Wich are the best wonders?

[naval_lord]

for me it has to be the great light house

 

[1-800-DOCTORB]

Sun Tzu's great for wars with with opponents far away from your empire. You can instantly gain an effective staging area as soon as you capture an enemy city because the barracks magically appears in that city. My tactic is usually to rotate my units in and out of combat and u can last a long time with the one-turn healing bonus until help arrives.

 

[stachnie]

My favourite wonders are:

- Great Library: even if I am a tech leader, it gives me at least 1 free tech (e.g. Monarchy) - moreover, it means that others don't get them After the patch 1.17f and on higher levels, it becomes even more important.

- Sun Tzu: free barracks over all continent mean that if you capture a city, your units can heal very fast.

- At least one of two: Sistine Chapel and/or Bach's Cathedral - they help to deal with unhappiiness.

- Hoover Dam: maybe not a musthave but is VERY nice.

- Universal Suffrage: important under Democracy (and Republic).

- United Nations - from obvious reasons

Still very nice:

- Colossus, esp. when combined with Copernicus Observatory, Newton's University and SETI. There was only one game where I had Colossus in a different city than three next ones: it was my only coastal city at the beginning of the game and it had low production while I had a very good city (grassland plus some hills and mountains with two gold, rivers) next to my capital.

- Leonardo Workshop saves a lot of money when upgrading units.

- Adam Smith's Co: significantly lower maintenance costs.

- Cure for Cancer.

Useful but optional:

- Pyramids (the problem is that usually one can have EITHER Pyramids OR Great Library): they are not as important as in Civ II because growth is much faster and I usually don't use the pop rushing.

- Magellan's Expedion, Theory of Evolution, Longevity.

I regard other wonders as rather useless, but some of them may be important for culture victory (Oracle works too short, Shakespeare in one city only). Great Wall is pathetic, Great Lighthouse doesn't allow to travel through Ocean - it is possible only after one discovers Navigation or Magnetism.


Regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

 

[WUM]

My list:

* Sun Tzu and
* Hooverdam for free improvements in all cities.
* Adam´s (+ small wonder Wall Street) for financial reasons.
* Sistine Chapel for great happiness of my people.
* Universal Suffrage because i want to go to war as a democracy.
* Theory of Evolution, for even greater scientific superiority and to prevent AI to try getting closer...

* United Nations - from obvious reasons, but only if i haven´t already won by the time the AI gets there

Besides these i just build all i can for scientific and cultural reasons and because i can´t stand the AI finishing a Wonder that could have done something for my glory...

 

[ABX]

I play on Emperor.

Great library is useless. Cuz on lower levels you don't need it (you should be the tech leader). On higher levels by the time you finish it you are 1/2 tech away from Education (which makes the wonder obsolete and you need it for Democracy). And on higher levels you will hardly built any wonders so you must choose them wisly.

I play with Egyptian only and if I manage to build the piramids (triger Golden age) i have almost won the game. Cuz by the time it is finished I have half of the world culture score (medium earth/12 opponents) and in the GA rush i build part of the Sistine chapel (another cultural boost).



Other important wonders for me.

Sistine Chapel
Hooverdam


My goal is allways the annihilation of the world (domination victory only).

 

[epsilon97]

If have asked this question on another thread, but I must know, How do you build these early wonders? I can beat the computer to them on Regent, but not on Monarch. I try everything. I will build one settler in my capital and and then start building the pyramids. I almost never get it in time. what am I doing wrong?

 

[Rich]

Originally posted by ABX
I play on Emperor.

Great library is useless. Cuz on lower levels you don't need it (you should be the tech leader). On higher levels by the time you finish it you are 1/2 tech away from Education (which makes the wonder obsolete and you need it for Democracy). And on higher levels you will hardly built any wonders so you must choose them wisly.

On harder difficulty levels. Other players (or so iv read) have this strategy. Be civ with a Military trait. Go on a rampage early on even if it means you gain very little or lose a bit. Just fight until a leader is creatd. Then end the war. Retreat ur leader back to where you want to build the wonder and hey presto u have the Great Library.

Although i havnt tried it myself i think it could work quite well.

Cheers

Rich

 

[Amask]

From the ancient era I only build Hanging Gardens. Everything else is now very useful (if I can build I do, but that's not my goal).
From Medievals I try to build Sun Tzu's Art of War and Smith Trading Company. Then it goes Universal Suffrage, Hoover Dam, and the two ones you can built with Genetics

 

[Shabbaman]

Art of war,

Kicks behind! It gives you a what, 25% advantage (veteran units) at no cost. It's actually the same discussion over whether or not to build the pyramids.

 

[petey]

Any improvement that gets rid of unhappy citizens is a must. Sistine Chapel is the best, followed closely by JS Bach's Cathedral. They get you a content base of citizens during the important phase of the game militarily and allow you to conquer territory and opponents while keeping up production.

Oracle expires too early to by useful, Shakespeare's Theatre is good for one city, but can't beat continent-wide effects, and by the time Cure for Cancer comes out, most games are basically already won or lost.

 

[Mike9993]

In my opinion the three best wonders are:

1. Sistine Chapel - how can you beat 6 content citizens!!!

2. The Great Libary - until rendered obselete no two civs can overtake you technologicaly.

3. Leonardo's Workshop - I know that many people will disagree with me and I agree that it is only a shadow of it's former self, but that 50% discount is a life-saver when it comes to upgrading 30+ defenders!

 

[Arrian]

I'm a bit of a wonder hog, so I have trouble making a short list of the best ones. Since I'm all about the science lead, failing to get all of the Industrial/Modern Wonders is unacceptable to me. If that happens, clearly things are not going well. I also want the lion's share of the medieval wonders. I've worked out how to nail just about all of them, playing on Monarch.

The shorter list, for me, is the list of wonders I can do without.

Pyramids
Great Lighthouse
Oracle
Colossus (sometimes you just don't have a good coastal city)
Hanging Gardens
Great Wall
Bach's (though I'd like it)
Shakespeare's

I will accept the loss of Leo's as well, but I'll be seriously annoyed.

-Arrian

 

[brody]

I build every wonder I can, regardless of usefulness, just to annoy the AI

But I prefer JS Bach's / Sistine Chapel. I can't remember which gives the double cathedral effect, but that's my favorite. It's worldwide (not just continental) which is VERY useful on archipelago.

That's my one must have. Other favorites:

-Pyramids
-Sun Tzu's War Academy
-Magellan (world war on archipelago is a lot easier to win if you can get troops across oceans 20% faster)
-Theory Of Evolution
-Smith's Trading

As modern wonders go, I do like Longevity and Cure for Cancer. I like my games to go long past the modern era, and I rarely get into big wars until then, so longevity is great. Conquer or raze & create cities, they grow much faster without having to feed them workers.

 

[brody]

Now who was it arguing that armies were inferior to a stack of the same units?? In a typical "frenzy" attack from the AI, the AI will lose no more than 2 or 3 tanks on 4 mech infantry. But against an army of the same 4 mech inf, the AI loses tanks every attack until the whole army is destroyed. So no more modern armors hitting your mech infantry, killing one, and surviving with 1 hp. No matter how you look at it, the army kills off as many or more enemies before it is destroyed:

1: Assume weak unit hits your troops and averages 1 HP damage before unit dies. Against army or stack, losses are the same. Difference: If army is still alive with 1 HP, you have 4 units to show for it. If stack is alive with 1 HP, you have 1 unit to show for it.

2: Assume stronger unit hits your troops and averages 3 HP damage before death. Against stack (4 HP a piece), he loses 4 units and then wins every battle afterward. Against army, he loses 5 units and then destroys the army. You destroy one extra unit, and if you can retreat you also gain all 4 units back.

3: A very strong unit hits your troops, averaging 5 HP damage before death. Against stack, enemy takes no losses. Against army, he loses three units before finally crushing you.

Don't even get me started on the "hit and run" approach for armies! 4 Modern Armor vs. any single unit will win. Mountains, fortresses, large cities, they don't matter. And if the enemy doesn't have a good counterattack, you save all 4 to fight again!

 

[Bojnas]

First time I post something here, so please be gentle.

My favourite wonder of the game has to be Pyramids. Free granaries everywhere! This means quite a few things:

- In the long run, it'll actually save shields. If you get enough cities, the amount of shields normally spent on granaries becomes greater than the amount spent on building Pyramids. This is true for all wonders that give free city improvements, so I assume everybody already thought of this.

- It'll save you money. No granary-upkeep. A no-brainer; we all know this, right?

- But here's something about Pyramids that nobody has mentioned here (though I suppose a lot of people already realized this, because it also applied to civ II) : the Pyramids give free food.

Public reaction (for those who didn't realize this): "Yeah dude, that's what granaries do."

No, that's not what I meant. You see, normally, when you build a granary, that'll take some time. If a granary is the first thing you build with a new city, it usually already has grown at least twice before the granary is finished. And every time the city grows, the food box is completely emptied. But if you have built the graves Cheops & family, those food boxes will be half-full (half-empty, if you're a pessimist).

<silence to build up tension>

So what does that mean? For every increase in city population before you normally would have built a granary, you now get 10 (20 if beyond population level 6) food for free! If the city has three inhabitants (probably the absolute minimum, barring rush-jobs), that essentially is one extra citizen! If you normally wait even longer, this bonus get's even bigger! This faster growth also means that there's more production and commerce, though that bonus compared to not having pyramids is very small. This bonus ofcourse only applies to cities founded after the Pyramids are built, so you need to build a few before this bonus offsets the slower growth of cities built before the Pyramids (since I don't think we'll build any granaries in the cities if we're planning to get the Pyramids anyway). But everybody goes for expansion anyway, right?


So, in short, with the Pyramids, you population grows even faster than it would with granaries.

Pyramids rule!

 

[Tweedledum]

I have a great liking for the "big culture" wonders - Hanging Gardens, Bach, Shakespeare (despite that fact that I'm nearly always at war...)

Another point is that some of the enabling techs are dead-ends (Music Theory, Free Artistry). If you wait until you're a couple of turns away from building the Wonder, you can sell what is effectively an entirely useless Civ advance to all the AI Civs and
rake in the proceeds (I once got a grand total of about 400 gold lump sum, 200 per turn, two techs and some - admittedly fairly useless - World Maps for Free Artistry when I was 3 turns away from completing the ST. Now that's what I call a bargain )

 

[Lawrence]

I love pyramids the most, but it's too damn hard to build it!

Maybe if I hire Herodotus as my Construction advisor it would be a little faster.

The other wonders:

The Colossus: Yes, this one. Definitely, if I have a good coastal city. Together with Copernicus's Observatory the city can become a researching metropolis, easily give me 100+ science per turn in pre-industrial times. Even when I can't get Copernicus, I can always go for Newton's University as these are all cheap wonders.

Copernicus: for the same reason, always build in the same city with the Colossus.

Sistine Chapel: It is really good to see your people happy, especially at higher difficulties.

I can live without other wonders, though most of them would be a good addition to my empire.

Actually, I haven't played a game in which I am still equal to the AI in industrial. In Monarch I always take an early lead, so I can always build all industrial and later wonders. And in Emperor they would have pissed me off before I can see any railroads in my country.

 

[God]

The top wonders would be:

Sistines: Around this time in the Middle Ages I am often at peace so its a time when I built alot of cathedrals.

Bachs: More happiness. Always nice on those harder levels.

Leonardos: Cheaper upgrades are really nice. I usually just upgrade knights to cavalry or a few riflemen up if they are near the front lines.

Copernicus: Always nice, but not essential

Newton's: Same as above.

Cure for Cancer: Most games I don't get time to build this one but with those huge cities it always helps.

ToE: I can get Atomic Theory and Electronics free and they are both really expensive so its nice.

Smiths: A little more money.

Pyramids, Great Libary and Sun Tzu are really popular but I don't really ever bother with them. Occansionally go for Sun Tzu if I have the time but not always.

I don't build pyramids because I only need granaries in my core cities for expansion. Also on higher levels fast growth will mean more unhappiness. Great Libary, by the time I get it, I am in the Middle Ages on monarch or emperor. A waste of time, unless you want to set it up for some Middle Age wonder. Sun Tzu is a bit better but I usually have barracks in most of my productive cities. Those faraway conquered cities don't really barracks because they aren't ever going to produce units.

 

[allhailIndia]

Ancient Age:
1.Go for the Oracle as soon as it appears and then the Pyramids.
2.Colossus if you have good coastal cities or Lighthouse on Huge or Island map
3.Get Great Library to cement tech lead or catch up
4. You can afford to bypass the Hanging gardens, but the culture is very valuable later on.
5.Great Wall sucks

Middle Age:
1.Get all happiness wonders and Leo's workshop pronto. Try Sistine Chapel if you don't get Bach or vice versa
2.Get Smith's Trading Company for the extra moolah$$$ and an opportunity to increase other rates

I usually get to the top of the table with this policy and have enough cities and prod to get ALL other wonders

 

[Bojnas]

Originally posted by God
I don't build pyramids because I only need granaries in my core cities for expansion. Also on higher levels fast growth will mean more unhappiness. Great Libary, by the time I get it, I am in the Middle Ages on monarch or emperor. A waste of time, unless you want to set it up for some Middle Age wonder. Sun Tzu is a bit better but I usually have barracks in most of my productive cities. Those faraway conquered cities don't really barracks because they aren't ever going to produce units.

Have you taken a look at the thread about the multitude of uses for workers? It's great! So extremely fast growth can be very useful if you use worker strategies. Other uses for the worker