REX/ICS vs National Wonders

[ChesStrategy]

Hi all,

For context, Im looking at Emperor/Immortal difficulty, standard map & speed, and on Pangaea; In general, whenever you guys decide to go wide, how do you time your expansions to get the national wonders you want? Or is it pretty much just get NC early, and ignore the rest?

When I say ignore, I mean only get it if you happen to find another reason to build a particular building X in ALL your cities.

This case is quite rare though since, I thought factoring city specialization also includes deciding which key buildings are needed (i.e. if a production-specialized city has only a tile generating gold, a market or mint is probably not necessary, vs a workshop); If we are strict on city specialization for the sake of controlling building maintenance, this makes it hard also to get the other national wonders:

TL;DR: Are national wonders other than NC even considered on higher difficulties when we factor in city/city building specialization, maint costs, And are trying to ICS/go wide?

Thanks for the advice,
Fellow Civ5 G&K player

 

[joncnunn]

Yes! Most important after NC is Cirus Maximus, and I personally won't consider founding a city that doesn't bring in a unique resource until that's built on Emperor+.

Next important after that is Grand Temple. (G&K only)

In my current game I also delayed founding a city until the following set of national wonders were built since I already had the structures in all current cities (these were built in a chain in my capital) : Iron Works - National Epic - Wall Street.

Cash rushing a needed improvement in the bad production cities really helps.
Evenually you do want to build Oxford, but you actually get more out of that one if you wait until you'd get an Information Age tech.

Also in G&K the national wonder that promotes all your spies & grants one more is useful.

 

[SilentConfusion]

That depends on how close I am to my opponents.

If I am very close I will stay small at first, while going military and will have to reassess after conquest.

If there is a lot of room to expand, I would maybe get Circus Maximus and then drop cities as fast as I can. The longer a city is down the better, especially in large numbers, but happiness is the limiter in those situations. CM helps and trading extra luxuries helps (especially since in G&K AI will improve copies of resource for trade early).

If I have a bit of room but I'm not in danger of attack, I'll stay small get all my favorite national wonders and go tall early on.

 

[Hpuk]

When going wide, I usually just build the NC and ignore the rest.
Sometimes I manage to get Ironworks as well, but it's rarely worth the hefty hammer cost when you have 8+ cities and aren't able to get it very early.