Okay, I respect other's points of view, certainly, but if we’re stating with certainty that we’re currently at the right value, without evidence/testing/etc, that may be a flawed argument. I certainly don’t have all the data, I just know that in all games past, there are 1-3 runaways. Sometimes I’m in that pack, others I’m not, but it is always without fail that those running away have wonder stockpiles. I’ve been playing a few games recently with adjusted numbers and it’s proving to spread out wonders much more. I’m not talking about Ancient era, which will have spread out wonders due to starting tech paths, and no one is a runaway yet, so that’s not in the scope of the argument. Once Civs get their economy and yields chugging along and stretching out leads, starting sometime in Medieval/Renaissance, that’s when Civs start running away and catching more wonders.
My apologies, I should have been more clear with my original statement, if you are in the front of the pack, you don’t have many opportunity costs to picking all of the wonders. I’m playing a China game now, who I could snowball very easily with before the changes I made. It’s late Renaissance, and I am raking in gold. I have built everything there is to build in my 9 non-puppet cities due to investing. I’m leading Tech and Policies both by 1. At the top of a pack of about 2-3. The only things I can do at this point are build units (don’t need, I have plenty of Chu-Ko-Nus for defense and don’t plan to attack for a bit), diplomacy units (only have 2 paper so I’m doing those 2 at a time), workers (already have 19, so 2 per city is plenty), processes (running either tech or culture, whichever I need to keep the two mostly even), or wonders. There’s 4 wonders available. What’s my opportunity cost for NOT trying to build them? Processes? I will be fine not running a process for a few turns, since if I lose the wonder, I’ll get reimbursed culture anyways. No downside at all to trying for more wonders.
The questions you posed are all great to consider, very thorough! But if you’re having to ask those questions, you probably aren’t at a runaway point, and THAT’S the whole point of increased cost penalties for multiple wonders so you can’t snowball harder. If you’re not at the front of the pack, and you are having to ask those questions, you may not have built many wonders anyways, in which case the penalties do not affect you, which means nothing changes to you between what you do or ask yourself now to what you’d do if the penalties were higher. And if you HAVE built a bunch of wonders, but still not at the front of the pack, then perhaps you’re either not planning/building the right wonders for your strategy or not capitalizing on the benefits of those wonders, in which case the penalties would not be your problem, it would be the rest of your gameplay strategy.
EDIT: At this point, before I made these changes, I am confident I could build most if not all of these wonders because I have a good idea of what specific techs the other leaders are on, I know how many policies they have, and I am confident my production is higher on average than theirs, partly because I took Diligence in religion. Could they combo an investment and a GE to snipe a wonder or two? Sure, but that just means they get these and I’ll beat them to the ones in next era. But I am also confident I’d start a full runaway at this point previously. I’ll let you know how this game concludes but I’m betting with these higher costs I’ve added, I will get fewer this era and next since both are at 40% currently. That’ll slow me down either due to building those (longer build time) or just because I don’t have them at all.
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