National Wonders, where to place them??

[krikav]

National wonders...

I think it would be safe to say that these things are the Achilles' heel of my game.
In my last game, I built Great Lib and Temple of Aretmis in a city I thought would be my oxford city.
However, once national wonder and oxford was in place, and at the time of state property, the presence of rivers and hills made this city my best production city instead.

So good in fact, that it rivaled the city in which I placed ironworks in production...

I seem to allways end up with no decent place to put globe theatre for drafting, since I want a high food city for a great people farm.

Wall-street seems to be the only national wonder that is easy to place, in a holy city.
However, I sometimes settle a few great prophets/great merchants in my great people factory before I got a holy city (or before it's up to speed), and that makes me want to build it there instead..

 

[OneLeggedRhino]

Once you've scouted but before placing cities, plan out the specializations. BUG mod helps with this, since you can place a BFC on the map for each city (if you read any of my games, you'll see that dotmap all the time).

It's helpful to have a list of defaults going in, so you know what you're looking for. Here's a good basic list:

One killer cottage city (1-2 food resources, 1-2 hills, lots of flat grass), which gets Ox, Wall St, palace for Bureaucracy and any settled commerce-type specialists. I usually place this one on the dotmap first (no need to build it first, but place it first, then plan around it).

One killer production city that gets Heroic Epic and your Great Generals. Build the lategame Exp wonder here too.

One killer food city that gets National Epic.

This plan carried me well into Immortal difficulty.

From there, add a second food city for drafting, possibly move Wall St to your holy city, add another prod city for Iron Works, and so on.

But the real trick is, instead of building cities then figuring out the specialization, figure out the specialization while you do your dotmap.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

However, once national wonder and oxford was in place, and at the time of state property, the presence of rivers and hills made this city my best production city instead.

So good in fact, that it rivaled the city in which I placed ironworks in production...

Yup - had that problem too. Primarily, it's just a matter of practice to look at the terrain to discover what a city will look like in the modern eras. This was my attempt to explain what I see, but for a number of reasons it hasn't held up very well.

I seem to always end up with no decent place to put globe theatre for drafting, since I want a high food city for a great people farm.

I think you'll find that you don't actually need a high food city for a drafting farm - what you really need is a place that grows back quickly. So a small city (large enough that you can actually draft the units you want, but no larger), where the population is primarily working farms should do it. So you need enough production to get the Theater built, and irrigation lines, and that's really about it.

In a way, it's an analog of the Heroic Epic. HE needs production, but it doesn't really need a lot of production - sure, 60 hammers per turn would be better, but something on the order of 20 hammers per turn is enough - especially if you can use those hammers to start capturing important cities from your neighbors.

Wall-street seems to be the only national wonder that is easy to place, in a holy city.

However, I sometimes settle a few great prophets/great merchants in my great people factory before I got a holy city (or before it's up to speed), and that makes me want to build it there instead..

Well, that's a matter of planning and vision - both seeing what the map should look like in the future, and arranging for the shrine to appear on schedule. One of the easiest ways to get Wall Street to work is to persuade the AI to build the shrine for you.

 

[Puhi]

One killer cottage city (1-2 food resources, 1-2 hills, lots of flat grass), which gets Ox, Wall St, palace for Bureaucracy and any settled commerce-type specialists.

I would disagree with putting Oxford and Wall St. together. If you have a cottaged Oxford, you max out its value with a high science slider. If Wall Street is in a cottaged city, a high science slider means you aren't getting much value.

If you plan on running a relatively high science slider, I find it best to farm your Wall St. and run merchant specialists.

 

[GGracchus]

I like to have cities that are almost definitely going to have the national wonders: NE goes in the GP farm, OU goes in my capital, Wall Street goes in the city with highest wealth. Ironworks goes in highest production. I'm not afraid to overlap something like Ironworks and OU or something, high science and production is good. The highest wealth city(or second highest if it's also the cap which is the three highest), then I found corps and build wall street.

 

[Mantic0re]

Build them early. Factories and state property make national wonders a bit less important. Early HE, OU, and maybe GT are massively important in their era. Don't delay them for that ideal spot.

 

[ahcos]

Build them early. Factories and state property make national wonders a bit less important. Early HE, OU, and maybe GT are massively important in their era. Don't delay them for that ideal spot.

Quoting for importance. Really, don't delay, unless you'll have the "perfect" spot set up a few turns after Usually, in Civ4 it's less important what you'll gain from a city in the late-mid/lategame, but what you'll gain in the earlygame/early midgame. In one of my last games my NE was a city only having a pig + 3 grassland farms, 2 desert, 4 tiles that were shared with my cap and ~6 watertiles without lighthouse because one-off-the-coast plus hills, in other words: a pretty crappy NE city. But i had it up and running with 3 specialists ~ 150 BC or so, and that was far more important.

Same for oxford: even weaker cities will benefit largely from the output bonus. You should usually aim for the best spot you have right now, don't wait on the wonders.

And for HE, you can also whip there. Sometimes a 3 hills city with massive food is enough, you can change that city in a workshop powerhouse later in the game if needed.

Long story short: the most important thing is to build national wonders fast.

Regarding oxford + ironworks, IW is a wonder i rarely build out of space race attempts, so it's okay to pair those two wonders for me: just bulldoze the cottages with workshops as soon as production becomes the bottleneck in the spacerace, e.g. when you've researched 2/3 of the techs needed for space. It's not the most clever thing in the world to pair the wonders, but there's worse (HE+NE, moia + NE). In general, any city that can reach pop 15+ and has enough food to support mainly workshops is a decent IW city, with a river->levee it's good and with railroaded hills it becomes great.

 

[krikav]

I think what I take away from this, is that I really need to tweek around the idea of a heavily cottaged buro-capital for oxford.
I often have my science slider high, if possible.

I found the hint about globe theatre very helpfull, I don't need a megacity for this, just a city that grows quickly. it can be a size 4 town, as long as it serves it's purpose. Thank you for pointing this out.

About the GP-factory town with national epic.
If I am running oxford in a cottage buro-cap, then I probably want merchants running here (to keep the science slider at 100%)
if I am running a bunch of merchants specialists, I will probably want wall-street in this city.
----

This feels like a sustainable configuration, Ox+burocap and GPF+wallstreet.



Perhaps I am sliding away from a National Wonder conversation now, but I think the root of my problems deciding what to place where, might be that I lack a proper understanding of how to use the slider, and what improvement to build where.

I'll create a new thread about for this issue:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=10962888#post10962888

 

[krikav]

Just a remark about moai/ironworks/heroic.

I find them much easier to plan for, and utilize efficiently. They work together in harmony well.
I often try to make both moai and heroic epic in the same city.

 

[krikav]

Quoting for importance. Really, don't delay, unless you'll have the "perfect" spot set up a few turns after Usually, in Civ4 it's less important what you'll gain from a city in the late-mid/lategame, but what you'll gain in the earlygame/early midgame. In one of my last games my NE was a city only having a pig + 3 grassland farms, 2 desert, 4 tiles that were shared with my cap and ~6 watertiles without lighthouse because one-off-the-coast plus hills, in other words: a pretty crappy NE city. But i had it up and running with 3 specialists ~ 150 BC or so, and that was far more important.

Same for oxford: even weaker cities will benefit largely from the output bonus. You should usually aim for the best spot you have right now, don't wait on the wonders.

And for HE, you can also whip there. Sometimes a 3 hills city with massive food is enough, you can change that city in a workshop powerhouse later in the game if needed.

Long story short: the most important thing is to build national wonders fast.

Regarding oxford + ironworks, IW is a wonder i rarely build out of space race attempts, so it's okay to pair those two wonders for me: just bulldoze the cottages with workshops as soon as production becomes the bottleneck in the spacerace, e.g. when you've researched 2/3 of the techs needed for space. It's not the most clever thing in the world to pair the wonders, but there's worse (HE+NE, moia + NE). In general, any city that can reach pop 15+ and has enough food to support mainly workshops is a decent IW city, with a river->levee it's good and with railroaded hills it becomes great.

I like your practical aproach, and there is much truth in what you and Mantic0re say about how essential it is to build them fast.
I think this relates to Einsteins Quote, "Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe."

If you get them up and running early, you get a advantage early and you can leverage on that advantage for a long time.

 

[ahcos]

Naaa, don't run specialists in your bureau cap + oxford, unless you really need those specialists badly. The slider isn't that important as long as your research output is decent. Better try to maintain deficit research: selling techs, failure gold for both world wonders and national wonders, building wealth etc.

Grown cottages in your oxford + bureaucracy cap can easily handle the research you need to win 70-80% of your games up to immortal level... grow those cottages.

Regarding globe theater, remember that the city needs at least size 6+ for you to be able to draft from. For a solely whipping approach, globe theater is overkill in most of the times, although it's freakin' awesome with bio+kremlin.

 

[krikav]

Naaa, don't run specialists in your bureau cap + oxford, unless you really need those specialists badly. The slider isn't that important as long as your research output is decent. Better try to maintain deficit research: selling techs, failure gold for both world wonders and national wonders, building wealth etc.

Grown cottages in your oxford + bureaucracy cap can easily handle the research you need to win 70-80% of your games up to immortal level... grow those cottages.

Regarding globe theater, remember that the city needs at least size 6+ for you to be able to draft from. For a solely whipping approach, globe theater is overkill in most of the times, although it's freakin' awesome with bio+kremlin.

Either I expressed myself unclear, or you misunderstod me. I said nothing about running specialist in the bureau cap.

The slider is incredibly important, since it determines pretty much everything else in your game, if you have the slider low, you probably need alot of science specialist to counteract that, if the slider is high, you might get away with less.

You are probably right about stressing the importance of growing the cottages of the ox-capital but I think this is allready covered.

I had no idea you had to be at least size 6+ for drafting, thank you for pointing this out.
Biology I understand, but what about kremlin? Are you speaking of rush-buying units?

 

[ahcos]

Kremlin also makes whipping more effecient (33%).

The slider by itself says nothing, it's just a management tool. What is important is your real output. You can have 200 beakers / turn with 0% slider, so i'm pretty sure you're overestimating the slider. The only thing you can "read" out of the slider is which % you put into science, gold, culture or espionage.

Regarding specialists, i got that wrong. Sorry.

 

[krikav]

This discussion really belongs in the thread I mentioned earlier though, since the current thread was about national wonders.

"The slider by itself says nothing, it's just a management tool. What is important is your real output. You can have 200 beakers / turn with 0% slider, so i'm pretty sure you're overestimating the slider. The only thing you can "read" out of the slider is which % you put into science, gold, culture or espionage"

What is important is the real output, I agree! But what I am trying to discuss is how to make that real output as large as possible, as quickly as possible. And various ways to achieve this!

The slider is a instrument, and a very blunt instrument. It determines how commerce will be allocated in all of your cities.

If you are running the slider at 0%, and you have your 200 beakers/turn from specialists in your GPF, you don't benefit at all from libraries in any of your commerce cities and you could play more efficiently by focusing on other things than building them.
On the other hand, if you are running with a 100% slider, you benefit alot from libraries, and almost nothing from markets.

This is a very real effect of slider usage, and I think it is a important concept to discuss.

 

[Gwynnja]

If you are running the slider at 0%, and you have your 200 beakers/turn from specialists in your GPF, you don't benefit at all from libraries in any of your commerce cities and you could play more efficiently by focusing on other things than building them.

That's not true. Libraries multiply ALL beakers, whether they're filtered through the slider or from specialists. They're also the first building that offer specialist slots. You don't necessarily need to build them in unit pumps right away but you need six by the time you get Education.

 

[krikav]

That's not true. Libraries multiply ALL beakers, whether they're filtered through the slider or from specialists. They're also the first building that offer specialist slots. You don't necessarily need to build them in unit pumps right away but you need six by the time you get Education.

Yes, it is true that you need 6 libraries if you are going education and oxford.
and yes it is true that libraries multiply specialist beakers.

When I said commercial cities, I am talking about commercial cities with none, or very few specialists though. And in such cities I am sure we can find more efficient investments, then libraries, while running a 0% science slider.

 

[Gwynnja]

Yes, it is true that you need 6 libraries if you are going education and oxford.
and yes it is true that libraries multiply specialist beakers.

When I said commercial cities, I am talking about commercial cities with none, or very few specialists though. And in such cities I am sure we can find more efficient investments, then libraries, while running a 0% science slider.

What commerce city investments are more efficient than commerce multiplying buildings? Granaries and sometimes monuments I suppose, but that's about it.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

What commerce city investments are more efficient than commerce multiplying buildings? Granaries and sometimes monuments I suppose, but that's about it.

If you're concentrating on maturing cottages, hammers are dear. And there aren't all that many commerce multiplying buildings anyway.