Uses for 'worthless' wonders?

[sylvanllewelyn]

Who goes sabotaging spaceship parts directly? That's way too expensive. I'd much rather sabotage hapiness resources, and cause anarchy.

 

[LucyDuke]

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.

Do those GPP ever pay off? I mean, there's no use building the Hagia Sophia for the GE points if the GPP aren't going to add up to actually produce a GE. Avoiding wasted GPP is the premise of GP farming, which by the way I'm not particularly fond of.

I'll sometimes start a wonder I don't fully expect to finish because of the gold insurance. Sort of cheesy, I know, but I don't know for sure whether I'll get it or not, and I won't do it with basically useless wonders (Chichen Itza).

 

[johnny5000]

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

You're much more subtle than me.
If an opponent is running away with victory, I'd much rather just rain ICBMs on his cities

Let them eat nukes.

 

[LucyDuke]

You're much more subtle than me.
If an opponent is running away with victory, I'd much rather just rain ICBMs on his cities

Let them eat nukes.

ICBMs are expensive. If you're in a space race and you can afford to build enough nukes to trounce his production (nukes are inefficient, I've heard), you're probably playing too low a level. Don't cheat yourself!

 

[axident]

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".

I just bribe as many people as I can to attack the lead space racer threat. But there have been times when I just shrug when someone builds Apollo, because I will soon steamroll lesser civs and get a Domination victory before enemy spaceships can launch.

 

[axident]

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.

Uh you do know that the Great People point threshold is the same throughout the empire right? That's why people have GP farms. I try to make my capital a Wonderville with a TON of specialists and thus have an amazing number of GP points, plus with Bureaucracy that adds up to major research points. Your specialists and Bureaucracy help make sure that you can continue building wonders in your capital, to complete the virtuous cycle.

 

[emperorosmar]

no wonder is useless...wonders give u great people also so its not useless...

 

[Lord Parkin]

no wonder is useless...wonders give u great people also so its not useless...

Some wonders are less useful than others though. Chichen Itza being a case in point.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I just bribe as many people as I can to attack the lead space racer threat. But there have been times when I just shrug when someone builds Apollo, because I will soon steamroll lesser civs and get a Domination victory before enemy spaceships can launch.

My game last night was interesting. I was #1 in points, but considerably behind in tech. Everybody hated me but because of my military they all feared me so no one attacked. I was also in a cultural cold war with my vassal state, Egypt, trying to keep two of the cities I took from him going back to him. Somehow I managed to get Space Elevator and Aluminum but was still way behind building SS components, SO, I started focusing on the economy and to generate spies to launch at Mansa Musa as economic missiles to sabotage his farms, see if that would play out the way Cabert and the others here recommend. While I was finishing up the great economic retooling (lots of new cottages, etc.), and starting to build spies, I wasn't keeping track of the time and won a time victory anyway, before the sabotage flurry even started.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Uh you do know that the Great People point threshold is the same throughout the empire right? That's why people have GP farms. I try to make my capital a Wonderville with a TON of specialists and thus have an amazing number of GP points, plus with Bureaucracy that adds up to major research points. Your specialists and Bureaucracy help make sure that you can continue building wonders in your capital, to complete the virtuous cycle.

That sounds like a good strategy to me. It alleviates the need for a GP farm, so that the city you founded with rice, pigs, 2 fish and a crab can workshop or mine its other squares and be a good naval shipyard, get more military value out of it.

Something to try tonight!

 

[axident]

That sounds like a good strategy to me. It alleviates the need for a GP farm, so that the city you founded with rice, pigs, 2 fish and a crab can workshop or mine its other squares and be a good naval shipyard, get more military value out of it.

Something to try tonight!

Have fun. It's always nice to get an early Academy and then Oxford in your capital at the same time. Biggest problem with having both National Epic & Oxford in the Wonderville/Specialistville/Farmville capital is happiness, so grab as many happy resources like Dye and Gold as possible.

 

[Phoenix1595]

Space elevator is kinda pointless unless you are going for space race. Plus, I find that when I finally can build it, I already have half my spaceship completed, and figure that I could probably spend the production on another spaceship piece than on the elevator.

Of course, if you are not going after SR (and you are probably done with the game anyway through other victory options), than I suppose Apollo Program is a mute point as well. Oh well.

 

[baboon]

I think the most useles Wonder to build is the Manhatan Project (unless everyone else is wery far away from atomic weapons). Why would i want to enable the AI to build atomic weapons? It`s better if they spend the resources to allow me to bulid nukes.

Last time I was building it the AI made a Resolution against nukes and they all voted for it. The construction was canceled

 

[baboon]

That sounds like a good strategy to me. It alleviates the need for a GP farm, so that the city you founded with rice, pigs, 2 fish and a crab can workshop or mine its other squares and be a good naval shipyard, get more military value out of it.

Something to try tonight!

Yeah I always were used to building all my wonders in the Capital, so my Capital is basicly always a GPP farm. And usually a hybrid, commerce mostly, but atm I even have to build units in it because my entire empire is a Commerce beast and my Capital has by far the most hammers

 

[Skallagrimson]

Have fun. It's always nice to get an early Academy and then Oxford in your capital at the same time. Biggest problem with having both National Epic & Oxford in the Wonderville/Specialistville/Farmville capital is happiness, so grab as many happy resources like Dye and Gold as possible.

I played a few games using this strategy, with mixed success. The biggest hit is on military readiness, I've found: once Feudalism is discovered there's the major decision to stay with Bureaucracy (for the wonder-building capitol) and Pacifism (for GPP), OR, be militarily strong with Vassalism and... anything but Pacifism (due to unit cost).

When I've had non-aggressive neighbors like Gandhi, I've found the pacifist-GPP-generating route is successful, but when Napoleon is next-door, there's no way he's gonna just sit there with his stacks of war elephants and watch you build wonder after wonder after wonder. With no plunder.

A hybrid civic I tried last night which was a dismal failure was Police State (I had Pyramids which enabled it), Vassalism (for XPs), and Pacifism, to fight off Napoleon and still farm up GPPs while doing it. What happened was the economy was completely nuked by all the high-cost units I was generating, and because the economy was nuked, science was faltering, and although my armies were large, without more advanced units to fight Napoleon's stacks, it just got to be too much in his favor (with the dreaded Elephants that kill everything, including spearmen most of the time, until you can build Pikemen), and my Ottoman empire crumbled, conquered by the Phreaking Phrench. I might go back to an early save-game from it and switch to Paganism for the war, see if I do better. Or just take it as a lesson learned for future play.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Yeah I always were used to building all my wonders in the Capital, so my Capital is basicly always a GPP farm. And usually a hybrid, commerce mostly, but atm I even have to build units in it because my entire empire is a Commerce beast and my Capital has by far the most hammers

Isn't it frustrating when the capitol looks to be absolutely ideal for Ironworks (high health and high production) BUT... it's already shot its national wonder wad on National Epic and Oxford? I hate having to shop around to places that have a lot of hammers but no fresh water or forest, slam them with unhealthy citizens, just to get Ironworks out of the way.

Lately I've been gearing up my choice for City 2 in the early game, based not on where the copper is, exclusively, but for a place that will eventually make a good Ironworks site. I can still usually get copper or iron in city 3, and worst case (very rare case), do an archery-rush to take it.

 

[Lord Parkin]

I played a few games using this strategy, with mixed success. The biggest hit is on military readiness, I've found: once Feudalism is discovered there's the major decision to stay with Bureaucracy (for the wonder-building capitol) and Pacifism (for GPP), OR, be militarily strong with Vassalism and... anything but Pacifism (due to unit cost).

When I've had non-aggressive neighbors like Gandhi, I've found the pacifist-GPP-generating route is successful, but when Napoleon is next-door, there's no way he's gonna just sit there with his stacks of war elephants and watch you build wonder after wonder after wonder. With no plunder.

A hybrid civic I tried last night which was a dismal failure was Police State (I had Pyramids which enabled it), Vassalism (for XPs), and Pacifism, to fight off Napoleon and still farm up GPPs while doing it. What happened was the economy was completely nuked by all the high-cost units I was generating, and because the economy was nuked, science was faltering, and although my armies were large, without more advanced units to fight Napoleon's stacks, it just got to be too much in his favor (with the dreaded Elephants that kill everything, including spearmen most of the time, until you can build Pikemen), and my Ottoman empire crumbled, conquered by the Phreaking Phrench. I might go back to an early save-game from it and switch to Paganism for the war, see if I do better. Or just take it as a lesson learned for future play.

Try Theocracy and Vassalage, it's a much better wartime combination.

 

[kniteowl]

I played a few games using this strategy, with mixed success. The biggest hit is on military readiness, I've found: once Feudalism is discovered there's the major decision to stay with Bureaucracy (for the wonder-building capitol) and Pacifism (for GPP), OR, be militarily strong with Vassalism and... anything but Pacifism (due to unit cost).

When I've had non-aggressive neighbors like Gandhi, I've found the pacifist-GPP-generating route is successful, but when Napoleon is next-door, there's no way he's gonna just sit there with his stacks of war elephants and watch you build wonder after wonder after wonder. With no plunder.

A hybrid civic I tried last night which was a dismal failure was Police State (I had Pyramids which enabled it), Vassalism (for XPs), and Pacifism, to fight off Napoleon and still farm up GPPs while doing it. What happened was the economy was completely nuked by all the high-cost units I was generating, and because the economy was nuked, science was faltering, and although my armies were large, without more advanced units to fight Napoleon's stacks, it just got to be too much in his favor (with the dreaded Elephants that kill everything, including spearmen most of the time, until you can build Pikemen), and my Ottoman empire crumbled, conquered by the Phreaking Phrench. I might go back to an early save-game from it and switch to Paganism for the war, see if I do better. Or just take it as a lesson learned for future play.

You should note the cost of the Civics you were running, Vassalage and Police State are High Cost and Pacifism is Zero cost, Pacifism and Vassalage are quite Synergetic in a Specialist Economy, as the negatives of both Civics are canceled out by the positives of the other.

Pacifism has Zero Civic Cost, while Vassalage has high Civics cost
Pacifism has a +1 Gold to Military Support Cost (Military only cost you extra if their outside your cultural boarders)
and Vassalage Gives you Free Unit Cost (Meaning you don't have to pay for your military under that Civic)

You wee running 2 High Civic Cost at the same time (Vassalage and PS) leading to a high Civics Cost which drained your economy, even With a Organized Civ Appearantly.

If you have Problems with Civic Combinations, I suggest playing with a Spiritual Civ and play around with the Civics to get used and to and understand their Benefits and Cost.

The Problem About War Elephants, the only thing that can truely Counter them before Pikeman are available is the Greek UU (Spearman) that has 5 Str. If your not playing as the Greeks the next Best alternative is you use Formation Promoted Maceman, Which will require 10XP, 8XP for Charismatic Civs and 5XP for Aggressive Civs.

IF you were having a major Problem with War Elephants you could of Pillaged his Ivory or Capture the City that Controlled Ivory to prevent him from building War Elephants.

 

[cabert]

I don't think negating the other civic's negative aspect is a good way to have synergy.
I also don't think that the free units apply to pacifism's military unit cost.

Vassalage + theocracy is a lot better than vassalage + pacifism IMHO

 

[kniteowl]

I don't think negating the other civic's negative aspect is a good way to have synergy.
I also don't think that the free units apply to pacifism's military unit cost.

Vassalage + theocracy is a lot better than vassalage + pacifism IMHO

I Agree with you but there are times where the Civics Switch may cost you more then running your current Civics like if you need extra GPP and XP, then that combination is uauslly better.