Natural Wonders, not very wonderful?

[xInVicTuSx]

I'd like to talk about something that makes this game fun for me.

That is terrain, and all its interesting permutations. One of the reasons super early game is such a hoot is Ancient Ruins. I love goodie huts, who doesn't? And opportunities are a hoot too, making a super tile out of what was junk before. But one feature that should be as impact-full, if not more, are natural wonders.

I've always found exploring in Civ to be one of the funnest aspects and am always a little sad later in the game when there are no more surprises in store. I still miss the free tech for proving the world is round from Civ IV.

As a player I always look far and wide for the best places to found cities and being beaten to it is one of the few things that will drive me to aggressive war if I'm playing peacefully. So I kind of figured finding a natural wonder would be a powerful incentive to found a city nearby... except that it really isn't. Unless I've seriously missed something, they are all really weak.

Reviewing:

Cerro de Potosi +3 +6
El Dorado (in GEM? Never see it..) +6 +3
Fountain of Youth (also never see it) +4 +1
Krakatoa +3 +6
Mt.Fuji +6 +3
Mt.Kailash +6 +1
Mt.Sinai +3 +6
Old Faithful +3 +6
Rock of Gibraltar +2 +2 +4
Sri Pada +4 +3
Barringer Crater +6 +3
Grand Mesa +6 +3
Great Barrier Reef (takes up more than one tile) +2 food +2 production +2 gold +2 science
Uluru +2 food +3 culture +3 faith
( Hit the image limit! )

While adding more would probably be difficult due to map scripting and art limitations... making the ones we have better should? be easier.

The scripting works against some of them.. Krakatoa is on an island alone which can't be built on; Barringer Crater and Old Faithful I almost always find is poor desert terrain.

Thing is, I feel like simple bonus resources always outweigh a rare natural wonder when founding cities. With opportunities giving resources to tiles which were before only given by either natural wonders or great people... their value has declined even further.

I think their main problem is that they do not scale. Their yields are the same when you first see them as in the very last turn in the game, whereas almost every other tile type improves over the game. I think they should scale, if they can.
Something like +1 or +2 their yield per era. This would keep them from being supertiles in the early game (because luckily spawning next to one would be unfair) but would help make them powerful supertiles throughout the game and being very attractive city sites even if the terrain around them otherwise sucks.

Combing that with the pantheon "One with Nature" which I find otherwise useless, would create supertiles as a basis to found a city next to. I would envision that the bonus from the belief would scale as well, otherwise it would still be a poor pantheon.

There is already one situation where a "supertile" can be created, that is:
1) Found city next to Mountain
2) Purchase Science Opportunity for said mountain
3) Build Machu Picchu there.
This gives +5 food +5 gold +5 science: +5 culture +5 faith
Which otherwise cannot be matched by any combination of improvements and terrain.
I've done this in several games and it doesn't seem to break balance. Sure I only get one of them, but I also get to build it where ever I want as long as its near a mountain and I'm quick enough.

Would it bother anyone if natural wonders were more important for overall city placing strategy? Is it doable to scale them?

 

[mystikx21]

It might be interesting if they increased some yields per era. I think they're powerful initially, but the trade-off is that they have little to improve them (other than opportunities).

There are some that are now passable. So GBR can get fish under it to be improved now, for example. That might be one option is to stack a bonus tile on them or allow GP improvements on them, something like that.

GBR was always a little better though as I believe it was improved by harbors and seaports where the others were all mountains and only improved by opportunities.

Another option would be to tie some new opportunities to natural wonders too, perhaps some religious based ones or later-game "national park" effects.

 

[void_genesis]

Is it worth thinking about a situational wonder or policy to enhance the effect of natural wonders? There is already a religious belief or two that improves them. Spain used to have the UA on them but I think it is being revised.......might be more interesting if any leader could adopt a strategy to make the most of natural wonders.......

 

[Tomice]

I can fully agree to the original post. While they do seem strong on paper, one can hardly make any use of them. Especially the coastal NW's are often unreacheable in practice. They are quite nice if you're lucky to have them somewhere nearby, but to weak to hunt for them (weaker than GP improvements as example).

And I agree, the Macchu Picchu/Opportunity combo is awesome!

 

[Thalassicus]

There's several ways we could increase NW yields over time. The simplest would be adding yield to all NWs whenever the most advanced player reaches a new era.

I also like the idea of a National Park opportunity to boost the yield of natural wonders. I'd be okay with that too.

For future reference, most things like natural wonder yields are in GEM_Details.xls in the mod folder (Natural_W tab in this case). You can copy a table to the forum by A) taking a screenshot or B) using a forum table. Either method takes just a few seconds. The way to do B is:

1. copy table to notepad++
2. find-replace tabs with |
3. copy to forum with [TABLE] [/TABLE] tags around it

||||||||value
Reef|2|2|2|2||||30.0
Gibraltar|2|2|4|||||30.0
Fountain_Youth|4||||||1|30.0
Mesa||6|3|||||30.0
Potosi||3|6|||||30.0
Crater||6||3||||30.0
Volcano||3||6||||30.0
El_Dorado|||6||3|||30.0
Geyser|||3|6||||30.0
Fuji|||||6|3||30.0
Mt_Sinai|||||3|6||30.0
Mt_Kailash||||||6|1|30.0
Uluru|2||||3|3||30.0
Sri_Pada|4|||||3||30.0

 

[mystikx21]

The opportunity method would require some investment, but would trigger more optimally by being in your borders (or the AI's). I don't know if CS get opportunities, but presumably conquering them could trigger the necessary.

I find some of them are potent enough to be viable most of the game without much help already. But I think a minor per era increase like CS get might be fine though. I'm not sure details wise how that would work (rotating which yield gets improved, increasing both/all, etc), but it would make them each more useful and powerful quickly enough.

 

[joncnunn]

On the natural wonders; remember that Spain gets 2X bonus of what's listed. Even if your not playing Spain at the moment, you might not want to increase them too much or else Spain becomes runaway AI in every game they are in.

Actually at the listed values; these appear really good.
The ones without food at all are roughly equivalent to great people tile improvement and it's really hard to argue that the ones with 2 food + something else are weak when you can lock your first citizen to it the turn you founded the city even before you get a worker into the area.

Actually the main problems with Natural Wonders is often placement: It's one or two hexes from a city state and so a city state is using it; or worse yet, a badly placed city state has disallowed all possible city sites that could have been built that would take in the sea based natural wonder.

 

[mystikx21]

They're pretty good early, but don't do much later on versus resource mines or late game villages. I think an opportunity for a "national park" would probably work fine to keep these viable into the late game, by at least adding a significant amount of gold (3-4) for free and with investment adding +1 happy/+4-5 food or 8-10 science/culture, something like that. They'd be rare, but comparable to late-game GIs. I don't think they should add production/gold otherwise, and the opportunity should be around late renaissance-early industrial era.

I'm not sure how the 2x yield for leaders works (I haven't played as Spain in a while), but if it just doubles the initial yield, rather than the tile value as a whole, that wouldn't be too bad this way.

 

[AnthonyG]

They are kind of weak I guess, but honestly I might get one of them in 1 of 10 games, maybe less. I certainly don't go out of my way to settle near one. And here I agree with joncnunn: most of them are placed for city states anyway, which I never conquer.

 

[EricB]

The other day I was playing as Polynesia. I found a natural wonder not too far from my capitol. There were also two new luxury resources around that area. It was surrounded by plains, hills, deserts, and mountains too. I placed my 2nd city there and it became a production powerhouse. The two luxuries were incense and marble, so it was terrific at building wonders. The NW was one of those that gives a bunch of production and some gold, no food or culture.

I beelined for mathematics and built the Hanging Gardens in that city to get a big food bonus. I farmed everything that could be farmed around it. I was going for a culture victory anyways so I went into tradition and got the policy for +2 food on every defense building. The city eventually grew to over size 30. It built the Utopia Project for a culture victory in 8 turns (on epic speed, which would be maybe 5 turns on normal speed). So yeah a natural wonder can be useful. It's a plus, but not something you go after really hard. They should increase their yields per era. I'd suggest a 50% increase per era. A natural wonder tile that produces 6 production in the ancient era should produce 9 production in the classical era, 12 in the medieval era, 15 renaissance, 18 industrial, and 21 modern.

A natural wonder is better than a specialist tile (customs house, landmark, etc) in the ancient era. That should scale with the game. It would also make Spain really interesting to use as it would be worth searching the world to find those natural wonders and taking over whoever had them.

 

[JohnS]

Is it really necessery that they scale with era? That might turn them from nice bonuses into game breakers - I mean, a nice starting bonus already snowballs quite easily, I'm not certain we should increase that effect.

I like the idea about opportunities for natural wonders, though, since that brings an opportunity cost with it. It also sounds like a great way of injecting some flavour into them: "Oh no! All the monkeys have disappeared from Gibraltar! What should we do?"