Favorite National Wonder

[blitzkrieg1980]

I went with the majority on this one.

Heroic Epic ftw. More often than not, by the time I research Literature, I have access to Heroic epic from barbs or axe rush. The Heroic Epic is huge all game, but it never shines so obviously as when you first build it if you're still in the classical era. When your city is straining for 15-20 per turn and you build the bad-boy HE, your unit builds get 33.75-45 per turn (including forge). 2 turn axeman/swordsman on marathon? 2-3 turn catapults? Yes please!

 

[The Rook]

I find Oxford and NE most consistently strong in my games (not always in the same city). Sometimes one is of marginal value, but not very often.

 

[henrebotha]

I voted National Epic and Oxford University because I am a shameless Great Scientist whore.

 

[Neal]

I kind of went out on a limb and went with Globe Theater and Moai Statues. Are the various Epics better? Certainly. But they're not my favorites. I like the Moai and the Globe because they make fundamental changes to a city, rather than just tacking on another multiplier. I guess the National Park is in there, too. A 100% bonus to Great People Points is great to have, but kind of bland. But getting +1 hammer per water tile? Letting a city ignore the Happy Cap? Getting free Specialists? Those are coool.

 

[Woodreaux]

While I always build Wall Street and Oxford if the game last long enough, I am always impressed by the awesomeness of the Globe Theatre. Whenever I have a have 3 food resources or beaucoup floodplains in a BFC, I put the Globe Theatre there.

You whip it, the people say "Thank you, may I have another".
You constantly draft from it, the people say "Hell yeah, we'll go!"
You crowd over 9,000 population into it, and it's a mega commerce center + GPF combo.

I can't get enough of that Globe Theatre.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Oxford and HE are alright, but I have gone games without building them, ever, and won on immortal (in fact not building oxford is fast becoming normal as games aren't lasting that long)

My 2 most important wonders are:

NE: Early NE does so much for the tech capabilities of your civilization it is not even funny. With a decent bulbing plan I have gotten Steel in 600 A.D. and fielded a large army of cannons + macemen in 700 A.D(was so fast I didn't have enough cats to upgrade), Can you say game breaking? If you wanna get an advantage fast, and pursue it, NE is the way to go. Even if you aren't bulbing, you will be settling and probably scientists. The faster you get your GP out the faster you supercharge your civ. Great people are not to be underestimated. An super science city with an academy and 4 GSes c. 800 A.D. is a lovely thing, producing 36 beakers 4 hammers from GP alone without any additional modifiers (54 beakers with rep), once again this can be game breaking Renaissance-Industrial era, which is where I find a settled specialist strategy tends to pay off.

Any way you cut it, the NE does so much for your civ

Other national wonder that can really be game breaking is globe theater.
It is really easy to get a city that can draft 1 unit/turn, and I mean REALLY easy. 1 unit per turn adds up ridiculously fast, especially on epic/marathon speed and this allows for the fast accumulation of armies so fast it feels exploitish.
If you wanna get even more exploity, put GT + HE in same city (some city with a lot of forests + 1 or 2 good food resources) and you will be able to do some seriously abusive whipping as well, HE doubles hammers that are whipped into military units as well so with a combination of drafting rifles + whipping cannons every few turns you can turn out large stacks in very little time.


All things considered however, nothing does as much for a civ as the National Epic. The faster you get your GP out, the better off you are with any strategy other than golden age spamming or corporations, both of which are best suited to late industrial - modern age, and my games rarely, if ever last that long, and if they do, they have long been decided and I am just being lazy and going for UN or something

If you need tech late game, then Oxford is great, but the key to my success on higher difficulties has been opportunistic warfare, which usually involves having a military edge renaissance era or era and because I so often press as soon as I know I can be successful, Oxford is quite often a moot point.

 

[henrebotha]

I feel the Red Cross deserves honourable mention just for giving free promotions.

 

[DaveMurray]

No Hermitage Love?

As I love huge maps, I find stuff like HE, Oxford, isn't as game breaking as it is on smaller maps. Some of my favorites would be Wall Street and NE. Wall Street allows corporations to be run at or close to a profit and throwing in a shrine makes it even better, especially with the huge map aspect. The big drawback though is it comes pretty late and costs a lot in hammers.

The NE though is cheap, has a resource multiplier, and comes pretty early. I don't need to describe how awesome GPs are but the main advantage of the NE is it allows for more GPs earlier and the earlier something is obtained, the better advantage it snowballs into later in the game. Also, the NE's usefulness is irrelevant to map size as you're generally only going to run one true GP farm. It's a must build in any game regardless of whatever options I'm using or whatever strategy I'm pursuing.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

the NE's usefulness is irrelevant to map size as you're generally only going to run one true GP farm.

This is not necessarily true. Especially in a specialist-heavy economy, you'll often have multiple cities popping great people. Granted, usually one city is pretty dominant in popping them, but I'll often have 3 food heavy cities popping Great People.

As for the usefulness of HE on huge maps, I would think that HE is just as strong on a huge map as NE is. I used to play huge maps exclusively and if you plan on winning via military, having HE is huge with respect to building units fast. Marathon speed especially. Even though unit costs scale 2/3 of turn #s, training a tank every turn vs. every 2-3 turns will drastically quicken the pace of your military victory.

That being said, you may not be going for a military victory (especially on a huge map), however, HE allows classical/medieval/renaissance era wars to be sped up rather drastically making it useful in every game.

 

[popejubal]

As I love huge maps, I find stuff like HE, Oxford, isn't as game breaking as it is on smaller maps. Some of my favorites would be Wall Street and NE. Wall Street allows corporations to be run at or close to a profit and throwing in a shrine makes it even better, especially with the huge map aspect. The big drawback though is it comes pretty late and costs a lot in hammers.

I do agree that things that effect a single city are less significant in a huge map than things that effect your entire empire. HE still makes a big difference because you're only going to get the Great Generals that you get and you want to get as much benefit from those Great Generals as you can. Having the HE lets you produce significantly more military than without simply because you are still going to have a mix of cities and only a few of your cities are going to have really outstanding production - even on Huge. As long as you can get those units to the area where they're needed, HE still makes a big difference (although obviously not as big of a difference as it does in a game where you only have 1 production city and 5 cities total in your empire).

The NE though is cheap, has a resource multiplier, and comes pretty early. I don't need to describe how awesome GPs are but the main advantage of the NE is it allows for more GPs earlier and the earlier something is obtained, the better advantage it snowballs into later in the game. Also, the NE's usefulness is irrelevant to map size as you're generally only going to run one true GP farm. It's a must build in any game regardless of whatever options I'm using or whatever strategy I'm pursuing.

I do find that the NE is a little less useful on Huge maps than on much smaller ones just because I'll be running more than one of every kind of city except for Shrine/Corporation/Wall Street. Still, the biggest difference for me is what I do with my Great People.
Smaller maps = settle. Great People make an enormous difference to a single city. When that city is 25% of your empire, that's an enormous difference to your empire.
Larger maps = Bulb or Golden Age. When your super city is 1/30 of your empire, making that city better has much less significance.

...obviously, getting a shrine is even more important on Huge maps than on small ones, though, so Great Priests are an exception.

 

[DaveMurray]

This is not necessarily true. Especially in a specialist-heavy economy, you'll often have multiple cities popping great people. Granted, usually one city is pretty dominant in popping them, but I'll often have 3 food heavy cities popping Great People.

Hence why I said one true GP farm. Regardless of map size, most games will generally have one city that's best suited to feeding a lot of specialists and that will be the true GP farm producing most of the GPs.

As for the usefulness of HE on huge maps, I would think that HE is just as strong on a huge map as NE is. I used to play huge maps exclusively and if you plan on winning via military, having HE is huge with respect to building units fast. Marathon speed especially. Even though unit costs scale 2/3 of turn #s, training a tank every turn vs. every 2-3 turns will drastically quicken the pace of your military victory.

If I have 12 cities producing units with one having the HE, it wouldn't be as much of a benefit if I had 4 cities producing units with one having the HE. The HE's usefulness is the amount of production it adds to the empire wide production of units, and it just isn't going to be that much of a factor when used in a large empire on a huge sized map. Of course I'll still build it as soon as I can because it's useful regardless; it's just not as game breaking on huge map as the NE is. Of course comparing GPs to units is like comparing apples to oranges anyways.

 

[DaveMurray]

I do find that the NE is a little less useful on Huge maps than on much smaller ones just because I'll be running more than one of every kind of city

I'm pretty sure that's it's generally inefficient to purposely try and run two GP farms. GPPs aren't like beakers or gold so having more of them producing empire wide isn't going to help produce more GPs. Obviously there are going to be cases where running a lot of specialists in many cities with the right civics is going to be the preferred method of producing beakers and that in turn will pop some GPs but if you have two cities or more solely dedicated to popping GPs (i.e. you have 2 cities running specialists but you're primarily using cottages for research and you're running the civics to support them) it might be a better idea to take some of those specialists in the non-HE cities and put them into working some improved land.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Of course comparing GPs to units is like comparing apples to oranges anyways.

Too true, too true.

it's just not as game breaking on huge map as the NE

I really don't see how map size has to do with the NE being game breaking.

The logic as I see it:
Huge maps don't mean larger clusters of food resources, so you're NE city will generally have the same food surpluses on a huge or even small map. So, you'll be feeding a similar amount of specialists regardless of map size. So, you'll be earning a similar # of GPP regardless of map size. So, you'll be earning a similar # of GPP doubled from the NE. So, you'll be earning a similar # of Great People.

Now, I might be overlooking something here, but as I see it, the NE is as effective on any map size.

 

[DaveMurray]

I really don't see how map size has to do with the NE being game breaking.

It doesn't which is the whole point I was trying to convey, it's impact is huge regardless of the map size. I wasn't saying that the NE was better on a huge map, just that the HE or Oxford aren't as good on huge maps are they are on the smaller maps.

The logic as I see it:
Huge maps don't mean larger clusters of food resources, so you're NE city will generally have the same food surpluses on a huge or even small map. So, you'll be feeding a similar amount of specialists regardless of map size. So, you'll be earning a similar # of GPP regardless of map size. So, you'll be earning a similar # of GPP doubled from the NE. So, you'll be earning a similar # of Great People.

Now, I might be overlooking something here, but as I see it, the NE is as effective on any map size.

I will say that huge maps often offer bigger clusters of flood plains but I haven't sat down and generated large numbers of smaller sized maps so I can't verify this. But what you are saying is exactly right which is why I like the NE better then HE or Oxford.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Ah. Gotcha. I consider HE to be just as important as NE on any size map, though. Just a difference in opinion and playstyle, though.

When it comes to floodplains, I've seen large clusters on standard/large maps so I don't think it has to do with Huge. My last capital had 10 floodplains tiles in it.

 

[djvandrake]

Oxford, Wall Street, Heroic Epic, National Epic are the ones I ALWAYS build. The others are quite good too, but I don't always use them.

 

[JammerUno]

The NE, it's early, it's in a good techpath, it lets you bulb more.

Oxford is great with a bureau capital though.

 

[Krill]

Favourite would possibly be West Point. It's fun to play with highly promoted units.

Best is situational, although obviously favours some more than others.

 

[mrt144]

The only ones I consistently build are Wall Street/Oxford, Heroic Epic and Iron Works.

 

[Soirana]

flavor wise i like statues a lot. Making your double crab tundra deer city into something...

Power wise... don't know either Globe or Oxford. Both might be overpowered in timely fashion.