Questions about Wonders

[Gianmarco Silvestro]

I have two questions about wonders.
I am sorry if they are dumb but I would need some clarification.

1) Why does the wonders become obsolete?
I understand the fact that a city can have more wonders as the culture grows but why to stop their effects when they become obsolete? Couldn’t the obsolescence be related only to the “count” of wonders towards the limit at a given cultural level?
I think it would be great to keep the effects and that this would add extra variety to the medium-late game.


2) Why does the wonders of a conquered city do not produce culture for the new owner? If one gets high (maybe 100%) percentage of culture in a city shouldn’t the wonders produce culture?

Thanks in advance for the answers and, as always, a big thank you to Leoreth and all the people that contribute developing the mod.

 

[Gianmarco Silvestro]

Up.

 

[Force44]

The questions you pose aim quite at the heart of some fundamentals of the mod.
Untill someone more knowledgeable finds the opportunity to answer your questions here are my two cents on the subject:

1) Why do (some) wonders become obsolete?

Wonders come with a cost (hammers for either building or conquest), to make them viable they need to pay back their cost in a certain timeframe. When they retain their effect after that timeframe there is a point they become too powerfull.
To balance the game you can either make them less usefull over time or axe their abilities completely (in the mod they keep giving you great person points even after expiration btw).

2) Why do wonders cease giving (additional) culture (over time) to the new owner?

My opionion is that the cost for someone who builds a wonder is higher than for someone who conquers a wonder. Because the investment in hammers was smaller a smaller reward seems suitable (you still get part of the previously generated culture and both all of the benefits untill the wonder goes obsolete and newly generated great person points, so imo capturing a city with a wonder is still a bargain)

To (extremely) summarize, I would implement these properties for balancereasons, but I'm sure more justifications can be found.
Hope this answer shed some light on your questions. Have fun playing with and thinking about the mod!

 

[Nyayr]

For those starting an early civs like Persia, Rome, India and trying to make it to the space race. You have a limit of wonders 1/2/4/7/ per size was it 10 for legendary culture? You can build, later on you might find the city you own would be full of wonders from old times and you can't build any new in them I do tend to sometimes leave techs to develop later like to keep my Cothon a couple turns longer ^^

 

[Gianmarco Silvestro]

Thank you very much for your answers!

The number of wonders could just increase with the culture of the city and the gains from the wonders could be tweaked.

About conquering a city with wonders, I agree that it is more convenient, but also you are facing a civ which is gaining benefits from the wonders themselves, so it is a good reward imho.

Also it would be nice to have the same feeling towards wonders as the one the player gets when a city gets higher and higher percentage (until 100%) of culture in the city!

The effect I personally feel at the moment is that the wonders “do not belong”, like they are owned by a dead civ and not praised by the new population in the city.

 

[Enyavar]

(Sorry I'm late here.) The "do not belong" fits somewhat.

But also, at some point the old wonders are really too powerful and don't fit a civ anymore. Egypt has the two ultra-powerful wonders tailored for their civ: Pyramids+Sphinx. In combination, these are very very powerful wonders. If they don't go obsolete, Egyptian players would win the space race easily. But... the Ptolemaic kings didn't use them anymore. In fact, Pyramids went out of style 1500 years before Alexander conquered Egypt, so Cleopatra did not benefit from them. And the Arab Conquerors certainly had no use for either; instead these wonders were neglected. The Sphinx had to be unburied!

The Cothon and the Great Lighthouse are also ultra-powerful wonders. Imagine the Cothon (+1 hammer on each coast tile!!) combined with a manufactory, a factory and a power plant. It not only makes no sense that the factory would increase the productivity of a rowboat-harbor, it's also overpowered. And the Great Lighthouse adds +2 trade routes to its city... which is OP when you combine it with Custom Houses and all the later add-ons to increase trade.

The Duijuyuan grants +1 food for each river tile. The Grand Canal grants +2 commerce for each river tile. The Levee grants +1 production for each river tile. Each of these three buildings is obsoleted by the tech tier that enables the next one... for a reason.

The Buddhist wonders give serious food bonuses. They are designed to tie in neatly with Buddhist civilization UHVs, enable their victory when built. They are not supposed to grant unlimited growth+whipping.

Why would the Papal state continue to use the Colisseum to train their troops? Why would Secular France (or similar crusader states) be able to use the Krak des Chevaliers during the Indochina wars?

Yes, the wonder obsoletion is inconvenient, but it's in the game for balance reasons as well as historical ones.

 

[Gianmarco Silvestro]

I completely agree with the balance reasons that you put out in a very clever and brilliant way.

What if one made them location specific, not expiring and with adjusted benefits?

What about the vanilla game? How did they balance the wonders? Could we follow a pattern like that and tweak them to link them to specific world areas?

 

[1SDANi]

I completely agree with the balance reasons that you put out in a very clever and brilliant way.

What if one made them location specific, not expiring and with adjusted benefits?

What about the vanilla game? How did they balance the wonders? Could we follow a pattern like that and tweak them to link them to specific world areas?

According to the wiki, the following wonders obsolete at the following techs in the vanilla game:

• Angkor Wat (Computers)
• Apostolic Palace (Mass Media)
• Chichen Itza (Rifling)
• Colossus (Astronomy)
• Great Library (Scientific Method)
• Great Lighthouse (Corporation)
• Hagia Sophia (Steam Power)
• Kremlin (Fiber Optics)
• Parthenon (Chemistry)
• Spiral Minaret (Computers)
• Stonehenge (Astronomy in Beyond the Sword, or Calendar in vanilla)
• Temple of Artemis (Scientific Method)
• University of Sankore (Computers)

 

[Leoreth]

Wonders do obsolete in the vanilla game, which is why this question puzzled me so much.

 

[PiR]

I totally agree wonders should be nerfed when times passes, and we are still free to delay their obsolescence by researching techs that will not obsolete them in priority (how many times have I done that).
However in the vanilla game or vanilla RFC, for the cultural output of the wonder, I think it was never "obsoleted"? I thought we always benefited from it?

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, but that is also the case in DoC.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

I remember the good old days when the Great Cothon didn't expire and many ancient civ strategies were designed around having a "Cothon city" for the entire game... I understand why Cothon becomes obsolete but I miss that kind of permanent city specialization.

Also, do obsolete wonders count toward the Wonder limit? If they do, that seems slightly punishing to small, wondermongering civs that can't build a lot of cities.

Another very small wonder-related question: would it be possible to list the wonders associated with each religion on each religion's civilopedia page? I remember seeing something like it in the list of changes but having that kind of list accessible in game would be nice .

 

[1SDANi]

I remember the good old days when the Great Cothon didn't expire and many ancient civ strategies were designed around having a "Cothon city" for the entire game... I understand why Cothon becomes obsolete but I miss that kind of permanent city specialization.

Also, do obsolete wonders count toward the Wonder limit? If they do, that seems slightly punishing to small, wondermongering civs that can't build a lot of cities.

Another very small wonder-related question: would it be possible to list the wonders associated with each religion on each religion's civilopedia page? I remember seeing something like it in the list of changes but having that kind of list accessible in game would be nice .

they do not count

that'd be quite nice tbh

 

[Force44]

Obsolete wonders don't count towards the limit ?!

That drastically would change my strategy for long games with civilizations with only one huge core city from picking the best wonders to building as many obsolete ones as possible. I'll give it a go in the new year.

In the mean time, happy 2020 everybody!

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

However in the vanilla game or vanilla RFC, for the cultural output of the wonder, I think it was never "obsoleted"? I thought we always benefited from it?

While that still technically happens, this only counts for the original owner, not any future conquerors. Imo there should be a building that provides extra culture for every obsolete building, i.e. most Wonders, Walls, Castles, Monasteries and in the very late game Stables. Historical city walls, castles and monasteries are after all popular tourist destinations in many places, and the culture from Stables represents how people still use horse drawn carriages for city tours in cities like Vienna, not to mention that many people ride horses for fun and that there is still a ceremonial function for cavalry in many countries.

Maybe this would make for a good additional effect for the Hotel?

 

[PiR]

Yes, but that is also the case in DoC.

Thanks for confirming this.

While that still technically happens, this only counts for the original owner, not any future conquerors.

So maybe this is the difference with vanilla game?

 

[Leoreth]

No, that's also the case in the base game.

 

[Gianmarco Silvestro]

Thank you all for all the explanations and the information!

Going back to my “core” question:

Do you think that there could be a way to “tweak” wonders and make them a long lasting source of power for a city?
I think that this could be achieved by making (some/most?) wonders geographically locked to an area of tiles. This would allow other civs to take them over and most importantly (imho) make them “theirs”, part of their culture!

I think that this could be a great implementation. Of course game-changing in terms of strategy and mechanics, but potentially majestic.

Also there could be capitals with “stacked” wonders, that can become the core of superpowers indeed (ie Rome, Paris, Parsa, Memphis and may others).

Any feedback or thoughts on this specific idea?

 

[JDPElGrillo]

Obsolete wonders already continue to provide culture to their city, which is not a trivial thing for controlling borders and especially in wartime, where your path of attack can hinge on which tiles capturing a city will free up for your 2-movers. That said, if you really wanted a small ongoing return from obsolete wonders you could go with the civ3 tourist attraction mechanic and give them a trickle of GPT. Anything more than that and I’d say the effects could start becoming too swingy on top of being unrealistic. Going tall with mature cottages, settled great people, and national wonders (that incidentally never obsolete) is enough to distinguish strong core cities from peripheral ones, IMO.

 

[Force44]

Well an implementation of your idea could be to attatch additional bonuses to the civilizations that are supposed to build (or possess) the wonders. That way said wonders become an ever bigger target for 'suitable' civilizations to acquire.

Another implementation of your idea would be to grant additional bonuses to wonders when they are built on the correct spot on the map.

And I would not be surprised if it would be difficult but possible to lock certain bonuses of the wonder to certain ages (like already is done with certain civilizationbonuses)

If applied to a mod(mod) of DoC I would certainly be interested to see how such an implementation of wonders would pan out!