FoxOfWar
Prince
Just stumbled across this, and I will definitely have a look-see once I start a new game. I love my wonder-spam games at times.
Waiting for feedback. I now work on TO and WP mods. When I finishe them, I will do quick update for PO and then start adding renaissance.Just stumbled across this, and I will definitely have a look-see once I start a new game. I love my wonder-spam games at times.
I recommend you to do it, because it can be longer than expected until I get to the Renaissance. Nice to see my best Beta-Tester back. :]Official so far. I'll swap to Github version for my next go.
I still play 1-11.Heh. Right after posting that, my game decided to CTD. Github version is a go, thus.
Increased size of lakes to 15 tiles instead of 10.
That's a bit of an exaggeration but I agree with the sentiment, why make changes beyond the scope of the mod?When all modmods will make their little changes to VP base game ( many already), modmods will be dead.
When all modmods will make their little changes to VP base game ( many already), modmods will be dead.
It can be easily reverted. I changed it, but now I think it does not the job I wanted it to do.That's a bit of an exaggeration but I agree with the sentiment, why make changes beyond the scope of the mod?
Just thank you for your feedback. You are the first onr to do such a complex and detailed analysis of existing wonders.Played with the mod for about two days, and I'm probably gonna be the first to have negative opinions on the current state of how this mod over-restricts and in some cases even has entirely bad restrictions that defeat the entire purpose of researching a technology for that wonder in the first place. First I'll start with the biggest offender being wonders requiring some really questionable restrictions be met in order to construct and finish off by looking at certain wonders that feel too weak and too strong as of right now. Overall my criticism will boil down to the restrictions being far too strict and ruining the point of building the wonders in the original mod, which is to benefit certain starting positions and at least having it spread between some cities and civs, not all of them.
P.S. I'm going to use requirement/restriction interchangeably. Please just bear with it I was doing this late at night.
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1. Marble Wonders: Statue of Zeus, Goebekeli Tepe
1a. I'll start off with the Statue of Zeus since that one really has the more noticeable problem with the restriction by marble. In VP no matter what mapscript you play on marble is not a guaranteed luxury resource for any civ to start with, and is basically found in extremely low amounts throughout the map. That alone already makes what can be considered an essential wonder for civs with any need to do any form of conquest in the early game suddenly become less reasonable, especially considering the nerf to archer's range in the most recent Vox Populi patch. In some sense restricting it like this and making civs do a land grab for that resource is also a good thing, but it kills the entire point of building an army early to conquer nearby civs if you have to not only defend the city you just settled near that marble for the wonder, but also try to juggle actually taking an enemy civ's cities.
Solution: Add stone to the requirement for building the Statue of Zeus.
1b. The over-encompassing issue I also find with the marble wonders (and pretty much all wonders with this same exact issue) boils down to having to require an improved version of that resource to actually built it, which is where it becomes a more prominent issue for the Goebekeli Tepe. This wonder doesn't require marble only as it has a stone requirement as well, but you'll find I'm going to repeat this point a lot and it is that it needs an improved version of the resource nearby. Considering how far in construction is in the tech tree when you start a game it is unlikely you'll really get to benefit from that wonder fairly if you try to rush construction just to build it as that means sacrificing techs that could be essential to improving your nearby starting resources, making new cities, etc. etc. Since this is a Neolothic wonder it would at least make some sense to not require the nearby resources to be improved, but at least be inside the territory of the city intent on building it.
Solution: Require the resources be nearby, improved or unimproved. I will get on this point about other Neolithic wonders as well.
2. Singular Luxury Starting Resource Wonders: Colossus, Wielickzca Salt Mine, Lavaux
The real issue I find with these wonders really boils down to the fact that it practically guarantees in the case of the salt mine, and almost guarantees in the case of the Colossus that whatever civilization starts with this luxury resource will have that wonder all to themselves, which is a good argument against the point of making these wonders easier to spread around. Compared to the Shwedagon Paya in the original incarnation of the mod, the reason why that wonder worked is because it relied on 4 different resources and only required one of any of those to be built. It essentially gave it some restriction, but didn't outright guarantee it to just one civ only. I'll go ahead and go into more detail for my complaints on each wonder.
2a. I got most of my points with the Colossus so I'll keep it brief, considering how difficult it might be to find yourself in the right situation with Petra, the only other available option early for an extra trade route becomes the Colossus, but you essentially made it even less feasible than the Petra with the copper restriction.
Solution: Add Iron as an improved resource requirement to allow it become more accessible overall.
2b. I'm not sure how this wonder could be addressed at all and at least still have it make sense. From a balancing viewpoint this wonder is actually tame since a percent improvement that early in the game isn't particularly useful compared to what the other neolithics do in flat numbers with more essential yields such as culture (Altamra Cave) or faith (Goebekeli) or both (Majorville Med Wheel). Definitely removing the salt requirement is a good first step, but you'd have to add another requirement in exchange for making it more accessible. The best restriction I can think of is to make it so the city requires a river nearby or a lake, since no other Neolithic wonder seems to have such a requirement. Essentially what the wonder does itself is perfectly fine, including spawning the extra salt.
Solution: Remove the salt restriction, change the restriction to requiring a lake or river nearby, whichever seems more logical.
2c. Never really got around to this one in order to have much of an opinion on this one honestly. From what I see on the civlopedia it has a similar issue to the salt mine. Instead of the the wine restriction have it require a built plantation instead, and have it spawn wine?
Solution: Spawn wine, exchange wine restriction with plantation restriction instead, readjust wonder's bonuses as needed.
3. Holy City & Policy Wonders: (I'm not gonna list these off since it is already implied.)
3a. So in regards to the policy wonders, I find it extremely punishing to put restrictions on where those wonders are allowed to be built since the restriction for these wonders themselves should just be completing the branch itself. I also didn't get to see it myself, but the in the original mod it was either one or the other as a choice, you couldn't have both. I don't know if that is still the case or not, but if it isn't I'd say re-implementing it would be most appropriate.
Solution: Remove any restrictions on it, having unlocked the policy should be the only restriction. Also make it a one or the other choice between both wonders available in the policy branch/tree/w/e it is called.
3b. I'm going to echo a similar point in 3a. Players shouldn't be punished for having made a religion and be limited in their choice just because a Holy City doesn't meet building requirements. However I don't believe it'd be necessary to gut all the requirements, just tone them down a little bit more instead. Great example would be Hagia Sophia. It requires a forest nearby, and if you're anything like me *cough* automated workers *cough*, you might lock yourself out of it in your holy city. In fact I almost did that until I looked at the requirement.
Solution: Cut down on the restrictions for these wonders. Could even potentially lock you out of building these wonders since they are tied down to where you decide to make your Holy City.
4. Certain Triple Restrictions and/or Awkward Restrictions: Great Library, Great Lighthouse, Stonehenge, Roman Forum, Petra, Mont-Saint Michel (was addressed in most recent version), Mohenjo-Daro, Angkor-Wat.
Biggest issue that I find with these wonders boils down to their restrictions being so strong that they either become unrealistic to see get built, or they are guaranteed for someone to be built just because of the start bias that civ will have. The exception here is the Great Library, which just has the most counterproductive restriction I have seen out of all the wonders so far. Some of these restrictions just need to be limited to two instead of three, or slightly reworked, so I'll address each of them with a solution and no explanation.
Great Library: Remove the Writer's Guild restriction(Why do I need to research two extra technologies just to see the benefit of the Great Library?). Add Forest/Jungle requirements (books are made of paper after all) OR have the scrivener's office built in your empire/have a paper resource in your empire.
Great Lighthouse: Remove Flood Plains and Oasis requirement. Add stone requirement, and if you still want to keep it restricted to the desert(I personally wouldn't, it is another essential warmonger wonder imo), add a desert requirement as well.
Stonehenge: Remove the roads requirement or reduce it to one road. Unlike other wonders which require improvements, roads are actually detrimental early on and you don't even get settlers on the wheel tech where it is located.
Roman Forum: Marsh is not exactly common in most map scripts, but it is ok to have this restriction on the Roman Forum since the Buddhas of Bayman add another diplomatic wonder option. Just remove the river requirement, and maybe the flat requirement as well for the Roman Forum.
Petra: Mountains make sense for it, but mixing desert and a mountain requirement hurts the yields of this wonder, and the potential for it to appear. Replace the mountain requirement with a hill requirement or just don't have that restriction/requirement at all. Alternatively make it so the player must have at least 1 caravan in their empire already as the new restriction.
Mohenjo-Daro: Remove the hill requirement, it's pretty hard to see this wonder have an opportunity to come up with desert being uncommon, on top of it needing to be a hill next to a river???
Angkor-Wat: Least offensive one in here, but I don't know how much of an issue it'd be to find both a lake and a jungle nearby unless you have a civ with that starting bias for it.
5. No restriction/requirement issues at all, but definitely some balancing issues from what I can tell and have seen so far: Karnak, Malawiya Minaret.
5a. Karnak needs production as a yield again, plain and simple. There is no reason to build such a costly wonder and sacrifice (on a marathon run) 100 turns almost if it is not the capital just to get even more food on flood plains.... seriously? Do something similar to the unofficial version of the original mod someone made where instead of every flood plain getting prod and faith, it was just every 2 flood plains, that actually made it balanced and functional.
5b. Malawiya Minaret makes it waaaaay too easy to just outproduce everyone if you spec yourself into producing great engineers quickly. 9 prod and 3 faith manufactories (not even accounting for how stoneworks and quarries get buffed) is already overkill that early in the game. Nerf the manufactory bonus and remove the free great engineer from it, there are a lot of other wonders in the same era that already give free people as well, but what restrictions they have or what they do is more reasonable than what the Malawiya Minaret does.
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Conclusion: Unfortunately for me, I'm not enjoying this version as much as I thought I would. Some restrictions are over-bearing and make you remember way more than you should, or just ruin the entire point of even researching a technology. Some victory types also feel gimped by the requirements and restrictions that they start to feel less valuable overall. Despite these glaring flaws, I still find it significantly better than not having the mod, as having wonder whores hoard wonders all into one city without this mod is really obnoxious and outright unrealistic as well. I'm willing to continue discussing the overall balance of this mod however, and would like to know if my own input has actually helped in anyway.
P.S. There might be some nuances I might have thought but not said, also I apologize in advance for the wall of text.
Just thank you for your feedback. You are the first onr to do such a complex and detailed analysis of existing wonders.
Sorry to hear you are not enjoying it and I hope next version will be much better. Short answer what I will do with it:
PS. Now you have to leave Forest or Jungle in the city. No more insane cutting
- I remember @pineappledan saying me that luxury requirements won't work. I sticked to it, then I cut much of them and now I will do final blow to this idea. Definitely removing luxury restrictions and substituting them with something else (funny thing Colossus had Iron before :]);
- Holy wonders have much weaker and easier requirement just because they have Holy. I checked that in my game and I had 3 of them available (El Ghriba, Borobudur and Hagia Sophia). I don't think they are unbuildable. Nevertheless, I will look once again into them and maybe cut more.
- Policy Wonders have much harder restrictions because they can be built in any of your cities unlike holy wonders. If I decide to tone dwn holy ones I will surely tone those to, but not entirely.
- Some good points you enlisted will be surely took into account. With Great Library I missed the fact it is not researched on the same tech. My mistake. With Angkor Wat I found it little harder to built, but I like its requirment. Once I built it in my 3rd city. Some of your other thought are thing which concerned me too, so I will check them.
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