Decentralizing Wonder-building from capitals

[Trigan Emperor]

Throughout the Civilization series, my games have tended to end up with nearly all the Wonders I build being located in the capital city.

This is only natural, since Wonder-building is a race against time with the other civs, and the capital city tends to be the best-developed city, with the highest production rate.

Building Wonders directly on tiles on the map is one one limiting factor in Civ VI, for space reasons, as are the building requirements many Wonders have, such as by a river, on a hill, on a desert tile etc.

I was trying to think of other ways to try and spread Wonders around one's cities a little more.

What about if building a Wonder in a city added a percentage production penalty to building the next Wonder in that city? And what if it also reduced the production time for building a Wonder in all of one's other cities?

One could rationalize it along the lines of people in the city with the Wonder built saying, "We already have x number of Wonders, why do we need to build another?"

While the city without the Wonder thinks, "Hey, that city has a Wonder, we want one too!"

If it was felt that this system might penalize capital cities too much against building later-era Wonders, the penalty could potentially be reset at the start of each era, or semi-reset, with 50% of penalty removed.

Anyway, that's an idea I just had. Anyone else have any ideas that could work? Or, indeed, if this is an issue worth addressing at all?

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I would make wonders a reward for some difficult objective you completed, and then a wonder would simply appear in any random (but still applicable) space. Maybe even replacing a district or other improvement (?). This would de-emphasize wonder placement in only the most productive of cities and make them more of a spontaneous thing.

so let's just start with an early one. Stonehenge. Maybe the winner would have to generate the most amount of faith and build the most quarries.

The Pyramids. Maybe something like 10 workers should have to build 10 different improvements in desert tiles without getting captured or something like that.

Hanging Gardens. Have the most population growth yet improve the least number of river tiles (keeping them natural).

for your work, the wonder would then give you the same sort of benefit reflexively for the rest of the game, of course.

etc.

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I would make wonders a reward for some difficult objective you completed, and then a wonder would simply appear in any random (but still applicable) space. Maybe even replacing a district or other improvement (?). This would de-emphasize wonder placement in only the most productive of cities and make them more of a spontaneous thing.

so let's just start with an early one. Stonehenge. Maybe the winner would have to generate the most amount of faith and build the most quarries.

The Pyramids. Maybe something like 10 workers should have to build 10 different improvements in desert tiles without getting captured or something like that.

Hanging Gardens. Have the most population growth yet improve the least number of river tiles (keeping them natural).

for your work, the wonder would then give you the same sort of benefit reflexively for the rest of the game, of course.

etc.

That's a cool idea!

I had another idea about maybe giving each Wonder an associated Resource, so each of that type of Resource within a city's range would give a Wonder production bonus to that city. It would be another way to try and differentiate cities, making some more auspicious than other for particular Wonders.

Then I had another idea, which is really simple, and could probably be easily modded into the game: What if it was a Policy Card?

In the game, there's: "+15% Production towards Ancient and Classical era wonders."

What about an additional Policy Card something like: "+25% Production towards Ancient and Classical era wonders that aren't being built in your Capital."

So by using both Policy Cards together, one could get, say, 35 or 40% reduction in Production cost for Wonders in cities that aren't the Capital.

 

[Bliss]

Civilization VI actually improved this since Wonders now have requirements. "Can only be built on a hill; or adjacent to a campus; on top of woods", etc etc.
What I actually dislike is making some civilizations focused on it, like China and Egypt, for example. This leads to a wrong perception that an empire that only builds Wonders is a strategy, when in fact it is not, because the bonus don't follow a straight pattern. They usually are very different from each other.

 

[Timberdoodle]

I had another idea about maybe giving each Wonder an associated Resource, so each of that type of Resource within a city's range would give a Wonder production bonus to that city. It would be another way to try and differentiate cities, making some more auspicious than other for particular Wonders.

I like this idea. I'm a fan of Civ VI's design philosophy of 'playing the map'. I think there's room for bonus resources to have more perks in general. It would be nice if having an improved source of stone or copper in a city gave a small production bonuses to specific wonders, especially in the early and mid game.

Another thought I had was that cities with an industrial zones and factory could gain the ability to add production to a under construction wonder that was within 5 tiles of the industrial zone - even if it was in another city. Just a thought, my thinking being that it would spread out wonders to less productive cities while helping to cut down the turns required to get late game wonders, but would probably be totally broken in practice!

 

[Patine]

Throughout the Civilization series, my games have tended to end up with nearly all the Wonders I build being located in the capital city.

I'm not sure which previous Civilization series you're SPECIFICALLY referring to, but when in Civ2, I don't necessarily do an "all wonders in the capital," idea, nor is that necessarily practical in every game. I've never played Civ4 or Civ5, myself, and my memories of Civ1 and Civ3 are more murky, so thus I'm asking which other iteration of Civilization are you specifically referencing?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Spreading out Wonders - a useful ideal, because while there are some historical cities that have 'clusters' of Wonders. Civ takes it to extremes.
You could simply prohibit multiple Wonders in a single city, or limit it to one Wonder per Era per City, and I believe there have been Mods in Civ V and/or Civ VI that did that, but it seems 'artificial' to have a gamey prohibition when there might be another way to get the same effect.
Here are some semi-random Thoughts:
1. Blanket Rule: No Wonder gives any Adjacency Bonus, and a Wonder negates all bonuses from the tile it sits on. While Wonders give some great bonuses, this would also make a cluster of them a potential 'sink' for the city - no way to get more out of those tiles.
This is, basically, a form of prohibition, but it's not arbitrary - you could still build multiple Wonders, but you've got to make sure you don't strangle the city while you're at it.
2. IF Wonders are supposed to give Civ-wide bonuses, why not make the Production Cost spread over the Civ? There are several ways this could be done:
Wherever the Wonder is built, it uses up all the Production from the city that owns that tile, as usual. In addition, a percentage or actual Production Points can be added per turn from any or all of your other cities to the production of the Wonder. OR, perhaps only Production from cities linked to the Home City by a road/trade route. AND/OR possibly any other city can never add more production than the Home City - keeping you from building all your Wonders in obscure little peripheral cities, which isn't the way most Wonders worked at all.
3. Jack up the 'requirements' and prerequisites for Wonders so that, essentially, you jump through all the hoops to get a Wonder first, and then the construction of the Wonder is just a placement. This could include required Resources (and, being a Wonder, possibly several Resources in Quantity), Civics, Level of Religion, Level of Military, in-game actions (If you've never fought a naval battle, would you still have the motivation and expertise to build the Venetian Arsenal?), Size and Type of City, etc.

All this is part of a potential different 'view' of Wonders: that they should be much less a Contest to build one before someone else does, and more a relatively rare enterprise that only gets 'built' if a bunch of requirements are met, so that many may not appear in your game at all, and unless you are really warping your game, you cannot generate the requirements to build very many Wonders in a single game. Of course, to keep people (us Wonder-Mongers) from being turned off, I'd bring back National Wonders as an intermediate step between Buildings/Improvements and World Wonders that would remain much more common, but also would not be competitive - every and/or all Civs that fulfill the requirements could build them

 

[Trigan Emperor]

I like this idea. I'm a fan of Civ VI's design philosophy of 'playing the map'. I think there's room for bonus resources to have more perks in general. It would be nice if having an improved source of stone or copper in a city gave a small production bonuses to specific wonders, especially in the early and mid game.
Another thought I had was that cities with an industrial zones and factory could gain the ability to add production to a under construction wonder that was within 5 tiles of the industrial zone - even if it was in another city. Just a thought, my thinking being that it would spread out wonders to less productive cities while helping to cut down the turns required to get late game wonders, but would probably be totally broken in practice!

I think Industrial Zones and Factories would come too late, as it would be unable to affect earlier-era Wonders. It probably gets easier to diversify Wonder-building locations later in the game, as one has more cities, and more cities that could rival the capital for production. Plus, one may generate Great Engineers with Wonder-building ability.

I'm not sure which previous Civilization series you're SPECIFICALLY referring to, but when in Civ2, I don't necessarily do an "all wonders in the capital," idea, nor is that necessarily practical in every game. I've never played Civ4 or Civ5, myself, and my memories of Civ1 and Civ3 are more murky, so thus I'm asking which other iteration of Civilization are you specifically referencing?

I've been playing Civ since Civ II, and am speaking generally, rather than about any particular edition.

In other Civ games, Great Engineers could be used to build Wonders in other cities, but they seem to be harder to generate in Civ VI, and only some of them have Wonder-building abilities.

In any case, it was often advisable to build Wonders in the same city to take full benfit of Culture or Great Person bonuses in the city. Civ VI is similar in this respect in that Pingala provides Great Person and Tourism bonuses to a city.

Spreading out Wonders - a useful ideal, because while there are some historical cities that have 'clusters' of Wonders. Civ takes it to extremes.
You could simply prohibit multiple Wonders in a single city, or limit it to one Wonder per Era per City, and I believe there have been Mods in Civ V and/or Civ VI that did that, but it seems 'artificial' to have a gamey prohibition when there might be another way to get the same effect.
Here are some semi-random Thoughts:
1. Blanket Rule: No Wonder gives any Adjacency Bonus, and a Wonder negates all bonuses from the tile it sits on. While Wonders give some great bonuses, this would also make a cluster of them a potential 'sink' for the city - no way to get more out of those tiles.
This is, basically, a form of prohibition, but it's not arbitrary - you could still build multiple Wonders, but you've got to make sure you don't strangle the city while you're at it.
2. IF Wonders are supposed to give Civ-wide bonuses, why not make the Production Cost spread over the Civ? There are several ways this could be done:
Wherever the Wonder is built, it uses up all the Production from the city that owns that tile, as usual. In addition, a percentage or actual Production Points can be added per turn from any or all of your other cities to the production of the Wonder. OR, perhaps only Production from cities linked to the Home City by a road/trade route. AND/OR possibly any other city can never add more production than the Home City - keeping you from building all your Wonders in obscure little peripheral cities, which isn't the way most Wonders worked at all.
3. Jack up the 'requirements' and prerequisites for Wonders so that, essentially, you jump through all the hoops to get a Wonder first, and then the construction of the Wonder is just a placement. This could include required Resources (and, being a Wonder, possibly several Resources in Quantity), Civics, Level of Religion, Level of Military, in-game actions (If you've never fought a naval battle, would you still have the motivation and expertise to build the Venetian Arsenal?), Size and Type of City, etc.
All this is part of a potential different 'view' of Wonders: that they should be much less a Contest to build one before someone else does, and more a relatively rare enterprise that only gets 'built' if a bunch of requirements are met, so that many may not appear in your game at all, and unless you are really warping your game, you cannot generate the requirements to build very many Wonders in a single game. Of course, to keep people (us Wonder-Mongers) from being turned off, I'd bring back National Wonders as an intermediate step between Buildings/Improvements and World Wonders that would remain much more common, but also would not be competitive - every and/or all Civs that fulfill the requirements could build them

I quite like the idea of one Wonder per Age in a city. I think the effect would be, though, that it would mean that other civs would get to build the Wonder, rather than another city of one's own civilization. In order for one's non-capital cities to be competitive in Wonder-building against another civ's capital, I think they would need a boost to their Wonder production.

So perhaps an additional part of this could be for there to be a Wonder-building city Project, which would provide Production towards any Wonders currently being built. It would split the Production if more than one Wonder was currently under construction by one's empire. There could potentially be a limit of only three cities being able to run this project at any one time, in order to prevent a civ setting all their cities to this project, giving a huge Wonder-building advantage. Or maybe the Project could only be run in one's capital city, so that it would only benefit Wonder-building in non-capital cities, and would be unable to be used to benefit the capital itself.

The "Jack up the requirements" idea is an intriguing one, but is quite complex, and doesn't seem like it could be easily modded into the game. It would probably require dev-led changes.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind with making changes to Wonder-building in the capital, is that it would probably make Culture Victory a bit harder.

 

[The googles do nothing]

If you add the requirement of 'Capital or any City with a wonder' or 'Any city with a wonder' to some policies that would be a minor but effective change to get more wonders built outside of the capital.

 

[ehecatzin]

I think that should we get another xpack, wonders need to have a serious rework.

I agree in that wonders should have many different ways to be built, not only as OP suggest by having certain wonders have be built by many cities, just using the rest of yields in the game besides production would make it more interesting.

Say for example, a percentage of a wonder has to be built with faith, gold, science or culture.
Or even using other resources in the game, using X ammenities while building, or envoys.

any of those would help in preventing a production focused civ from hoarding everything and would open the gate to more wonder strategies.

As for the space problem, I agree, cities in civ tend to take a whole lot of space and not even feel like cities the more the game advances, between patchy districts and all wonders taking a whole space on the map, and i dont know about you but I find the difference in scale for some wonders to be quite jarring, The Pyramids taking the same space as the Bolshoi Theater for example.

I think a solution would be to have Districts have a space for a wonder, and have some wonders be buildable only as part of a district, I don't think it would be that hard considering most districts have an unused space for district graphics in the middle, so you'd had stuff like the Big Ben be part of your commercial district or the aformentioned Bolshoi Theater part of the Theater district. Great Library on the campus district, St. Basil Cathedral on a Holy site, and even open the possibility of reintroducing a number of castle wonders back into the game as part of Encampment districts, Himeji Castle for example.

It could also open the possibility of making some districts that are always static more engaging (aqueduct), and districts that many players avoid more interesting, (neighborhoods)

The last change I would love to see made are wonders that, should probably be It's own district, and visually grow the more things you build in it, just like the Cothon for Carthage does. so these..."wonder districts" would have to be built on a district that doesn't already have a wonder, for example:

-Broadway
-Forbidden City
-Venetian Arsenal
-Angkor Wat
-Ruhr Valley

It's not so weird considering Firaxis already did this but for infrastructure, like the Panama Canal or Golden Gate. Besides, Imagine starting Angkor Wat small and build it up as you add more buildings into it, or Broadway getting taller and filling with advertisings. Could even open the possibility to bring old and new stuff in this form, like Wall Street, the Pentagon, or the Circus Maximus.

It would liberate map space, and provide a way for cities to actually feel like they are developing instead of spreading all over the map, and visually it would make cities feel more compact and unique.

I just want more ways to build unique cities and wonders besides picking a tile and dumping production into it.