Some wonders should be placed in there respective districts

[Captain Kilgore]

Why can't the library in my district be the Great Library? Why can't the lighthouse in my harbor be the Great Lighthouse? Keep the requirements, the animations and the bonuses, but don't make me build Broadway in the middle of a bunch of farms because its the only spot left next to the cultural district, just let me build it in my cultural district itself. It would make the cities look much more natural, with a few exceptions like the Oracle, Stonehenge, and Alhambra

The fact that you can't place wonders on strategic resources, plus their requirements all while needing to be built next to their respective districts makes it difficult to really plan on which wonders you want to build and still have a somewhat fluid strategy. If you leave a spot open on a river next to your campus for Oxford University you might miss out on some adjacency bonuses and somebody else beats you to it anyways, which really holds you back. It would make much more sense for the university in your campus district to be Oxford University. The same thing could be said for the industrial district and Ruhr Valley. The catch would be you could only build one wonder in each district, that way you can't have any super cities. I've noticed that the city I focus on production with usually becomes overcrowded with all the wonders I can build, which has led to some unexpected early cultural victories.

 

[Elucidus]

I agree the wonder system needs a bit of work, what that is exactly to balance it, I am not yet sure, but you have some good ideas, and are on the right track.

 

[TomKQT]

I'm not sure.
I must say that I don't personaly like how wonders work in Civ6, because finding a spot for them is usually quite hard and you must often sacrifice a tile which could have been good for something else. Plus most wonders seems very week to me. Putting this two factors together, I noticed that I'm building MUCH MUCH less wonders than in Civ5. In Civ5 I quite often had my capital full of wonders, even maybe like 90 % of all existing wonders
On the other hand, I don't think that it's a bad design (every wonder requiring a separate tile), because it adds another strategic element to the game and IMHO it fits the game very well. Tiles around the city now have very important meaning and it's not just "anonymous mass" of farms, lumber camps, mines and trading posts like in Civ5.

I would however definitely lift some quite crazy restrictions on wonders like: next to a cattle and on a flat land and next to a river and not next to the city centre and on a coast
But I also miss how in CivV the great library/lighthouse automatically gave the city a regural library/lighthouse, because it make so much sense. Why would you need a small lighthouse if you already have the huge one?

 

[RealAntithesis]

I agree. I don't see why wonders should be taking up entire tiles. Wonders are associated with particular game play mechanics which are represented by certain districts for science, commerce, culture, religion, seafaring, military and industrial. Wonders should be placed in these districts and if there's no room, spill out into surrounding tiles (without taking those tiles out of play).

It doesn't really make sense to me that some Wonders take up an entire tile when they are essentially just buildings - such as Oxford University, Eiffel Tower etc. Other Wonders that are more associated with the landscape and terrain may well make sense to take up real space on the map.

The trade off between building wonders or working tiles is too great, especially considering some aren't so wondrous in the first place. They already take a significant amount of production to build, but to also sacrifice workable terrain, and coupled with their very restrictive placement rules, makes them a potentially loss making proposition.

I've found myself in the position of wanting to build a wonder, but it could only be built on one tile in the city where I wanted it, but that tile had a bonus/strategic/luxury resource already on it. So I put down the wonder, which permanently destroyed the resource, and after many a turn, the AI beat me to it by a few days. So in the end, not only didn't I have a Wonder and lost production, but also no resource.

Wonders should be good, only resulting in lost opportunity when failing to build one, not permanently penalising the player making them quite bad.

 

[Elucidus]

It was a balancing issue for sure, but one that, ironically, needs balancing. It shouldn't be all or nothing, and the ones that do take up a tile should be more powerful. The restrictions seem a bit harsh, however, moving some wonders into the relevant districts would alleviate some of that and for those truly great wonders that need their own tile, maybe those restrictions will be worth keeping, or at least some of them, so you keep that strategic value.

 

[Ryika]

The fact that you can't place wonders on strategic resources, plus their requirements all while needing to be built next to their respective districts makes it difficult to really plan on which wonders you want to build and still have a somewhat fluid strategy. If you leave a spot open on a river next to your campus for Oxford University you might miss out on some adjacency bonuses and somebody else beats you to it anyways, which really holds you back.

You actually perfectly describe why I like the current system and why I would not want the...

university in your campus district to be Oxford University.

...in that one little paragraph. Wonders SHOULD be something that you plan around, something that you give up other stuff for, and something that, if you don't get them, "really hold you back". That's what makes the current implementation interesting, placing them in districts would diminish the influence they have.

In my opinion the only thing wrong with wonders is that their effects are generally on the weak side and that production costs are too high for later wonders.

 

[UWHabs]

My only flaw is that in many cases, wonders are too expensive and too specific. So the Terracotta army basically never gets built until the modern Era. I think what should happen is that every wonder can be built almost anywhere, but basically you get a big bonus if you get the tile/adjacency right, and a lesser bonus otherwise.

So maybe Ruhr Valley always gives the +30% production, but only gives the mine bonus if it'still on a river. could be a good mix of encouraging placement without being too restrictive.