Design: Wonders

[QES]

How about 1 free sage and 1 free engineer. Since stonehenge is both an engineering marvel and scientific. Two free specialists is what the great library gives, and stonehenge shouldn't exceed it.
Maybe also +8 culture and +2 great sage points.

How about a free sage and a free prophet? While the engineer was perhaps necessary to GET the stones there, once it was built, it didnt produce engineering. Knowledge/religion was its purpose? We think?
-Qes

 

[lorgen]

What if that wonder could be built by any civ without a state religion, and banned them from getting one? If i wanted to play with agnostic lanun, then let me.
It would be availble midgame.

That sounds quite cool. Could open up for some alternative strategies. Though, that wonder should give a lot of bonuses to compensate for the lack of religion. Maybe also some revolts if you have cities with religion on completion of the wonder, and a negative dip-relation "you are a forsaker of our god(s)" -2(?) relation.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

I like the idea of requiring earth mana. Like, "no, let ME try a wall of stone!"

And one way to end withdrawl chance is to make it change the terrain to cost 4 movement points--then only commandos would have any mp left after attacking, and mp are required to withdraw.

The catch in requiring Earth mana is that players will soon start asking why Wonders X, Y, and Z don't also have mana node requirements. So unless other Wonders are planned to have mana requirements, ya probably don't want just 'Caer Decayshus' to require a mana type.

OTOH I guess you caould make Earth magic a bonus-to-production resource. Throw a few more mana-type bonuses out to other wonders. (e.g. Spirit helps high Culture things, like the Perfect Lyre. Or Law for the Winter Palace.)

Is there a way to allow a resource (magic or mundane) to give something other than a 100% bonus to construction? e.g. Could 'Caer Decayshus' be given a 25% production bonus for each Earth node owned by the realm? If you had 4 Earth sources, you'd get the full 100% bonus as is the case now for a single source. (e.g. Copper and Form of the Titan.) The same thing could be applied to mundane resources. Using our above example, say, +50% production on the Titan for each Copper tile owned (and remaining untraded.)

This isn't all that significant a change and I've no idea where to put it on the priority scheme (if at all). But it would assign some value to haveing more than one type of mundane resource. The game is moving to a state where multimple mana sources will play a role ... would the game benefit from creating a role for multiple mundane resources as well?

I don't know. Am just throwing out an idea.

 

[Unser Giftzwerg]

That sounds quite cool. Could open up for some alternative strategies. Though, that wonder should give a lot of bonuses to compensate for the lack of religion. Maybe also some revolts if you have cities with religion on completion of the wonder, and a negative dip-relation "you are a forsaker of our god(s)" -2(?) relation.

How exactly would this differ from workking to give your realm the Free Religion civic?

I guess one way to look at such a Wonder would be as an almost certain bonus for the Grigori, if they are in that game. The Grigori would want to build it every time, since they are already agnostic. But more civilizations would not want it, so it would probably be available to the Grigori most times.
But that raises the question, would this Wonder go unbuilt in the majority of games played?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

The catch in requiring Earth mana is that players will soon start asking why Wonders X, Y, and Z don't also have mana node requirements. So unless other Wonders are planned to have mana requirements, ya probably don't want just 'Caer Decayshus' to require a mana type.

Some do, now, and more will later, I believe. Aque Succellus (sp) requires life mana, blood of the phoenix, um, also life... Another one or two, I think.

Is there a way to allow a resource (magic or mundane) to give something other than a 100% bonus to construction?

The issue isn't changing the bonus rate, I'm pretty sure that's easily done. Might be more difficult to do the per resouce, but it could be neat, on a few, not too many wonders.

 

[loki1232]

Some do, now, and more will later, I believe. Aque Succellus (sp) requires life mana, blood of the phoenix, um, also life... Another one or two, I think.

We're working on more, not just the armegeddon spells.

 

[eerr]

new wonders, based on both a mana rescource and another, "real" rescource

the fortress, which gives a huge defense and collaterall damage reduction
(earth and stone)

the death charge (world unit) 1 use unit that can be used to attack.
the tile it attacks lose 50% hp(max-20) and reduces a cities base defense bonus to 0% (if it is used on a city) it also destroys the top defending unit
(fire and gunpowder)

the reversal of history?
all new units you produce gain +40% in tundra and ice tiles
randomly changes grassland to plains ,plains into tundra, in and around your cities, mostly in flat areas(less hills and forests)
(air and iron)

alcemical advantage
can only be built in a coastal citywater tiles(scaled by map size) nearby gain the acidic property and deal damage/degeneration to ships passing through, your ships gain +10% regeneration
(water and reagents)

 

[Bad Player]

What about a wonder that can only be built by sacrificing slaves to add resources to build it? E.g. Theatre of Horrors.

 

[much2much]

Could the randomly destructive style of projects give the civs that create them permanent happiness bonuses? I don't see the point of using them otherwise unless you are already on the downward slope. I'm sure everybody would respect their boss more if he/she were able to cast the world into darness.

 

[QES]

new wonders, based on both a mana rescource and another, "real" rescource

the fortress, which gives a huge defense and collaterall damage reduction
(earth and stone)

the death charge (world unit) 1 use unit that can be used to attack.
the tile it attacks lose 50% hp(max-20) and reduces a cities base defense bonus to 0% (if it is used on a city) it also destroys the top defending unit
(fire and gunpowder)

the reversal of history?
all new units you produce gain +40% in tundra and ice tiles
randomly changes grassland to plains ,plains into tundra, in and around your cities, mostly in flat areas(less hills and forests)
(air and iron)

alcemical advantage
can only be built in a coastal citywater tiles(scaled by map size) nearby gain the acidic property and deal damage/degeneration to ships passing through, your ships gain +10% regeneration
(water and reagents)

I LIKE these ideas. They need adjustments for balance and the like, but its a genuinely flavorful and neat concept.

"Reversal of History" could be A) named better, and B) would/should imply some sort of economic bonus given to the civ for tundra squares. As normally even defensive bonuses dont make up for lack of production.

"Death Charge" while intersting, doesnt strike me as a partiucarly "fantastic" element. Maybe "Mechanical Dragon" This unit ignores city defense bonuses (i.e. target's in a city do not get bonuses from culture or promotions) Walls still add, as does terrain modifiers. The Mechanical Dragon causes a great deal of colateral damage, and if it dies, it explodes and does even more collateral damage (possible let it destroy buildings in the city?)

ADDS:

Wind Spire (Wonder)
Can only be built in a city with a peak in its radius. All units produced in this city may cross "impassible" terrain and gain water walking.
(requires Air and Mithril)

Sophia Gravitas (World Unit)
Has Summoning, Channeling and Sorcery III, but not I or II. May learn III level spells without the need for I or II level spells to be learned.
(Requires Metamagic and Reagents)

Lord's Opus (Wonder)
Farms Produce +1 Hammers In Aristocracy and +1 food in Serfdom, and +1 gold in Agriculture, Law-summons gain +1 Str. +2 Culture per specialist.
(Requires Law and Gold)

Cask of Endless Amontillado (Wonder)
Produces 3 Wine. +1 Happiness and +1 Health for wine. Units gain the "courage" promotion for free.
(Requires Dimensional and Wine)

Necropolis (Wonder)
Has a "value" equal to the population of the city it is built in. All units produced in this city gain that "value" in experiance upon creation. Mortal Units that die within the city's radius, produce one skeleton (non-summon) IN the city.
(Requires Death and Marble)

Voidman's Swtich (Wonder)
If city is conquered, it can only be razed, not captured, and all units within the cities radius (regardless of owner) are destroyed. All land in cities radius degrades one level if city is captured.
(Requires Entropy and Gems)

Titan Chronos (World Unit)
T3 or 4 unit. Melee. Whenever Chronos attacks a stack, all units in that stack are unable to move (movment reduced to 0) for one turn, they are also unable to heal) Has a high withdrawl chance.
(Requires Air or Mind? and Iron or Mithril?)

-Qes

 

[Thonnas]

completely unrelated to anything else (afaik): Before palaces where given the 3 mana/bonuses I intended to suggest that perhaps there be another building/wonder that provides the mana/bonus enabling a capturing civ to also have access to that mana/bonus. with there being 3 now, it would probably be a bit too overpowered, but I still feal the base of the idea deserves some consideration.

In vanilla civ, it always seemed that many of the leaders traites were more like traites of the people. I felt that conquering those people should give the conquerer similar benefits. Dealing with that could potentially get messy, but in FfH there are some things, like magical aptidude (via mana), that could have this kind of effect on a conquering civ. It it weren't too messy, it also be marvelous to allow some unique units to be buldable by a conquering civ.

If the dwarves can make and opperate cannon, and I conquered the dwarves, I would certainly put them to work building and opperating cannon for me. (this particular example might be a little too much to allow, but hopefully you get the idea.)

 

[subanark]

More Ideas:
Alantis Settler (World Unit):
Water unit that can found a city in Water tiles.
City built can only work water tiles, and gets 2h/1c/1f for each tile. Starts with lighthouse and harbor.

Endless Mirrage:
Each hostile unit in player's borders has a 2% chance each turn of being teleported outside player's borders. (The city they thought they were attacking was just a mirrage).

Soul Weavers:
Units built in the city have a 25% chance to get a promotion that gives the promotions of defeated enimies to the conquering unit even if the unit could not norrmaly recieve such promotion. The unit's level is adusted to represent this, although experence is not gained. This works in reverse too, if this unit is defeated the conquering unit gets their promotion. Only promotions that can be gotten by a level up are allowed.

Chaotic Judgement:
Unilateral decleration of war! (Everyone declares war on everyone else)
Building civilization recieves no matiance costs for 10 turns.
All have been found guilty and all must be punished.
Requires Chaos and Law mana nodes.

Aura of Forgivness:
All AI civs forgive past trangressions (e.g. raising a city, declaring war on them).

 

[khanjackal]

i like the idea of chaotic judgement as an apocalypse wonder

 

[bdmarti]

I had some ideas for powerful wonders that could be good or bad for a player at the same time. I even thought I might try to program them myself if there were interest from the FFH community.

Everflowing Spring - requires water mana and perhaps supplies a water mana once built as well.
Upon being built this wonder adds a river to the city tile. On each subsequent turn, until a body of water is reached, an additional portion of river will be added to the end of this magical river in a random direction OR one plot adjacent to the river will be turned into desert-flood plains. Once the river hits a body of water it stops growing in length, but it will convert all it's river adjacent tiles to floodplains eventually.

This wonder is powerful in that it adds fresh water to a city where there may be none and it adds the possibility of many floodplains for food...but at the same time it blows away tiles and possibly resources and it could possibly drown your city in unhealth.

Or....

North Winds, East Winds, South Winds, West Winds - requires air mana and must be in the appropriate 1/2 or 1/4 of the map to build. Perhaps supplies an air mana once built as well.
Only one of these may be built in any given city.
The effect is simple: units moving in the direction of the wind, say from west to east for the East Winds wonder, will not lose movement points while in the city radius. Units moving against the wind, say from east to west for the East winds wonder, will lose an addiional movement point for each plot they move.
Units moving perpendicular to the wind are not affected in any way.

These wonders would have an interesting effect of slowing all movement from one direction...but making instantanious movement possible in the other (at least the 5 city plots anyway). Since these wonders effect all units, including the owners, it is a mixed blessing to have them.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

How about allowing a few wonders to change a players alignment, so Auric and Cassiel don't always stay evil and neutral?

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

Ok, on my way to work I was thinking to my self how to incorporate more of Terry Pratchetts work into FfH. I have added the wiki entry for The Nexus from one of his books [one of my fav quotes] What next?

I came up with an idea Let me present to you:

Unseen University

Requirements:
Strength of Will
Mage Guild

Effects:
+2 [Great Sage] +10
+10% in city it is build
Grands all your arcane units a free promotion at the time it is build
A small chance every turn that a Beast from the Other/Under Dimensions will spawn near the city [~15 composed out of random damage types{fire, ice, lightning, death, poison}, barb]


Wiki/Pedia text:

Old Tom was the single cracked bronze bell in the University bell tower. The clapper dropped out shortly after it was cast, but the bell still tolled out some tremendously sonorous silences every hour.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Eric)

[was thinking about the effect of nullifying the upkeep for all your arcane units but for a late wonder it would not matter that much]