Poll: Do Ancient and Classical era wonder prerequisites need review?

[dostillevi]

I believe certain prerequisites on ancient and classical era wonders are due for review. My experience is that on emperor, the AI has enough bonuses to culture that if they tech to a wonder properly, they will be able to build that wonder before a human player can get the prerequisite policies. I believe the intention of policy based limitations is to balance wonders so that science oriented Civs can't beeline techs and preclude non-science Civs from having a chance at getting key wonders.

However the current implementation of policy requirements for early wonders is effectively a hard barrier to human players ever competing for those wonders. With smaller games and fewer AI, there's a reasonable chance that several early wonders won't be focused by any AI, leaving some chance of a player winning them. However as things are now, if a human wants a wonder that the AI also wants and has teched correctly for, it's virtually impossible for the player to win that early wonder because there hasn't yet been enough opportunity for the human to focus their Civ's output. This is particularly evident in how the AI can consistently build the Statue of Zeus before the player can even start construction. There simply isn't any way for the player to accumulate enough culture to meet the requirement.

So currently, the net effect of civic based prerequisites (and to a lesser extent, pop based pre-requisites) are that early wonders exist purely to enrich the AI.

I think something like removing civic requirements in the ancient and classical eras may help resolve this. However I don't play multiplayer, so I would want to be sure this change doesn't negatively affect human vs human balance. Thinking it through I don't feel that it would, but this is where all of your experience and opinions can be helpful.

Or, please tell me how I should play my early games (on Epic Emperor with 19 AI) differently

 

[Stalker0]

At the end of the day, the AIs ability to take early wonders is less about the prereqs and more about the early bonuses of high level AI. If you lowered the policy requirements, than that simply means the superior science of the AI will ensure it gets the wonder built quicker.

The AI just plain has more hammers, science, and culture than a human can muster at that point in the game. So if the AI chooses to focus on a wonder....there is truly little the human can do to stop that. There are only 3 realistic ways to prevent that:

1) Reduce AI early bonuses. Effective, but has lots of snowball issues down the road, making the AI overall significantly weaker.
2) Reduce AI wonder competitiveness. Aka make the AIs "lazy" about selecting certain wonders. For example (I can't speak on the latest version) but for the last several versions while the AI goes after the hanging gardens like its crack cocaine, the Roman forum is often ignored. You could do the same for more wonders.
3) ****Create some kind of early wonder "handicap". Aka AIs have to spend 50% more hammers than the human to get an early wonder. Probably the easiest way to replicate that, is to say that the AIs all start with "5 wonders built".... this creates a production penalty that the AI will deal with. However, the penalty decays after a few eras so as the human catches up the AI's penalty is removed.

Number 3 is an idea that literally just came to me, and honestly I really like it if its doable. Seems a very elegant way to slow down the AI from spamming out early wonders, while ensuring that they are still competitive with later ones.

 

[dostillevi]

3) ****Create some kind of early wonder "handicap". Aka AIs have to spend 50% more hammers than the human to get an early wonder. Probably the easiest way to replicate that, is to say that the AIs all start with "5 wonders built".... this creates a production penalty that the AI will deal with. However, the penalty decays after a few eras so as the human catches up the AI's penalty is removed.

Nice thinking, it definitely has the least impact compared to other options, and such a penalty ought to be relatively easy to balance. It would definitely help in situations where currently I'll be working on a classical wonder for many turns, only to have the AI start wonder production 14 turns ahead of me. This happens a lot, and it's very easy to see with the Wonder Race mod installed. It's really infuriating when it happens early, because there's just no way to justify it, even if they game the start of wonder production to align with chopping a forest and an immediate invest.

I don't know if it would fully solve the issue with Statue of Zeus though. The AI still hits that ~10 turns earlier than I can on Epic.. I could probably time it exactly with a fast monument * rush * and beeline to bronze working. If it's as bad as I recall though, it would still be almost impossible for a player to compete for due to the 2 policy requirement. If it was just one policy, or none, I could race the AI there, and with your suggestion compete with them for it. I think that early in the game it is a simple numbers issue - there are only so many hammers available, and it seems reasonable that a human or AI with average hammers beelining Zeus probably shouldn't get it, but with a greater than average hammer distribution (say, 8 hammers on 4 tiles + 1 on the capital without starvation), that player or AI should have a competitive chance to get Zeus. strategically chopping a forest should be a real decision that could win the statue for the player. Right now it would be a weak conversion to culture 99% of the time.

 

[dostillevi]

Just now playing a game on Epic, Emperor with 19 AI:

Turn 39 someone begins constructing Statue of Zeus. I didn't beeline bronze working, so I'm 8 turns away from having the tech. I'm 29 turns away from having the policy requirement (less, because I took authority, but I just got it and haven't had time to bash in any barbarian skulls). I build my monument first and with 5 hammers between my city and a nearby hill. The policy requirement is clearly impossible to meet. I hope this gets addressed.