Balancing Difficulty with Wonders and the desire to build in general.

[Tazer Olox]

Hello, first I'd like to introduce myself. I'm a longtime lurker who finally decided to register. I've been playing Civ since Civ4 vanilla. I usually play King or Emperor to challenge myself. I've had only one Deity win on Civ6 (Science with 8 civs on Standard map and speed playing Germany ending with the Korean cities encircled from land and sea, just one turn away from Conquest). I was attacked midgame by the Khmer and Shaka and that dragged on for quite a while, so the game lasted until the last era.
My dilema has always been what to go for? I'm a real builder at heart but I'm also competitive and I do enjoy a challenge, instead of just mopping up the map midgame on Prince. This has been my most difficult dilema since Wonders and districts both cost tiles now. I hope its not percieved as a stupid question. I've been through everything from the SOD era to aliens, NFP, the 1UPT+walls, I don't use bugs or mods(except sometimes for those that give a better overall summary). I take the game and my civ and map as is and try to make the best of it. How do you guys prefer to balance enjoying building out your cities and tiles with moving up to King and Emperor and having a challenge?
PS: Please excuse any typos.

 

[AntSou]

With the Barbarian Clans Mode on you can reduce the amount of City States (E.g. 12 Civs, 6-8 CityStates / 6 Civs, 3-4 City States), which clears up the central areas of the map for actual Civs. The barbarian camps that spawn towards the edges of the map tend to grow into City States, so the balance between Civs and City States will still feel appropriate.

Another advantage is that you can rely on these barbarian camps to partially build up your army, since they're cheaper to purchase than if you were to purchase them in your own city, thus releasing production towards building districts and wonders. Though having a decent amount of income is necessary if you which to take this path.

 

[UWHabs]

If you want to build up, then the best way is simply to build your cities a little further apart. It may not always be optimal, but if you like to build, then it's the way to go. If you don't cram a city in every square that you can, but space them out a little more, that gives you the space to develop. The other great way if you like to build is to choose a civ that really gets production bonuses. Play as Age of Steam Victoria, for example (or Germany like your above game), and your cities should generally be productive enough to build anything you want.

Pick a civ that either benefits your play style, or pick one that helps you out in something you're weaker at. If you struggle with civs attacking you, pick a civ with a good military bonus, and even if you don't use it on the offensive, it can give you enough security that you can enjoy building your empire however you want.

 

[reddishrecue]

Yu have to build up and keep expanding throughout the land. If you stay and sit duck on the 2 or 3 cities you start out with and build wonders.. it won't work out. At least that's what happened to me with Egypt on Emperor. There must be a better strategy since that civ 5 strategy just doesn't work anymore.

 

[EdTice]

Yu have to build up and keep expanding throughout the land. If you stay and sit duck on the 2 or 3 cities you start out with and build wonders.. it won't work out. At least that's what happened to me with Egypt on Emperor. There must be a better strategy since that civ 5 strategy just doesn't work anymore.

Building wonders in an established city is very inefficient. Building a wonder might take sixty turns or so. On the other hand, you can build a settler and a builder in about twenty turns. Send them out to where you want the wonder to be and then chop it out. You'll have a wonder in a third of the time at a third of the cost. The only time it really makes sense to build wonders in an existing city is if you are going for a tourism victory and want to get additional great works slots in a Pingala city.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Building wonders in an established city is very inefficient. Building a wonder might take sixty turns or so. On the other hand, you can build a settler and a builder in about twenty turns. Send them out to where you want the wonder to be and then chop it out. You'll have a wonder in a third of the time at a third of the cost. The only time it really makes sense to build wonders in an existing city is if you are going for a tourism victory and want to get additional great works slots in a Pingala city.

Building Wonders in an ordinary established city - you are correct, it basically takes the city 'off line' for most of an Era.

On the other hand, a high production city with hills, an Industrial District and Workshop, and bonuses from the right Trade Routes and City States can be set up as a Wonder Producer popping out Wonders in less than 20 - 30 turns, or about half the 'norrnal' time.

I am not saying this is Optimal Play, because it usually isn't - you are still taking a city basically out of the regular game to produce Wonders when with the same production specialization it could be building armies, fleets, or specialized structures to directly further a Victory - like Holy Site and structures for Religious Victory or Diplomatic, Scientific Districts and structures for those Victories. But if there is a Wonder you feel you absolutely have to have, early start on planning for a city dedicated to it can get it relatively fast - but you have to start planning for it almost an entire Era in advance!

 

[EdTice]

Building Wonders in an ordinary established city - you are correct, it basically takes the city 'off line' for most of an Era.

On the other hand, a high production city with hills, an Industrial District and Workshop, and bonuses from the right Trade Routes and City States can be set up as a Wonder Producer popping out Wonders in less than 20 - 30 turns, or about half the 'norrnal' time.

I am not saying this is Optimal Play, because it usually isn't - you are still taking a city basically out of the regular game to produce Wonders when with the same production specialization it could be building armies, fleets, or specialized structures to directly further a Victory - like Holy Site and structures for Religious Victory or Diplomatic, Scientific Districts and structures for those Victories. But if there is a Wonder you feel you absolutely have to have, early start on planning for a city dedicated to it can get it relatively fast - but you have to start planning for it almost an entire Era in advance!

This strategy is fine as long as you are sure the AI isn't going to beat you to the wonder. Otherwise, the city is out of commission for an era and you don't get a wonder out of it. When I build wonders (and I'm not the best player so there might be even better strategies), I start building the wonder in the chop city while getting magnus established. I use my high production city to send down multiple builders. I count up how many chops I'm going to get from each builder. I might have to let the city work the wonder for a few turns. But I know that once I start chopping I'm going to get the wonder in one or two turns so that I don't risk a huge production loss. There might be better ways to do this. If I remember, before starting wonders, I try to have a few builders with one or two charges left so that I can chop the whole thing out in a turn or two.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The further up you get in difficulty, the harder it is to get a wonder (the hardest usually being the early ones).
This means that you have to be very selective in which wonders you go for, and you usually just want to get wonders that are both realistic to get, while the wonder also needs to have a very clear impact for you.
Generally I only shoot for one wonder every game that is a must have for me, which is Kilwa Kisiwani.
I might get others as well (Mausoleum, Forbidden City), and some are situational depending on landscape and/or victory type (Etemenanki, Eiffel Tower).

That being said, I do not agree that building a wonder is necessarily a bad idea, and that the city is "useless" in that time during construction.
Often, those cities are temporarily "done" doing anything useful anyway (getting new districts up, building the buildings in them), and whatever those cities did can usually be done by others in the meantime (getting more builders for instance).
Also, production is not really working in a linear way in this sense, because you can often use faith (and often gold too), to take care of your infrastructure needs.
For instance, I tend to play with faith a lot (either from religion, or from pillaging the AI), which means that I have a separate faith economy to buy settlers and builders with (monumentality), and even districts (Moksha).
This frees up a lot of production for your cities, and wonder building is actually one of the few avenues that are useful for them.

What is important though is to plan out which city that goes for which wonder, and try to time it.
Barring any chops, you generally want to have a high production city doing the heavy lifting, as there is no point spending an entire era building a wonder.
This includes setting up as many trade routes as you can from that city if the wonder is really important to you (often a good idea if you for instance settle a good Petra spot just as the wonder unlocks, but you need the yields from internal trade routes to even be able to get production and grow the city).
Having a high production city is important, because the longer you spend building a wonder, the higher the risk that it gets sniped, the longer that city gets time to grow (for instance, it could hit a new population threshold for a district, which now means that you are not doing something useful in that city since you are not building said new district), and the less time you get to enjoy from the benefits of the wonder.

 

[Miserable Old Git]

Playing, as I do, Deity on a huge map, I'm generally not interested in wonders. The only ones I'm likely to go for are:

Mont St Michel. Only if I'm going for a cultural victory (for the Reliquaries bonus).

Hagia Sophia. Only if I'm going for a religious victory.

Taj Mahal. Only if I'm going for a domination victory (needed to help ensure a golden Future age, with its uranium bonus).

Statue of Liberty. Only if I'm going for a diplomatic victory.

Biosphere. Unless I have large reserves of coal or oil.

Estadio do Maracana. Low priority, and only if there's nothing better to do.

Very occasionally I might build Great Zimbabwe, Ruhr Valley, or Petra, if circumstances make them desirable and there's nothing better to do. For all other wonders, I find the returns from wonders nowhere near makes up for the opportunity cost.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

For all other wonders, I find the returns from wonders nowhere near makes up for the opportunity cost.

Kilwa Kisiwani.
Even if you "only" get suzerainty from the lower priority city states (gold, faith), the yields you get are so absurd that its nearly always worth it.
Science and culture likewise scales through the roof, and keeps scaling as its one of the rare % modifiers in civ 6.
I will chop whatever it takes to get that wonder, or pump in as many trade routes as I can to secure it before the AI takes it.
The few times that the AI sniped it I tend to get quite pissed, followed by a search on the map to see who picked it up, and if I can realistically invade his city anytime soon.