Really we need a new category of Prehistoric Wonders for things like Mesa Verde, Göbekli Tepe, Stonehenge, Newgrange, and the like--wonders that are manmade but predate recorded history.
What new wonders would you like to see in civ VII?
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Boris Gudenuf
Deity
In one of the earlier Civs (Pre-Civ V) the 'goody huts' were actually represented on the map by tiny Stonehenge-like monuments. So, one way to represent Pre-Historic Monuments/Wonders if they don't want to back-date Civ and make Neolithic a playable Era would be to have a few such scattered about the starting Map as Mysterious Things Made Long Ago By Gods Or Giants with suitable bonuses.
The problem with this is that it makes the start of game an impossible Design Dilemma: if the Ancient Wonders are worth too much or give too valuable a Bonus, then some players will just restart until they get one nearby. If they don't give much of a Bonus why include them at all except as Eye Candy?
On the other hand, if they include a 'real' Neolithic Start, then the Ancient Wonders would be a marvelous addition to give the gamer another sweat-popping Decision Point: some Wonders (indeed, at the moment it appears Most of Them)* can be built without a City anywhere nearby, so your little wandering Tribe(s) or incipient Settlement can go to work on one - but probably will lose a huge percentage of Production/Food or other resources that may set your initial progress back. So, Crunch Time: is the bonus from the AW going to be worth what you give up for it? - A decision that will change depending on the starting position, terrain, neighbors, and thus be different in almost every game.
* But there's an important Exception, of course: nearly the first city, Uruk (Orekh, Unug, Orkhoe, Auruk, or Erech) was built around two pre-existing 'Temple Districts/Mounds' Eanna and Kullaba. Either or both of them could be Ancient Wonders that when built immediately Jump Start your first city, and might even form an 'automatic' Holy Site and City Center as soon as they are completed. Uruk had an estimated 80,000 population well before 3000 BCE, so 'jump start' is very appropriate here.
mitsho
Deity
Yeah, these neolithic wonders should be the option for the pre-game, i.e. neolithic era: Do I use my scouts to explore or do I build a wonder. I do think they afterwards (apart from maybe the Eanna and Kullaba example ;-)) should have served their purpose and be abandonable. Stonehenge was "forgotten" after all and didn't contribute to the English civ for a long time. And the cities don't need to pop up besides them in my opinion.
More generally, I'm all for diverse wonders: A military wonder doesn't necessarily require much production of which a military expansive civ wouldn't necessarily have too many. Wonders should be available to all playstyles. And if they are not monumental, they also don't need to take up a whole tile. There's lots of stuff they can do with them. The selection of which wonders get into the game comes afterwards. What's important to me though is that it's a balanced number from all eras and all corners of the earth.
More generally, I'm all for diverse wonders: A military wonder doesn't necessarily require much production of which a military expansive civ wouldn't necessarily have too many. Wonders should be available to all playstyles. And if they are not monumental, they also don't need to take up a whole tile. There's lots of stuff they can do with them. The selection of which wonders get into the game comes afterwards. What's important to me though is that it's a balanced number from all eras and all corners of the earth.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Completely agree.
Having done some searching already, though, I can tell you that some parts of the world are kind of "wonder lite" from pre-history. The problem isn't that people weren't doing wonderous things and constructions, but that the only things that survive to be identified from the Neolithic tend to be made of stone or composed of earth mounds, so, for example, in central China where good building stone is buried under river-deposited silt and earth mounds tend to get dug up and re-used in rammed earth construction, there just aren't a lot of identifiable neolithic monuments.
Which doesn't mean there are none: less than an hour ago I read a science article from Canada: they re-introduced Bison to one of the Dakota tribal areas up there and the animals promptly uncovered a bunch of petroglyphic monuments that no one even had a clue ever existed - 1000 to 1800 years old, so firmly in the Neolithic for North America and utterly unexpected in what was part of the North American Prairie and supposedly lightly inhabited at the time.
So, we just have to keep our eyes open, and if necessary ignore TSL for Neolithic Monuments. Given that most of them cannot be assigned to any identifiable civilization (the Neolithic archeological sites are often separated from any later 'civilization' in the area by 1000s of years) their cultural identification is less important than the terrain requirements, if any: nobody is going to build the Goseck Circle ( a 'wood henge' astronomical calendar monument in Germany made entirely of wood from around 4900 BCE) in the desert, for example, but Carnac stones can be erected anywhere you can find large rocks . . .
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I'd like to see Gobekli Tepe, but it doesn't fit Civ's time scheme, since it was a megalithic structure that predates...almost everything except hunting and gathering.
For a natural wonder, I'd like to see Lake Maracaibo and its Catatumbo Lightning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning
For a natural wonder, I'd like to see Lake Maracaibo and its Catatumbo Lightning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catatumbo_lightning
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Gobekli Tepe is the subject of some considerable argument among archeologists now, because the carbon dates (of stuff found around the stone megaliths, so tentative) place the first monuments at about 9400 BCE, the last at about 8000 BCE. 9400 is just at or before the first traces of agriculture and domestic animals (sheep, goats, pigs) in the surrounding regions, but at least 1000 years before the first 'city' (Jericho). Whether the incipient agriculture came before or after the monuments is the crux of the arguments.
Which is why we need a new category of Ancient Wonders to cover constructions like Gobekli Tepe and others (the Carnac Stones, Newgrange, Goslek, etc) that were built well before cities were built anywhere near them: as the game as always been designed, without a city you can't claim terrain/tiles and build anything, so the AW will need a whole new system of settlement to include them.
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You know what might be a cool way to do that? Have it as a reward from a goodie hut. The wonder gets erected right there in the middle of nowhere. Now you have an incentive to build a city nearby. Maybe it is enticing enough to motivate you. But maybe the terrain just doesn't work or it's too far from your capital for the early game, and the thing fades into obscurity. It would be interesting from the gameplay perspective, I think.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
Very, very good idea. I was doodling around last night trying to figure out a mechanic for the Ancient Wonders and potential Bonuses from some of them, and always came back to the fact that an elaborate mechanism for building a special category of Wonders is a lot of game design resources going into sites and constructions many of which, by the time the first City was built anywhere near them or the first recognizable Civilization arose nearby, had been long abandoned and meant nothing to the Civ growing up around them.
Abandoned Ancient Wonders would always have the potential to provide a Tourist bonus (or, if Civ VII abandons Tourism as a currency in the game, Cultural or Religious Bonus of some kind) and, of course, would be potential sites for Archeologists' attentions. In fact, one of the much later bonuses from such a site could be that Archeologists can keep coming back to the site for X turns, finding a potential new 'exhibit' each time.
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Lake Baikal.
Lake Baikal, Russia is one of the most beautiful and picturesque places not only in Siberia but also on the entire planet. Lying in a rift depression, located in the southern part of Eastern Siberia, this is the oldest lake in the world (being about 25-35 million years old).
Baikal is also the largest freshwater reservoir on Earth, so that 22% of all freshwater worldwide and 85% of Russia’s water supply are concentrated here. Its volume of water is 23 thousand km3 (approximately the amount of five Great Lakes combined in the United States).
In addition to the value of huge reserves of fresh water, (which, due to low mineralization: 100 g / l, it can be safely equated as distilled water) Baikal is also the deepest lake in the world. In 1996 it was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
https://www.lakebaikal.org/
The lake hosts an impressive unique flora and fauna. Scientists have identified about 2600 species of animals and plants and almost 70 per cent of them are endemic that means, they only can be found in this lake. One of the most representative inhabitants of the Baikal’s ecosystem is the Nerpa (Phoca sibirica), a unique freshwater seal which lives in the northern zone of Baikal and in the Ushkanye islands.
Another symbol of the Baikal’s fauna is the Omul, the most popular salmonid fish of the lake. Other representative specie of the lake is the Golomyanka also known as Baikal oil fish, an unusual beautiful fish, which is a translucent fish that live in depths between 200 and 500 meters, this kind of fish is famous for disintegrating and become a mass of oil and bones when they are exposed to sunlight. The region is inhabited also by foxes, eagles, deer, bears, and many others animals and plants.
https://7wonders.org/europe/russia/irkutsk/baikal-lake/
So, it is the oldest lake in the world. It is also the deepest lake in the world. It is also biodiverse.
Lake Baikal, Russia is one of the most beautiful and picturesque places not only in Siberia but also on the entire planet. Lying in a rift depression, located in the southern part of Eastern Siberia, this is the oldest lake in the world (being about 25-35 million years old).
Baikal is also the largest freshwater reservoir on Earth, so that 22% of all freshwater worldwide and 85% of Russia’s water supply are concentrated here. Its volume of water is 23 thousand km3 (approximately the amount of five Great Lakes combined in the United States).
In addition to the value of huge reserves of fresh water, (which, due to low mineralization: 100 g / l, it can be safely equated as distilled water) Baikal is also the deepest lake in the world. In 1996 it was included on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
https://www.lakebaikal.org/
The lake hosts an impressive unique flora and fauna. Scientists have identified about 2600 species of animals and plants and almost 70 per cent of them are endemic that means, they only can be found in this lake. One of the most representative inhabitants of the Baikal’s ecosystem is the Nerpa (Phoca sibirica), a unique freshwater seal which lives in the northern zone of Baikal and in the Ushkanye islands.
Another symbol of the Baikal’s fauna is the Omul, the most popular salmonid fish of the lake. Other representative specie of the lake is the Golomyanka also known as Baikal oil fish, an unusual beautiful fish, which is a translucent fish that live in depths between 200 and 500 meters, this kind of fish is famous for disintegrating and become a mass of oil and bones when they are exposed to sunlight. The region is inhabited also by foxes, eagles, deer, bears, and many others animals and plants.
https://7wonders.org/europe/russia/irkutsk/baikal-lake/
So, it is the oldest lake in the world. It is also the deepest lake in the world. It is also biodiverse.
Oldest that has been dated with certainty, that is. Lake Zaysan in Kazakhstan may be older but has not been dated with sufficient certainty to satisfy the scientific community.
I agree that Lake Baikal is another great candidate for deep, clear primordial lakes alongside Crater Lake and Pingualuk Lake.
awesome
Meme Lord
Most of the wonder-worthy things in Africa are going to be natural wonders, especially if we’re talking things that haven’t already been featured in the game.
That being said, I’d like to see Lalibela, Okavango Delta, and Iconic Tower.
Boogrta
Chieftain
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The House of Wisdom desperately needs to be in Civ 7.
I'd say that I was shocked to find out that the House of Wisdom has never been in a civ game before but considering that Firaxis only added 3 Muslim leaders in civ 6, I am not that surprised...
I'd say that I was shocked to find out that the House of Wisdom has never been in a civ game before but considering that Firaxis only added 3 Muslim leaders in civ 6, I am not that surprised...
Agreed. The Islamic world is pretty underrepresented em Civ. House of Wisdom could be the replacement for Sankore University, and we could have more Islamic wonders from North Africa and Middle East.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
The "House of Wisdom" (Bayt-al-Hikmah) wouldn't be terrain-specific like Sankore U., but it might have a bonus to Science for every Civ or City State you have a trade route to, to represent its influence as the center of the Translation Movement that made texts from India, Persia, Europe, Byzantium, etc available to Arab scholars IRL.
That could make it a Science Powerhouse for the right Civ, but not, perhaps, as important to others - which I think is one way to avoid excessive Wonder Competition in Civ VII - make the Wonder Effects and Requirements specific enough that not everybody can get major benefits from them, so that Wonders really are Unique and not General
awesome
Meme Lord
I’m not sure what the balance would be, but I wouldn’t mind having these give small boosts to jump start civilizations and help with their intended play styles. They would basically be civ specific natural wonders.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
The problem with "Civ Specific Wonder" is that in that case it's easier to simply give the Civ an initial boost to population in newly founded cities - or at least its first founded city. And the problem with that is that if the Starting Position happens to be in the tundra or mountains or desert or other Food-deprived terrain, then having extra population to feed from the start is not a Bonus but a Malus.
I think we have to be very careful what Bonuses we make Civ-specific and independent of what's happening On The Map and In The Game: they can result in really insane situations like a Norway in the middle of the continent with no body of water bigger than a 2-tile lake on which to float its Longships (which has happened to me More Than Once!)
In the case of Population-Boosting early Ancient Wonders, by keeping them general to all there would be little reason to even try to build them if you don't have a good food supply - but there could be other Ancient Wonders more appropriate to your situation, like a Religion, Production, or other 'enhancing' Wonder.
I've seen poor Gitarja spawn landlocked before. At that point she might as well have no abilities or uniques whatsoever.
awesome
Meme Lord
That’s exactly what I had in mind. There could be some food ones, too, but nothing super powerful. It might still be difficult to figure out a good one for every civ, and might not be worth it, even if you could.
Boris Gudenuf
Deity
It doesn't have to be for every Civ, just for potential Starting points/terrain. Like, one each that enhances Tundra, Rivers, Mountains, Floodplains and possibly Religion, Population, General Production, Unit Production - that's 8 right there, and since not everyone should be building Wonders, you don't need much more.
Let's see, a partial list of Pre-City Wonders:
Kullaba
Eanna
Gobekli Tepe
Mustatils
Maumbury Rings
Hunebedden Dolmens
Carnac Stones
Goseck Circle
Tarxian Complex (Ggantija Temples)
Watson Brake
Newgrange (Si an Bhru)
I don't honestly think the game needs more than that unless you want to play exclusively on Ridiculously Gargantuan Maps with most of the in-game Civs all represented in a single game . . .
Any Polish architectural wonder
St Mary's Church in Gdańsk is one of like top three greatest brick temples in the world, it was the second largest Lutheran church in the world for several centuries
Many great examples from Kraków, such as Wawel Castle, Sukiennice and numerous temples
Other architecture of Gdańsk, Poznań, Warsaw, Toruń, Wrocław also has its wonders
Malbork Castle, although it was originally built by Teutons
Wieliczka Salt Mine, a wonder you can only build on salt resource, would be a very novel concept
St Mary's Church in Gdańsk is one of like top three greatest brick temples in the world, it was the second largest Lutheran church in the world for several centuries
Many great examples from Kraków, such as Wawel Castle, Sukiennice and numerous temples
Other architecture of Gdańsk, Poznań, Warsaw, Toruń, Wrocław also has its wonders
Malbork Castle, although it was originally built by Teutons
Wieliczka Salt Mine, a wonder you can only build on salt resource, would be a very novel concept
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