v3.8 - Wonders

[Thalassicus]

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about the update to World Wonders, please post them here.


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I'm trying to figure out a strategy for linking wonders to policies. I like the overall concept. Civs ahead in tech could traditionally horde all the wonders, which makes the game too easy (if we get them) or not fun (if an AI does). Wonders connected to a policy now require investments in many areas of the game. We need culture for the policy, science for tech, production to build it, and military units to guard it.

Firaxis' approach is simple: if a policy gives a bonus, tie a wonder with the same bonus to the policy. I'm not sure this is the best method. It's overkill to get free workers from both the Pyramids and Liberty tree policies. I have similar concerns with other wonders like the Forbidden Palace. It's more interesting for a player without CS allies to get the Forbidden Palace, instead of someone who's going to dominate the Congress through citystates anyway.

We could reverse that so wonders are connected to policies with different abilities. If a wonder's usually acquired for peace, it could be connected to a war policy. This basically flips Firaxis' method.

Another idea is linking broadly useful wonders with narrowly specialized policies or vice versa. We could connect the Great Library to Oligarchy, for example. This makes Oligarchy more desirable while the wonder's unclaimed, and the garrison bonus would help defend the wonder.

I don't know what advantages or disadvantages these ideas might have. I started thinking about it just today, so I'm still very much in brainstorming mode.

 

[albie_123]

I think it's a good idea to still have some sort of tenuous link between the policy effect and the wonder, simply because those going for that sort of policy should be the ones that also want to build the associated wonder.

Basically, the way I see it, the wonder SHOULD be directly related to the policy, but should not be used as a 'level up' or 'upgrade' to the effect of the policy, which the Pyramids basically are. It shouldn't be more broad than the policy's bonus either, as that would make the player more likely to see the policy as 'unlock X wonder', rather than 'provide this bonus (and also, unlock X wonder)'.

Incidentally, I know that it would require some mixing and matching of effects and wonders, but I'm still really reluctant about the Pyramids and the Great Wall being liberty wonders from a historical and flavor perspective - I would also question why the Great Wall belongs in the liberty tree from a gameplay perspective as well. Other than that, I love the plan regarding wonder unlocking. Having two wonders deeper within the trees sounds like a lot of fun.

 

[mitsho]

In general, I like the "contrary" link to social policies more than the similar one. Anti-Snowballing would be the reason I agree with you. But I can also very well live with effects that are similar to the general theme of the tree, but not exactly the same, i.e. Liberty => many cities => a wonder that helps city connections or intra-civ trade routes, both are effects that "require" a wide empire, but also go beyond that. I do like the Great Wall for Liberty though, makes going tall and negleting military and thus becoming invincible not a op strategy? (or so, I just feel it fits Great Empires well)

More generally though, there are a few trigger/conditions for wonders that favour different playstyles and ideally, the wonders should be distributed "more or less evenly" over them:

• Technology: Basic Req. for all wonders, wonders that only need this are available to everyone
• Production and Population: Needed to build the wonders (also tradition helps)
• Terrain: mostly Mountains or Coasts (Rivers are also thinkable), used to make some wonders more rare
• Social Policy: Linking Wonders to playstyle choice
• Holy City: Reserving religious wonders for a religious playstyle
• Projects: Favouring "Wide empires a bit more than Tall ones"? (Is that true? Certainly a possibility to think about?)
• Great Persons: Only Merchants, Artists, Generals, Admirals etc. can build the wonder (buffing less liked wonders? might be a bit much to code)
• And probably some other ways...

But those are just theoretical thinking. As for now, I like the general (! = so not necessarily everytime) rule of 2 wonders per policy tree and some thematical linking I'm not sure about linking Great Pyramids to Oligarchy, it might be so strange to actually work, or start a storm of complaints You decide what you want

 

[Thalassicus]

Those are good ideas.

My old plan was Firaxis' method of linking wonders and policies with similar effects. I'm leaning away from that now, and trying to figure out a new plan.

 

[sukritact]

While it's true a player without CS allies getting the Forbidden Palace is more interesting gameplaywise, I don't think it'll work out that way.

A wonder is a relatively risky investment unless you happen to be so far ahead it doesn't matter anyway. For those people who have no interest in the wonder in the first place, why would they try building it at all, even if they had access to it, unless they could spare the production? For those who do want the wonder; it makes the wonder even riskier because they'd have to spend culture on policies that may not be that useful to them (and miss out on policies that would be).

What I'm saying is while wonders should be hard to get, the fact remains that if the wonder is too hard to get, its requirements too out of the way, or anything else of the sort, people simply will not want to take the risk. So while the idea can work, you'll have to be extremely careful getting the balance right.

Be very careful with the "contrary" concept.

 

[skodkim]

I tend to agree most with Albie_123 and hope you won't go to far down the "contrary" line.

\Skodkim

 

[jwerano]

Another idea is linking broadly useful wonders with narrowly specialized policies or vice versa. We could connect the Great Library to Oligarchy, for example. This makes Oligarchy more desirable while the wonder's unclaimed, and the garrison bonus would help defend the wonder.

I think it would make more sense and be flavorful for it to be done this way, but I see no harm in linking wonders to contrary policies in a few select cases. It could make things more interesting to use both methods a bit.

 

[Ahriman]

I like the Firaxis model of linking wonders to policy trees, one per tree, but I wouldn't want to see more policy linkages than that. Wonders should primarily come from techs, not policies.

And the link should not be to a specific policy, they should be unlocked by the opener, and the wonder effect should be something that synergizes in general with the broad theme and gameplay style of the tree, though not one that directly duplicates advantages already provided by the tree.

The best way to think about this in my view is in terms of substitutes vs complements. The pyramids effect didn't really work well because the policy and the wonder provided the same effect, and those effects were substitutes, the marginal effect of getting a second boost was much smaller than that of the initial boost.
What we want are complements; given that Liberty makes it easier for you to quickly get a multi-city empire that is spread out, and to build the improvements you need to support it, the wonder should be something that supports that goal further but using different mechanics. Something related to trade route connections (which require roads and so are a good synergy with faster improvement construction) and/or happiness would be a good way to do that.

Having wonders that are synergies also makes it easier to get better flavor.

 

[wobuffet]

I pretty much always support mechanisms to make tech dominance less important gameplay-wise, and this is no exception. The thematic linking of Wonders to policies is a great idea. I'll concur that I'm a bit wary of too much of the "contrary" line of thinking: it should make sense at least sometimes to go Culture/Policy-heavy but Wonder-light (i.e., no SP should be generally quite weak without building the associated Wonder).

I like Ahriman's substitutes/complements thinking and mitsho's idea of having generally related but not tightly overlapping effects of SPs and/or unlocked Wonders: i.e.,
+food and +growth = lame and liable to help snowballing;
+growth and +Specialist bonus = much more interesting. Or
+Settler production and +Free settler = uninteresting,
+Settler production and +Trade route income = interesting.


The Pyramids' 2 Workers + Liberty's Free Worker is definitely overkill, but I'm not so sure about the Forbidden Palace & City-States. I play with Diplo Victory off, though, so I don't really know how that balance would work.

 

[mitsho]

I pretty much always support mechanisms to make tech dominance less important gameplay-wise, and this is no exception.

That might be the most important element of this proposal and why I want to see it implemented.

The Banaue-comment can be read in two ways: a) Two triggers makes it unlikely that a wonder will get build so it lessens the race, but also b) my terrain makes me wanna take this particular policy so I can build the wonder. I can see why we wouldn't want two conditions for one wonder, but then again, it's quite minor, no?

So yeah, I guess the only thing that should be avoided for wonders and policies is to "double-down", i.e. have the wonder and the policy have the same effect (Liberty and Pyramids, Free-Walls-Policy and Great Wall), after that you can have contrary or complementary.

 

[Ahriman]

That might be the most important element of this proposal and why I want to see it implemented.

I think tech is already less important in Civ5 than in previous versions of Civ (the military power increments and the economy boosts aren't as large), and I don't really see that we would want to make it weaker still. If you can't keep up in tech, that should hurt.
Keep in mind that there were many people who didn't want any policy lockouts for Wonders at all. I think the vanilla version (one wonder per tree, unlocked by opener) is a good compromise between the two extremes (2 wonders pre tree, zero wonders per tree).

I can see why we wouldn't want two conditions for one wonder, but then again, it's quite minor, no?

I don't think that having a city with lots of hills or having a particular policy are minor conditions. They're each maybe ~1/3 chance, making this 1/9 to meet both, or in other words making it so that wonder competition is basically eliminated for these wonders.
Having drastically cut competition for 18 wonders doesn't seem like a good idea.

 

[wobuffet]

As it is, being ahead in techs/Science is the key to every single victory condition.

More techs = better units for Domination (esp because against the AI at higher levels, quality over quantity is the only way to win at war).
More techs = the Internet, Hotels, Airports for Cultural/Tourism Victory (steep late-game Tourism ramp-ups are the only way to win in unmodded BNW)
More techs = more trade routes, Gold, etc. for more CS allies greatly help Diplo Victory

So by my count, 4.5 of the 5 victory conditions depend critically on techs, which is not fun balance-wise (obviously it is and should be so for Science Victory). Rushing Libraries, the National College, and Universities every game is boring and repetitive; that should be the right strategy some of the time, but not every time.


[BNW's new Cultural Victory is elegantly designed and works thematically, but as implemented depends too much on very late-game Techs, not needing which was the one good thing CV had going in vanilla/G&K.]

 

[Ahriman]

As it is, being ahead in techs/Science is the key to every single victory condition.

It's *a* key. It's not the only key. Being a few techs ahead doesn't really help with most victory conditions; a few techs isn't really going to give you much gold advantage or help with your city state alliances, a few techs isn't going to make much difference in terms of your aggregate tourism output, and the relative difference in military performance between tiers is arguably lower than it has been in previous versions of Civ.

All you've said is "more tech is good". Sure it is. So? More city state allies are also good. More production is good. More food is good. More population is good; in fact population is a key to every victory condition. It's not clear that a few extra techs are better than all of those things. There are all sorts of tradeoffs in the game and all kinds of different decisions you can make about short term vs long term and about different kinds of things you can invest in. If you want to argue that investing in tech is more important than any other investment, you have to actually argue that, you can't just assert it. Maybe building a battleship will help me more than building a research lab will. Maybe building a settler or an archer a wonder will help me more than building a library will. Maybe buying a city state alliance will help me more than buying a university.

Yes, tourism is dependent on the late game, by design. But that's a feature. It is supposed to be something to make the late game more interesting, that was the main goal of BNW. Vanilla and G&K had a very boring late game. BNW gave you some interesting things in the late game that only worked in the late game, and that was a big step forward. If you start trying to make tech not matter or making it easy to get tourism without tech, then you're undermining what BNW achieved.

 

[wobuffet]

@Ahriman: OK, we can agree to disagree; my goal here is to contribute my two cents to the discussion, not argue with you.

My impression of BNW as shipped is that Science is still pretty much always one of the most (if not the most) important objective relative to others no matter what victory type we're going for, and that it'd be more fun to have other, different things be relatively more important depending on the circumstances.

I agree that the late-game is much more interesting now, and that this is a big step forward!

 

[mystikx21]

Complementary wonder unlocks sounds much more appealing than contrarian unlocks or especially boring duplicate unlocks (both of the liberty tree's wonders are duplicating some effects).

With that in mind. I'd also say that we should probably avoid where possible unlocking wonders that already have terrain limitations for their effectiveness (coast/hill/mountain). This may be complementary in effects, but it too heavily restricts the availability of a particular wonder. I'm not sure we need two unlocks per tree, but I'm not adamantly opposed.

I'd also consider leaving Stonehenge out, though I can see the draw of putting a faith-wonder in the Piety tree I think there are other ways to acquire faith that were already available (cheap shrines?).

 

[Dunkah]

I would be ok with early Trees unlocking more than one Wonder... that is just about the only time of the game where everyone is equal and the wonderlust is at its greatest.

Also it would be OK if some of the late game Trees unlocked National Wonders in their closers.