What else can the Eiffel Tower do?

roidesfoux

Warlord
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Nov 11, 2003
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I've never liked Wonders that put a building in your cities. The only one that does that in Civ4 is the Eiffel Tower (Broadcast Tower in every city). So I decided to mod it, but I'm having trouble deciding what to have it do. I want it to be worthwhile to build, but not resemble other Wonders too closely.
Does anyone have any ideas?

-RdF
 
The easiest answer, I'd say, would be to have it give a similar but weaker benefit to all of your cities (weaker, because if you then build the Broadcast Towers yourself, you don't want it to get too out of control). For instance, just a flat "+1 happy per 20% culture" in all cities, or "+1 happy per Hit Movies, Hit Musicals, or Hit Singles".

Now, personally I don't have a problem with the free-building Wonder concept. Wonders that give you a straight bonus give you power, while these Wonders only give you time. After all, the other players could just build the buildings themselves. For large, core cities that have plenty of production, it wouldn't take that long to build Broadcast towers anyway, so really what you're doing is sacrificing a dozen or so turns in one city to save three or four turns each in a larger number of cities; it's still a net gain, of course, but once the other civs build the towers of their own, your only real advantage was what you built in the turns you would have used for towers of your own. And then there's the risk factor; will you choose not to build Broadcast Towers while you build the Eiffel, knowing that if someone beats you to it you'll be further behind, or will you build the towers anyway, knowing that you've wasted effort if you do get the Wonder?

It is kind of strange that they removed every instance of this type of Wonders when translating old wonders to Civ4, but then added a new one. But the bigger headache for me is that the Eiffel Tower is unlocked one tech BEFORE the building it creates, which is the complete opposite of the Civ3 pattern. Granted, you'll probably want to research Mass Media anyway (for the U.N. and Hollywood), but I'd want to change its effect to avoid this problem.
 
I have no problem with the game mechanics of it; it's more a conceptual thing. I don't like the idea that building a Wonder plops a building down in each of your cities. However, its not so bad if you think of it as the Wonder providing the same effect as the building, so it's unneccesary to actually build the building.

One of the first things I did when I started modding is switching Broadcast Tower and the Eiffel Tower.

-RdF
 
this is a good idea, and I do not think the Eiffel Tower bonus made much sense anyways.. I don't know much about the Tower itself, as it never really interested me, but I know it was a great feat of industry at the time, perhaps some sort of bonus related that industry would be appropriate.. or commerce as a result of tourism..

also, doesnt Stonehenge give you free obelisks in your cities?
 
roidesfoux said:
I have no problem with the game mechanics of it; it's more a conceptual thing. I don't like the idea that building a Wonder plops a building down in each of your cities. However, its not so bad if you think of it as the Wonder providing the same effect as the building, so it's unneccesary to actually build the building.

One of the first things I did when I started modding is switching Broadcast Tower and the Eiffel Tower.

-RdF

The wayt he game implements it though, it is the easiest way to acheive the same effect of the building in all cities. Also, when the wonder is obseleted, the "building" is removed from cities that didn't actually build one, so it's kind of a moot point. the implementation is correct, the method isn't perfect, but... why change what isn't broken?
 
Tactician Zhao said:
this is a good idea, and I do not think the Eiffel Tower bonus made much sense anyways.. I don't know much about the Tower itself, as it never really interested me, but I know it was a great feat of industry at the time, perhaps some sort of bonus related that industry would be appropriate.. or commerce as a result of tourism..

also, doesnt Stonehenge give you free obelisks in your cities?

The Eiffel Tower is actually used as a broadcast tower in France; I don't remember it's range, but I know it's phenomenal; I think it covers all of France and parts of the surrounding countries.

And yes, Stonehenge does indeed give free obelisks.
 
I took out the Eiffel Tower as a wonder and made it a normal building - the television station. :-)

Max
 
donquixote235 said:
The Eiffel Tower is actually used as a broadcast tower in France; I don't remember it's range, but I know it's phenomenal; I think it covers all of France and parts of the surrounding countries.

wow, very interesting.. I thank you for this information
 
donquixote235 said:
The Eiffel Tower is actually used as a broadcast tower in France; I don't remember it's range, but I know it's phenomenal; I think it covers all of France and parts of the surrounding countries.

Would it be possible to make the Tower do this in Civ? Meaning that it places the equivelant of a Broadcast station in all cities within a certain radius.
 
I liked Civ 2's eiffel tower. it would be especially useful in civ4, with diplomacy being wacky as it is.
 
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