Best Wonders.

[DylanAraki]

I'm just wondering what wonders are the best to have? I know in the late game you can usually get pretty much all of them, but in the earlier game you have to choose certain ones.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The Apostolic Palace. What other wonder gives you a chance to win the game instantly due to dumb luck?. I've won some games because the only civs that didn't have the AP religion captured an AP religion city. Suckers.

It's also fun tricking everyone into Free Religion and being the sole candidate. Or just building it under a minority religion, and switching to the most popular religion. You get to be the only candidate without the religious hate once you switch into the popular religion.

Love it or hate it, either I build it or I destroy it. Therefore it has to be the best wonder.

 

[Kid R]

The main thing to remember is that all the wonders present you with a trade-off decision between getting their benefit and spending the hammers on something else like expansion and military.

Early on I'd say it depends on how the map looks which ones will be the most advantageous, if any. Great Lighthouse if you have lots of coast, and is often mentioned as the strongest wonder of all. The pyramids is extremely strong because of representation but costs a bomb to build and generally people say it's a better investment to claim land if the alternative is somebody else getting the land. Great Library is on a good tech path and is also, well, great!

A lot depends on whether you're playing on a difficulty which is a challenge for you to win at all, or if you enjoy games on a difficulty where you can roll the AIs over fairly comfortably and your goal is to win as quickly as possible. Wonders like Stonehenge and the Oracle definitely have strong benefits but are most useful in the second kind of game, i.e. when you can easily afford them, if that makes sense

 

[Matarice]

I like the mausoleum of maussollos alot, though I like to have many golden ages in the late game where it really gets you running away from your opponents if you have a 36-turns golden age. (Instead of a 24-turns one, hrhrhr) I like that.

 

[Ataxerxes]

The Apostolic Palace. What other wonder gives you a chance to win the game instantly due to dumb luck?. I've won some games because the only civs that didn't have the AP religion captured an AP religion city. Suckers.

It's also fun tricking everyone into Free Religion and being the sole candidate. Or just building it under a minority religion, and switching to the most popular religion. You get to be the only candidate without the religious hate once you switch into the popular religion.

Love it or hate it, either I build it or I destroy it. Therefore it has to be the best wonder.

I'd second the AP. Even if you don't arrange a cheese win or win the game accidentally (don't laugh, I've done it and seen others win by accident) the +2 hammers make Monasteries and Temples good builds. The AP is equally good if a neighbor builds it in your religion.

In a regular game the real issue with the AP is often denial. If you don't build it somebody else will. If it goes into the wrong hands - a religion you don't have - you might be the victim of an AP dogpile. Nothing like having half the world declare on you at once.

If you can control the AP, so much the better. Now you can declare holy war, grab neighboring cities without war, etc. The issue if you don't control it is that you might be forced to declare or stop a war at the wrong time.

 

[Peregrine]

second the statements made above.

But I also go for it as early as convenient for the production. Temples keep 'em happy, Monasteries boost tech, and they both generate an extra hammer. An extra two hammers in every city is nice, and if I don't have 'em, somebody else will.

 

[Archon_Wing]

In a regular game the real issue with the AP is often denial. If you don't build it somebody else will. If it goes into the wrong hands - a religion you don't have - you might be the victim of an AP dogpile. Nothing like having half the world declare on you at once.

It is kinda hard to build the thing though-- it is sped up by nothing. Theology is a somewhat expensive and extremely annoying tech to get to. If I have a great prophet, maybe I could spend it on that. The other thing is that the AI tends to research it and sit on it a lot, so trading for it isn't too awful, if it's a bulk trade.

Other good wonders include the Great Lighthouse (early great merchants are cool), and all the Aesthetics line tech wonders tend to be worthy, solely on the fact that the AI does not prioritize these techs. You'll usually have little competition, if you have marble too. The Great Library is a decent science boost, the Parthenon helps a lot with GPs, since Great people are more valuable earlier, and the Sistine Chapel helps with those culture wins, as well as denying it to the AI. The culture generated is seriously good at pushing at people. And once you're done with them, the AI will happily trade you stuff like machinery, engineering or guilds for these techs

There's also the Cristo Redendtor, which would have been broken if it didn't come so late.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Ahh... dbl post

 

[Iranon]

Apostolic Palace for its ability to singlehandedly win you the game.
Oracle and Great Library for sheer efficiency... only skip those if you have a good reason.
Great Lighthouse and Pyramids open up powerful economies but require more active use.

 

[DylanAraki]

Apostolic Palace for its ability to singlehandedly win you the game.
Oracle and Great Library for sheer efficiency... only skip those if you have a good reason.
Great Lighthouse and Pyramids open up powerful economies but require more active use.

Damn Egypt, has good knowledge at wonders.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

Space Elevator can be quite powerful if it comes at Composites instead of Robotics.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It would help a lot. Sadly, it currently requires Robotics, which isn't even needed to build the spaceship. For the most part, the bottleneck is tech, not production.

I find Cristo to be so funny. You can do stuff like force UN environmentalism on them and then go back to SP/FM next turn. Or temporarily adopt Universal Suffrage, rushbuy a bunch of stuff, and change to something else.

 

[Farm Boy]

I thought a forced civic under the UN was locked in?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yes it is. You can't change out of it unless the motion gets voted on again and it fails.

 

[kochman]

Great Library.

If you have an academy in your capital, as you should, plus the regular library, and through in a monastery or two...

Tech is important.

The GLH is pretty good, but I rarely shoot for it, just because the AI seems to love it and you have to go for it so early, when you could be building settlers/workers/etc.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I used to build the GLib in my super science capital. I now build it in my GP farm and combine it with national epic. Freakish amounts of GP...

 

[kochman]

I used to build the GLib in my super science capital. I now build it in my GP farm and combine it with national epic. Freakish amounts of GP...

Yes, I do what you say, I just generally make it in my capital. GL and NE are a good combo! I later add Oxford to the city of course.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

It's generally best not to have your capital as GP farm unless you don't want to run bureaucracy, since that doesn't boost specialists.

 

[kochman]

It's generally best not to have your capital as GP farm unless you don't want to run bureaucracy, since that doesn't boost specialists.

So, except for during Bureau, it is fine? (a long period of the game of course).

Please elaborate. I want to see if I should shift my strategy. The extra commerce from the Palace really helps out early on science...

 

[ParadigmShifter]

You really want to maximise bureaucracy multipliers so you want to be working commerce tiles and hammer tiles, not running specialists and working excess food, neither of which get a bureau bonus.

This is why many SE players cottage the capital and farm everywhere else.

It doesn't matter if you don't run bureaucracy though. If you have a huge army and maintenance is killing you Vassalage may be better anyway.