Uses for 'worthless' wonders?

[svv]

Tanks are great. I seem to get them before bombers and artillery, so it doesn't seem to be an issue of playing longer games. With Pentagon, they're CR3 when first born in the West Point city. First promotion, they can start doing collateral damage.

The two-movement thing can be very helpful. Often I'll make one SOD of my 1-movement units (including cannon/artillery) to take inland cities, and send the tanks scampering off to the sides to take coastal cities, with the help of naval bombardment.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I'll admit it, I'm wonder-addicted. Even if I lose the race to build it, I treat it as a "wealth" option for the gold. The ones I tend to avoid more than others are the ones with Prophet GPPs, when I don't have a Holy City to shrine up and want to get a few Engineers lined up for more important later builds like Space Elevator and Three Gorges Dam.

 

[Lord Parkin]

The Pentagon is actually one of the few late wonders that are useful. It translates to a lot more military power (and more cost-effectively) than you think too, because modern units take more hammers, and you have a lot more cities, and larger ones too.

Chichen Itza... I believe it's useless, but there's one place that I haven't tried it yet: multiplayer duels. If it turns out to be useless, it's useless.

It's useless in multiplayer duels too, from my experience (18 wins against 4 losses says it is so).

 

[axident]

Chichen gets my vote as least useful World Wonder. I disagree with the Pentagon-doubters, though, but then again, I'm usually running Organized Religion + Industrious + Forge + Factory (which might be powered by that time), PLUS you have to remember that it's a zero-sum game when it comes to wonders: if you don't build it, someone else will.

I don't mind giving up Chichen Itza or something, but if I have nothing better to build in my wonder city, I'll build it anyway just for GPP or maybe gold refunds if I need gold.

Pentagon, though... I won't let anyone else have it if I can help it, even if I'm going for a non-military victory. But like I said, I'm usually running organized religion + industrious, so it's more worthwhile for me.

 

[GenericKen]

Re Pentagon> You can't rush 7 tanks with a great engineer.

Additionally, when roughly on military parity with other civilizations, the pentagon gives an edge that translates dispropotianately in combat. i.e. 32 vs 28 = 70% vs 30%, which is further amplified by the effects of the tank's collateral damage.

Re Colossus> Very powerful, but a bit of a gamble. It's one of the best wonders to be sped up by copper and sometimes the AI doesn't grab metal casting.

Even if you wind up working an average of 1 water tile per city, that's equivalent to a holy shrine. Through the early game, collossus can make fishing villiages more than self-sufficient and easily finance an early conquest.

You'll eventually want to swap to a cottage economy (or perhaps a GP economy, if those costal tiles are full of food), but for its time, the colossus more than pays for itself. This obviously doesn't apply on a map with 0 water.

Angkor Wat> Turns priests into engineer-and-a-halfs potentially very early in the game (if going for the philosophy slingshot). Very potent with caste system or Pyramids.

Chichen Itza> Not a wonder I would personally ever invest resources to build, it definatelly gets an asterisk when choosing cities to conquer however. Not only will it deprive a rival of the defense when he had built up depending on it, but it's quite nice for newly conquered cities that had not had time to build up their culture in the face of the coming counter-attack. Less of your army stays behind on defense (generally the healing units is enough), and you get to just keep on steamrolling.

Hagia Sophia> The one wonder I simply can't understand building. I guess the great engineer points are nice, but compared with the pyramids... it just seems silly.

 

[kniteowl]

Hagia Sophia> The one wonder I simply can't understand building. I guess the great engineer points are nice, but compared with the pyramids... it just seems silly.

It's a wonder generally better for games of Slower Speed eg- Epic, Marathon as it takes your workers longer to improve tiles and you don't need to run the Serfdom Civic to benefit for the 50% Fast improvement to workers.

 

[Skallagrimson]

When workers are slow I just build more workers, hehe. But I never scoff at Engineer GPP. If I'm not at war and there's nothing else pressing for a city, sure, I'll have it work on Hagia, until something better comes along.

 

[LucyDuke]

Even if you wind up working an average of 1 water tile per city, that's equivalent to a holy shrine. Through the early game, collossus can make fishing villiages more than self-sufficient and easily finance an early conquest.

I realize it's little more than nitpicking, but you really can't compare a tile to a shrine. You have to keep that citizen happy and healthy, and you can't build wall street in every city. Shrines also profit from cities you don't own.

 

[CivDude86]

Water tiles dont' give you money when running 100% science and shrines don't cost money (that pop does).

 

[Skallagrimson]

Happiness is taking an AI city with 2+ shrines, both intact after the battle, for widespread religions.

 

[jkp1187]

Regarding the Pentagon -- I think the nice thing about Civ IV versus previous incarnations is that there are no "must-have" wonders. There are wonders that make your life easier, there are wonders that I prefer to build more than others, there are wonders that, over the span of the game, give you a leg up in certain respects, but there are no wonders that you really NEED to have.

I was just looking through some old strategy guides and found my old Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri guide. The description of one of the "wonders" in that book contains this phrase:

"The project has more goodies than Christmas morning, and shuld probably be considered essential to any long-term development strategy.... If you're pursuing a development-based strategy, you do want to grab this as soon as possible...."

Another wonder had this phrase: "Regardless of your faction or strategy, this one is just too good to miss."


I can't think of any Wonder in Civ IV that I'd say that about. Which isn't to say that I don't build wonders from time to time, but I can't think of a time when failling to build a wonder lost me the game...nor building a wonder won me the game. (Getting/failing to get one may have made things harder/easier, but that's not quite the same thing.)

As for me, I do try to grab the Pentagon when playing a non-aggressive civ if possible, for the XP boost it gives naval units. It makes for fewer headaches at sea.

^^about pentagon.

It's probably just me then.
I never (almost) go for tanks.
I very often fight with riflemen(!) and artillery and fighters/bombers.
If I need to go further into the tech tree, I'll go for infantry all right, but it's quite rare that I get to build even a single tank .
Maybe it's the map size, maybe it's my priorities, but here is what I build and how:
- fighters/bombers in "commerce cities" (pop or cash rushed)
- ships/artillery in IW/RC city (if there is one)
- Infantry all over the place (pop, $ rushed, or drafted)
- artillery/infantry/ships in HE/WP.

It's just a general way of doing it.
Of course, if I have settled a few MI in my HE/WP city, I'll build artillery there for CR3, and build the infantry and ships somewhere else and if RC doesn't exist yet, I won't bother with them.

If you guys jave 100+ turns of building and using troops after pentagon, good for you. I know I don't.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Regarding the Pentagon -- I think the nice thing about Civ IV versus previous incarnations is that there are no "must-have" wonders. There are wonders that make your life easier, there are wonders that I prefer to build more than others, there are wonders that, over the span of the game, give you a leg up in certain respects, but there are no wonders that you really NEED to have.

When going for space race there's really no getting there if an AI builds Space Elevator and has Aluminum, and you don't. All the plains-hills hammers in the world just won't allow you to catch up. I've even been way ahead of a rival in tech, and started my space ship components much earlier, but due to a lack of the Ultimate God Mineral in the game, and missing out on Space Elevator, the rival was able to just build past me.

Same thing in reverse: I've been #2 or #3 in tech and points in the late-game, and still won space race because I had the Ultimate God Mineral and Space Elevator, and the top rivals didn't.

As a goal my late-game beeline is to Industrialism, before I go to Rocketry, and if I don't have the UGM, I use Marines and Tanks to go after it militarily while researching Rocketry.

A "really good nice to have" in that late game is Three Gorges Dam, especially when a lot of cities aren't on riverside tiles, due to the health hit of having to build coal plants.

All in all, the more Engineers I have saved up for the late game, the more confident I feel that victory "will be mine".

 

[cabert]

When going for space race there's really no getting there if an AI builds Space Elevator and has Aluminum, and you don't. All the plains-hills hammers in the world just won't allow you to catch up. I've even been way ahead of a rival in tech, and started my space ship components much earlier, but due to a lack of the Ultimate God Mineral in the game, and missing out on Space Elevator, the rival was able to just build past me.

Spies can buy you the time even if you miss the Space Elevator, so there is no "must have".

Same thing in reverse: I've been #2 or #3 in tech and points in the late-game, and still won space race because I had the Ultimate God Mineral and Space Elevator, and the top rivals didn't.

right, play your strength

 

[Skallagrimson]

Spies can buy you the time even if you miss the Space Elevator, so there is no "must have".

Right, 10,000 gold to bring a build queue to "half". Gotcha.

 

[cabert]

Right, 10,000 gold to bring a build queue to "half". Gotcha.

or just 200 gold to destroy a farm
then another
then another
then another
until the city with the most expensive part simply cannot feed miners
then you can destroy windmills, pastures, unprotected mines...
to bring the building time from 20 turns to 80 turns.
Then, if you finished researching all the space parts, you can just as well go 100% gold and indeed blow his part built thing

 

[Skallagrimson]

I see a treadmill race here where it's worker-turns versus gold. I doubt the workers lose here, if there are many of them. And if I have the gold to fund up that rapid pace of repeated sabotage, I probably had the science to be way ahead of the AI and get the critical Space Elevator, etc., anyway. Coins are coins, after all.

 

[cabert]

I see a treadmill race here where it's worker-turns versus gold. I doubt the workers lose here, if there are many of them. And if I have the gold to fund up that rapid pace of repeated sabotage, I probably had the science to be way ahead of the AI and get the critical Space Elevator, etc., anyway. Coins are coins, after all.

the AI doesn't team up workers, so you win
And about gold, you don't need to have more gold than the AIs, just to use it wisely. It doesn't matter if you only have 2000 gold/turn.

 

[Skallagrimson]

What I know is that if I can cost my opponent 200 gold every time I build a farm, I know I can economically bleed him to death as he foolishly tries to sabotage my spaceship-building production city every turn.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

I dont know if its a good strat but i like getting free gpp for the entire game so I try really hard to get one wonder in every city that can build one in a reasonable time frame. This means often the less desirable wonders gets attempted by less productive cities. If i get it great finally a source of free gpp in that city. If i dont /shrug wasnt my best production city anyway.

Also i think if you play an industrious civ and you have the bonus resource for the wonder you are compelled to go for it just to use your advantages. There is no wonder that is that bad when you got both bonuses going for ya right? Its not like your forcing the issue.

 

[cabert]

What I know is that if I can cost my opponent 200 gold every time I build a farm, I know I can economically bleed him to death as he foolishly tries to sabotage my spaceship-building production city every turn.

really?
If you're done researching, what are you going to do with your commerce?
I think that earning 2000 gold/turn and using this to sabotage wildly is the best use of the late commerce.