only build wonders in the capital?

[HansA]

Morning,

I mostly build all my wonders in the capital

GL, NC, HS, HG, PT, Louvre

I like to have a strong capital, but sometimes wonders say +x% in the city it is purchased.

Also reason is that I build them in the capital because in all my games (not many) has the fastest production speed and then I can finish the wonder before the AI does. Only later a 2nd city will closely match my capital's speed.

Where do you build your wonders and why?

Thanks for enlightening me.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Generally speaking, the most productive city should build most of the wonders, but this is not carved in stone.

If you plan to take Piety tree you should 'distribute' them a bit between multiple cities. Often with Great Engineer help. Reformation social policy will provide a 33% boost to culture output in each city with World Wonder.

National College almost exclusively should be built in the capital. National Treasury and other commerce enhancing wonders like Big Ben and Colossus in the city with the biggest gold output (meaning with most gold modifying buildings). I often find that conquered capital is better candidate than my own. Especially after being a puppet for a while. But this may vary.

Ironworks is a different story. The common logic says it also should be built in the most productive city, but that's not always true. When you play for science, ironworks in second best city can help it to match the capital production-wise and allow two spaceships parts to be completed in the same amount of turns. When planting ironworks in the capital will not bring it to be twice as productive as it was before, so total number of turns needed for two parts to be finished will increase. Thus with this one sometimes math comes in play. Just go with your hunch if you're too lazy. Not a game breaker.

Machu Picchu has to be near mountain. Hanging gardens preferably too, to fully utilize observatory potential. But the city should have some really good dirt. There is no point in working many lousy tiles. When the capital has better land, build it there. If you have military specialized city with barracks, military academy, armory, Brandenburg Gate and Heroic Epic obviously need to be there as well. Usually it is the most productive city, i.e. the capital. I'm sure I forgot some...

 

[HansA]

Thanks The Pilgrim for your answer.

Mostly my capital is also the military headquarters with baracks and so on, since production is most of the time highest there as well.

With roads to my other 1 or 2 extra cities, I can move fast enough.

At least on the level, king, I play at the moment.

 

[jega001]

Pilgram already pointed out the Piety-Reformation point so i'll leave that one be. 33% increased culture is not something to be forgotten about! If your capital is your military headquarters and your still building wonders then you need to identify and and build up another production city. Being unable to build additional units when you need too because your building a wonder you decide you truly need is a bad place to put yourself in. Early on in the game try to identify at least one addition city to be a solid production city. Build a barracks and armory there so your not caught in that situation in the future.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Fair point, jega001.

Difficulty level makes some difference, though. On higher levels milking AI allows to buy most of the army. So no adjustments needed. I'm also not a big fan of wonders spammery and rarely have a problem to squeeze in whatever I want. Defensively little bunch of units will be sufficient, offensively I'd better kick them out everywhere unpromoted rather than wait until they are built one by one. But if you plan to hard build lots of them, for example while waiting for the next techs on upgrade path, that's most likely what you should do.

 

[binhthuy71]

My usual strategy is to specialize cities. One for Culture, one for Science and one for Production. There are some mostly early game buildings that I build in every city. Monument, Barracks, Workshop, Library, anything that's needed to build a National Wonder later on. If my civ has a powerful UB then I'll build that where it will do the most good. The same for things like Stone Works or Forges. I try to keep my World Wonders to a minimum and to build them in the appropriate city. I've found that, for me, this simplifies the game, reduces micromanagement and leaves me with a lot more cash due to reduced maintenance costs.

That strategy also enables me to get a nice overall Culture boost from the Piety tree, as Pilgrim pointed out above.

 

[budweiser]

Has anyone said use GEs to rush in your other cities yet?

 

[binhthuy71]

Has anyone said use GEs to rush in your other cities yet?

Always. My Science city usually tends to be a bit weak in production so a GE build is often a necessity to grab a Wonder before the AI does.
The good part is that my Production city usually produces enough GE's to do the trick.

 

[chazzycat]

There is also freedom to consider. If you take the left side, that gives a flat culture bonus to each wonder. So if you have freedom and not piety, it's better to have all the wonders in the city with the best multiplier (probably the capital). Tall non-culture games would likely fit this scenario pretty frequently.

 

[bhavv]

This is how I like to build my wonders

I spread them between two cities. I prefer to settle manufactories rather than rush wonders, but thats because I'm only playing on King difficulty and can spam almost every wonder with ease.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Has anyone said use GEs to rush in your other cities yet?

Often. Always in domination games.

There is also freedom to consider. If you take the left side, that gives a flat culture bonus to each wonder. So if you have freedom and not piety, it's better to have all the wonders in the city with the best multiplier (probably the capital). Tall non-culture games would likely fit this scenario pretty frequently.

Does anybody actually build culture multiplying buildings in a non-culture games? I never build neither Hermitage nor Broadcast towers. Is there another multiplier in between? I can forget some.
Opera houses everywhere is not something I can imagine. And Broadcast towers even less likely. Besides, around the point you reach Radio you're supposed more or less to bulb your way up to Nanotech/Globalization and culture doesn't matter anymore. So if I have 'spare' policies before Scientific Revolution I pick the right side of Freedom in weird cases and usually just Order/Commerce.

 

[bhavv]

Often. Always in domination games.
Does anybody actually build culture multiplying buildings in a non-culture games? I never build neither Hermitage nor Broadcast towers.

My builder games basically turn into both Science + Culture at the same time. The only difference being that I take Rationalism instead of Piety. Culture buildings are always good as more policies is always better. I like to eventually have at least all of Tradition + Liberty, either the right side of Freedom or middle policies in Order, all of Rationalism and right side of Commerce in science games, and you can only get all of those if you build the culture buldings. If I'm going for a pure culture game with Piety and not Rationalism, then I play as Ramesses or Pachacuti. If I want to try a Science game with Rationalism, then I play Korea or Babylon

The top left policy in Freedom only helps if you build a lot of wonders, but the one below it always helps as it give you a massive GPT boost, but without many wonders it isnt worth taking the left side at all. The opener and right side bonuses are important for anyone wanting to run specialist economies

 

[vexing]

Does anybody actually build culture multiplying buildings in a non-culture games? I never build neither Hermitage nor Broadcast towers

in a time victory i will... in a real game i don't necessarily even build temples, much less opera houses.

 

[The Pilgrim]

@bhavv
The problem with left side of Freedom is that it comes too late to make a difference. If you don't pump culture like crazy, and I don't see a point in doing this in science game, you'll likely have two trees filled and another couple of policies at most. Liberty/Tradition + Piety/Rationalism depending on wide/tall approach. With some variations of course, but you get the picture. I usually play wide, so my choices are more narrowed. For me there is nothing really practical in Freedom past the opener.

in a time victory i will... in a real game i don't necessarily even build temples, much less opera houses.

I won't live long enough to see myself doing anything in a time victory.
Thanks. This confirms my conclusions. I build temples for domination, obviously, but only occasionally for science.

 

[bhavv]

Freedom isnt really very useful for a wide empire, but with Korea it allowed me to reach 1900 BPT in the 1800s:

Spoiler :

1900 BPT with 5 cities running as many specialists they can without starving:

Spoiler :

Not a single research pact signed, nor city state paid for during the game, and I will easily blitz through the modern era techs with just 8 turns for future science on epic speed:

Spoiler :

My smallest city and the only one that I couldnt grow to size 20+ because I didnt replace the forests with farms :x



15 specialists being fed with just 2 fish, each one has a bonus +4 science from Koreas UA + Secularism, and +2 Production with Statue of Liberty

Each Artist slot not only gives me +3 culture, but also +4 science and +2 production.

 

[The Pilgrim]

Freedom isnt really very useful for a wide empire, but with Korea it allowed me to reach 1900 BPT in the 1800s:

Yeah, Korea is a special case due to their UA. You have some very unconventional stuff going there. How many GP's you've got in total?

 

[bhavv]

Every round of GPs I made a triple pop with a GS, GE and GA. The total number of GP pops would be the number of landmarks -2 from the Louvre, so thats 5 x 3 = 15 GP pops.

+2 GA from the Louvre, +1 GS from Porcelain tower, +2 GEs from from Hagia Sophia and Liberty finisher, and settle each one. Its very easy to do, you just need to micromanage the GP bars to keep them all equal.

I started the map again to try and better my city development and growth and because the combination of wonders in my capital had given me too many GA points so I couldnt run it in full specialist mode. I focused more with getting my Colosseums and national wonders built faster so I could grow sooner. My progress by 1400 AD was just unbelievable ...

I <3 Korea

I just built the following combination of wonders which eventually gets all 3 GP bars completely equal with all Artist, Scientist and Engineer slots filled (you need a flat riverside capital for the windmill's engineer slot and a garden, marble will also help a lot, plus lots or grassland tiles to settle your GPs on).

In the order they were built:

Temple of Artemis, Great Library, Hanging Gardens, Oracle, Stonehenge, Hagia Sophia, Chichen Itza, Porcelain Tower, Himeji Castle, Forbidden Palace, Taj Majal, Kremlin, Louvre, Brandenburg Gate, Statue of Liberty.

In my first go I put both the Sistine Chapel + Taj Mahal in the capital, but that gave it too many GA points, so this time I put Sistine Chapel in my second city along with various great merchant wonders that I wanted (Mausoleum and Big Ben, plus Colossus since it had 2 fish and loads of water tiles from an inland sea).

To get the first round of great people spawned on the same turn, you need to rush to either education or metal casting depending on whether you need engineer or scientist slots to allow it to happen. You get your first artist slot early with the temple, then I like to make sure I have enough money saved to rush buy specialist buildings past the temple in my capital as soon as the tech is researched (except the Opera house, I get that for free with legalism).

It easily doable on King difficulty using the three early settled GEs. It would probably be possible on higher difficulties, but you might need to use some GEs on hurrying wonders instead of settling them which would be lame for Korea.

If you build all those wonders, then as soon as you have the statue of liberty built and both the Freedom and Rationalism trees filled, you can run all your cities packed full with specialists for the rest of the game, allowing each city to generate a base of around 250 beakers and 60 production per turn (plus loads more beakers in the capital with National College + Academies, and some extra beakers from wherever you settle your GAs). The trick is getting your cities large enough, you have 16 specialist slots in total, so you need around size 20 cities at least that can work enough food tiles to support every specialist slot being filled.

 

[black213]

Freedom isnt really very useful for a wide empire, but with Korea it allowed me to reach 1900 BPT in the 1800s:

Spoiler :

1900 BPT with 5 cities running as many specialists they can without starving:

Spoiler :

Not a single research pact signed, nor city state paid for during the game, and I will easily blitz through the modern era techs with just 8 turns for future science on epic speed:

Spoiler :

My smallest city and the only one that I couldnt grow to size 20+ because I didnt replace the forests with farms :x



15 specialists being fed with just 2 fish, each one has a bonus +4 science from Koreas UA + Secularism, and +2 Production with Statue of Liberty

Each Artist slot not only gives me +3 culture, but also +4 science and +2 production.

I wouldn't call that a wide empire.

 

[bhavv]

No it wasnt, it was a tall empire

I only ever settle 4 cities, here I settled a 5th later because there was a nice riverside middle space as well.

What I meant was that if you are settling lots and lots of cities, freedom wont work well because you need all your citizens in fewer cities to work specialist slots.

Its a must have for Korea along with secularism and statue of liberty for end game uberness with just a few cities. Timing triple GP pops makes it even nicer.