New Wonder Revisions

[Leoreth]

I had a look at some feedback on some of the new wonders and spent some thought on that. Before putting anything into practice, I wanted to put those where I agreed the concerns were valid up for discussion again with my ideas on how to improve them.

Notre Dame: One less temple required for cathedrals. This is very weak and situational to almost only the Polish UHV.

• +25% building production with state religion: still connected to religion, would help France with its building oriented goal and theme, easily implemented
• should the old effect still stay?

Burj Khalifa: +2F +2C on desert tiles. Too expensive to build, only unlocks mediocre desert tiles.

Here I am torn. The desert theme makes sense imo, but I don't think making deserts semi-workable really makes sense. Do we really want to see cottages in Arabian deserts, or worse, buff windmill hills? So the choice is, either make a stronger desert requirement similar to Delta Works, or provide different benefits that scale with desert. Since the UAE have a large immigrant population and resident foreign nationals I think free specialists work best.

• option 1: requires 10 desert tiles in city radius and +1 specialist per trade route
• option 2: +1 specialist per 2 desert tiles in city radius
• I don't know about the cost. I guess there should be some accounting for the fact that this cannot be built in usually productive locations.

Atomium: +1 research per ICBM built. It seems like the AI doesn't build enough ICBMs to justify this. Maybe related to the new Nuclear Plant requirement. I have already adjusted the AI to pay more attention to this requirement. I don't know if anything else is needed, the effect itself is sound imo.

Gardens by the Bay: +2 commerce per excess health. Not good enough, too expensive to built. To be honest, I find those "per excess X" effects kinda awkward, both from a programming and a communication perspective.

The idea was the connect the Gardens to health through its ecological theme and Singapore's famous emphasis on cleanliness. I wanted to avoid giving extra health with this wonder because that would just encourage being dirtier, while rewards for being healthy encourage other means of being healthy. Nevertheless, ideas:

• free Recycling Center in every city
• double health from buildings (in all cities)
  
• cities celebrate when they are healthy
• +1 health per 10% science rate

Harbour Opera: +1 food per excess happiness. Contradictory effect: as cities grow from the extra food, they lose it again due to the population unhappiness

• +2 happiness per culture level
• +2 food per culture level
• Double happiness per culture rate (in all cities)

Nobel Prize: extra GPP when GP are born in pleased civilisations. Read offhand comments that it's not very useful. Should the amount of GPP granted be increased?

Escorial: extra gold for colonies founded or acquired. Also commented on being weak.

In general, this effect is obviously geared towards Spain, which founds and conquers a lot of colonies if played historically. To a lower extent, this may also apply to Portugal. The idea was to have an effect that rewards colonisation without making it more sustainable in the long term. Is it too weak even in those cases? In that case, further ideas to strengthen it, which may be combined:

• increase gold amount awarded
• +1 population in acquired colonies
• no colony maintenance after acquiring colonies for X turns

House of Wisdom: +200% research from great people inventions. The criticism I have seen here is that the 2 tech limit often defeats the purpose of the effect, and that it expires too soon.

I think the latter is fine. It's meant to be limited and you should be ready to make use of it when you get it. Also Optics can be easily skipped for a while when getting into the Renaissance. Is it too expensive to build considering that limited time?

• Great People can discover up to 3 technologies (as a specific effect of the wonder)

Prambanan: only complaint is that Hinduism never ends up in Indonesia, which is fair. Indonesia is actually a historical region for Hinduism, but the distance to other Hindu cities is probably too much to overcome. Looks like I need to improve mechanism for long distance religion spread some more.

Silver Tree Fountain: free great person for every great general born. Critique is that there is no time to build the wonder for the historical Mongols because they're busy building military. Which is fair.

I think the effect itself is good, especially if you are doing a lot of warring. But as additional effect

• Free Lancer in every core city

Gur-e-Amir: culture equal to gold looted for its city. Historical builder are the Turks, with the critique being that they usually do not research that deep into the tech tree for their culture goal where this would be useful.

This is kinda tough to balance. I guess if we want this to end up in Central Asia, and not another Muslim civ that is usually ahead of the Turks in tech, there should be a resource requirement. But then also, maybe there should be a different effect so this isn't so nakedly useful only for the Turkic UHV and nothing else. Maybe something else related to conquering cities?

• requires Patronage
• requires Silk (or Gems?)
• settled specialists in conquered cities are relocated to the city where the wonder is located

Does this address some of the concerns and flaws with these wonders? Any preferences among the options? Other wonders that need looking at?

 

[Temujin8k]

Not sure if OP, but maybe the Escorial can also grant a free Administrative Center to the first colony on each continent in the New World. So that's like 2 for the whole map. Reflects the viceroyalty colonial administration, and can significantly help with maintenance costs as well.

 

[Malchar]

Escorial could make it so colonies start with your state religion or perhaps a monastery as well.

 

[Nyayr]

plus maybe a free Castle for their -25% cost reduction. Though isn't the castle quickly outdated for Spain too? not a 100% sure.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

I think the Harbour Opera should be geared toward a culture victory. It's one of the most iconic buildings in the world, probably the most well-known performance hall in the world, despite being literally thousands of miles from the vast majority of major population centers. If people know anything about Australia other than the threat of its wildlife, it's the opera hall. So if culture victory represents other civs recognizing and adopting your culture, the Harbour Opera must be contributing greatly toward any progress Australia is making toward that victory. It always struck me as kind of odd that it was a growth wonder anyway; if there's one thing I DON'T think about when considering Australia, it is population density.

One thing that I think might make it worthwhile to build if you're going for a culture victory is something that helps you close the gap between your top city and numbers 2 & 3. I don't know how to phrase it exactly, but I think it would be interesting if it could make GAs more effective in cities that don't have Harbour Opera (maybe based on the difference between that city and the city that has the wonder?). That way you're encouraged to build it in your culture capital, and culture in that city still progresses you toward the victory even after it achieves Legendary, since it will just keep boosting the GA value.

 

[Leoreth]

Not sure if OP, but maybe the Escorial can also grant a free Administrative Center to the first colony on each continent in the New World. So that's like 2 for the whole map. Reflects the viceroyalty colonial administration, and can significantly help with maintenance costs as well.

I am hesitant to do this because the advantage of this would scale better long term than short term.

plus maybe a free Castle for their -25% cost reduction. Though isn't the castle quickly outdated for Spain too? not a 100% sure.

That's an interesting idea, maybe their castle should obsolete a little later?

I think the Harbour Opera should be geared toward a culture victory. It's one of the most iconic buildings in the world, probably the most well-known performance hall in the world, despite being literally thousands of miles from the vast majority of major population centers. If people know anything about Australia other than the threat of its wildlife, it's the opera hall. So if culture victory represents other civs recognizing and adopting your culture, the Harbour Opera must be contributing greatly toward any progress Australia is making toward that victory. It always struck me as kind of odd that it was a growth wonder anyway; if there's one thing I DON'T think about when considering Australia, it is population density.

One thing that I think might make it worthwhile to build if you're going for a culture victory is something that helps you close the gap between your top city and numbers 2 & 3. I don't know how to phrase it exactly, but I think it would be interesting if it could make GAs more effective in cities that don't have Harbour Opera (maybe based on the difference between that city and the city that has the wonder?). That way you're encouraged to build it in your culture capital, and culture in that city still progresses you toward the victory even after it achieves Legendary, since it will just keep boosting the GA value.

GA meaning Golden Age or Great Artist? Buffing culture from the Great Work ability is interesting but maybe too limited.

 

[Zaddy]

I'm just going to scroll through the Civilopedia and give my thoughts on any wonders that stick out to me as needing attention.

Atomium: When endgame techs cost literally thousands of beakers, the extra few beakers this wonder will give you is simply microscopic in comparison. Perhaps it could give a large reduction in the chance of nuclear meltdowns with power plants or something like that, even in addition to it's current effect?

Burj Khalifa: It's fun to mess around and build it in the Rocky Mountains as America, but it's not actually all that good. I think having a requirement of X desert tiles in a city radius and rewarding trade routes with specialists seems like a fine idea!

Empire State Building: If you build it in the strongest cities on the map, it basically nets you a full-strength shrine. That sounds good, until you realize that, at this period in the game, +20 is so minuscule that it is hardly noticeable, in addition to being an extremely expensive wonder. In my opinion, the effect could be doubled and the wonder's cost reduced significantly, and it would still be fairly weak

Gardens by the Bay: Because increased = increased in the late game, the cities that are most able to build this will see little benefit. The effect is simply very weak, so it's also not worth rushing with a Great Engineer. Any of the effects you proposed would be a very welcomed change and would make it a significantly better wonder!

Hagia Sophia: I think this wonder is pretty weak. Byzantium has little issues staying contemporary in tech with Europeans and has little time to spend building spies when they need units. I have spent time trying to think of a better effect for this but unfortunately I have not thought of anything.

 

[Steb]

Notre Dame: One less temple required for cathedrals. This is very weak and situational to almost only the Polish UHV.

I'm guessing you've considered just strengthening its effect? "Cathedrals of your state religion require only 1 temple" would be quite cool and strong, and produce the intended effect of covering Europe with cathedrals. I suppose it would make the Polish UHV trivial, but it wouldn't be hard to adjust it.

Atomium: +1 research per ICBM built. It seems like the AI doesn't build enough ICBMs to justify this. Maybe related to the new Nuclear Plant requirement. I have already adjusted the AI to pay more attention to this requirement. I don't know if anything else is needed, the effect itself is sound imo.

The only actual link between the Atomium and nuclear weapons is that the Atomium represents atoms (specifically, iron) and nuclear weapons also use atoms (not even iron). Astute readers will realize that this kind of link would be true with literally any physical object. The symbolism of the Atomium as a monument of the Atomic Age is nice, but it would be fine to give it an effect completely unrelated to nuclear energy. For instance, +1 research from exploited iron and aluminum mines in your and pleased civilizations? +1 research from metal resources used by corporations?

I think the Harbour Opera should be geared toward a culture victory. It's one of the most iconic buildings in the world, probably the most well-known performance hall in the world, despite being literally thousands of miles from the vast majority of major population centers. If people know anything about Australia other than the threat of its wildlife, it's the opera hall. So if culture victory represents other civs recognizing and adopting your culture, the Harbour Opera must be contributing greatly toward any progress Australia is making toward that victory. It always struck me as kind of odd that it was a growth wonder anyway; if there's one thing I DON'T think about when considering Australia, it is population density.

One thing that I think might make it worthwhile to build if you're going for a culture victory is something that helps you close the gap between your top city and numbers 2 & 3. I don't know how to phrase it exactly, but I think it would be interesting if it could make GAs more effective in cities that don't have Harbour Opera (maybe based on the difference between that city and the city that has the wonder?). That way you're encouraged to build it in your culture capital, and culture in that city still progresses you toward the victory even after it achieves Legendary, since it will just keep boosting the GA value.

Agreed that the Sydney Opera as a growth wonder isn't super appropriate. I think boosting Great Artists' abilities would be good actually, since that's exactly what you need when going for a culture victory in the late game. So +100% culture from great works, and the wonder could grant you a Great Artist so you can use the effect immediately.

Burj Khalifa: +2F +2C on desert tiles. Too expensive to build, only unlocks mediocre desert tiles.

Here I am torn. The desert theme makes sense imo, but I don't think making deserts semi-workable really makes sense. Do we really want to see cottages in Arabian deserts, or worse, buff windmill hills? So the choice is, either make a stronger desert requirement similar to Delta Works, or provide different benefits that scale with desert. Since the UAE have a large immigrant population and resident foreign nationals I think free specialists work best.

I agree, make it good for desert cities without requiring the city to actually exploit the desert tiles. The millions of people in Dubai are in Dubai, not in the surrounding desert doing who knows what.

Hagia Sophia: I think this wonder is pretty weak. Byzantium has little issues staying contemporary in tech with Europeans and has little time to spend building spies when they need units. I have spent time trying to think of a better effect for this but unfortunately I have not thought of anything.

This is more about Byzantium than the wonder, but something should be changed so that there's an incentive to build spies as Byzantium (stronger UP maybe?).

 

[Publicola]

We could treat Burj Khalifa somewhat like the current Empire State Building wonder, and give +1 per desert tile (or +2 if we need it to have a bigger impact). That'd create an incentive to build it in a heavily deserted area, without forcing players to work every desert tile in range.

 

[Caesar Augustus]

GA meaning Golden Age or Great Artist? Buffing culture from the Great Work ability is interesting but maybe too limited.

I was meaning Great Artist, sorry for not being clear. I agree that it's a limited effect but I think from a gameplay perspective it's kind of fine for some of the late game wonders to have effects that are highly niche but very powerful for that niche. Like, yes, it would be largely useless in games where you're not going for a culture victory, but as the game gets later and later it becomes more clear whether or not any particular use of your production is actually contributing toward your victory. Now it might be that JUST boosting the Great Work ability doesn't do enough toward a culture victory without also somehow letting you more easily guarantee getting Great Artists to begin with. Maybe it could also increase the artist slots? Or increase the GPP your artists generate?

 

[johnfloyd27]

Burj Khalifa:
I’d have it grant a significant number of trade routes and boost trade rev in the city. The actual Burj is a symbol of Dubai becoming an international destination and the city is now a major travel hub, but the desert around it is still useless desert!

 

[ozqar]

For the Burj Khalifa, what about +1 trade route per oil resource in city ring , requires X desert tiles in city radius (and maybe access to coast?).

 

[black213]

Silver Tree Fountain: free great person for every great general born. Critique is that there is no time to build the wonder for the historical Mongols because they're busy building military. Which is fair.

I think the effect itself is good, especially if you are doing a lot of warring. But as additional effect

• Free Lancer in every core city

I haven't played the Mongols very much, but the few times I did, I specifically tried to get this wonder but was prevented mid-build by random religion spread.

 

[merijn_v1]

Burj Khalifa: +2F +2C on desert tiles. Too expensive to build, only unlocks mediocre desert tiles.

Here I am torn. The desert theme makes sense imo, but I don't think making deserts semi-workable really makes sense. Do we really want to see cottages in Arabian deserts, or worse, buff windmill hills? So the choice is, either make a stronger desert requirement similar to Delta Works, or provide different benefits that scale with desert. Since the UAE have a large immigrant population and resident foreign nationals I think free specialists work best.

• option 1: requires 10 desert tiles in city radius and +1 specialist per trade route
• option 2: +1 specialist per 2 desert tiles in city radius
• I don't know about the cost. I guess there should be some accounting for the fact that this cannot be built in usually productive locations.

The Burj Khalifa does not really do this. Even with the Burj Khalifa, you still can't build cottages on desert tiles. (Except flood plains and oasis, but that is intended)

The Burj Khalifa also doesn't simply add +2F +2C to every desert tile. Instead, it sets a minimum value of 2 for both yields. For regular desert tiles that effects to +2F +2C, but it doesn't add this to flood plains or oasis. (It only adds +1C to those tile as a result)

I thought this effect was applied after calculating the improvement yield bonus. This would have resulted in the food and commerce from the windmills being discarded. (A desert windmill hill would provide 1F2P2C without the Burj Khalifa and 2F2P2C with the Burj Khalifa. Only the food would increase as that is lower than 2, but the commerce is already at the minimum of 2 so that will not increase) It turns out I was wrong and the improvement yield bonus is added after the Burj Khalifa effect. So the improvement yield is added on top of the minimum 2F2C, resulting in 3F2P4C desert windmills.

 

[keli]

I had a look at some feedback on some of the new wonders and spent some thought on that. Before putting anything into practice, I wanted to put those where I agreed the concerns were valid up for discussion again with my ideas on how to improve them.

Notre Dame: One less temple required for cathedrals. This is very weak and situational to almost only the Polish UHV.

• +25% building production with state religion: still connected to religion, would help France with its building oriented goal and theme, easily implemented
• should the old effect still stay?

Burj Khalifa: +2F +2C on desert tiles. Too expensive to build, only unlocks mediocre desert tiles.

Here I am torn. The desert theme makes sense imo, but I don't think making deserts semi-workable really makes sense. Do we really want to see cottages in Arabian deserts, or worse, buff windmill hills? So the choice is, either make a stronger desert requirement similar to Delta Works, or provide different benefits that scale with desert. Since the UAE have a large immigrant population and resident foreign nationals I think free specialists work best.

• option 1: requires 10 desert tiles in city radius and +1 specialist per trade route
• option 2: +1 specialist per 2 desert tiles in city radius
• I don't know about the cost. I guess there should be some accounting for the fact that this cannot be built in usually productive locations.

Atomium: +1 research per ICBM built. It seems like the AI doesn't build enough ICBMs to justify this. Maybe related to the new Nuclear Plant requirement. I have already adjusted the AI to pay more attention to this requirement. I don't know if anything else is needed, the effect itself is sound imo.

Gardens by the Bay: +2 commerce per excess health. Not good enough, too expensive to built. To be honest, I find those "per excess X" effects kinda awkward, both from a programming and a communication perspective.

The idea was the connect the Gardens to health through its ecological theme and Singapore's famous emphasis on cleanliness. I wanted to avoid giving extra health with this wonder because that would just encourage being dirtier, while rewards for being healthy encourage other means of being healthy. Nevertheless, ideas:

• free Recycling Center in every city
• double health from buildings (in all cities)
  
• cities celebrate when they are healthy
• +1 health per 10% science rate

Harbour Opera: +1 food per excess happiness. Contradictory effect: as cities grow from the extra food, they lose it again due to the population unhappiness

• +2 happiness per culture level
• +2 food per culture level
• Double happiness per culture rate (in all cities)

Nobel Prize: extra GPP when GP are born in pleased civilisations. Read offhand comments that it's not very useful. Should the amount of GPP granted be increased?

Escorial: extra gold for colonies founded or acquired. Also commented on being weak.

In general, this effect is obviously geared towards Spain, which founds and conquers a lot of colonies if played historically. To a lower extent, this may also apply to Portugal. The idea was to have an effect that rewards colonisation without making it more sustainable in the long term. Is it too weak even in those cases? In that case, further ideas to strengthen it, which may be combined:

• increase gold amount awarded
• +1 population in acquired colonies
• no colony maintenance after acquiring colonies for X turns

House of Wisdom: +200% research from great people inventions. The criticism I have seen here is that the 2 tech limit often defeats the purpose of the effect, and that it expires too soon.

I think the latter is fine. It's meant to be limited and you should be ready to make use of it when you get it. Also Optics can be easily skipped for a while when getting into the Renaissance. Is it too expensive to build considering that limited time?

• Great People can discover up to 3 technologies (as a specific effect of the wonder)

Prambanan: only complaint is that Hinduism never ends up in Indonesia, which is fair. Indonesia is actually a historical region for Hinduism, but the distance to other Hindu cities is probably too much to overcome. Looks like I need to improve mechanism for long distance religion spread some more.

Silver Tree Fountain: free great person for every great general born. Critique is that there is no time to build the wonder for the historical Mongols because they're busy building military. Which is fair.

I think the effect itself is good, especially if you are doing a lot of warring. But as additional effect

• Free Lancer in every core city

Gur-e-Amir: culture equal to gold looted for its city. Historical builder are the Turks, with the critique being that they usually do not research that deep into the tech tree for their culture goal where this would be useful.

This is kinda tough to balance. I guess if we want this to end up in Central Asia, and not another Muslim civ that is usually ahead of the Turks in tech, there should be a resource requirement. But then also, maybe there should be a different effect so this isn't so nakedly useful only for the Turkic UHV and nothing else. Maybe something else related to conquering cities?

• requires Patronage
• requires Silk (or Gems?)
• settled specialists in conquered cities are relocated to the city where the wonder is located

Does this address some of the concerns and flaws with these wonders? Any preferences among the options? Other wonders that need looking at?

Notre Dame: I think the +25% increase in building speed is very potent. I would say a +20% would be more balanced. Alternatively, it could provide culture for each cottage in the BFC and maybe extra happiness in the city it is built, basically encouraging cottage play in Paris and would help with the UHV.

Burj Kalifa: Prerequisite oil and desert in the BFC. Provides 3 hammers and one trade route per desert tile in the BFC. Would help with making a crappy city viable in the desert, but would not help with population growth. Wouldn't make cities with 1 desert tile overpowered as the bonus stacks by the number of desert tiles around the city (same mechanic as for that Church which gives bonus for each mountain).

Atomium: If we keep the old effect, then I would recommend a +2 science as it is a late wonder where science costs are already inflated.

Gardens by the Bay: +1 health per science rate is great IMO, also could add some commerce/trade route bonus as it is a tourist attraction.

 

[Seakin]

Burj Kalifa: As I understand it the two things that make Dubai such an rich and international city are its good position for trade and more impotantly it's oil. But making oil a Prerequisite for it seems a bit to restrictive for me.
So how about one/two Trade Route/s per Luxury and Strategic Resource on Desert and Sea in cityradius and +1 food and hammer per traderoute. City must be on desert. (Floodplains Should be excluded from this I guess.)
Could also be a percentage per traderoute like the bonus from Multilateralism but I am not even sure if the percentage works of the base 1 ore total amount.

 

[Seakin]

Notre Dame: One less temple required for cathedrals. This is very weak and situational to almost only the Polish UHV.

• +25% building production with state religion: still connected to religion, would help France with its building oriented goal and theme, easily implemented
• should the old effect still stay?

Notre Dame: I think the +25% increase in building speed is very potent. I would say a +20% would be more balanced. Alternatively, it could provide culture for each cottage in the BFC and maybe extra happiness in the city it is built, basically encouraging cottage play in Paris and would help with the UHV.

Building Production seem pretty good and I agree 15/20% would be better especially if it still doesn't obsolets.
How about to give the old effect to all Civilization with the same statereligion as the owner and restrict it to that religion but let it require only two Temple.

 

[rmontaruli]

I ask for this wonder back! No matter its effect.

 

[LikeNothing]

Escorial could make it so colonies start with your state religion or perhaps a monastery as well.

How poetic, that this is a conjugate of the Arabian UP.

Catholicism and Protestantism already auto-spread to New World colonies pretty fast (and faster than other state religions), though. Perhaps that auto-spread should be toned down a bit, to a level comparable to other state religions.

An alternative is that every time you acquire a colony, a missionary of your state religion spawns in your capital. If all your cities already have the state religion already, then a religious prosecutor spawns instead.

I ask for this wonder back! No matter its effect.

I can't see the image. The suspense is intolerable!

 

[phoenixfire7]

It was an image of the tower of Pisa