A New Take on Wonders of the World

[epicivfreak]

 

[VainoValkea]

Wonders are large investments. I wouldn't want to invest a lot in Hanging Gardens and then get the Statue of Zeus instead. I also don't really see how this would improve the game...

 

[kaspergm]

Yeah, I really don't see how this would work in a strategy game, a bit of randomness is good for replayability, but what you are suggesting here is doing a huge investment and then have the outcome being decided by a die roll, with odds being that if you need a particular wonder for your play style, that will not be what you get. And to make things worse, it will make replayability worse by making it so that each civ will be likely to always end up with the same wonders.

I'm not against rethinking wonders and do have some ideas in this area, but I don't think this particular model would make the game better.

 

[epicivfreak]

 

[awesome]

What everyone is saying is that this idea doesn't sound very fun.
Or worthwhile.

 

[kaspergm]

It would work just fine, the same way Great People work just fine with some randomness to them. Both can be huge parts of your strategy, neither has to be.

There isn't any randomness to Great People apart from the spawning of Great Prophets, and that's one of the worst features in Civ5 ...

 

[VainoValkea]

Yeah, that really wouldn't happen. You wouldn't invest in one wonder and get another instead, you simply decide to invest in a wonder and get whatever you happen to get, most likely whatever is at the top of the list of "most likely to get" wonders, based on the factors mentioned. Just like Great People, you'd see what you're most likely to get from investing in the wonder, what's second-most-likely, etc.

You're missing the point. How does this make the gameplay more fun? More challenging? More strategic? Better in some other way? You're just proposing stuff without explaining why it would improve the game. My two cents: no one wants to invest a lot in "a wonder" and then poof, get something abysmally poor on a random roll.

Also, you don't seem to understand the concept of Great People and how they are generated very well because they work nothing like you're proposing.

 

[Galgus]

There isn't any randomness to Great People apart from the spawning of Great Prophets, and that's one of the worst features in Civ5 ...

How are Great Prophets random?

Anyway, I agree with the general sentiment that not getting to pick a wonder to build makes things less fun for no real gain.

 

[VainoValkea]

How are Great Prophets random?

Before industrial era, you get them by a roll once you've got a minimum amount of faith. For example, you need 200 faith to get your GP but there is some randomness involved so you won't usually get it right after crossing the threshold.

 

[kaspergm]

Before industrial era, you get them by a roll once you've got a minimum amount of faith. For example, you need 200 faith to get your GP but there is some randomness involved so you won't usually get it right after crossing the threshold.

Yes, just to be more specific on this, every faith point you have above the threshold will give you 1 % chance of a Great Prophet spawning on that turn. So for your first GP, you need to go above 200, so if you hit 202 first turn, there's a 2 % chance you get a prophet that turn, if not, next turn you may have 206 faith, and there's a 6 % chance a prophet spawns this turn, etc.

That is a really bad system, because it opens the possibility for (and that happens) that the first player over the threshold does not get to be the first to pick belief. And since getting the belief you want can be pretty critical for your religion's value (more so with Pantheon than anything else), this has major impact on the game.

 

[VainoValkea]

Thanks kaspergm, I was unsure on how the system worked myself but figured it would be something like that.

 

[Galgus]

Yes, just to be more specific on this, every faith point you have above the threshold will give you 1 % chance of a Great Prophet spawning on that turn. So for your first GP, you need to go above 200, so if you hit 202 first turn, there's a 2 % chance you get a prophet that turn, if not, next turn you may have 206 faith, and there's a 6 % chance a prophet spawns this turn, etc.

That is a really bad system, because it opens the possibility for (and that happens) that the first player over the threshold does not get to be the first to pick belief. And since getting the belief you want can be pretty critical for your religion's value (more so with Pantheon than anything else), this has major impact on the game.

I agree, that is a terrible system.

 

[epicivfreak]

 

[steveg700]

You're missing the point. It sounds fun to me, so I put it out there. If you don't like it, feel free to say so, as you've done, and then move on.

No point in posting ideas in a discussion forum if you don't want actual discussion, including that of a critical nature. Opinions are not always a purely arbitrary matter of taste like "red is my favorite color" or "I don't like onions on my hamburger". They can actually be discussed with a weighing of the pros and cons.

Folks are just trying to figure out what you think the "pros" are, with the reasonable expectation that you're going for something more substantial than "sounds fun to me". What makes it fun? Is it intended to address an existing issue that isn't fun?

I would go so far to say it's not as bad as some other posters have made it to be. Randomness is not an abhorrent thing in a game, as it test one's skills at mitigating circumstances. There's certainly a great deal of it in this game. I definitely don't want great prophets to spawn at a purely deterministic threshhold, for instance. Luck is important there or you'd see a whole bunch of prophets all spawning at the same time (and then we'd hear griping about the randomness of turn order). If an entire strategy revolves around receiving a specific religious belief or wonder, then there's a lesson to be learned about putting all of one's eggs in a single basket.

 

[dexters]

Basically, the short of it is this, just like you don't select which type of great person you're going to build, there are percentage chances that determine that, you only select "Build Wonder" and percentage chances determine exactly which one you build.

What Factors In?
While you'd have an equal chance to build all wonders your tech level would allow you, the following are a few possible things that affect actual chances to build:
1. Your Civilization (Egypt would be more likely to build the Pyramids, Sphinx or Lighthouse, while China would be more likely to build the Great Wall, Terracotta Army, etc.)
2. Your Traits (A Seafaring civ would be more likely to build the Lighthouse, A Militaristic civ more likely to build the Great Wall, etc.)
3. Your resources (stone makes Great Wall or Pyramids more likely, while Silk makes Silk Road more likely, etc.)
4. Your tile output in the city where it's built (High Food output increases chance of building growth-wonders, High Gold output increases chance of building wealth-wonders, high Production increases others)
5. Those are just some off the top of my head, there would be lots of others to factor in.

This could work as a sub-genre of wonders or 'flavours' to wonders but as a core mechanic I suspect it will not go down well with long-time fans who expect to have control over what wonders they 'can' build.

A lot of strategies goes towards hitting certain wonders, and I think a purely random chance based on some pre-determined traits is going to cause a lot of uproar on the levels Civ5 experienced when it was first released.

I know you've received some negative feedback already, but I just want to step back a little and mention that 'randomness' is a very controversial subject in Civilization. Even 'some' randomness like volcanoes exploding and random disasters that have minor impacts to growth will get a lot of people upset. That's not to say randomness is disliked. Part of the fun is overcoming a difficult starting position due to the randomness of the game settings, and barbarian camps and the cumulative behaviour of game AI from game to game. If anything Civilization 5 excised random events only to replace it one of the most random epic games ever (assuming players aren't playing baked games where they control who to start with and map details).

That said, keep in mind this game already sort of gently pushes certain civs towards certain wonder preferences. Starting bias, UA all play a role. Part of the fun in Civilization is watching alternative histories unfold. China with the Pyramids and so on.

Now what can we do about your suggestion? There could be 'build project' option in the menu, outside of produce gold/beakers whereby you set it to build a project and after a set of turns with some randomness, say 10 turns +- 5 the game will reward you with a momument which you can use to augment buildings in your cities.

Think of it like how great works of art/music/writing augments culture buildings in BNW

 

[VainoValkea]

You're missing the point. It sounds fun to me, so I put it out there. If you don't like it, feel free to say so, as you've done, and then move on.

As steveg700 said, why bother posting your ideas here if you don't want them discussed?

For that matter, game design is an art and a big business. If you can't explain your idea's value beyond "it sounds fun to me" instead of explaining how it improves the game, and can't respond to criticism, your idea isn't likely to be good anyway.

 

[epicivfreak]

 

[kaspergm]

I welcome actual discussion, but there was none in the first few posts, it was merely "meh, I don't like it" and "ew, randomness" followed by an explanation of how Great Prophets work in Civ5.

Actually, that's not true at all. VainoValkea, in the very first post, in two lines very explicitly and very precisely summed up why we think this is a bad idea.

 

[VainoValkea]

I welcome actual discussion, but there was none in the first few posts, it was merely "meh, I don't like it" and "ew, randomness" followed by an explanation of how Great Prophets work in Civ5.

...

Why does it have to be more grand than it simply sounds fun to me?

Oh, the irony. So, "I don't like it" is a bad argument but "it sounds fun to me" is enough to make it a good suggestion? Are you being serious?

There's no point in even discussing this proposal, because you obviously can't take criticism or evaluate it further than "but it sounds fun to me".

 

[DudewiththeFood]

I think this is a good idea but it would need to be improved and honed before it became part of the game. I think there should be a certain predisposition to military wonders in a city that has trained a large portion of an empire's army and has a barracks/armoury/walls. Although, if I wanted to play Greece peacefully I don't want to see the Statue of Zeus appear just because they built it in real life.

Actually, writing this has given me an idea along this line without the randomness. Building wonders works as it does now but they are all buffed (some more than others) with the production cost put up. Then, certain modifiers such as buildings, resources, size, history can increase/decrease it further. Where Stonehenge might be 5 faith and 18 turns to build now for 2 cities. With this, it would be 8 faith. One city would need 36 turns. The other that has already built a shrine and has stone nearby only needs 20. Then again, if some wonders got buffed like this they'd become gamebreaking especially with Egypt.