Right to Rule - New Wonders

[queenpea]

Thoughts on the new wonders? (and please add screenshots when available--I haven't opened up the game yet since the update). Here are some of my random reactions:

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus seems strange to me. Not sure why a wonder with a cavalry bonus would need to be placed on the coast. I guess Antiquity wonders with bonuses towards coastal tiles or building ships would seem out of bounds for the goals in Antiquity? Regardless, this is a bit of a let down. Especially as I don't feel that cavalry units need to continuously receive buffs.

Wat Xieng Thong + Rila Monastery could be fun. I'm excited by this one, though I would like the culture bonus to increase per Great Work somehow.

Ubudiah Mosque I struggle with this one because many of my cities in VII don't have a lot of improvements as city sprawl is such a thing in VII. Most of my cities are majority urban tiles, with rural tiles being assigned to towns. I guess this would work in a very rural city, but I haven't really pursued this strategy.

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is an Antiquity Age wonder in Civilization VII. It must be built on Flat terrain adjacent to Coast.

• Effects:
  • The first time a Cavalry unit is destroyed, it respawns in the closest Settlement you own at 25% HP

Grand Bazaar is an Exploration Age wonder in Civilization VII. It must be built adjacent to a District in the Homelands.

• Effects:
  • +2 Gold.
  • +2 Resource Slots.
  • +3 Gold on Homelands Exotic Resource tiles.

Wat Xieng Thong is an Exploration Age wonder in Civilization VII. It must be built adjacent to a River.

• Effects:
  • +2 Culture.
  • Receieve 200 Gold every time you obtain a Great Work.

Ubudiah Mosque is a Modern Age wonder in Civilization VII. It must be built adjacent to a District.

• Effects:
  • +4 Happiness.
  • +50% to all yields on Improvements in this Settlement.

 

[disjointaccount]

Mausoleum seems strong, though I agree it'd be nice to see buffs going to classes other than cav.

Very underwhelmed by Grand Bazaar but I might be underestimating the potential yields.

I tried a little messing around with Rila + Wat Xieng Thong in my first game last night. It was a lot of fun and there's definitely potential for massive gold income.

I had the same reaction to Ubudiah Mosque but I think maybe it's just the kind of wonder you have to really build around and then it can give huge rewards? I might try a game where I sort of dedicate a city to UI spam with Serpent Mound and then add the Mosque to see what the yields are like. I think the inherent problem with all modern wonders atm though is just that they have to be incredibly powerful to tempt me into making them rather than just directly beelining my win.

Theres also Thanh Hue, which is the associated Dai Viet wonder and otherwise unlocked by (I think) castles in exploration? Needs to be built in a city with at least 7 current age walls and gives all cities with at least 7 current age walls +1 specialist cap.

 

[Menocchio]

There seems to be something strange going on with the Mausoleum, because while it works (and it's nice to spam out cavalry without worry) for me they keep respawning at my capital, not the nearest settlement. It makes a big difference when you're in a war and your capital is well away from your frontier.

Thanh Hue is an ideal sim-city wonder, and a real no-brainer if you're playing a civ like Abbasids who want specialists in big tall cities. I haven't gotten to Modern yet, but I feel like Ubudiah Mosque could be really interesting if you're coming out of Exploration with the Inca, Songhai, or Han/Ming. There's probably some scheme out there to maximise rural production yields, too.

 

[Siptah]

Disclaimer: I haven't built any of these yet.

Grand Bazaar isn't really great as it seems. It might be handy at the beginning of modern, before you get many factories up, and help to get these up faster with the gold. I'll try to grab it in my next economic palythrough.

Mausoleum: it's probably a nice to have that could be the edge every now and then? Especially if you play Mongols or Charlemagne. Then you can throw your plenty cavalry at the enemy without even taking any care of them.

The Wat seems fun. On the other hand, the gold might be a bit low for exploration and especially modern?

Ubudiah Mosque seems not really useful. Cities with a lot of production usually don't have many improvements in my late game.

Thanh Hue is interesting. I wonder how often I will get a chance to actually build it. 7 exploration age walls is usually not common for me. Yet, if I can have Angkor as well...

 

[disjointaccount]

The more I think about Mausoleum, the more I like it, actually. There's definitely an element of it depending on playstyle here, but with commanders being a thing, I tend to actually play more conservatively with my units than I did in previous games (outside of wars where it's clear the invasion is going to be an absolute meat grinder and I put my cities on endless unit production 10 turns ahead of time).

Objectively, Mausoleum would be more useful in terms of production saved the more horsies are dying, but from the mindset of treating every unit as more valuable, getting them back feels better. So basically, even where it's less useful, it still feels impactful because it's undoing a casualty that felt like more of a big deal.

 

[Bootstrapbilly]

I feel Firaxis have been pretty overzealous with coastal requirements for some wonders. Dogo Onsen and Theodoric's are examples, Battersea less so though at least it's navy related for some reason. Sure the cities are near the coast, but its not like you can see the sea from the actual locations or the sea really relating to them. I don't feel that way with Halicarnassus coastal requirement but don't really understand what it has to do with cavalry.

Halicarnassus seems decent enough, only takes 3 horse men to respawn to recoup the cost in hammers assuming no production modifiers for either.

Also feel Grand Bazaar is pretty underwhelming, I guess slots are pretty hard to come by at the start of exploration and gpt from treasure resources that are already improved might be a decent early exploration age bump?

Ubudiah is there just for city planning and yield porn just feels too late in the game to be too impactful. I wonder if it works on the total tile yield or just the improvement. Expedition camps on natural wonders come to mind. Nepal highland power stations too and serpent mound too

Thanh Hue seems like a worse Angkor Wat or an Angkor Wat designed just for Dai Viet, even with the power of additional specialists. 7 medieval walls is hefty investment plus any buildings needed to be placed to get to 7 districts to place walls on.

Wat Xieng Thong seems pretty good though, relics don't feel that hard to come by when compared to wonders when compared to Great Stele. Great Stele, Rila, WXT seems fun.

 

[disjointaccount]

just feels too late in the game to be too impactful

This is how I feel about most modern wonders. I love building wonders, even just as adjacency sticks, but in modern I pretty much only ever build Oxford. It's just so hard to justify putting resources into something that doesn't directly help you towards your wincon. I'm personally a 4th age DLC believer, and if that is the case and modern becomes like antiquity and exploration where the legacy paths don't end the age, all of the wonders will immediately become much better (along with just general city-building) since the age will have that element of building your empire up for the future alongside chasing legacy paths, rather than just rushing a win ASAP. Fingers crossed, anyway.

 

[pjotroos]

This is how I feel about most modern wonders. I love building wonders, even just as adjacency sticks, but in modern I pretty much only ever build Oxford. It's just so hard to justify putting resources into something that doesn't directly help you towards your wincon.

Five months in, I still blame how the victory conditions actually work, not that they exist. As one counterpoint - Science is generally okay. You need to engage with the systems of the age. Economic is most of the way there. But for both Culture & Domination, you can get to the winning project by turn 20-25, effectively skipping any progression within the era. I do not understand why explorers unlock on the very first civic. I think the domination victory is a horrible mess overall. It rewards you leaving your neigbors with a lot of crap cities in exploration. It incentivises opposing ideologies, without actually forcing anyone into ideology, ever. And most egregiously, it takes more turns to build both the necessary projects than it takes to do the conquering, if you set yourself up right.

I also think Modern era on the whole feels hollow, because it doesn't incentivise new settling or city planning in any way. All land types are viable from antiquity. All your adjacencies will be sorted out by exploration. All you're doing is overbuilding and moving troops around. That's why I can't see fourth era happening.

 

[Krikkit1]

For the Bazaar…what are “Exotic” resource tiles.

 

[disjointaccount]

Five months in, I still blame how the victory conditions actually work, not that they exist. As one counterpoint - Science is generally okay. You need to engage with the systems of the age. Economic is most of the way there. But for both Culture & Domination, you can get to the winning project by turn 20-25, effectively skipping any progression within the era. I do not understand why explorers unlock on the very first civic. I think the domination victory is a horrible mess overall. It rewards you leaving your neigbors with a lot of crap cities in exploration. It incentivises opposing ideologies, without actually forcing anyone into ideology, ever. And most egregiously, it takes more turns to build both the necessary projects than it takes to do the conquering, if you set yourself up right.

I also think Modern era on the whole feels hollow, because it doesn't incentivise new settling or city planning in any way. All land types are viable from antiquity. All your adjacencies will be sorted out by exploration. All you're doing is overbuilding and moving troops around. That's why I can't see fourth era happening.

I think culture not relying on, you know, culture, is a relatively persistent problem throughout the game. Antiquity is the only age where the culture legacy path actually rewards having high culture yields, and even then that can still be largely circumvented in other ways. I think a good chunk of the issue stems from culture buildings being in the science tree, so culture can't just snowball itself the way science can. But Piety and Natural History being base-level civics are really weird decisions.

 

[Krikkit1]

I think culture not relying on, you know, culture, is a relatively persistent problem throughout the game. Antiquity is the only age where the culture legacy path actually rewards having high culture yields, and even then that can still be largely circumvented in other ways. I think a good chunk of the issue stems from culture buildings being in the science tree, so culture can't just snowball itself the way science can. But Piety and Natural History being base-level civics are really weird decisions.

Piety could work fine as a base level civic if they made getting Relics Harder and Fleshed out the Theology tree more. (basically have you do stuff with Religion before just getting Relics)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think culture not relying on, you know, culture, is a relatively persistent problem throughout the game. Antiquity is the only age where the culture legacy path actually rewards having high culture yields, and even then that can still be largely circumvented in other ways. I think a good chunk of the issue stems from culture buildings being in the science tree, so culture can't just snowball itself the way science can. But Piety and Natural History being base-level civics are really weird decisions.

Piety being base level Civic in Exploration I suspect is because the Religion mechanics actually belong at the end of Antiquity: only Islam and its off-shoots (Sikh, Ba'hai) are actual 'Exploration" religions. Having artificially moved Religion to Exploration, they had to start it early to have it make any sense at all, but that makes the entire religion-based Cultural Path (which has virtually no conflict built into it: you can get enough relics regardless of what any opponent does) easily completable before the Age is more than 1/3 over.

Couple that to the nearly entirely Map dependent Economic Path and the Specialist/Adjacency based Science path, neither of which can be completed early unless the game is already a complete runaway, and Exploration Age seems as if it is designed to be played Sequentially: first do religion/Culture, then set up economic/Trade, finally fill in the specialists and adjacencies to complete Science.

And note that, like religion/Culture, Science also has virtually no conflict with any other player and trade only in grabbing good resource sites as early as possible. By ignoring the military Path, I have gone through most Exploration Ages without firing a shot or engaging in so much as a border skirmish while still completing three out of four Legacy paths completely.

 

[KMadCandy]

…I think the domination victory is a horrible mess overall. It rewards you leaving your neigbors with a lot of crap cities in exploration. It incentivises opposing ideologies, without actually forcing anyone into ideology, ever. And most egregiously, it takes more turns to build both the necessary projects than it takes to do the conquering, if you set yourself up right…

I hadn’t thought about it like that before, but I completely agree! Thank you for putting it into words for me

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

For the Bazaar…what are “Exotic” resource tiles.

It's either a translation error. It's meant to say Treasure.

You basically get more Gold on Homeland Treasure Resource tiles, can be quite powerful if you happen to have be near them (I found a huge clump so it made for really good ones).

 

[Krikkit1]

It's either a translation error. It's meant to say Treasure.

You basically get more Gold on Homeland Treasure Resource tiles, can be quite powerful if you happen to have be near them (I found a huge clump so it made for really good ones).

So only useful for one Era…I assume it is all Homeland Treasure Resources tiles not just those in the city it is in.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'm only familiar with two of the new Wonders, but they both deserve some comment:

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is yet another of many examples of Wonders in Civ games that has no real connection with what the game has it do. There is no known special connection between the structure, the dynasty, or the city with 'cavalry', whether chariots or individual riders. The effect buffing cavalry is particularly egregious given that cavalry is the one unit type already overpowered in the game and so least needing buffing.

On the other hand, Halicarnassus is associated with the sea (it was a major trading port and its most famous non-historian was probably Artemisia of Caria, one of Civ VI's Great Admirals) so that having the buff apply to Warships would be much more appropriate and allow sea exploration with much less worry about blundering into a fleet of hostile IP quadriremes or carracks.

The Grand Bazaar (Buyuk Carsi or Bezzazistan-j Cedid if they are referring to Constantinople/Istanbul's great market) seems rather meh. Resource slots are critical in Antiquity to slot your 30 resources/Civ, but not so much in Exploration, where also +2 Gold is, relatively, nothing. Having an effect that only applies to one Age is also rather deflating, given that 'Wonders' are geneerally considered worthwhile because they affect your Civ throughout he game, not just for 1/3 of it.

Given that the Bazaar drew in goods from all over the globe, I suggest that it give you more Trade Routes and more Gold from each one and/or more distance for each Route. That could be tied to Treasure resources, but to keep the Wonder from losing much of its appeal at the end of Exploration Age, I think it would be better to make this the Great Trade (Route) Wonder of the game, which also ties it in nicely with Exploration Age's emphasis on long-distance intercontinental trade.

 

[Krikkit1]

I'm only familiar with two of the new Wonders, but they both deserve some comment:

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus is yet another of many examples of Wonders in Civ games that has no real connection with what the game has it do. There is no known special connection between the structure, the dynasty, or the city with 'cavalry', whether chariots or individual riders. The effect buffing cavalry is particularly egregious given that cavalry is the one unit type already overpowered in the game and so least needing buffing.

On the other hand, Halicarnassus is associated with the sea (it was a major trading port and its most famous non-historian was probably Artemisia of Caria, one of Civ VI's Great Admirals) so that having the buff apply to Warships would be much more appropriate and allow sea exploration with much less worry about blundering into a fleet of hostile IP quadriremes or carracks.

The Grand Bazaar (Buyuk Carsi or Bezzazistan-j Cedid if they are referring to Constantinople/Istanbul's great market) seems rather meh. Resource slots are critical in Antiquity to slot your 30 resources/Civ, but not so much in Exploration, where also +2 Gold is, relatively, nothing. Having an effect that only applies to one Age is also rather deflating, given that 'Wonders' are geneerally considered worthwhile because they affect your Civ throughout he game, not just for 1/3 of it.

Given that the Bazaar drew in goods from all over the globe, I suggest that it give you more Trade Routes and more Gold from each one and/or more distance for each Route. That could be tied to Treasure resources, but to keep the Wonder from losing much of its appeal at the end of Exploration Age, I think it would be better to make this the Great Trade (Route) Wonder of the game, which also ties it in nicely with Exploration Age's emphasis on long-distance intercontinental trade.

Maybe if the Bazaar was +1 slot per unique resource slotted (and +3 gold per Homeland Treasure/Factory resources)

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The Mausoleum is meh and kind of confusing thematically.

The Grand Bazaar looks good (like all resource slot wonders), but being at such an early civic, it's going to be difficult to build before the AI.

Thanh Hue will be good for the Exploration science legacy.

Wat Xieng Thong also seems like the AI will be hard to compete with for it, but it's much less desirable, as its gold boosts are fairly small and inconsistent.

Ubudiah seems very nice, maybe one of the best in the game, depending on what settlement you put it in.

 

[disjointaccount]

I don't necessarily hate wonders that only work in one age; they just have to be powerful enough to justify it, which Grand Bazaar decidedly isn't

Given that the Bazaar drew in goods from all over the globe, I suggest that it give you more Trade Routes and more Gold from each one and/or more distance for each Route. That could be tied to Treasure resources

This makes me think, what if the Bazaar (or another wonder) enabled trading for treasure resources in some way? It'd probably be tricky to balance so that it wasn't either totally busted or so convoluted it was worthless, but it could be a cool way to open up another option for legacy path completion, in the vein of Rila Monastery.

 

[Krikkit1]

I don't necessarily hate wonders that only work in one age; they just have to be powerful enough to justify it, which Grand Bazaar decidedly isn't

This makes me think, what if the Bazaar (or another wonder) enabled trading for treasure resources in some way? It'd probably be tricky to balance so that it wasn't either totally busted or so convoluted it was worthless, but it could be a cool way to open up another option for legacy path completion, in the vein of Rila Monastery.

I could see it generating Caravans from Homeland Treasure Resources (either in this Settlement or All Homeland Treasure Resources in your empire)