Evaluating wonders.

[sampsa]

Ah. Forges - massively overrated. Yes GLib is on a convenient path, but that doesn't mean you need to build it, you can also failgold it. Reading your message I think we just have different preferences. I'm very rarely in OR and build the minimal amount of buildings, especially below deity, since the game ends a lot sooner. When watching your games I feel you needlessly put a ton of into buildings. I do not know how big part of it is fun/roleplaying or if you think it's optimal.

For me, NE is underwhelming for the same reason GLib is underwhelming. The value of goes down really fast after the first GA. Of course you can play a strategy where you don't rely on music GA and it's very possible to lose the race on deity. In that case NE+GLib go significantly up in value.

 

[drewisfat]

More sampsa bullying..... does the report button even work? Can we change his avatar to a forge? The dude just hates hammers. Intentionally failgolding GLib is crazy. Not as crazy as MoM or Pentagon in A tier, but crazy nonetheless.
Problem with tier lists is are we rating them by like ROI or how often we build them? GLib and mids are my most common wonder builds, but neither is as amazing as TGL or TGW where 150-200 hammers turns into like 5000 beakers over the course of the game. Maybe mids can post a similar return but with the huge 500 hammer cost.
MoM has lots of fans, but it's never made sense to me. I get that this is a great wonder to have but it's not easy to build first even if I beeline calendar, and I almost never beeline calendar. Presumably in that one game I did beeline calendar I'd want my workers to build a bunch of plantations asap, not start chopping out a wonder I might lose anyway. It also doesn't help you immediately - might be 50 turns before you GA. And it does give artist pollution - which is the main reason the NE is overrated. It's a key wonder to try to capture but on deity it's not a wonder you can consistently self-build. But yeah if the tier list considers all difficulty levels it's more reasonable.
Pentagon is late. I don't knock late stuff just for being late, unlike the great Sampsa I've had games go into the 20th century, but the later the game the less promotions matter as collateral/splash damage just overrides other considerations. If you have no qualms with using nukes for instance, it's completely pointless.
I've also never considered Hanging Gardens as reasonable. Good on lower levels on a huge map I guess, but on deity I'd have to beeline it to win it, and so I'm not going to have many cities. There's not even a chance of just getting lucky and getting it late, because I don't want to invest that huge cost in a pointless early aqueduct that won't pay itself back in failgold.
Oracle. It's never 100% secure on deity and failgold doesn't compensate you for the early detour into medit/priesthood. I'd either need to plan on self-teching monarchy early regardless or have strong commerce to afford the gamble. Like I think it's reasonable with IND + either gold or gems to try to bulb MC, but that's a very win-more situation. And that priest pollution. Priest pollution awful. It's the reason stonehenge is always worse than failgold. I don't want to miss out on a bulb in the midgame because I got hit with back to back priest spawns.
Statue of Liberty is another one that seems amazing to a builder style of player, but Democracy is a very expensive detour at the time when you should be closing out on your end game military techs. The benefit is also misleading since those great people get spread out to every city and comes past the prime of great people, just maybe helping get one final 3-person GA a handful of turns faster.
IDK, tier lists for wonders are weird. Some are very dependent on difficulty level or big map settings. Some are tied to the more cheesy victory conditions. And something like Chichen Itza is very notable to me as the best midgame failgold option for stone. But yeah I'd wind up having 2/3 of the wonders in the bottom tier as never-builds for my purposes. Hard to say one wonder is worse than the other if I'm building them 0% of the time, though ToA deserves a special place in F-. There's a dozen reasons it's not worth it but spoiling merchant trade missions has made me regret even capturing it.
Good list overall, closer to the money than most takes I've seen. Props for mentioning that premature walls (Chichen Itza) can actually backfire. Even props to Sampsa for suggesting going either NE or Music GA and not both.

 

[sampsa]

More sampsa bullying..... does the report button even work?

Intentionally failgolding GLib is crazy.

Honestly I don't recall doing that, but just as food for thought. In a "music -> GA -> cuirs -> win" type game I don't think failgold is significantly worse than the GLib itself.

MoM has lots of fans, but it's never made sense to me. I get that this is a great wonder to have but it's not easy to build first even if I beeline calendar, and I almost never beeline calendar.

I'm not sure if I've ever built it on deity either! Like you say, it's good to capture it.

Pentagon is late. I don't knock late stuff just for being late, unlike the great Sampsa I've had games go into the 20th century

I've had one deity game go to the 20th century, not because I'm so great at this game but because I'm very bad at finishing games. I didn't know what Pentagon does, but seems like trash. Nukes!

IDK, tier lists for wonders are weird. Some are very dependent on difficulty level or big map settings. Some are tied to the more cheesy victory conditions.

This. Your contribution is from deity perspective and we are all ears.

 

[floydmcw]

ToA deserves a special place in F-. There's a dozen reasons it's not worth it but spoiling merchant trade missions has made me regret even capturing it.

Can you explain how ToA spoils trade missions?

 

[civac]

The idea is that if someone else has it you can get more valuable trade missions by targeting the foreign ToA city. Bit farfetched imo. In many cases the Toa city will not be optimal in other respects (size, distance, overseas, harbor).

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

Agree with Drew’s wise words. My experience of deity is that any wonder that typically goes later than the Great Library, with the exceptions of the Taj and Sistine, is one of: i) not obtainable with a sane tech path; ii) not worth the opportunity cost; or iii) given you’ve built it, a sign that you’ve already long won the game. (I’m happy to accept that there are exceptions for space races; I never go space so I don’t know.)

I do like the Great Library though. I pretty much always play fractal so I astro bulb in a majority of games. I rarely go lib because I’d rather get astro earlier through a bulb than for “free” after bulbing and researching some techs I don’t need for a while. It’s also not reliable if you don’t know who is on the other continent and it’s bad if you tech down that path and don’t get lib. Great Library means you can get the scientists for the astro bulb without having to stagnate two or three of your cities for dozens of turns so you can do other stuff with them. I aLao agree with the tech path being a good one and it being cheap and reliably buildable.

The Pyramids is the other wonder I build a lot. Access to rep early game when happiness is real constraint is amazing but it’s also buildable after you’ve blocked land. You can try to get it at a point where fail gold isn’t the end of the world.

The Great Lighthouse can be wonderful if you can get it but it’s high risk because: i) it can go at an unobtainable date; ii) it competes for hammers with early game expansion so it stunts your expansion and you can be screwed even if you get it; and iii) if you don’t get it you get a bit of fail gold for going for two techs you often don’t need before (say) pottery and are behind on claiming land. It’s also strongest on map scripts that tend to be easier because the AI does badly with water. On deity the period where it’s best on a fractal map - ie post astro pre-mercantilism is often not that long either.

Shout out for Sistine and Parthenon because maps conducive to culture victory can be some of the easiest deity maps.

 

[sampsa]

I do like the Great Library though. I pretty much always play fractal so I astro bulb in a majority of games. I rarely go lib because I’d rather get astro earlier through a bulb than for “free” after bulbing and researching some techs I don’t need for a while. It’s also not reliable if you don’t know who is on the other continent and it’s bad if you tech down that path and don’t get lib. Great Library means you can get the scientists for the astro bulb without having to stagnate two or three of your cities for dozens of turns so you can do other stuff with them.

This is a fair point - GLib goes up in value if you intend to bulb astro.

 

[floydmcw]

The idea is that if someone else has it you can get more valuable trade missions by targeting the foreign ToA city. Bit farfetched imo. In many cases the Toa city will not be optimal in other respects (size, distance, overseas, harbor).

Thanks. I realized I had no idea what influenced the reward of a trade mission, and found this thread which explains it: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...on-for-a-great-merchant-trade-mission.483154/.

 

[drewisfat]

You know what, I change my mind. Pentagon might make sense with a tank rush. I prefer infantry/arty so I didn't consider that. Tanks still want those promos for CR and you might have nothing to build while waiting on industrialism. 1,250 hammers and no resource boost is really expensive though. Bismarck ticks both the IND and the panzer boxes.

 

[Fippy]

Glib also gives a minimum of 7.5 beakers / turn for "free".
Which can be around ~10% of the total research output at times where cities aren't that developed yet.

It's not outstanding but a very nice total package.
Considering how there are only 2 outstanding wonders, 3 on very barb heavy maps (TGW), i think it's deserving of being ranked 1 tier below those.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

You know what, I change my mind. Pentagon might make sense with a tank rush. I prefer infantry/arty so I didn't consider that. Tanks still want those promos for CR and you might have nothing to build while waiting on industrialism. 1,250 hammers and no resource boost is really expensive though. Bismarck ticks both the IND and the panzer boxes.

The trouble is that, if you can build the pentagon, you’re one of if not the first to AL so the game is in all likelihood already won. Additionally, if you miss it, fail gold at an often unspectacular conversion rate is poor compensation for delaying building a factory and coal plant in your highest production city. It’s also easy enough to get two promotions at this stage of the game.

Where I like it is really late game when the UN has denied you theocracy and vassalage. Throwing CR2 artillery/ tanks at mechanised infantry is noticeably less depressing than CR1. But in that sort of game I’ll never have been in a tech position to build the pentagon.

 

[Henrik75]

Take this with a grain of salt but
IMHO,
evaluating wonders on deity fractal/pangaea/shuffle with TT on is pretty pointless, there's only a very tiny handful of wonders that are even worth considering building, under very specific circumstances. The rest are better as just failgold because the pace of the game flies by and the AI get wonders ridiculously fast with all their cheats

Despite being a deity player myself, my tier list is more targetted at immortal (should state in the video its a general average for anyone playing on emperor to deity), but in the tier list I made some clarifications on which would be a lot better on imm vs deity as I went through the wonders.
Stuff like mausoleum, hanging gardens, etc etc is much more realistic to get on the immortal difficulty because you can get it later and sacrifice a lot less to get the tech at an appropriate date. I.e. flick in currency before calendar.
I don't think we should be assessing wonders for deity difficulty also because a very small minority actually play deity, they just have loud voices and post here everyday, I think majority of players float between monarch to immortal, with a few casually chilling at noble/prince and a few playing deity.

That being said, I stand by my point that mausoleum is strong even on deity, as is great library, and the wall; ok, oracle maybe not so much- 1 tier down But there's a clear distinction between these and say crap like chicken pizza, angkor wat, zeus, etc. Plenty of deity games I have had reasonably strong positions I can just trade a tech or two for calendar to improve some resources, and then have access to marble so why the heck not build it. Then you pair the mausoleum with a taj golden age and you can just go straight to cavalry and wipe everyone off the planet that way, OR, cuirassier rush with all those production boosts.
I can't be bothered getting into an in depth arguement about forges and buildings in the game, I play differently and enjoy and feel value from early production and happiness boosts to build momentum earlier, and enjoy trebuchet knight stomping targets on deity or immortal with the forge bonus. Making trebs/knights consistently whippable for 2 population instead of 3 population feels very strong and convenient to me IMO. that's 2 less sizes you have to grow. Same for cuirassiers, put a couple hammers into a cuirs then you can 2 pop whip it with a forge. It may have a touch of roleplay feelsgoods in building more buildings? I like flicking in harbors if I have GLH or overseas routes and planning to play the late game, idk, seems a very small investment for fast payoff in commerce per turn plus prepares for lategame factory unhealthiness. Might slap a market into the capital (AFTER bureaucracy) if the capital feels worthy and has nothing better to do. The gold is nice and doesn't take terribly long to pay off while the happiness can be real clutch if war weariness or defy anger gets annoying.

Maybe my play style is not optimal? but heck, I'd burn out if I only built 3 wonders ever and ignored 95% of the buildings and just spammed wealth in every city all game. Adding more elements and mixing things up and getting play out of wonders and niche strategies is how I roll and enjoy the game, and still find ways to improve as a player. Just FYI I dont mean any disrespect to any of you and a lot of people in here are probably better at the game than me, but, I do what I can to have fun and still play at a comfortable level. Its why every so often I drop the difficulty down to immortal even though I CAN beat deity so I can play a more flexible game and attempt harder maps.

 

[sampsa]

Plenty of deity games I have had reasonably strong positions I can just trade a tech or two for calendar to improve some resources, and then have access to marble so why the heck not build it. Then you pair the mausoleum with a taj golden age and you can just go straight to cavalry and wipe everyone off the planet that way, OR, cuirassier rush with all those production boosts.

But the real question is what would've happened in those games without the extra 4 GA turns from MoM?

I can't be bothered getting into an in depth arguement about forges and buildings in the game, I play differently and enjoy and feel value from early production and happiness boosts to build momentum earlier, and enjoy trebuchet knight stomping targets on deity or immortal with the forge bonus. Making trebs/knights consistently whippable for 2 population instead of 3 population feels very strong and convenient to me IMO. that's 2 less sizes you have to grow. Same for cuirassiers, put a couple hammers into a cuirs then you can 2 pop whip it with a forge.

Math doesn't agree with your arguments. If you aren't into pen+pencil or spreadsheet investigation and rather go by feel, you could try to play a game without building forges everywhere and see if it feels different.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Maybe my play style is not optimal? but heck, I'd burn out if I only built 3 wonders ever and ignored 95% of the buildings and just spammed wealth in every city all game.

If building less is too stressing for you, you should definitely not do it.

Adding more elements and mixing things up and getting play out of wonders and niche strategies is how I roll and enjoy the game, and still find ways to improve as a player. Just FYI I dont mean any disrespect to any of you and a lot of people in here are probably better at the game than me, but, I do what I can to have fun and still play at a comfortable level. Its why every so often I drop the difficulty down to immortal even though I CAN beat deity so I can play a more flexible game and attempt harder maps.

Of course.

 

[Fippy]

What i like about forges: they often are penalty free whips (or even increase the happy situation).
Naturally we only have to make cities stronger long-term if things could get difficult later.
A deity game where i never feel like adding some forges prolly wasn't challenging anyways.

 

[sampsa]

What i like about forges: they often are penalty free whips (or even increase the happy situation).

Yes. If forge didn't come with a -bonus I'd feel more strongly against it.

Naturally we only have to make cities stronger long-term if things could get difficult later.

I agree to some extent, they can be built as kind of an insurance if you are unsure whether you can win directly by war.

A deity game where i never feel like adding some forges prolly wasn't challenging anyways.

Yes, in which case it doesn't even matter whether you build them or not. If you are indifferent between building something or not, then that something can't be labeled as "must have" or even "good", which pretty much sums up my entire argument. And I'm not saying that you particularly have labeled forges that way. At least at some point it felt like "must have" is the consensus and I'm challenging that.

Remembering the past, at some point you were kind of frustrated with deity pangaea, because you can nearly always win with cuirs. Would it be fair to say that on many deity pangaea cuir games, you are indifferent between building (non-IND) forges or not building them?

 

[civac]

Forges are great except when you are planning an imminent timing attack. Deity tech trading games warp these evaluations substantially. We had to nerf Mausoleum in our multiplayer mod. Yes, it's an investment into the future but the payoff is outstanding. In a slower games it does not add 4 GA turns but 12 at the very least. It can easily be 16 or 20 turns.

 

[sampsa]

Deity tech trading games warp these evaluations substantially.

Yes. To be clear, I am talking only about (deity) single player tech trading games. Maybe it's a horrible setting to play the game with, but it's the standard.

 

[Fippy]

Remembering the past, at some point you were kind of frustrated with deity pangaea, because you can nearly always win with cuirs. Would it be fair to say that on many deity pangaea cuir games, you are indifferent between building (non-IND) forges or not building them?

Fair to say yup
Pangaea can be very challenging if you start in a map centre position, surrounded by dangerous AIs.
But once you get an advantage things play out similar.

 

[Nick723]

Stonehenge gets a lot of hate - but I think it has its place. I think most people don’t get where it shines, which in my opinion is when paired with an early rush (eg horse archer).
Here:
- you aren’t expanding much anyway - it’s a commerce race to HBR
- Stonehenge helps you build your army. Maybe +1 happiness for more whipping, but also border pops help you get more full value chops
- the free monument in captured cities helps your recovery. The AI does not place their cities with good tiles in the first ring, and so having free culture when other culture is hard to come by is a boost

Granted it’s still a very rare build, but if you have the opportunity to settle on stone or have riverside stone, it’s worth considering imo.

 

[sampsa]

Granted it’s still a very rare build, but if you have the opportunity to settle on stone or have riverside stone, it’s worth considering imo.

But if you are going for HAs, masonry is a detour. And in any case probably failgold is better than the actual wonder. So i think I'll keep hatin'