Oh yeah. I think my point is, Amundsen-Scott is a wonder worth structuring your overall strategy around getting. I was a bit late to the party this game, not noticing until Rapid Deployment was just a couple techs forward. And then I noticed.
That had me thinking: Okay, Judaism has Jesuits. How can I get a city converted to Judaism, so I can train missionaries and faith-buy my Campus buildings? You need research lab before you can start Amundsen-Scott.
Can I send in a governor to buy my Campus outright? Magnus is the chop guy, but Reyna and Moksha are the district-purchasing guys; and Moksha has a faith bonus for finishing Amundsen.
Re-route my domestic trade routes to go to Amundsen-Scott.
Need to save up money.
I don't need the 5 snow tiles until after the wonder is done. The important thing, first, is to get the wonder up before anyone else does. And it's still half as useful even without the other snow tiles. Also, the campus need only be ADJACENT to a snow tile--not on one.
So I decide on Moksha; I had no way of getting Jesuits anyway. Faith goes to buying the campus; gold goes to buying the campus buildings. I settle on fresh water--I don't want to mess with aqueduct or housing issues. Important things about city placement:
1. 5 snow tiles
2. fresh water. Either that, or a) some extra money to buy a sewer, or b) some extra faith to buy an aqueduct. Builders aren't too good at adding housing improvements on snow tiles. Tundra, yes. Snow, no.
3. close enough to a factory to get power to it. I had not considered this one until it was too late. Luckily, though, I had Mexico City. This is a big reason why Amundsen-Scott has to be planned way ahead.
4. arboreal forest is nice, but the problem is I have to choose between Magnus and Moksha/Reyna. I chose Moksha and lumbermilled the forest.
5. adjacency bonus for campus is nice, but...bleh. Doesn't matter here. Just get it up.
6. You can push it on the loyalty--it's getting a governor. Just avoid the -20's. The domestic trade routes roll in the food.
I domestic-traded and policy-carded the tar out of it. I didn't miss the opportunity cost for doing it--the payoff from Amundsen-Scott far exceeded whatever opportunity cost. Gustav Eiffel comes up on my Great People list as an engineer (450 hammers toward wonder construction), and I had the Mausoleum for precisely this reason. Industrial Zone projects!! My other cities rush in to get those GP points up.
Amundsen-Scott comes up about 7 turns sooner than I thought. So what happens? My science far outpaces what I expected, so I end up researching Future Tech much more than I thought. I went for Science Victory, but that was only for the Steam achievements. It actually helped more with a Domination victory than anything else, since I could just upgrade my army an era ahead and steamroll. I ended up going to war anyway, to get more aluminum and uranium (SV can eat up all the aluminum and uranium it can get). I used some lame, pretextual casus belli, of course. Anyway the point is, my SV was no longer science-limited at all: I was production-limited. And Amundsen-Scott was even giving me +20% toward that.
Hindsight 20/20, I should have declared war BEFORE Amundsen-Scott, because I could have pillaged a bunch of faith and gold to help with the project. It's just the war would have been significantly harder then, since I wasn't teched up yet. But it's another way to get your other cities to pitch in: by building units. The units pillage. With the loot, you rush Amundsen-Scott. Then with the +20% production bonus, your cities get their production back.
The Moksha bonus faith from building Amundsen-Scott and the campus buildings didn't really matter.
Now, I'm left with all these domestic trade routes still going to my snow city, after Amundsen-Scott is done. Which I don't regret, but...now that I have all these snow tiles and excess production, I can throw up districts that don't really care about adjacency bonuses (I chose Aerodrome, but should have chosen Encampment and built an airfield). Wind Farms on the hills tiles. Turn 265 SV, in spite of all my mistakes.
Why are you comparing a late game wonder to a tier 1 govt. plaza building? You build them at different times in the game for different victory types. Sincerely, what do you see that they have in common?
I think the point is that if you've felt the goodness of Warlord's Throne, and you go to all the trouble of going to war to get it, then...Amundsen-Scott is giving the same thing, and it's permanent. Also if you time it right, you can go capture a city while your snow city is up, and get the 20% bonus toward building the wonder. Probably want to get that population and hammer count up first, before taking the city.
