Manhattan Project and Apollo Program should cost more production.

[kenrickandbros]

The Manhattan Project and Apollo Program cost 750 production. Wonders in the same part of the game cost 1250 production, and they don't give you nukes/spaceship parts!

For the Manhattan Project, this excerpt comes directly from the civilization wiki "The US began serious efforts to create a nuclear bomb in the 1930s, but the program ramped up into high gear after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in late 1941. Eventually the program would employ some 125,000 people and cost approximately $20 billion (in today's dollars)." It took 10+ years, the equivalent of 20 billion dollars, and the effort of 125,000 workers. I'm not saying that it should cost several thousand production, but 750 seems like nothing!

For Apollo Program, this excerpt also comes from the wiki "...Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, arguably the single greatest feat of engineering in human history. The Apollo Program was hugely expensive, but the advances it brought in technology and science have changed the world forever."

I think they should cost 1250 production, like wonders in the same era.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

You're actually touching on a point that needs to be addressed for a lot of "Wonders" throughout the game: that they are Hugely expensive, and that it took the resources of an entire region or Civilization to build them, not just one city.

In this respect, there is a lot of variation among the 'World Wonders'.
The Great Wall
The Pyramids
The Terracotta Army
Neuschanstein
The Manhattan Project
The Apollo Program

All of these required the resources of the entire state to build. 'Mad Ludwig's' Neuschanstein Project and his other palace projects almost bankrupted Bavaria, and led to his being quietly pt away in an asylum. All of these 'Wonders' required workers and specialists to be gathered from all parts of the country, and in some case (Great Wall the classic example) also used up workers who died by the thousands.
By contrast, other 'Wonders' are much smaller in scale, although their influence may be, in the long run, no less Wonderful:
The Great Library (Museum at Alexandria)
The Great Lighthouse (Pharos)
The Mausoleum (of Halicarnassus)
The Colossus (of Rhodes)

These required very little resources outside of those available to the city in which they were built. In fact, the Mausoleum and Colossus were built by City States in game terms!

We need a New Mechanism for the construction of some Wonders, that requires resources from outside the immediate construction site, instead of just making outside resources a 'nice to have' feature like the current internal Production Trade Routes.

For one thing, by requiring and making possible the use of Civilization-wide resources for Wonder Construction, we would also avoid the Great Production City Builds All the Wonders effect we get now - come on, we've all done it: get one city full of Hammers and let it crank out whatever Wonder you're grubbing for, never mind if you wind up with icons for the Colossus, Pyramids, Big Ben and Eiffel Tower all crammed in around a single city!

In addition, there are Social Policy/Political/Religious requirements for some Wonders. The Pyramids and Terracotta Army were both built by Semi-Divine Absolute Monarchs: can you imagine either of them being completed by a civilization that did not already have a number of Tradition Social Policies and an Absolute Monarchy of a government? The Great Library requires not only Writing (literacy), but also the kind of Rational Inquiry exemplified by Philosophy and some of the Freedom and Rationalism Social Policies. In fact, once Piety and religious 'policies' became dominant (Christianity and Islam) the Library was destroyed by them.

So, another brake on 'Wonder Hogging' would be more Social/Religious Policy requirements for some Wonders. This will get less important as the game progresses into the Industrial and later Eras, but at that point the majority of 'Wonders' also get expensive enough to require Multi-City or Civ-wde support, which should act as an equal 'brake' on building multiple Wonders at once within one civilization simply because you have several Production Cities.

 

[Browd]

We need a New Mechanism for the construction of some Wonders, that requires resources from outside the immediate construction site, instead of just making outside resources a 'nice to have' feature like the current internal Production Trade Routes.

But you don't want a mechanism that arbitrarily penalizes OCC players. The ability to combine production across cities (a la Worlds Fair, etc.) to finish a wonder more quickly should not REQUIRE that you have multiple cities.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

But you don't want a mechanism that arbitrarily penalizes OCC players. The ability to combine production across cities (a la Worlds Fair, etc.) to finish a wonder more quickly should not REQUIRE that you have multiple cities.

I could argue, actually, that it's not arbitrary and historically an OCC Civilization would find some Wonders simply out of reach BUT for game purposes, we don't have to be that historically accurate!.

Instead how about a mechanism where you could declare a National Project or 'Wonder Mode' during which time Everything is sacrificed n The National Interest. So, your Gold, Culture, Growth, and Happiness might all be 'voluntarily' reduced to pour everything into Production for the Wonder. Obviously, the less of everything else you've got, the less you can do this, but it would go some way to represent the requirements to build many Wonders.

- And, in a larger Multi-City Empire, doing this to largely benefit construction in One City (where the Wonder is being built) should generate some extreme Happiness penalties in al the other cities, making this Mode much less useable by larger Civs, and therefore a "leveling influence" for the OCC types. This, of course, has to be paired with some Extreme Results from Unhappiness - Revolts, Work Shutdown, Governments Falling - a lot more than the watered down effects we have now in Civ V.

Here's another thought: The National Project or National Emergency Mode could also be used to dramatically increase/speed up the production of Units, also - replicating, perhaps, the Mass Mobilizations in wartime of Revolutionary France, European states in WWI, and, especially, the Soviet Union in WWII, when they effectively generated an entirely new army in 3 months, then duplicated that in the next 6 months, and all while evacuating most of their industry.
In wartime this would generate less Unhappiness ("Patriotism factor?") but still reduce everything but Production - all the warring states in WWII essentially stopped all 'Luxury' production for civilians, rationed Food, and diverted all raw materials to Military Production.
Declaring a National Project or National Emergency should also require or be modified by certain Social Policies or Ideologies, and even by Technology: many early civilizations historically simply didn't have the administration or control over their population to get the 'sacrifices' out of them.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

This is a sacrifice made for gameplay. Just as the wonders themselves grant nearly magical abilities.

I feel like this is the line of thought that led to the wonder limit in Civ IV. Very hype-deflating.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

This is a sacrifice made for gameplay. Just as the wonders themselves grant nearly magical abilities.

I feel like this is the line of thought that led to the wonder limit in Civ IV. Very hype-deflating.

Well, this is also potentially starting a whole new discussion, not on the cost of some Wonders, but on the entire Purpose of Wonders in the game.

First, I think it's safe to say we're not going to get rid of them - they've been a popular part of Civ since at least Civ 2 (I never played the original Civ, so someone can perhaps tell us if Wonders were in the original game?).

Second, I think the major problems with Wonders are two-fold:
...One, they provide Benefits and Abilities that are, as you stated, 'Magical' - more prosaically, available almost no other way regardless of how you play - so they may be Nice To Have in some games, in others yo are Required to compete for them - you cannot ignore them in your play.
...Two, they are subject to gross Abuse: ridiculous concentrations of totally unrelated Wonders clumped into one Wonder-Builder City: on the one hand, providing multiple Civ-Wide Benefits, on the other hand, making one Humungous Basket of Goodies to tempt a would-be conqueror.

So, IMHO, they contribute to the historical 'flavor; of the game while grossly distorting the historical play of the game.

My suggestions in this thread were specific to the OP's contention that some Wonders required far more resources than the game required. I think that contention could be expanded, and it would also help with the two primary problems with Wonders:

First, in that many Wonders required Civilization-wide Assets to build, and should be virtually impossible for a single city to construct on its own.
Second, that many Wonders - in fact, I'll go so far as to say that most of them before the Industrial Age - required Social or Religious Policies or combinations of those and government types to Build, AND that those requirements were far more restrictive than the amount of Production Assets required.

I think, in addition, that to complete the 'Reform of Wonders' one other stipulation should be implemented:

Every Benefit provided by a Wonder should also be available by some other form of construction, Policy, or play. If a Wonder makes all your Workers more efficient and provides 'free' workers, there should be some other method of getting the same effect - probably requiring more time and effort, but available in the same general 'Era' of the game as the Wonder, so that the Wonder, or other Wonders, don't become the focus of the game.
Wonders should be the culmination of a combination of Policies and playing decisions that may cut you off entirely from building other Wonders or gaining other benefits. Like everything else in the game, building a Wonder should require a meaningful decision or set of decisions involving gain and sacrifice - not as in Civ V, where all decisions simply involve which benefit to go after first.