Useless Wonders of the Past

[Vorret]

Pyramids never became obsolete... but it was only on the same continent, always built it for some reason...

 

[Ashmantious]

Eiffel Tower in Civ II, my MO of Play is to avoid being frisky until the end of the game unless the other Civ starts something. I didn’t have much of a rep that needed repairing.

Great Wall seemed a bit pointless. I never built walls in my cities (they usually grew too fast) and I never really needed the extra punch against the barbs.

 

[oxonian2001]

Great Wall seemed a bit pointless. I never built walls in my cities (they usually grew too fast) and I never really needed the extra punch against the barbs.

I KNEW I had forgotten something! The Great Wall was seriously nerfed from previous versions. Admittedly, it had arguably been over-powerful previously, but it was a pretty drastic change.

Oh, Shakespeare's Theatre was always very low on my list as well. Not so much because it wasn't useful (although it was strictly optional even for a builder), as because I couldn't spare the research for Free Artistry. And Magellan's Voyage, of course, was also a minor concern except in specialized circumstances. Has anyone ever been dramatically better off with two extra movement for ships?

 

[Spatzimaus]

The Great Library was extremely useful, and was almost always the first Wonder I'd really make an effort to complete. That way, I could go for something with a long lead time like Monarchy or the Republic, and let everyone else worry about giving me all those other techs. Plus, it meant that I could build up a big army at the start of the middle ages (I played the Chinese, and Riders were IMO the best UU in the game) without sacrificing my technology level.

Useless Wonders? For me, that'd include:
> Wonders that only improved happiness in one city. By the late game, my large cities never had unhappiness problems due to combining Marketplace, Colosseum, Cathedral, other wonders, and luxury resources; it was the small or newly-conquered stuff that had problems.
Shakespeare's Theater was a prime example of this. Dead-end tech, only helped one city... not worth it. Are you really going to spend ten turns researching useless techs for this when you could be getting Steam Power or Industrialization instead?
(Wonders that improved a single city in other ways, like research or production, were very useful.)
> The Great Wall... it only helped size 6 or less, and gave a cheap city improvement that didn't have an upkeep to begin with.
> The wonders that created a unit every 4-5 turns. Not that the units were terrible, but they weren't upgradeable, cost upkeep, and just weren't very strong. I'd just disband them to feed production of buildings, but they weren't even worth enough to make that work well.

 

[Donkey Puncher]

I agree the Great Library is the most important wonder especially early in the game.my nrxt favorite wounld be Sun Tze's art of war then the most economically important is Smith's trading post . To help youhave extrav cash to support your army

 

[MEL THE GREAT]

The great library to me is the best early wonder and very useful at helping me build my military before going to the middle ages.

 

[Sirian]

All wonders count for something in Civ4, because they produce points (each turn) toward spawning a Great Person in the city where they are built. This can mean that early wonders, even if their primary effect goes obsolete quickly, will continue to inspire citizens in your city and continue to add to the sum of your civilization's worth and power.


- Sirian

 

[drjones]

As many have said the GL is very powerful. So powerful I had to stop using GL type wonders in RAR for a challenge. I did make sure to trade all my new techs to the GL owner first though and made a b-line for the obsolescence tech.

The thing folks overlook about Shakespears is the culture, that thing was a powerhouse for borders and culture victories and making it on the 'greatest cities' list. Not to mention the early size boost. It was not a must have but still worth the trouble in the right situation.

As for the new game, all is different, leave your civ3 preconceptions at the door or get ready for a reamin.

-drjones

 

[spa]

I never really got into Civ3 (too tedious and unrewarding) and I came into the series when Civ2 came out so my experience is limited to Civ2. In that one I have to say the worst and I mean the worst wonder was the Lighthouse. It went obsolete and all it did was protect your sucky early ships. I found that the Civ2 map generator usually had ocean chokepoints so you could generally sail along the coast and then hop to the next continent without ever going away from land making the Lighthouse a dud (assuming you even bothered to build a ship before caravels). Others that were useful but weren't overly impressive because of minimal effect or quick obsolete:

1. Sun Tzu (if you kept your vetrean when upgrading then it would have been decent)
2. Oracle (obsolete too soon after building it and then investing in temples)
3. Great Wall (obsolete before it could be really useful since I never fought in the ancient era)
4. Eiffel Tower (since I didn't fight I had a clean reputation when I sprung. Besides it was usually pretty easy to goad the AI into declaring war with threats thus keeping your hands clean)
5. Womens Suffrage (who waged war as a democracy?)
6. Marco Polo's Embassy (who needed contact with the AI when they were programmed to hate you?)

And then on the flip side you had the critically awesome ones.

1. Pyramids (I started over if I didn't get them)
2. Michelangeo's Chapel (again I would start over as on the high difficulties you needed the happiness)
3. J.S. Bach Cathedral
4. Hoover Dam
5. Adam Smiths Trading Company
6. The United Nations
7. Great Library
8. Leonardo's Workshop
9. Darwin's Voyage (not so important to me just important to keep away from the AI so that they wouldn't win the race to the two critical modern wonders)

Anyway, hopefully things will be more balanced in Civ4 so that some wonders aren't clearly superior to others.

 

[Yahzi]

In Civ2 I remember needing Sufferage.

But in Civ3 it was Hoover's Dam. The Great Library was awesome, but simply unbuildable at the hardest difficulty levels.

I had to have the Dam, though, because otherwise the pollution levels would eat me alive.

The only other wonder I actually cared about building was the Forbidden Palace.

 

[brummenstiegler]

Compared to Civ II, the wonders in Civ III were way weaker. I remember at least half a dozen wonders in Civ II that I really, really, really (REALLY!) wanted to have, but in Civ III, especially at deity difficulty level, I hardly ever managed to get any wonder, also, because I didn't feel it was necessary. In Civ II almost every wonder gave you an "unfair" advantage, but in Civ III you could almost always beat this advantage by building some more improvements. The Great Library is excluded here. But I hardly EVER managed to bulid it. It's a shame...

 

[Paranoid Eyes]

Compared to Civ II, the wonders in Civ III were way weaker. I remember at least half a dozen wonders in Civ II that I really, really, really (REALLY!) wanted to have, but in Civ III, especially at deity difficulty level, I hardly ever managed to get any wonder, also, because I didn't feel it was necessary. In Civ II almost every wonder gave you an "unfair" advantage, but in Civ III you could almost always beat this advantage by building some more improvements. The Great Library is excluded here. But I hardly EVER managed to bulid it. It's a shame...

I, for one, think the benefit should be somewhere in between the godliness of civ2 wonders and the underpowered ones in civ3 (save for a few, Hoover for example). They should be good enough to reward you for investing the shields/hammers, but not so back-breaking that you feel like you need a certain wonder in order to compete.