Great wall explained - better than crap after all.

[Victoria]

Was messing around last night as I could not find accurate information on the great wall and found it can be VERY powerful.

You can start using builders to build them during masonry and not after Renaissance.

For building the wall it has to be on the border of your city and you cannot make a circle with it. A wall cannot enclose a space is I guess the best way to put it.

If you have a single piece of wall you gain no benefit.
If you have 2 pieces of wall then each tile will produce +1 gold if worked
If you have 3 pieces of wall each end tile will produce +1 gold and the center one will produce +2
This is described in the wiki as each adjacent piece of wall provides +1 gold.
I would not build the wall for this benefit unless I really needed the money or in preparation for the next and most powerful part.

The Castles technology is easy to reach. When you do so each adjacent wall provides +1 culture.
What this means is with a settler and 5 builder builds I can in 5 turns of making a new city create a city that if the 5 wall tiles are worked will provide +8 culture. Of if 3 tiles are worked provides +6 culture. This is a very large culture hit quite early and with 4 settler and 5 builders I can quickly produce 4 3 pop cities that together provide a whopping +24 culture and provide a significant boost through the civics tree.

What was missing was the clear information on tourism. When flight is discovered all culture based resource improvements (i.e great wall) provide tourism. In the case of the great wall it is +1 tourism per adjacent piece of wall. Therefore at flight my +24 culture cluster would provide +24 tourism as well.

If I had built a single city and managed to extend its border to the maximum and used 6 builders and had the population fed in to get it high enough the maximum limit would be +44 culture and +44 tourism.
Anyone that is experienced knows this is a theoretical limit and I CBA work out the realistic ATM.
Anyone experienced will also appreciate that the +44 culture boost is massive, mega. The +44 tourism is OK but only can be doubled with computers, but naturally still affected by trade bonuses.

One small thing - Great wall tiles cannot be destroyed by builders but must be "replaced" with another build like an aqueduct or campus.

 

[stormtrooper412]

it works like the Moai in civ5, the adjacency can make it quite silly down the stretch

 

[Victoria]

the adjacency can make it quite silly down the stretch

I am not convinced. It does give great culture benefit mid game but this tails off as time goes on and the tourism is OK but not superb like seaside resorts.

 

[Promethian]

It seems to me to be great for tiles that can't normally be improved, like tundra or desert and merely ok otherwise. The problem is if I can put farms there, I want that food and housing so I can grow the city bigger and get a higher district cap. China can make one of the absolute best Petra cities with the great wall. That is something but its hardly a reliable bonus.

 

[Victoria]

The turn the Carnival is built Brazil gains an extra turn of GPP points.

Most games I play its about the fresh water... There tends to be a grassy or plains gap with no water. That will happily accommodate 1-4 cities with a pop of 3 generating 6 culture and tourism each. It is a lot more guaranteed that petra IMO and hell, why not do both?... I am not dissing your way.

 

[SKS]

The best part I think is that Great Walls do not have to be worked in order to provide tourism. Which means that you can use it to fill up your crap tiles in faraway cities that will never work quite so much and still get a ton of culture. IIRC wonders give +6 tourism so a line of 4 great walls produces the same tourism.

Basically a free fort that is built with builders and not Mil Engineers, it's quite a decent UI. Much better than the majority of UIs anyways.

 

[Victoria]

The best part I think is that Great Walls do not have to be worked in order to provide tourism.

I agree that the great wall is not useless but I believe it is the large early culture value that is OP.

Btw, wonders do not produce 6 tourism. The correct formula is 2 + 1 for each era after the era the wobder cones from. I have tested this out, in the ancoent era if i build the gardens they are +2, and when is move to classical it is +3

 

[myclan]

There is a way to make Great wall gives out 3 culture plus 3 gold, very attractive tile for new city to expand its border, just build it as
\ aaaa /
— —
/aaaa \

 

[Scoojitsu]

Could you elaborate on that, myclan? I don't get it from the picture, sorry.

 

[Victoria]

There is a way to make Great wall gives out 3 culture plus 3 gold, very attractive tile for new city to expand its border, just build it as
\ aaaa /
— —
/aaaa \

Just what is aaa are those obliques? Please be specific, 3 culture per tile?

 

[TheGreatSleepyOne]

I think he means make diamond shaped great wall segments, triangle walls if you would have it. Which I'm not sure is possible in most cases.

 

[myclan]

Just what is aaa are those obliques? Please be specific, 3 culture per tile?

Don't have time to start a Chinese game recently, but I have seen AI China building Great Wall with an output of 3culture+3gold, so I think building the Great Wall like the shape of mercedes-benz is just fine. I don't know why space is automatically deleted so I just type the aaaa in represent of an empty tile

 

[Victoria]

A wall cannot encirlcle, so a triangle would be an encirclement. However if a Y is possible then yes 3 per square, nice point, I will have to try

 

[TheGreatSleepyOne]

I'm going to start a game as China with these settings to try a Great Wall based tourism strategy.
Map Type: Inland Sea;
Map Size: Standard;
Game Speed: Standard;
All win cons activated;
Emperor Difficulty.
Try to get Cultural Victory.

My plan is to found Great Wall Cities in the tundra. These will be suboptimal cities on the northern/southern border of my productive core. They exist solely to build great wall segments. I am choosing inland sea as the map type to reduce the effectiveness/availability of seaside resorts and improve the effectiveness/availability of natural parks and great wall segments.

I am considering 3 waves of expansion.
First wave: Initial push to 4 cities to form a productive core of my empire. I expect these to grow and build most of the districts.
Second wave: Try to expand to 8 cities packed as closely as possible to one another on the northern or southern border in a line. These will make one contiguous Great Wall. It is in these cities that I will try to utilize Y formations.
Third Wave: These are generally garbage cites planted to secure resources or serve as healing zones for your military.

 

[jaegybomb]

China can make one of the absolute best Petra cities with the great wall. That is something but its hardly a reliable bonus.

If China wants Petra no other civ can stop them from getting it.

 

[TheGreatSleepyOne]

I won that game on turn 262 with the Great Wall providing about 25% of my tourism.

 

[WideCoast]

I am considering 3 waves of expansion.
First wave: Initial push to 4 cities to form a productive core of my empire. I expect these to grow and build most of the districts.
Second wave: Try to expand to 8 cities packed as closely as possible to one another on the northern or southern border in a line. These will make one contiguous Great Wall. It is in these cities that I will try to utilize Y formations.
Third Wave: These are generally garbage cites planted to secure resources or serve as healing zones for your military.

I'm sorry this goes a bit OT, but I couldn't find a way to send a PM. So I'm just wondering wether you ignore IZ overlap almost entirely or was this just a specialcase? Or you just didn't mention anything about it, because this was more related to culture?

 

[TheGreatSleepyOne]

To answer your question WideCoast:
I do not ignore IZ zone overlap entirely. I only prioritized IZ overlap in what I call the productive core of my empire. In a culture victory, production is NOT as important as one might think. I prioritized Commercial hubs and theater squares in all cities, I focused on foreign trade to generate ludicrous amounts of gold then purchased most of my infrasturcture with gold instead of hammers. I did end up with IZ in 6 of my 12 cities but I really don't think I even needed to do that.

Spoiler :

http://imgur.com/a/TVJ5A

The first picture is 2 turns before victory.
And the rest show the length of my Great Wall.

 

[Victoria]

do not ignore IZ zone overlap entirely. I only prioritized IZ overlap in what I call the productive core of my empire. In a culture victory, production is NOT as important as one might think

Well said!... IZ is not so important, still important but there are so many other things to consider.

I do love the wall and the three point pieces of wall but notice that all aroud it probably evens out to 2 tourism per pieces of wall regardless of design... havibing done it do you agree on this theory?

 

[TheGreatSleepyOne]

I do love the wall and the three point pieces of wall but notice that all aroud it probably evens out to 2 tourism per pieces of wall regardless of design... havibing done it do you agree on this theory?

If you look at the first screenshot again, you can see that the 3-point walls ( Y -formation) are the only ones generating 2 visiting tourists, while the straight sections only get 1. I so do think that the Y-formation made an impact, but not as significant as building a resort.
It really depends on how early you research Castles and Flight since Visiting Tourists are generated based on lifetime culture gain and those 2 techs are needed for the Great Wall to generate Culture then Tourism. In hindsight, I should have actually prioritized science over production in this game so that I could get to Flight sooner (because I used gold as my means of producing buildings 60% of the time).

In conclusion, I would suggest that when pursuing a great wall tourism strategy, that you go for quantity over quality. That is, build as many cities to build as many segments as humanly possibly. And make Y formations where it is convenient.

Do not underestimate the gold generation of the Great Wall either. I was making ludicrous amounts of gold between the wall, foreign trade, luxury trading, and commercial hub investments.