What Wonders can be...

[How to know]

I have been thinking about the roles of wonders in this series for quite some time, and it just bugs me so much that I guess might well share them with the internet...

Regarding wonders, when comparing Civ6 to its predecessors, the most noticeable difference is that wonders are now occupying a slot on the map. Since many wonders are relatively large architectural-wise, I am quite convinced by that. Still, the fact that they need to complete the precious land with all the districts, improvements and even the city centers themselves are usually quite annoying, not to mention some of the landscape requirement for the wonders are just more annoying than fun.

Lets say I want to be a Great Library, in Civ6 I will first need to build a campus, a library in it, only then I can reach for my precious library, and it will be adjacent to my campus that will take away a potential adjacency bonus plus for campus I want it to be next to as much as mountains, coasts, etc. as possible, which further limited my choices. In terms of gameplay, I guess it promotes thinking and making choices, emphasis on opportunity cost and so on, but this mechanism just not really intuitive in my opinion. In Civ5 you can stack as many wonders as you wish in a single city, the lack of limits releases the land, and in some historical cities like Paris for example, they do indeed have massive amount of wonders, but I doubt the catch-them-all attitude on wonders are promoting strategic thinking, although it is a guilty pleasure that many have shared...

My suggestion is to make wonders more expensive, but they establish a corresponding district beneath them. Also, if a district has already been built, I can build my wonder on it with a discount, either way, the wonder and district will occupy the same slot. So for example, I want to build Great Library, if I don't have a campus, the Great Library would be, let's say 40% more expensive to build, however when I finish the project I get both the wonder and the district. And if I do have a campus beforehand, I get a discount of 40% off for my Great Library.

The other thing I want to discuss is that from Civ IV to VI wonders don't have maintenance. I find it strange that mega projects like wonders that took so much effort to build are just sitting there and take care of themselves once we finish them. I believe not only they need to have maintenance, but it needs to be high as well. On top of that, combining with my earlier suggestion, wonders should not only take gold to maintain but also a certain amount of population as well, if they can function like districts.

I will use the Great Library as an example again. As a campus, the Great Library should have at least two science citizens working in it for the whole time to receive its full advantage, if we don't have enough citizens to support that, its yield will be halved and a mechanism, called ruination, disrepair or whatever, starts to count the turn passed since the lack of maintenance. After reaching a certain threshold the Great Library becomes a ruin that only yields a small amount of Culture, Tourism and Production (Spolia). These ruins can be reused in some way after researched archaeology, or it can interact with some new Renaissance features nicely.

Sorry for posting some rather pointless stuff I would love to know how everyone thinks about these ideas.

Edit: I forgot to mention this: I hate the childish look 3d model in Civ VI, please bring my oil paintings back.

 

[Naokaukodem]

The result of your ideas would be that wonders would be yet more a pain in the arse : nobody would bother. At least within Civ6. A lot of wonders are already as pointless as that now, so if they cost maintenance and 2 citizens, not counting the time needed to build them, everybody would feel more comfortable NOT having them.

It's strange that people, in order to improve things, thinks they have to make them worse.

Personnally I like wonders when they are overpowered, like in civ2. I dislike having to read a whole paragraph in order to see the miserable effects they have, the more long is the text, the more miserable the effects are. And it's a general game design : having flat choices that forces you to read the whole thing, from pantheons to civilizations choices, passing by religions and i can't remember what more.

 

[How to know]

The result of your ideas would be that wonders would be yet more a pain in the arse : nobody would bother. At least within Civ6. A lot of wonders are already as pointless as that now, so if they cost maintenance and 2 citizens, not counting the time needed to build them, everybody would feel more comfortable NOT having them.

It's strange that people, in order to improve things, thinks they have to make them worse.

Personnally I like wonders when they are overpowered, like in civ2. I dislike having to read a whole paragraph in order to see the miserable effects they have, the more long is the text, the more miserable the effects are. And it's a general game design : having flat choices that forces you to read the whole thing, from pantheons to civilizations choices, passing by religions and i can't remember what more.

Well, firstly thank you for replying. I have to admit it never comes to my mind that I am actually nerfing the wonders even though that is exactly what I am suggesting... I guess to counter we need to buff them up, but that is not the core of the solution nor the problem I was most concerned of.

If I read you post correctly it is about clarity and simplicity in design and wording. For the wording I guess I can make it simpler: Wonders are now the better version of districts. They can be build directly with extra hammer, or as a upgrade patch to the existing districts. Wonders have both the districts' bonus and their own cool stuffs.

For the maintenance, especially the part of keeping citizens inside of district, I think it was more related to what I think about districts than wonders... If things don't get used, things get bad, same for food, same for electronics, and same for civil infrastructures. To balance it out in the Civ6 system both housings, food and populations needs to inflate quite a bit , which is too much maths for me right now...

As for the simplicity of the design, personally I don't find it long or miserable at all. But I am the kind of people who read the read civilopedia line by line, play dnd as dungeon master and enjoy reading dictionary I guess it appears differently to people...

 

[Naokaukodem]

I tended to notice that the more long was the description text of a civ or a wonder, the less interesting it was. (ingame) Civ4 limited that by attributing a couple traits to each civs among less a dozen that could be remembered quite easily. It started to get worse in Civ5, especially with pantheons, tenets and the like. IMO it got even worse in 6. Not to mention the mitigated effects that follow. I love Rome in 6 because their depiction is clear and their abilities powerful IMO. Monuments + roads seem very useful to me, at a point I wish every civ has it. That's there that I started to want a civ with the abilities of all civs. But I guess such a mod would make the game crash lol.

 

[How to know]

I tended to notice that the more long was the description text of a civ or a wonder, the less interesting it was. (ingame) Civ4 limited that by attributing a couple traits to each civs among less a dozen that could be remembered quite easily. It started to get worse in Civ5, especially with pantheons, tenets and the like. IMO it got even worse in 6. Not to mention the mitigated effects that follow. I love Rome in 6 because their depiction is clear and their abilities powerful IMO. Monuments + roads seem very useful to me, at a point I wish every civ has it. That's there that I started to want a civ with the abilities of all civs. But I guess such a mod would make the game crash lol.

That is fair. I think the most successful UA in Civ6, or the one I like the most, is the greek one. One wild policy slot for every government, that's it, the shortest among all. Although in game it is not the most powerful one, but through very simple sentence it opens up endless synergies and build. The opposite one I can think of is Venice in Civ 5, where it takes both UA and UU to constitute its single-city play style, neither are simple in their effects and descriptions. Even though the experience is unique and I eventually find a lot of fun playing as Venice but I can be quite terrifying at the first look.

However I really disagree with how Civ4 assign generic traits to different leaders, and I believe the Unique Abilities for leaders starting from Civ5 is in a good direction. Hammurabi and Roosevelt are both Organised leders but obviously their view on "organisation" are very different. Unique ability are like the shinny jewel that attracts birds, they keep us interested, and we need to think constantly to provide countermeasure against opposing civilizations as well.

 

[The googles do nothing]

It does seem like the concept of of Wonders has gotten a little stale. Wonders in civ come from a time where there was focus on the return of investment and optimization of building things and more on roleplaying - at least on my part. The wonder 'race' to see who builds it first is not exciting after a couple of games.

I like the idea of having maintenance having a bigger effect of the game. I would put a maintenance cost on lots of things: unit promotions, district adjacencies, great people, anything that has a bonus would need to be paid for. I can see how this not everyone would like this, they don't play civ to simulate being an accountant.

 

[criZp]

I don't think wonders need maintenance, I see maintenance as a way of putting a sort of soft limit on military size and empire size. I don't want maintenance cost as a punishment for investing in a time-consuming and risky building. Wonders and the likes have opportunity cost already, when they are done I'd like them to give some back without being a constant money drain.