The Great Wall Debate

[Astares]

If I have Masonry, then my first build item on settling a city is usually a Wall. They require no upkeep and usually a new city can build them in 10-20 turns, which is using dead time till the city grows to two and I can build a worker.

The Great Wall though is the booby prize of the Great Wonders in CivIII. The only reason I see AI civs build it is because its the only thing left once the Ancient Era wonder rush. All of a sudden you'll see such and such has built the Pyramids, then someone has to switch from it so it is usually then Hanging Gardens or Great Library, then some other civ builds the remainder out of those two and then the Great Wall is built (assuming of course the other wonders have been completed).

Is there any articles that list the priority or significance of Wonders to the AI or do they just try to build them all when they the appropiate technology ?

 

[Hurricane]

Ok, I did a small test scenario. 4 cities (size 9)

Antium: no walls, no GW
Cumae: walls, no GW
Memphis: no walls, GW
Heliopolis: walls, GW

Each city was defended by 2 units. I attacked the first city with 2 swordsmen (all regs), noted the exact combat (for example hit, hit, wound, hit and wound, hit, wound, hit, wound). I then reloaded and did the same for the next city. With random seed on, the combat outcomes should be EXACTLY the same, no matter which city you attack, IF the walls and GW work like inteded. BTW, this is in 4000bc, so the GW is not obsolete.

I did the test 5 times (each with 4 reloads), and each and every reload had identical results. The effect of the GW should definitely appear. I don't know what Tacit_Exit did, but my game sure as hell works like it should.

My test is attached. Play as the Greeks.

EDIT: This is on v1.29. Maybe it's a PTW bug?

 

[alamo]

Interesting. Is it a PTW bug? How do you mess that up?

One other desirable trait of the GW is that it can trigger a GA for a miltaristic civ. GA can be triggered by building wonder(s) that play to your civ traits.

 

[Tacit_Exit]

@alamo/hurricane

Originally posted by Tacit_Exit
. . . and have uncovered what is probably a PTW 'bug'.

Yeah; I've reported it as a bug.

*edit* I'd say it probably manifested in PTW as an indirect result of the addition of the Civil Defense improvement and whatever code change Firaxians did to implement it.

 

[BobTheTerrible]

A good test would be to see if radar tower effects are cumulative, ie if you have 2 towers next to each other if you'd get the bonus for being within the range of 2 of them.

 

[Hygro]

Bob, supposedly they are not, but then again, walls aren't supposed to work in cities

 

[BobTheTerrible]

Originally posted by Hygro
Bob, supposedly they are not, but then again, walls aren't supposed to work in cities

Exactly. Supposedly they don't work cumulatively, but maybe they do.

 

[amirsan]

Originally posted by CivGeneral
I duild the Great Wall just to reap the benifits of an increace in Barbarian Defense . THough I wished it still had the "City Wall in every city" effect.

That would be real cool.

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by Tacit_Exit
I'd say it probably manifested in PTW as an indirect result of the addition of the Civil Defense improvement and whatever code change Firaxians did to implement it.

This is correct. Walls work fine in vanilla civ3.

In vanilla civ3, walls were defined as any improvement with either a non-zero defensive bonus, or a non-zero bombard defense. All such improvements got the walls city graphic, and became obsolete for cities greater than size 6.

In PTW, the above approach would obviously not work, since the civil defense has a defensive bonus but is supposed to work for any size city. Firaxis decided to change the definition of walls to be any improvement with a non-zero bombard defense. Unfortunately, they forgot to make all other properties besides the bombard defense (such as the defensive bonus) of such improvements become obsolete after size 6. Note that the bombard defense still becomes negated after size 6, even in PTW.

 

[squidd]

great mr. tacit!!!

just sharing a couple of thoughts. i've never really looked at the great wall's value in a military manner. funny considering chinese history says it was built specifically for this purpose.

i've always looked at it secondarily (as one poster has said) as a culture booster. but primarily as a golden age trigger.

herein lies quite a shaky predicament. it takes a little math and even more foresight to determine whether the great wall, upon its completion and upon the trigeering of the golden age, will cause x number of cities to produce bonus shields and money to justify its building.

if x is too low a number, then the answer is obviously no and it would seem that the city building the great wall was better off pumping out settlers. (i am assuming a pre-build here as the construction will come at the brink of acient to medival age change)

if x is high enough then having the great wall is swell considering its just 200(?) shields, or costs much less than those 600 shield wonders.

squidd