Strategy for wonders

[thungrim]

Hello fellow CivFanatics,

Long time casual civ player here. I just wanted to pick your brains about wonder placement in cities with regards to Great People.

Given the choice, would you specialize the wonders in a city? (ie. as many "Great Prophet" wonders in one city, while "great engineer" ones in another) Or do you try to balance out the wonders for an even increase in culture throughout cities?

Second, do you mix wonder types or let the bonuses for Great People mix together? Looking forward to your insights.

Currently I space my wonders out around my cities, purely for aesthetics (and yes, I play on difficulties low enough for aesthetics to factor into my gameplay ). I've been considering a switch to concentrating wonders in a few cities to capitalize on Great People chances in the hopes that I increase my output of great people.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm less formal than that. I try to spread the wonders between 3 of the older cities, but I also concentrate on which city can build the wonder first if I am in competition with another civ to get it built. Beyond that, there are certain wonders that really do give benefits based on where they are and what their benefit is. So you watch them and try to get them in specific places. But I don't try to govern which GP I'll get with wonders. That's a lesser consideration, and I'll use specialists to aim for that.

 

[nanomage]

"Given the choice" is usually unprobable.
You have to build wonders where you can build them faster.

Also you usually have only one or two cities which produce GP, and normally they are not highly productive to build wonders.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

If I build alot of wonders (which is rare), I like to put the engineer wonders in one city just so I can pop an engineer at some point in the game with 100% chance. I also tend to put my great prophet wonders in one city also since I am normally aiming for scientists.

All other wonders tend to go in capital or high prod city which acts as a mixed bag secondary GP farm.

 

[Warhead5654]

I pop all my wonders into one big city

My capital city is usually the global cultural capital pumping out 4k+ per turn

Get Free Speech with pacifism and Never worry about culture in your capital


But by the time you hit industrial age with this strategy, the borders are built and culture isn't AS important anymore.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Get Free Speech with pacifism and Never worry about culture in your capital

Generally speaking, you never have to worry about culture in your capital (unless ur going for a cultural win of course! )

The only Wonders that I specify for GP purposes are the Oracle, Stonehenge, and Angkor Wat. In specialist heavy games, I usually try for a Great Prophet GP Farm in one of my most productive cities. In that city (usually the capital), I'll [try to] build Stonehenge, Oracle, (whatever other Wonder gives GProph points), and Angkor Wat. My food heavy city will get the Great Library and that's about it (besides as many scientists as I can cram in without starvation or stagnation).

Popping Great Prophets can be a huge boon. Sometimes, you can even grab a later religion even if you haven't focused on religion. I can often grab Christianity with my first Great Prophet. My second will create the shrine and any subsequent GrProph will get settled in my production madhouse. Angkor Wat just adds to the priest/prophet insanity

 

[Lessa]

At most I am likely to only be building wonders in three cities. So one will be GE wonders only, in order to keep the GE pool clean. My science city will have GS wonders if possible (hopefully with the aid of a GE from the GE city to counter poor production). Finally the 3rd (usually my capitol) gets anything else I want (and hopefully pops a GP or 2 for shrines or settling).

Late in the game when I (hopefully) have a tech lead I may put wonders in borfder cities for the culture.

However i have recently managed to curb my wonder addiction so tend to be fairly picky about which ones I build.

 

[nanomage]

At most I am likely to only be building wonders in one city. So one will be GE wonders only, in order to keep the GE pool clean. My science city will have GS wonders if possible (hopefully with the aid of a GE from the GE city to counter poor production). Finally the 3rd (usually my capitol) gets anything else I want (and hopefully pops a GP or 2 for shrines or settling).

Late in the game when I (hopefully) have a tech lead I may put wonders in borfder cities for the culture.

However i have recently managed to curb my wonder addiction so tend to be fairly picky about which ones I build.

I envy you much...
I just barely have opportunity to complete a single wonder i picked.

 

[Lessa]

I envy you much...
I just barely have opportunity to complete a single wonder i picked

I'm still mainly playing noble. Although I am just about to move up to Prince. So although I can't really build all the wonders (without getting run over by the AI shortly because I've put all my hammers into wonders not troops), I can still get a few that I actually want.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Yup, I'm going to have to start utilizing Wonders less... or at least... building them less

I'm moving up to Prince tonight, permanently (IE not just for Earth 18 games). Once I get prince down, I can forget about building more than a couple Wonders unless I have Industrious leader AND the resource bonus... I'm already missing them....

 

[dirtyparrot]

I'm not a wonder fiend. I usually pick and choose the wonders that I'm going for based on my civ's traits. For example if I'm Gandhi, I'll make sure that I get the Parthenon ASAP so the philo trait is super-enhanced (and can be really awesome if you combine this with the National Epic and Pacifism, which is something like 350% the normal rate of GPP). Plus, I choose more to focus on my cities infrastructure and unit production and get most of my wonders through conquest.

 

[Iranon]

I often try to collect as many non-artist-poducing wonders in one city and build the National Epic there; often I settle Great People there as well and later get the science output up with Oxford.

Sometimes the Great Library will go into another city, and most scientists and some engineers might be settled there... but I usually default to a bloated capital that's doing absolutely everything.

 

[QuixotesGhost]

Given the choice, would you specialize the wonders in a city? (ie. as many "Great Prophet" wonders in one city, while "great engineer" ones in another) Or do you try to balance out the wonders for an even increase in culture throughout cities?

Second, do you mix wonder types or let the bonuses for Great People mix together? Looking forward to your insights.

There's actually benefits and drawbacks to mixing Great People points. If you mix them you can generally get your great people faster; but you might not get the one you want.

However, in many situations there's actually multiple great people that you want. So you can afford to have polution, build all the wonders in the same city, and max out specialist slots to get out your great people quicker.

For example, pretend I'm relying heavily on Espionage. I want GSpies. However, GSpies produce excruciatingly slow. However, consider the holy city bonus for Espionage. So I don't just want GSpies; I also want GProphets to found a religion and the shrine will help me run my EP slider higher. So, I can run Priests alongside Spies to get great people out much quicker, and both great people will be a significant boon to Espionage.

So if you spread wonders out you have guaranteed types (often worth it for GP that are harder to get like GEgineers) but you'll ultimately get them slower.

Whether or not it's worth it is up to the strategy you are pursueing.

 

[Tephros]

I'm not a fan of great merchants in any game, or artists in any non-cultural game, so I try to keep those GPP outside of my main GP city, whether it be specialist-based generation, wonder-based generation, or both.

Awesome synergy would be doing something like building the Pyramids in any city for representation, the Great Library in your main wonder city, the Temple of Artemis in that same city, and the Parthenon elsewhere. The great merchant points from the temple are unfortunate, but those two wonders together is just awesome GPP production.

I did end up getting that in a game where I played as Stalin of the Zulu, but I stole the Great Library/Artemis city from Gandhi. The city was also food rich and on the coast. I promptly build the national epic there. Too bad the GLH was on the other side of the world.

 

[Raider]

I play a lot on Immortal, and there barbarians are a huge problem. At a certain point, they just swarm you, and it's not uncommon to have a constant stream of archers/axemen pouring at your cities. Because of this, I sometimes rush for the Great Wall from my capital before founding my 2nd city. Or sometimes concurrently. I'll grow my capital, then when it's at or one short of max population, I will make a setter and then start the great wall, timing it so that the settler produces at the same time as the masonry research finishes. Great Wall allows me to then quickly expand without worrying about building up a large army to protect my cities and improvements from barbarians.

After that, I typically, rush straight to Oracle and use it to get Code of Laws and found Confucianism. A few dozen turns later, my wonders give me a great prophet, which allows me to make the holy building and collect money from my religion. This subsidy allows me to keep my research rate high and compensate for the slow commerce start I got by focusing on production early on.

 

[IAM]

I'm stingy about building wonders. The more I play the less I build them. The Oracle is one that I will more consistantly focus on to shotgun to hereditary rule. The other two that I will make an attempt at are the Pentagon and Statue of Liberty. I play huge maps with lots of civs. Any wonder I build I have to have a specific well defined reason why I want it. Great person points is a minor factor in building the Oracle otherwise it's not an issue.