Handling Wonders

[dsinsocal]

Why doesn't the game lock out wonders as soon as construction *begins* on it rather than after it's completed?

I find the whole notion that a civilization could spend hundreds of years building something only to have a 90%-complete construction disappear and be forgotten just because another civ (that you've never met or heard of before) beat you to the finish.

When a civ begins construction on a wonder it should send up a notification that "<insert civ name> has begun construction on <insert wonder>", and that wonder should be locked out for everyone else. This is far more realistic and would eliminate the pointless frustration of wasting 25-50 turns and getting absolutely nothing out of it because the AI beat you to the end.

 

[Amrunril]

If wonders were locked at the beginning of construction, securing them would be purely a matter of research, instead of a mix of research and production (and great people/special abilities), as it currently is. What's more, you could even have a wonder "claimed" but not constructed for the better part of the game, if you start it in a low production city or switch to producing something else. What should happen when you miss out on a wonder has always been a bit problematic, but I think the problems this solution creates are even bigger.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

I think the production you invest on the wonder should not be lost if you lose the race so you can invest it into something else. You still lose the wonder but it make the whole wonder thing a bit less risky and thus more encouraging.

 

[Uberfrog]

If wonders were locked at the beginning of construction, securing them would be purely a matter of research, instead of a mix of research and production (and great people/special abilities), as it currently is. What's more, you could even have a wonder "claimed" but not constructed for the better part of the game, if you start it in a low production city or switch to producing something else. What should happen when you miss out on a wonder has always been a bit problematic, but I think the problems this solution creates are even bigger.

You'd also be able to squat wonders with no intention of finishing them, by researching them first, and just queuing something else in production.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A couple of suggestions for the 'Wonder Problem"...
1. If you don't get the Wonder, you get a Unfinished Wonder graphic on the tile, and the amount of Production you put into the Wonder minus, say, 25 - 50%, is recovered at X Production per Turn in the city. When all the Production has been recovered, the Unfinished Wonder graphic disappears and you can build something else there. This would represent, among other things, the locals stealing stone, marble, and other building materials from the construction.
2. All Wonders, almost by definition, are Tourist Attractions. Every Wonder should have a Tourism Component. Even Incomplete Wonders, if protected agains Pillage (in other words, you Don't recover the Production Costs) would generate Tourism: look at the traffic created by the damaged, ruined sites today.

These additions, I think, might do a lot to lessen the pain of 'losing' a Wonder, and the problem of what to do with a wonder whose effects are largely Obsolete in the later Eras.
The Tourism from Wonders might not 'kick in' until the Industrial Era, but, for instance, the Pyramids in Egypt were already a Tourist Attraction in the 4th century BCE - Solon of Athens, among others, visited there and was regaled (as today) with 'tall tales' about their construction from local guides.

 

[dsinsocal]

If wonders were locked at the beginning of construction, securing them would be purely a matter of research, instead of a mix of research and production (and great people/special abilities), as it currently is.

I have no problem with that. If you want to lock up the production in your city for the next 80-100 turns because you rushed to build a wonder in a city that doesn't have a lot of production, that's a calculated trade off you have to make. I tend to think that such a decision would make it harder to win the game, not easier, because you're not building all the other things your city needs to grow and produce.

You'd also be able to squat wonders with no intention of finishing them, by researching them first, and just queuing something else in production.

Obviously, once you started building a wonder you shouldn't be able to un-queue it just to lock it up in limbo the entire game. That's an easily solveable problem.

 

[Klionheart]

Emphatically *no*.
It makes no sense that just because someone starts building something, no one else can attempt to beat him/her to the target. And it can be easily exploited with few if any drawbacks...if you drop a random 1-pop village in the snow to nonsensically block production for your 150-production neighbor metropolis you won't be missing on much. You might even get extra resources out of it.
Wonder racing has always been part of Civ and should remain so.

What could/should change is that you just lose the production if you're beaten. Previous editions had gold reimbursement, I don't know why that was removed in 6. Put it back, or Boris's ideas which are very nice too.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

What could/should change is that you just lose the production if you're beaten. Previous editions had gold reimbursement, I don't know why that was removed in 6. Put it back, or Boris's ideas which are very nice too.

Just give back the production. The more you complicate things the more exploits is opened up. See what happened to Civ IV.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Just give back the production. The more you complicate things the more exploits is opened up. See what happened to Civ IV.

Exactly. The reason I posted about a 'phased' return of the Production is that it avoids the 'Exploit' of starting a Wonder, by various means (starting and stopping in the Production Queue) making sure you don't get it, and then using the Production Pop to finish something entirely different. Converting building materials from an unfinished Mausoleum or Hanging Garden into Oxford University may be perfectly reasonable, but it just doesn't 'feel' right and the possibilities for Exploitation ONLY by the Human Player are obvious.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The one thing I do agree with is that it does seem odd that we lost the compensation for missed Wonders we had in previous iterations. Having this compo makes even more sense now that players-& the AI-can't just spam wonders in just one city....or at all, for that matter.

 

[sten_88]

Wonders are supposed to be unique and very much one-offs. I find it a bit weird that you can have multiple civs building the same wonder like several people across the world all had the exact same great idea, and even stranger that you then knock the whole thing down even at 99% complete just because someone else built it. I would suggest a system similar to the great people system where you earn points towards wonders by building certain things (e.g. libraries for Great Library), having certain tiles in your borders (e.g. desert for Pyramids), resources, luxuries etc. Then you still get the competition but without the loss of 20+ turns of production.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Wonders are supposed to be unique and very much one-offs. I find it a bit weird that you can have multiple civs building the same wonder like several people across the world all had the exact same great idea, and even stranger that you then knock the whole thing down even at 99% complete just because someone else built it. I would suggest a system similar to the great people system where you earn points towards wonders by building certain things (e.g. libraries for Great Library), having certain tiles in your borders (e.g. desert for Pyramids), resources, luxuries etc. Then you still get the competition but without the loss of 20+ turns of production.

The problem is the most 'Wonders' are not 'one-offs', they are More Of The Same or Biggest Of Many. There were lots of libraries in the ancient world, the Museum and Library at Alexandria just happened to be the biggest. There are more Great Temples than you can shake an archeologist at, the game just happens to pick a few to be 'Wonders'. Oxford University - if it's a Wonder, there are at least a dozen other Universities that could claim the same title for equal or better reasons.
BUT I agree that there should be more Specific Requirements to start building a Particular Wonder. Civ VI got a good start by having specific terrain/district requirements in addition to Tech/Civic requirements, but we still have enough 'Wonder Races' that it's obvious they didn't go far enough...
For instance:
Great Library requires, obviously, Writing, but also requires the city have trade routes to bring in books and scrolls to be copied, a tradition of literacy and wide-ranging Inquiry that promotes books on a multitude of subjects. So, perhaps, in addition to the current Civics requirements, you might also need the Policy of Natural Philosophy and at least 2 foreign Trade Routes to start this wonder.
Oxford (or any other Great University) may require not only the Tech: Scientific Theory, but also the Civic: Humanism and/or the Policies of Rationalism or Humanism, in order to have a sufficiently wide-ranging cirriculum to make it Great.

Any 'military' Wonder, like the Alhambra or Terra-cotta Army , as a minimum, you must have fought at least one War - or possibly defeated/destroyed at least one enemy (non-Barbarian) unit.

A more complex system of requirements, but also requiring a major investment in several directions to start a Wonder, making it much less likely that several Civilizations in the same game will all proceed in exactly the same path to be able to compete for it.

 

[Lee Duane Fitzsimmons]

A lot of the speculation in this thread sounds interesting. If anyone knows of a mod that has this feature, then let me know.