extra wonder bonus.

Civ unique wonders are also an interesting idea. I'm not sure if the balance issues are worse than for unique buildings in general and I tend to shy away from forcing civilizations too much towards a specific strategy, but it's something to consider.

 

[Pazyryk]

I really like the idea.

I think it could be coded in xml/Lua, but using a different approach than suggested by several (outstanding and prolific) modders above.

1. Create a national wonder called "National Library".
2. Create a "wonder" called "Great Library" that is unbuildable (cost = -1).
3. Each turn, check to see if anyone has a National Library. If so: remove the National Library, replace it with the Great Library, and stop running this check (so it only happens once). [This would work better with an OnBuildingCreated event, sure, but works with current events.]

Of course, it's a little strange that you build a National Library, then get a Great Library (if you are first) and then can build the National Library again. A better approach would be if the Great Library then prevented construction of the National Library (so it is in effect a super-improved National Library), but I don't know how to do that (would need a "BuildingPrevents" tag I guess).

To generalize this approach, you would need one national wonder for each wonder. Many of these already exist or are easy to imagine. Others are much tougher to imagine.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Of course, it's a little strange that you build a National Library, then get a Great Library (if you are first) and then can build the National Library again. A better approach would be if the Great Library then prevented construction of the National Library (so it is in effect a super-improved National Library), but I don't know how to do that.

That's what the MutuallyExclusiveGroup logic is for. Look at the Nuclear and Solar Plants to see how this works. So you'd just put these two into the same group; having the Great Library would automatically prevent you from building the National Library. Conversely, if you make the Great Library require the National Library AND be in the same group as it, then it's automatically unbuildable and you don't need to set the cost to -1.

The biggest problem with this exclusivity logic is that it's too simple. You just appear to set <MutuallyExclusiveGroup>N</MutuallyExclusiveGroup> for all entries in a set, where N is an integer. This is extremely unfavorable to modders; how many different mods would all try using Group #2? Can the logic handle skipping numbers (so you could use group number 24601 for your mod), or do they have to be consecutive like ID numbers are?

The other issue is timing. When two people build the National Library on the same turn, what does the game do? Give them both a Great Library, give neither, pick at random, or just crash like it usually does?

 

[Anondod]

Can't you check at the start of each player's turn? I don't know how the lua events stuff works so I don't know if that's possible.

Yeah, finding alternatives for some of the wonders gets a bit tricky. What do you do about the Great Wall, for example? Just a bigger fortification doesn't seem adequate, really.

Would the MutuallyExclusiveGroup work for the whole civ or just that city?

 

[Pazyryk]

How to break ties? Well, it's not a very satisfying answer, but however you ("you" the coder) decide. Could be Human player always. Could be whatever order Lua gives you when you run through players. Could be randomized. Could be whoever has the most carryover production. Basically up to whoever codes it.

Anyway, thanks for providing the last piece of the logic I was missing. I'll repost here to put it all in one place:

1. Create a national wonder called "National Library".
2. Create a "wonder" called "Great Library" that is unbuildable (cost = -1).
3. (from Spatzimaus above) Use MutuallyExclusiveGroup logic so that Great Library is exclusive with National Library. (note modding incompatibility issue in post above)
4. Each turn, check to see if anyone has a National Library. If so: remove the National Library, replace it with the Great Library, and stop running this check (so it only happens once).
   

The biggest problem with this exclusivity logic is that it's too simple. You just appear to set <MutuallyExclusiveGroup>N</MutuallyExclusiveGroup> for all entries in a set, where N is an integer. This is extremely unfavorable to modders; how many different mods would all try using Group #2? Can the logic handle skipping numbers (so you could use group number 24601 for your mod), or do they have to be consecutive like ID numbers are?

I hate to dogpile on the developers, but why couldn't they have just made this a simple text string? That would have made it easy to add mod-specific exclusive groups.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Would the MutuallyExclusiveGroup work for the whole civ or just that city?

Good point. It'd only prevent building one in the same city, I suppose.

But there's a better solution I thought of: make the two buildings part of the same Building Class. The one-per-world or one-per-civ parts of World/National Wonders are tied to the building Class, NOT the building Type. So think of it like a UB; you build a National Library as a National Wonder, the Lua replaces the NL with the Great Library if you're the first, and because they're in the same building class, you're still locked out from building more National Libraries because you already have one building of that class. No one would be able to build the Great Library directly, because the default building type for that class would be the National Library, and it'd be like the GL is a unique building for a nonexistent civ.

 

[Anondod]

Excellent! Thanks to both of you for showing me how to do this.

 

[Pazyryk]

Slightly off topic, but if you're going to do a serious Wonder overhaul anyway...

It drives me nuts that most of the World Wonders give only 1 culture. There seems to be a general trend in Civ5 that each building can only do exactly one thing. So we can't have a Great Library that gives a tech and significant culture. Nonsense. With few exceptions (e.g., Pentagon), all World Wonders should give a decent amount of culture, as good or maybe better than any single building. If this has to be balanced in Wonder cost, fine (they should cost much more relative to normal buildings anyway). If this increases the importance of Wonders in a culture victory, fine. It should. Wonders were not needed at all for culture win in Civ4, and only a few specific ones are relevant for culture win in Civ5. I don't know why the designers continue to feel that Wonder construction should be unrelated to cultural achievement (seems counterintuitive to me).

 

[Anondod]

I agree that it makes sense that wonders should be more important for a cultural victory. (This is one reason why I like the Cultural Capitals mod.) Looking over the culture generated by wonders would be a part of what I would do if I ever got going with this.

I definitely agree about multi-purpose buildings, though I think buildings have largely been single-purpose through the whole Civ series. At least I think it was the same in Civ 4; I seem to recall the multi-purpose buildings being one of the things I liked about FfH, and while it's not really part of the purpose of this idea it's something I'd like to get into as well.