Why does my civ stop building wonders???

[Lboogie13]

Hey all. I apologize right here and now for being a noobie but we all have to start somewhere.

I'm playing the Civ III vanilla edition (I know, I know, PTW, C3C expansion packs, CIV 4...). Right in the middle of building a wonder my annyong advisor tells me Rome (or whatever city) can no longer work on it and the city is switching to something else.

Why does this happen? How can I avoid it? HELP!

 

[vmxa]

You cannot avoid it as long as someone build the wonder before you. You can only elect to switch to another item. The game only allows one each for any Great Wonder. Small wonders can be built by all.

This is true for the expansion packs as well. The thing you need to do now is to get it started sooner or be able to yield more shields per turn in the wonder city.

Eventually you will be able to gauge the probability of beating them to a given wonder. In the main, if you make 12 shields and they make 14, you need to start before they do.

So if you are notified that someone started a wonder and you have not started it yet nor do you have any prebuild underway, don't start it.

Look to see that your wonder city is at full size, if not add workers. Make sure all tiles worked by the pop are mined, unless the food is needed. See if you can shift to a more shields producing tile, maybe even steal one from the next town.

 

[SimpleMonkey]

Sounds to me like another civ has completed the wonder before you have. You'll get a notification that this has happened during an interturn when the various AI civs do all their business: the foreign advisor will pop up and say something like "We've learned that the Pyramids have been completed in the French city of Paris." Then during your following turn you have the chance to click on city you had building the same wonder and switch its production to something else. Usually the best thing to do in such a situation is to switch it to another wonder, since you might well have a lot of shields invested in the project and not want to waste them. If you don't do the switch yourself on that turn, the city production will automatically switch on the next turn to the most expensive thing that you could build in that city, and you'll get a message like: "Since Washington can no longer build the Pyramids, it is now building a temple."

The problem is that the computer will not switch your production to the Palace and it may not switch it automatically to another wonder. So you may end up storing up 390 shields towards the Pyramids only to be beat out by someone else, and then you'll waste 330 shields when the computer switches you automatically and finishes a 60 shield temple in one turn. Does that make sense? This is why it's often good to start pre-building an expensive wonder in a city long before you get the technology that would allow you to build the wonder you really want. Say you're the Persians and you want to build the Great Library. Since you start with Masonry, you could start your second city building the Pyramids until you research and/or trade your way to Literature, at which point you could switch production from the Pyramids to the Great Library and you'd have a ton of shields already built up. If someone beat you to the Pyramids before you got Literature, you could switch production to the Palace, not with the intention of moving your capital (your capital is always the city with your palace) but just to keep building up shields. This is also why it's not advisable to build wonders in your capital, even if it is usually your most productive city -- you can't switch production to the palace if you're beaten to a wonder.

Anyway, the pluses and minuses of wonder-building are much discussed on these forums. A lot of strategy can go into knowing when to start pre-building a wonder and what techs to research in what order. I'd also especially advise you to read Ision's article on wonder addiction, if you haven't already. You can find it here.
Also, if you're not getting these messages from your foreign advisor, you'll want to check your game preferences to see if you have wonder pop-ups turned off.

 

[SimpleMonkey]

x-post w/vmxa. As ususal, he takes about a third of the time I do to get to the point.

Oh, and Lboogie13 -- Welcome to the forums!

 

[vmxa]

That was becasue Lboogie was still logged on, so I tried to get something out.

 

[Lboogie13]

Thanks a lot for the help. I did just read Ision's article on newbie wonder addiction. So true.

Everyone on the forum has been so helpful. This community is not like most game communities where everyone forgets they used to be a newb and instead of helping they ridicule your questions.

 

[gmaharriet]

This community is not like most game communities where everyone forgets they used to be a newb and instead of helping they ridicule your questions.

You are SO right! I remember being a newb here and so afraid to post my questions. Everyone was wonderful right from the start and this has become my 2nd home.

Glad to have you with us Lboogie13!!!

 

[Lboogie13]

Harriet - This is slowly becoming my second home. I have to confess that I have spent a lot of time here lately instead of working! I am trying everything to resist the temptation to play at work.

For the record I never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. I think of stupid people as AI on Super Deity-- they do very dumb things but can still wipe you out if you are not careful!

 

[jb1964]

I agree, it's a great forum. Very, very few flames and loads of good people willing to help.

I'm playing C3C now but don't plan a change to Civ4 until the total package price drops to about $20. That should be sometime in 2009.

If you want to bring your game up quickly so you can either beat the AI at high difficulty levels (that would be Monarch for me ) or just go for goofy fast wins (Space launches in the "Middle Ages") I recommend reading through and joining a Succession Game.

You will be able to play w/ a team at least one, and likely two levels higher than what you would want to solo. At least that's what I have found.

Welcome to the club of addicted gamers.

 

[Lboogie13]

Thanks. I just wandered over to the succession games and see what I can do.

 

[gmaharriet]

Harriet - This is slowly becoming my second home. I have to confess that I have spent a lot of time here lately instead of working! I am trying everything to resist the temptation to play at work.

For the record I never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. I think of stupid people as AI on Super Deity-- they do very dumb things but can still wipe you out if you are not careful!

My company has made this board an "illegal" site and I can't access it from the office. Can't imagine why.

The "stupid people" phrase in my sig is the motto of Team K.I.S.S. in the Multi-Team Demo (Democracy) Game here http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=149 . Not so sure how bright I am, but most of the team members are brilliant players and we have a lot of fun. You might want to think about joining one of the teams...there are 4. We play one turn and then pass it on to the next team. The game has been going since early August and I think we're on turn 93 or 94 now. We do get a bit spammy and silly at times.

 

[Lboogie13]

I agree, it's a great forum. Very, very few flames and loads of good people willing to help.

I'm playing C3C now but don't plan a change to Civ4 until the total package price drops to about $20. That should be sometime in 2009.

If you want to bring your game up quickly so you can either beat the AI at high difficulty levels (that would be Monarch for me ) or just go for goofy fast wins (Space launches in the "Middle Ages") I recommend reading through and joining a Succession Game.

You will be able to play w/ a team at least one, and likely two levels higher than what you would want to solo. At least that's what I have found.

Welcome to the club of addicted gamers.

Yeah I'm waiting for Conquests to drop in price. Even with Civ 4 out it is still hovering in the $25-$30 range. My wife hates it when I play the game so I can't spend that much and still stay under the radar! If it is around $10, when she asks why that charge from ebay/half.com is on the credit card, I can say "oh that, I just bought a few books...yeah that's the ticket."

 

[DoTheMath]

At the lower levels, you can be pretty certain of finishing the Pyramids - It becomes a reasonable build when you have a total of 4 cities + settlers, then build a reasonable # of workers in your nonWonder cities, and have them work the wonder city first. The only other early wonder worth building is Conquest's Temple of Artemis, with about 7 cities + settlers, if you are nonreligious, nonscientfic (because all culture is full priced). The other early wonders don't have enough of an effect on the handful of cities you start with.

 

[Lboogie13]

Thanks for all the help everyone. Trying to switch strategies from a newbie to a somewhat experienced player. It is very hard to break out of the traps that new players get into, i.e. build every single thing in all cities, build all wonders and have only a handful of workers and units.