How do you normally pair up your national wonders?

[Bandobras Took]

National Park / Iron Works is great for a production city. If you get it riverside, that will be the one that builds the Three Gorges. Another good combo is Moia / Iron Works if you can afford the health and have a lot of ocean tiles.

Ironworks without National Park is even better for a production city.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Ironworks without National Park is even better for a production city.

I was wondering why that statement irked me so much. National Park removes coal from your city IE takes away HALF of the Ironworks bonus!!!

 

[CivCorpse]

HE + IW makes sense if...

1. It's the best production site on the map
2. You are playing Epic or Marathon

Nope. IW+HE is overkill. Especially at the slower speeds where unit costs do not scale with building speeds. My HE+WP city is usually cranking out 2 modern armor every 3 turns. If I decide I want a wonder it is cranking out zero units for the duration of the wonder building.
Settling a GG in the IW city and having it crank out CR2 cannons or CG2 garrison troops for newly captured cities while my HE spam assault troops is a great compliment.
Though my prefered method is to build the pentagon and use the GG as a military academy instead.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Nope. IW+HE is overkill. Especially at the slower speeds where unit costs do not scale with building speeds. My HE+WP city is usually cranking out 2 modern armor every 3 turns. If I decide I want a wonder it is cranking out zero units for the duration of the wonder building.
Settling a GG in the IW city and having it crank out CR2 cannons or CG2 garrison troops for newly captured cities while my HE spam assault troops is a great compliment.
Though my prefered method is to build the pentagon and use the GG as a military academy instead.

You're generalizing big time. I'm sorry, but some maps just aren't that heavy on production. Sometimes, the best production city on your continent only has base 35-40 hammers after railroading the mines. For example my current game is incredible grassland and grassland hills heavy. I have a huge empire, but my best production city only has base 38 hammers. On marathon, the +100% in my capital with +50% from bureaucracy and +25% from forge (soon to have +75% from powered factories) so I can build my spaceship parts but if there is an aggressive CIV that tries to attack me while launching or whatever I can pump out modern armors in 1 turn in my capital and 2 turns in my other 2 cities. I'm okay.

 

[popejubal]

You're generalizing big time. I'm sorry, but some maps just aren't that heavy on production. Sometimes, the best production city on your continent only has base 35-40 hammers after railroading the mines. For example my current game is incredible grassland and grassland hills heavy. I have a huge empire, but my best production city only has base 38 hammers. On marathon, the +100% in my capital with +50% from bureaucracy and +25% from forge (soon to have +75% from powered factories) so I can build my spaceship parts but if there is an aggressive CIV that tries to attack me while launching or whatever I can pump out modern armors in 1 turn in my capital and 2 turns in my other 2 cities. I'm okay.

So right now, you're wasting the Heroic Epic entirely.

I can see a couple of situations when I'd put the HE and IronWorks in the same city - but not many. My Heroic Epic city is almost always going to have settled Great Generals in it, so every turn not spend building troops is going to waste GG XP as well as the HE production bonus. The Iron Works takes a lot of hammers to build (hammers that don't get +100% from HE, by the way) and any spaceship parts or wonders are going to miss out on that bonus as well.

I'd much rather have the HE city pump out units from the time it is built until the end of the game and put the Iron Works in another city where it will do me the most good. The Iron Works city can boost another city's military production quite well too and I don't think I've ever had a game where I didn't have at least 2 production cities by the time IW was available (OCC excluded, of course).

Pretty much the only time I can think of where I would build the IW in the same city as HE is when it's my biggest production city and I know that I'm going to not be in a war for the rest of the game (entire world is one giant Buddhist -fest with zillions of mutual Defensive Pacts).

Edit: If Civ +% bonuses were multiplicative instead of additive, I'd build this every game without fail. As it is now, each +% bonus in a given city is worth less than the last, so I'd rather spread the bonuses around.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

No. I'm not wasting anything. By the time the Ironworks is available, I've already decided on my victory condition. Up until that point, my HE city is pumping NOTHING BUT UNITS. So I'm doing exactly as you do, except with Ironworks, I am able to build the most expensive units in 1 turn each time. Also, if the map is poor, the HE + Ironworks can still pump out the most expensive units in 1-2 turns even if base hammer production is only 30-35. Not too shabby. Again, it's situational and you're giving a lot of different situations and generalizing the solution.

 

[Skallagrimson]

35 hammers is 11 workshops and a plains hill windmill, everything else grass cottages. If that's an Iron Works, well, add this to Attacko's Guide, LOL.

Point being HE alone should get you plenty of unit for even the most expensive units, so long as it's a decent hammer yield city. Even a Moai peninsula.

 

[popejubal]

No. I'm not wasting anything. By the time the Ironworks is available, I've already decided on my victory condition. Up until that point, my HE city is pumping NOTHING BUT UNITS. So I'm doing exactly as you do, except with Ironworks, I am able to build the most expensive units in 1 turn each time.

And every turn that you spend building Iron Works is a turn not spent building units. Iron Works takes a whole lot of turns. That's a whole lot of highly promoted units you haven't built.

 

[TabascoBob]

Well, there are twelve National Wonders (14 if you count the palaces). If you assume you must pair them up, here's my 2 gp (some already said, a couple wind up oddly paired because there's nothing left...)

1. Oxford U and National Epic (seems to have a lot of votes)
2. Maoi Statues and Heroic Epic- this is a common combo for me because of the time in the game that these become available. 2 turn cats and swords have me hooked.
3. Iron Works and.... West Point? Starting to get a little shaky, because I may not want my number one production city concentrating on military units for eternity....
4. Wall Street and.... well, by process of elimination, the remaining choices (in order of preference) are National Park, Hermitage, Mount Rushmore, Red Cross, and Globe Theater. GT, for the drafting reasons, is out; MR and RC have no synergy; WS and Hermitage might be cultural overkill, if WS is in one of your core cities and it has one or more shrines (and therefore cathedrals, etc.) So WS and NP and run those merchants and priests (moneychangers in the temple anyone?)
5. Getting down in the barrel: Globe Theater and.... I guess RC, if you are drafting, you might as well draft medics, no?
6. That leaves Hermitage and Mount Rushmore. If you're building Herm in a city that needs that extra 100% culture boost (to go with as many cathedrals as you can jam in there), then having MR as the "other" national wonder doesn't hurt (nor does it help.)
7. the palaces, can't go together but on the list for sake of complete-ness.

Palace or Forbidden Palace probably get first shot at the Wall Street combo; you don't need to keep your capital in the OU-NE or MS-HE location. If you insist on IW in your capital, then WS makes sense for the beauracracy centuries....

Obviously, pairing all of them is as the experts say, "sub-optimal." But this was a useful thread, if only to focus the mind on the issue and clarify things.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

2. Maoi Statues and Heroic Epic- this is a common combo for me because of the time in the game that these become available. 2 turn cats and swords have me hooked.
3. Iron Works and.... West Point? Starting to get a little shaky, because I may not want my number one production city concentrating on military units for eternity....

That's why you generally see people combining Heroic Epic (bonus only to military units) and Westpoint so that you are sure to have fast/powerful units coming out of your military factory. The Ironworks/Maoi Statues makes more sense out of these since you can utilize those extra hammers for anything you need (including navy if necessary).

I tend to combine Ironworks/Heroic Epic to be spitting out units 1 per turn in any age (including futuristic) when I'm playing for domination or conquest victories. But if I'm turtling up after my initial wars and going for anything else, I'll usually combine Heroic/Westpoint (preferably in a lower hammer count city) and Ironworks goes in the highest hammer count city I have.

 

[carl corey]

Well, most of the time Heroic Epic is available much earlier than IW. I don't like building HE in the second best production city just to save it for IW which becomes available ~800-1000 years later. The units that I'd lose because of this would affect the number of cities I take which would affect my whole game. I'd rather build workshops/watermills in a conquered city after getting State Property and build IW in there for example, even if it meant I'd knock down a few cottages. It's very rare that I tell myself from the BCs: "This is my IW city!". I remember doing it only once, when there was a location with two 4 food calendar resources (sugar?), lots of riverside grassland and a couple of hills, and almost entirely covered in jungle. Of course the decision was also influenced by the fact that I had other commerce cities settled much earlier, otherwise that could easily have become a commerce city.

In short:
- HE: usually best production city available early or with potential to have the best production in the near future
- IW: late decision; a mostly grassland riverside city, knock down everything and build workshops, watermills and maybe some farms if not in SP.

About WP: if I'm going for Cuirassiers WP will probably not get built for a while since I have to build from scratch pretty much all my cavalry. The window for using Cuirassiers is also pretty short to mess around with such an expansive building (unless I'm Industrious AND have stone). If I went for Rifling and only got Military Tradition afterwards then drafting and maybe upgrading CR maces is already going to give me the bulk of my army. In which case I could devote the time to build WP. The best time I found is after clearing your continent and waiting to build your navy to take out the other continent. If your HE city isn't coastal simply building additional land troops won't help very much to advance your attack anyway. If going for Steel/Military Science then most probably Military Tradition is delayed/skipped anyway.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

"This is my IW city!". I remember doing it only once, when there was a location with two 4 food calendar resources (sugar?), lots of riverside grassland and a couple of hills, and almost entirely covered in jungle.

That doesn't really sound like a great Ironworks city to me at all. +100% production to a base 10 city is only going to give you 20 .

I don't really decide my Ironworks city that early either. But you can definitely count what your total count will be once all bonuses are applied. If a city will have base 40-50 after all bonuses are applied, then I'm not going to hesitate in designating that my Ironworks city.

I don't like building HE in the second best production city

I'm not sure who said they would.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I don't really decide my Ironworks city that early either. But you can definitely count what your total count will be once all bonuses are applied. If a city will have base 40-50 after all bonuses are applied, then I'm not going to hesitate in designating that my Ironworks city.

Are you kidding? A football field has 60+ production....

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

That sounds good. But it looks more like a ridiculous economic city. Replace all those workshops with towns and you'd be looking at an economic giant.

Plus, that's only with State Property. Not everyone goes into SP.

I love workshops, too. But that city is just begging to become an economic GIANT. With a FIN leader, you're looking at around 150 just from towns. Which translates (after Lib/Univ/Obser) into around 185 per turn with your standard 70% slider. And that's not including gained from trade routes.

Even without a FIN leader, you're still looking at around 125 from towns.

 

[carl corey]

Well, if you have a lot of commerce cities and only a few production ones it's not too bad to turn a grassland city into a production one. Also, VS's city doesn't show Caste System bonus, which will net you another ~15 base (and levee effect, but a commerce city could get it too, just like trade routes will be the same in both cities). It could be interesting to look at good IW sites for non-SP cities too though, but I don't have a lot of saves kept and I think in most of them I ran SP.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Well, if you have a lot of commerce cities and only a few production ones it's not too bad to turn a grassland city into a production one. Also, VS's city doesn't show Caste System bonus, which will net you another ~15 base (and levee effect, but a commerce city could get it too, just like trade routes will be the same in both cities). It could be interesting to look at good IW sites for non-SP cities too though, but I don't have a lot of saves kept and I think in most of them I ran SP.

I definitely agree if you have a robust economy, this is a great way to get another production city up and running. In fact, I started a thread about floodplains and workshops (not running State property, it gives the same tile as those grassland workshops with SP).

That's very situational, though. You're talking about a grassland city that is undeveloped and late enough in the game to not need 125-150 . Granted, it takes time to build up those cottages, but in such a situation you'll probably be running Emancipation so they'll grow fairly quickly. In the situation that you don't need more commerce, then I'm all in for such an awesome production city.

 

[Skallagrimson]

There are a lot of situational caveats to the city combos, now that I think about them, mostly map-related and whether the strategy is pure war or if you want to grab Internet and Cristo along the way (to get a free spiritual trait and snarf up techs without having to steal or trade), and if you will be space racing or not.

For pure war it may make sense to either pair up IW + WP (use the IW's boost to build WP faster), or GT + WP + a few gg's (5 XP draftees). If there's going to be a point where you'll be swirling down to just a single unit pump in the late game (space race or turtling or rebuilding the economy AFTER a major war push), then HE + WP makes the most sense.

It's not extremely critical where WP goes since it's really just a lot of to pre-settle 2 gg's in a city. Actually I think Pentagon is higher payback in a warmongering mode because it gives you the equivalent of a gg settled *everywhere* (and drops the gg requirement in the draft city for 5 XP draftees, to 2), and if you're in warmongering mode you're going to be more widely producing units.

If war is a means to an end (like carving out a lot of new prod cities to boost a space race strategy), we're back to HE/WP because you'll eventually drop back to one elite unit pump, which IMO is best to also be coastal for elite naval units, which means you want a strong productive coastal city, which admittedly not every map will provide. During the war you let civics give you the wider boost for the national unit pumping effort.