Daedalus Ladder

[ShoGuL]

I am so glad they fixed this wonder and made it useful in the patch.

Not.

:|

 

[FaceUnderMask]

The only significant thing they did about wonders is nerfing relatively good markov's eclipse

 

[Roxlimn]

Wonders I find useful:

Ectogenesis Pod
Gene Vault (less useful now due to TR nerf)
Master Control
Pantopticon
Drone Sphere
Memetwork
Bytegeist
Crawler
Xenomalleum
Deep Memory
Armasail (invincible City)
Tectonic Anvil (value reduced due to TR nerf)
Xenodrome (lots of culture, saves Xenomass)

Rather than say the others are useless, I would rather say that I don't know how they're leveraged well at the moment.

 

[Gorbles]

Nanothermite deserves an honourable mention, I feel.

 

[Roxlimn]

Yeah, both Nanothermite and Archimedes Lever are fairly powerful. If you get them all in one city, it's basically invincible even to late game melee units.

 

[FaceUnderMask]

It's really amazing how mediocre wonders suddenly become useful because other are even worse.

 

[Strickl3r]

Petra, Pisa, Porzellan all boost numbers, too. Great Lighthouse + 1 movement(boost number) and free lighthouse, yap lot more interesting.

Petra is actually the most boring wonder ever. ''Oh i got an insane desert start let's rush petra to make the game more interesting, right. And if the ai get's turn 50 petra i'm just gonna start a new game ''

 

[shaglio]

The problem with the wonders is that they're all boring. Just boosting numbers.

They need to make some interesting ones, possibly by moving the effects of quests to them. Having a wonder that granted trade routes safety from aliens would be good (possibly overpowered?).

I miss wonders like Petra and the Great Lighthouse or The Great Wall which could radically affect game play.

I’m pretty sure the devs said they didn’t want to make the Wonders too good because they didn’t want any of them to become must-haves. If any wonders were too powerful, then everybody would beeline to them in every game, and that would defeat the purposed of having a flexible tech “web” instead of the more linear tech “trees” from Civs 1-5. As it is, you can just tech for other priorities (Units, Buildings, Terrain Improvements, Affinity points, etc.) and build whatever Wonders you gain access to along the way for minor boosts if you so desire.

 

[Lord Tirian]

As it is, you can just tech for other priorities (Units, Buildings, Terrain Improvements, Affinity points, etc.) and build whatever Wonders you gain access to along the way for minor boosts if you so desire.

Oh yeah, it makes sense why wonders are less important - and I think that's a good idea. Nevertheless, I don't think that removing everything that makes a wonder unique is a great idea.

Furthermore, a lot of them are just plainly bad investments: a lot of times, putting the same resources into a new outpost (or just research a new similar building) becomes more efficient.

One of the reasons why I think the blander wonders should provide a small amount of affinity XP, that way they would become more desirable yet fit into the affinity system used for the main progression. Additionally, more wonders should influence the civilization as a whole - that's where the blandness comes from, they get lost in a single city (and Civ:BE encourages more expansion, so they feel even more "lost" in the sea of cities). Mix that with some wonders that can influence play style a bit more... and I think there's potential for interesting wonders that are "nice to have" but not mandatory.

 

[sprang]

How about two wonders with the same effect, in different parts of the tree, and they can't stack. So EctoPod is matched by another +Food to Farms wonder, like on Ballistic LEV or something.

 

[Manannan]

Yeah, both Nanothermite and Archimedes Lever are fairly powerful. If you get them all in one city, it's basically invincible even to late game melee units.

The issue with these wonders (and more than a few others) is mostly where they are on the tech web honestly. Archimedes Lever for example would be wonderful if the player didn't have to go way out of their way to get it, but as is it's not really worth straying away from a more optimal tech path all by itself.

 

[Roxlimn]

The issue with these wonders (and more than a few others) is mostly where they are on the tech web honestly. Archimedes Lever for example would be wonderful if the player didn't have to go way out of their way to get it, but as is it's not really worth straying away from a more optimal tech path all by itself.

The problem is the entire idea of an optimal tech path. The Tech Web is obviously arranged by theme and cost very broadly. If there's any pattern to it that's intentional, I can't see it. This means that "the optimal tech path" was not intentionally designed, so Wonders like the Archimedes Lever cannot be designed with respect to these paths.

Apart from that, "optimal tech path" will change as items in the web are changed. The entire way "optimal tech path" is will have to be considered more deeply and more fundamentally before off-paths of this nature can make sense. Arguably, the complexity of the web highly suggests that whatever we think is optimal right now might turn out not to be very optimal in a year's time even without any tinkering.

 

[traius]

I think the largest and most obvious thing to do is to tie affinity to what you build instead of what you research (for example, our society is simultaneously learning about genetic modification and robotics in the medical field; cybernetics and genetic modification are both potential sources of extended life, but is the one we will choose to build that will shape humanity in the future. A hybrid of both is also possible, as is downloading human consciousness so humans are now essentially just robots. We'll learn all of them eventually, but it is the application that is the important part).
If that ever happens, then wonders should be a large part of pushing the affinities up. Building them should be worth 1/2 of the affinity xp, owning the other half, so capturing it can boost xp. Then almost every wonder could be useful in the web, though ones with affinity and a good bonus will be better, obviously.

 

[Gar]

+25% to naval trade routes
Trade routes immune to aliens when peaceful (aka, when they are green)
+1 xenomass/firaxis/floatstone from every sources of xenomass/firaxis/floatstone
+1 food to farms next to fresh water
+1 affinity point in your leading affinity per turn (end game wonder)
increased some yield for some/all specialist through out the colony (could have a handful of wonders which do things like this)
+1 science per worked tile with Miasma (tied to a harmony tech)
+15% strength against colonies where the leading ideology is NOT purity (tied to a purity tech)
+1% growth per x energy produced in that city, maxed at +y% (tied to a supremacy tech)
Satellites require two shots to be brought down

• +1 xenomass/firaxis/floatstone per appropriate affinity level
• More +% bonuses, why are wonders giving flat bonuses?
• Something cloaking: others' units outside your borders can't see where your units are inside your borders.
• +1 city attack range in this city
• +1 city attack per turn in this city
• All hexes in this city produce +1 (pick a yield, almost anything is interesting)
• -1 movement cost in miasma
• This city spawns miasma (similar to perm miasmic condensor overhead)
• Killing an alien unit has X% chance of 'stealing' the alien unit.
• Bonus spy effectiveness
• Units can phasal transport between your cities
• +100% satellite production in this city.
• City spawns a random satellite every X turns
• Canyons get +2 production +1 energy

Just more random ideas.

 

[poom3619]

Pardon the originality but if they put UA, UB, UU, tenet, policy or faith effects (pretty much every effect ever happened) from Civ5 game on wonder. It could be interesting, at least more than what we have now, or maybe few bonus that either make wide less painful or making tall civ "taller". (Ex. +2 Health per city, All cities with 6+ pop will have extra yields)

 

[sprang]

Furthermore, a lot of them are just plainly bad investments: a lot of times, putting the same resources into a new outpost (or just research a new similar building) becomes more efficient.

One of the reasons why I think the blander wonders should provide a small amount of affinity XP, that way they would become more desirable yet fit into the affinity system used for the main progression. Additionally, more wonders should influence the civilization as a whole - that's where the blandness comes from, they get lost in a single city (and Civ:BE encourages more expansion, so they feel even more "lost" in the sea of cities). Mix that with some wonders that can influence play style a bit more... and I think there's potential for interesting wonders that are "nice to have" but not mandatory.

Agree about the investment.

There's a balance problem with these flat yield late-game wonders. You can beeline the wonder or get a standard building for that yield. The wonders only pay for themselves if you beeline them. But if the wonder is only as good as a building, why would you bother to beeline it?

The only mitigating factor is the Knowledge Virtue of +7 culture per wonder. That could make a Wonder-chasing strategy possible. Except Knowledge is a very poor opening Virtue, especially for building the hammer-intensive cities you need for Wondering. If you open Industry or Prosperity, by the time you get to the bottom of Knowledge you've won the game, and you certainly don't need an additional +7 culture per wonder! Elodie might have liked it for free techs, but now it's pointless.

 

[FaceUnderMask]

How about two wonders with the same effect, in different parts of the tree, and they can't stack. So EctoPod is matched by another +Food to Farms wonder, like on Ballistic LEV or something.

How about the one who builds a wonder first does so for it's base hammer cost, and everyone else get an 1% penalty for each turn passed after that?

It made sense when wonders were unique in civ5, because they are unique IRL built to show off.
But consider india just built world first practical thermonuclear plant, so what, every other country says "awww, too bad"?

 

[Gort]

Get it get it get it

 

[sprang]

Get it get it get it

That looks nice. I especially like the 2-Geothermal-per-Wonder limitation. Now there's a reason to get the stuff.

My only concern is that stronger wonders are harder for an AI to benefit from, except in the simplest cases, because the AI is really bad at leveraging stacked or synergizing bonuses.

 

[Gort]

The guy did some "flavour" changes to the AI so they'll pursue wonders that make sense for what they're meant to be good at. For instance, Barre has a high "growth flavour", so he'll go after high growth flavour wonders, such as the Gene Vault or Ectogenesis Pod.

Chances are it'll never do it as well as a human does, of course, but that's what difficulty modifiers are for I guess.