What are the Top 3 Most Underrated Wonders?

[Stalker0]

Everyone loves Stonehenge, the Hanging Gardens, Angor Wat, etc. There are a lot of wonders that people natural flutter to. But what about the less sung about wonders. Which wonders do you think are generally undervalued by the community and are actually a lot stronger than they appear?

My top 3:

• Mausoleum of Halicarnassus: In between Stonehenge and the Hanging Gardens it be can easy to overlook this wonder. But I think its actually a sleeping powerhouse. WLTKD in your capital are often easy to maintain almost infiniately, which means this wonder is translating into a major boost in yields. Second, by giving you a free stone works (especially in cities you can't build it normally) it unlocks hammer ITRs much earlier in the game. This is very powerful, as this is the time your cities are getting off the ground. Being able to commit hammer ITRs to your first key cities can dramatically speed up their development."
  
  
• Terracotta Army: When you first get this wonder, its not all that great. The bonus isn't all that good for that time. However, later in the game when wars are long, kills frequent, and you now have an era scaling behind you, the culture you can gain from this wonder is just massive.
  
  
• The Motherland Calls: As a relatively new wonder, it can be easy to underappreciate what this one has going for it, especially late in the game. The supply is nice, the building maintenance reduction is actually more powerful than it might seem (building maintenance is a LOT in the late game). However, the ability to negate pillage power in late game wars can be a game changer. Armored units especially gave a massive power from the ability to hit move, pillage, and hit again, constantly maintaining health. During that off effectively ties one hand behind someone back.

What are yours?

Honorable Mention - Roman Forum

Hanging Garden often gets the love, but the Roman Forum can be surprisingly useful for early CS play. For example, being able to grab a cultural CS (and strip out the early influence from an opponent, which is hard for them to recoup) is a big deal. Further, getting to 2 paper gives you a lot more flexibility in producing diplo units....a benefit you normally have to wait signficantly longer for. Played correctly with a bunch of CS around you, the forum can give you an early game stranglehold on the CS in the area.

 

[CrazyG]

Halicarnassus: same reasons Stalker gave. Long term I think its stronger than Hanging Gardens. Its also cheaper and on a better tech.
Porcelain Tower: you should always pursue this if you want a science victory in my opinion. It's also not bad if you just want science in general.
Chichen Itza: even if you aren't pursuing a heavy golden age strategy, I think in practice this will usually produce more culture than any other wonder.

I think Angkor Wat might be the most overrated but perhaps I'm missing something.

 

[Circe]

What, you're popping a free Great Diplomat right in the beginning? I always collect embassies as fast as I can. I like the Forum because the AI tends to neglect it, and the GD points make your next one come faster too.

I think Angkor Wat might be the most overrated but perhaps I'm missing something.

Certainly overrated by the AI, it's one of those wonders I never even attempt anymore. Even beelining it I miss it. Great Lighthouse is the same.

 

[stii]

Yeah I don't love Angkor Wat at all. It is fine but not worth taking over other better wonders.

Agree on Terracotta Army it is probably the most powerful as it does multiple really strong things early on. Plus randomly making your worker better too!

And again on Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, it is good for pretty much the reasons given internal TR are so much safer early and and helps a lot with setting up cities.


Is Pantheon undervalued? It is very good with tradition and theming it lines up pretty perfectly and then it gives an awful lots of early culture.


I'd generally use a GD to get a quick CS over an embassy, early yields over much much later having more votes.

 

[Stalker0]

What, you're popping a free Great Diplomat right in the beginning? I always collect embassies as fast as I can. I like the Forum because the AI tends to neglect it, and the GD points make your next one come faster too.

I use to do that as well, but you would be surprised how much of a boost a good CS ally can get you at that point in the game, especially a culture one. A lux for happiness, solid yields, an ally in wars. You get bonus points if you also strip away enemy influence at the same time (as the AI does not convert CS aggressively at that stage in the game, so may not reattempt for a bit.

I never do more than the first GD like this, the rest are always embassies (and sometimes I do go embassy first) but try it out, you might be surprised how much it benefits you.

 

[ma_kuh]

As an Angkor Wat enjoyer, I feel compelled to make the case. The 20% multiplicative border growth is why it's fun, it feels like it helps impose borders to keep the AI away. It's probably overrated in terms of value, but I like it, and it has a unique modifier, available only on a handful of civs and the Tradition tree, and it scales with them all.

As for underrated, maybe they're rated highly but Petra + Colossus on trade route civs are fun, I always feel like I want more trade routes to manage. Kind of an awkward tech pathing though.

Halicarnassus is particularly nice if you need production trade routes but have no quarries.

 

[CrazyG]

What, you're popping a free Great Diplomat right in the beginning? I always collect embassies as fast as I can. I like the Forum because the AI tends to neglect it, and the GD points make your next one come faster too.

I have done this to get a faith ally before. Sometimes yields now are worth giving up a vote for, the world congress won't be for at least a hundred turns.

Is Pantheon undervalued? It is very good with tradition and theming it lines up pretty perfectly and then it gives an awful lots of early culture.

I almost said Parthenon. Its easy to undervalue because the number of yields isn't obvious until you account for the great work and theming bonus. However its also very weak if you didn't pick tradition.