How to maximize the use of your national wonders?

[Cjreynol]

Ok, so one thing I have been trying to work on lately is building my national wonders in the best possible cities so I can get the most use out of them. I have a thread about the Globe in the forum, and I have a general idea about all of them, but I was wondering what ideas people had specifically. And maybe a few interesting strategies for them too.

So please, share away

 

[madscientist]

Oxford goes in a high commerce or super specialist city to exploit the beaker output. Generally it already has an academy and frequesntly is the capital. Note Bureacracy's 50% comemrce boost to the capital is done BEFORE the Oxford bonus.

National Epic: Your GP farm. Can pool nicely with National Park later on for a super GP farm.

Heroic Epic: The strongest early production city. You want alot of early hammers ehre.

Globe: High food so you can abuse the draft and/or slavery.

Hermitage: weakest cultural border or one fo the big three on culture wins.

IronWorks: takes a little forsight to establish an additional super production city, INDEPENDENT of the HE or capital cities.

Maori: A high seatile coastal city with enough production to get them built in a reasonable time.

West Point: A coastal city so bonus applies to naval ships. Pairs well with Maori.

Forbidden Palace: Far from the capital, but NOT at the end of the empire. Picture the capital and FP as focal points in an eclipse.

Red Cross: A late city with alot of military production.

NAtional Park: Somewhere with alot of forrests for preserves and those free specialists.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

National Epic: Your GP farm. Can pool nicely with National Park later on for a super GP farm.

Translation: several high food tiles, surrounded by lots of flat tiles that can be connected (via farms) to fresh water (runs lots of specialists), or a production center (with food bonuses to drive the hills) that can be dedicated to building wonders.

Heroic Epic: The strongest early production city. You want alot of early hammers ehre.

Ergo green hills and food bonuses - 15-20 base hammers per turn. More is awesome, but you take what you can get.

Globe: High food so you can abuse the draft and/or slavery.

Note that the rest of the tiles can be junk, once you have enough food to recover a pop per turn.

Hermitage: weakest cultural border or one fo the big three on culture wins.

If you are planning to set the commerce slider to 100% culture, then this will usually be a high commerce city. A typical approach is to try to get all of your cities legendary at the same time, so the Hermitage normally goes in culture city #2 (the capitol doesn't usually need the help, and city three gets pumped full of great works in the end game).

IronWorks: takes a little forsight to establish an additional super production city, INDEPENDENT of the HE or capital cities.

Usually on a river, with 20 green and brown tiles that can feed themselves off of resources (not farming/windmilling tiles)

Maori: A high seatile coastal city with enough production to get them built in a reasonable time.

Generally one in which you want to be working the water tiles anyway (fresh water, and aquatic resources, and of course coastal preferred to ocean).

Red Cross: A late city with alot of military production.

This one's a bit tricky - you max it out in a city that produces a lot of units; especially a city drafting units as well as producing them.

 

[z0wb13]

do a search, there are lots of threads discussing this. try this.

 

[Calouste]

Didn't see Wall Street mentioned:

If you have a shrine, that is the obvious location.

If you don't, you need to but it somewhere with either good commerce or good food so you can run Merchant specialists (Wall Street + Market + Grocer give you 7 Merchant slots), and good production because Wall Street costs quite a few hammers, and you want to have a Bank, Market and Grocer as well, and most likely you want to pump Corporation Executives from there. I find it works quite well with Maoi (hammers + lots of commerce + decent food), but you can also look at building some Workshops in that city and later farming them over to get the hammers needed to get the infrastructure up in a decent time.

If you are going for corporations, don't be too hung up on where the shrine is if it is in a marginal city, as the corporation income quickly overtakes the shrine income.

 

[Cjreynol]

Thanks everyone, should help out a lot, I really appreciate it

And I have never thought about putting West Point in a coastal city!
It usually tends to go with the HE or the Red Cross in some city loaded with hills or the like. I really should have thought of that haha

I noticed that a lot of cities up on the list have a lot of different specifications to them, do you usually try to spread them out over a bunch of cities or do you try to keep 2 together for some synergy?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I noticed that a lot of cities up on the list have a lot of different specifications to them, do you usually try to spread them out over a bunch of cities or do you try to keep 2 together for some synergy?

September 2009
July 2009
March 2009
January 2009
Late December 2008
Early December 2008
August 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
July 2006
June 2006
Early June 2006
May 2006
March 2006

 

[madscientist]

I knew I forgot one, Wall Street. It goes into a shrined city and/or Corporate HQ.

Thanks to VoU for translation from MadScientistese into a CIV friendly format!

West Point combines well with a drydocks, especially for Charismatic leaders for 3 free promotions. When warlords came out with the Charismatic trait they reduced barracks to +3 XP but kept drydocks at +4 XP.

 

[Cjreynol]

Haha I see more clearly now. And thanks VoU for finding all those articles, I'm usually not much for the search function, maybe I should start

 

[6K Man]

One thing to remember is that a lot of the National Wonders provide specialist slots - Wall Street for Merchants, Oxford for Scientists, Ironworks for Engineers. So, when selecting sites, it often makes sense to ensure that there will be enough food to take advantage of these specialist slots (and the additional multiples to specialist output that the wonder provides!).

 

[Hsinchu]

Wall Street and Oxford usually both go into my Buro Capital. I frequently find that the settled GAs start to stack up.

Additionally, some Combos that I'm fond of are West Point+Heroic Epic. After Pentagon, and maybe some help with Barracks/Drydock/Vassalage/Theocracy, you can churn out some dangerous super soldiers.

Also, West Point+Red Cross if West Point was previously deferred for a while. Prior to Mechanized infantry/SEALS, the Marching Orders are pretty rad.

I don't know why, but I find myself smashing Hermitage together with National Epic in a wonderspam city. They don't synergize so much as they both exploit wonder benefits. Going for cultural victory, the Artist side of NE is really beneficial, too. I don't think Globe synergizes very well with either of them, except in the case of a SE city, Globe + NE, but since you typically won't have the hammers for Globe quickly, for me this more often than not requires an extra GE that I would rather keep for other stuff.

 

[Grashopa]

I've never used the Globe, or heard anyone mention HE and GT in the same city - doesn't HE multipy the whipped hammers as well? Or is it just not necessary? Anyone have a save so I can see how whipping and drafting with GT work?

How much food do you want in a GT city? Lets say you have irrigated wheat, grassland cows and 6 flood plains that happened to be cottaged. Do you need to farm over the FPs?

 

[jauggy]

Oxford goes in a high commerce or super specialist city to exploit the beaker output. Generally it already has an academy and frequesntly is the capital. Note Bureacracy's 50% comemrce boost to the capital is done BEFORE the Oxford bonus.

Question: So the oxford bonus is not done on the base, but 150% of the base? What about other building/civic multipliers?

 

[Grashopa]

bureaucracy increases commerce by 50%. All other multipliers increase gold or beakers which comes after total commerce is determined and multiplied by your slider.

 

[madscientist]

Question: So the oxford bonus is not done on the base, but 150% of the base? What about other building/civic multipliers?

Buracracy works on the commerce base while Oxford works on the beakers base

Example for easy math, your capital get's 100 commerce, under bureacracy it is now 150 commerce. Without Buracreacy it's 100 cammerce.

Now the slider kicks in, say 50% science and 50% gold. You now have 75 base beakers and 75 base gold under Bureacracy, and 50 beakers/50 gold under any other civic.

Add multipliers

Oxford/Academy/Library/Univeristy = 200% beakers, thus 225 beakers. Without Bueacracy beakers would be 150.

MArket/Grocer/Bank = 100% gold, thus the Burecratic capitals get's you 150 gold, other civics it's 100 gold. Wall Street would get you another 75 gold.

Iron works in the capital does the same with Bureacratic hammers although there is not slider for hammers.

Summary in example, under Bureacracy you get 225 beakers/150 gold versus 150 beakers/100 gold. The question for me during games is if the extra 2 commerce from Free Speech per town outweight the Bureacracy bonus OR whether the numerous bonus's of nationhood outweigh it.

 

[kochman]

Oxford: Usually my capital, with an academy, etc... wherever you get the most beakers...
National Epic: GP +100%, usually I like to put this in my highest great scientist producing city (capital).

Heroic Epic: Your war machine, couple w/ West Point
West Point: Your war machine, couple w/ Heroic Epic

Globe Theatre: Highest potential population.

Hermitage: Culture magnifier, couple with globe theater for GA production

IronWorks: Where do you have the most production?

Maori: Naval capital

Forbidden Palace: Other continent? If you are in one continent only, then in the middle of the further strech of your empire.
Wall Street: Good to combine with the forbidden palace (or versaille), and then found a corporation there too.

Red Cross: A late city with alot of military production, perhaps the naval capital

National Park: where you want, not an incredibly helpful one

 

[Woodreaux]

When I'm doing town & windmill based economies, I build Oxford & Wall Street in separate cities and keep lots of extra food available so I can run some specialists.

If I'm planning to run corporations, I'll build the Globe Theatre in at location with lots of extra food and run enough artists to spawn a great artist (for Civilized Jewelery). Afterwards, I generally just convert that city to a high population commerce city.