Best Wonder

[Dark Ascendant]

Adam Smith's really doesn't save THAT much money. In the late game, factories, airports and superhighways cost WAY more than the one-gold improvements. The BEST money-savers are:

1. Mike's Chapel *Favorite wonder*
2. Hoover Dam *best of the moneysavers*
3. Women's Sufferage *aggressive democracies*
4. Pyramids *fast and cheap early growth*

These save money AND a lot a shields.

 

[Ace]

Actually, Adam Smith does save quite a few coins. There are 7 improvements that cost 1 coin per turn maintance. If you have 10 cities with all 7 improvements, thats 70 coins per turn. Multiply that by a 100 turns and that 7,000 coins would rush buy a lot of camels. Say you only average 5 of these advances per city, but you have 40 cities, thats 200 coins per turn and 20,000 coins over 100 turns.

That said, Adam Smith is still only 4th or 5th on my list of must have wonders. In Diety, you gotta have Mike's, Leo's, Colossus, MP, and maybe, Bach's first.

 

[A+ombomb]

I originally would go with mikes, but I think it really depends on what the map looks like. If you have the potential for a large trade city, I would actually say that COLOSSUS would be better than even mikes! Why would a 1 city wonder overrate a nationwide wonder? Because you can trade with yourself, making colossus a virtual world affecting wonder and it can single handedly tech your civ via trade routes in the city that has it.

 

[Andu Indorin]

Over the years, my Top Five Wonders list has evolved. At present, it stands at:

1) Colossus
2) United Nations
3) Marco Polo's Embassy
4) Magellen's Voyage
5) (tie) Mike's Chapel and Hanging Gardens

(Okay, so it's six ...)

 

[Old n Slow]

Have we ever established the ai priority list for wonders? Is it correlated with the civilized/militaristic bent?

I find that some wonders seem more urgent than others.

 

[Andu Indorin]

Originally posted by Old n Slow
Have we ever established the ai priority list for wonders? Is it correlated with the civilized/militaristic bent?

Meaning, I guess, that given a choice between two available Wonders, which will a given AI choose. I suspect that there are some strong correlations to be determined between Perfectionist and Expansionist AI civs, since this seems to be a stronger determinant of AI build orders. ...

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Piramids is favoured by the AI. I don't know any of the others though. It doesn't pay much attention to the wonders though. I'v seen a city with Shakes and all the happyness improvements.

 

[Old n Slow]

I've also noticed that the ancient wonders don't get started unless the ai civ has 3+ cities (once maybe I've seen 2, but a city was lost to the barbs.) Sometimes during the second round of wonders (Copes, KRC, maybe Shakes, Sun Tsu) the ai will discover the tech, and start the wonder right away -- other times maybe delay the building. With the third (Leo's, Mikes, Magellan) & subsequent rounds, it seems as though the ai has enough potential to start the wonder immediately.

So I figure that there is some sense of size/resources available in the "build wonder/build something else" decision. Also, I've noticed some switching of choices (and of course, the drop/adds ) -- less switching to the wonder that everyone else is building but there is no rhyme nor reason that I can justify.

An extension of the build decision is the "continue/switch" decision -- I recall viewing an ai city' production activity (due to a spy visit), moving a couple of units closer & viewing again -- noting a change in the build orders, come back later in the same turn with a truck -- pop a peek to double check the demand and note that the build order has changed yet again! so the tohought occurs that the wonder choice may be an offshoot of production switching in general, rather than a wonder priority --

 

[Mise]

King Richard's Crusade -- you can get all of them that way.... Failing that, Mike's Chapel.

I've found that the Sioux always beats me to KRC, and in general, certain civs prefer certain wonders.

 

[Ballazic]

my favorite is seti

 

[Prof. Garfield]

You should chose a wonder that cannot be "replicated". SETI can be simulated with lots of reserch labs, but something like Bach or Magellans cannot be simulated.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Originally posted by Prof. Garfield
You should chose a wonder that cannot be "replicated". SETI can be simulated with lots of reserch labs, but something like Bach or Magellans cannot be simulated.

If it came down to a choice, I don't think I can come up with a situation where I wouldn't rather have Michaelangelo (which could be replicated with a lot of very expensive cathedrals) than Magellan.

No, now that I think about it...I take that back. I could see building Magellan over Mikes in OCC games (Not that building either one is all that likely), but in most other situations, Mike's gets the nod.

 

[ElephantU]

In OCC? Stockpile the caravans and consider Darwins instead.

 

[Old n Slow]

But then again...

Go back to an older version of this thread -- oedo responded with Lighthouse.

Hmmmm if a researcher of THAT caliber has that thought... needless to say that thought has stuck with me for a while; a long while.

For instance -- if one were to use "search" techniques; have a few boats that won't sink (with a couple of camels of course) would the extra benefits justify the opportunity cost?

I haven't explored the idea (partly due to my careless early play) but it still lingers in the back of my mind.

 

[Andu Indorin]

Originally posted by Old n Slow
But then again...

Go back to an older version of this thread -- oedo responded with Lighthouse.

Hmmmm if a researcher of THAT caliber has that thought... needless to say that thought has stuck with me for a while; a long while.

For instance -- if one were to use "search" techniques; have a few boats that won't sink (with a couple of camels of course) would the extra benefits justify the opportunity cost?

I haven't explored the idea (partly due to my careless early play) but it still lingers in the back of my mind.

Hard to say ... I tend to get to Magnetism fairly quickly, in part because of ship chains. Consequently, the Lighthouse is usually the first wonder to expire. I think getting to Navigation and then building Magellen's is still the better investment.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Adam Smith's really doesn't save THAT much money. In the late game, factories, airports and superhighways cost WAY more than the one-gold improvements. The BEST money-savers are:

1. Mike's Chapel *Favorite wonder*
2. Hoover Dam *best of the moneysavers*
3. Women's Sufferage *aggressive democracies*
4. Pyramids *fast and cheap early growth*

These save money AND a lot a shields.

I don't want to get too picky, but I would consider Mike's to be a better money saver because I don't always build that many factories, but I'd have to buy cathedrals or colosseums in almost every city if I didn't have mike's. And I would rather have Bach for aggressive Democracy. Even when on the move, I rarely have more than 2 units in the field from a single city on any given turn, so in that case the benefit of eliminating 2 unhappies is equal to WS, but if you have one unit out, you can still potentially keep the city celebrating. If you don't have units out, you still can get benefits in other ways. One might also argue that if used correctly, the UN can be even better for aggressive democracies (Andu, feel free to chime in on this one )

 

[Andu Indorin]

True. With the Emissary's Ploy, the UN's benefits to any type of militant democracy increases enormously vis-a-vis Women's Suffrage; as Tim mentions, the need for WS can be reduced by properly redistributing military forces; plus basing "spearhead" units in the city with Shakespeare's Theater.
Bach's is desirable as the "counterweight" to the UN since Communism decreases the effectiveness of Cathedrals by one citizen, but Bach's increases the effectiveness by two.

And a couple of other musings ...

Mike's Chapel might better be thought of a time saver rather than a money saver. If you build Cathedrals in all of your cities, you can sell them when you capture Mike's. Hence, while the initial cost per shield is 2g for a Cathedral, if you actually went this route the final cost after selling the Cathedral is 1g per shield. Granted, 3g per turn maintanence can be a minor drag on the economy ... but it's just so much easier to build Mike's Chapel in the first place.

And it suddenly occurred to me the other day ... it is absolutely dumb, dumb, dumb for an established Power Democracy to not buy Wonders of the World. But old habits (i.e., unexamined assumptions) die hard. You might call it the "KRC Syndrome."

 

[ElephantU]

I gather what you are saying is that it is "dumb" for a Power Democracy to carry a large treasury balance when it could be using the money for infrastructure or wonders. That I would agree with. Buying a Wonder at 4g/sh compared to PartialRushBuying the caravans at 2-2.5g/sh seems like a waste if you are short on money, but you could factor the time issues in for particular wonders (probably not the Eiffel Tower, though).

 

[Andu Indorin]

Actually, if one accepts the definition of Power Democracy as the ability to "full" rush build a commodity freight for 235g one turn, and deliver it the next turn for, say, 1250g; it would take two freight deliveries to buy the Wonder outright. (Full rush build Temple to "seed" the production box; switch to 600 shield Wonder and rush build = 2480g.) By comparison, if you go the food freight route to a Wonder, you're tying up the production of twelve cities when instead you could produce "replacement" commodity freight for in two or three cities, and rush build other useful things in the remaining nine.

 

[ElephantU]

Ah, I see. I mentioned to someone else recently the stupidity of building Food caravans when commodities are still available ("but they are only for a Wonder..."); the problem becomes one of when they are blocked. City growth and unblocking tricks like the Wonder Bread are then called for. I wouldn't call it "tying up" the cities; if you are doing your Trade right you should have a pile of caravans here and there, primarily commodity but also food. Once a city has "maxed out" on necessary improvements it should switch to producing any type of caravan/freight it can, as the food ones can be used for wonders or Wonder Bread. I think the key phrase of my previous post was "if you are short of money", which is why I focused on the stupidity of a large unspent treasury.