Wonders -- as used in CEP

[Funak]

Banaue Rice Terraces - This needs to stay in game because removing the extra food wonder which has been in game forever isn't something we should consider. If you remove this then the Hanging Gardens needs to be changed to a food wonder possibly with an added effect.

First off, nice initiative to actually try and do something.
I totally agree with your suggestion, move the 10%food from ToA here and add a flat 5 food to it instead, or maybe 2 food in every city.

Great Library - This should stay the same. I always get it when I can and use the Free Tech to get another tech so I can start building a wonder earlier which makes a significant difference.

Just have to point out that even if you remove the free tech the wonder is still one of the best ones in the game

 

[NarrativeKnight]

You are very welcome Funak.

I have posted in all of the discussion topics for balancing the CEP uses in the CP where it seems decisions are still to be made. I am hoping that even if our coders are missing in action that we can at least get a general consensus ready for when they get back. I am going to do the rest of the wonders tomorrow. It has been a LOT of reading today to get all of the other posts done along with these two.

I agree that the Great Library is awesome even without the free tech. I would still get it whenever I can but I would be sad if it we took away the free tech. I would miss it but everything else the CP is doing makes it far too important to throw away over one issue like this. I will go along with the majority even if the tech is taken away. I just think it really makes the Great Library a must build as I hope my suggested changes make for the other wonders does as well for them.

Ingolenuru on Steam

 

[NarrativeKnight]

It was mentioned that we needed to continue the discussion here in another thread so I figured I would give us a push.

Angkor Wat - Seriously CEP??? As if buying a diplomatic victory was not easy enough? This is just insane. Yes the original version is weak but another mod adds 4 prod and 4 culture to it. I think if we are sticking with it as part of the Patronage Tree then we should change it but to something that does not outright hand you a diplomatic victory. 50% increase to influence rewards with CSD or 100% reduction in influence loss without it. These give great power to individual CS relationships without just handing Diplomatic Victory to the player outright. I realize that with CSD there would still be some work involved with getting the remaining points to ally and get their votes but if you are leading in culture and faith then you don't even have to do anything. The city state quests will give you the rest you need and you just got a Diplomatic Victory for being impressive and building one wonder. Not good. The only reason people have been saying they don't use the CEP version is because they are not looking for an easy win. The reason for not taking the vanilla version is because it is weak.
Borobudur - This wonder is underwhelming. It is Stonehenge with 3 free missionaries. This wonder should mirror the real thing and have a more global effect. That it is a place for pilgrimage and a tourist attraction as well makes me think that it should have a base +5 faith and then tourism can add more to it. How about for each level of influence achieved with every nation you +2 faith. Exotic with all civs is +2 and if you get to Familiar with all of them then is +4 and so on. Give it Great Prophet points as well. The missionaries can stay or go.
Chichen Itza - Depending on what we do with GAs this can be weak or strong but since we have unified yields on the way how about giving it GA points this would be especially helpful since late game happiness seems to be a problem we cannot quite get a grasp on yet. I would even say 10 GA per turn.
Great Mosque of Djenne - The nerf on this one is egregious. +2 faith and a GProphet? It immediately becomes almost useless. Why take away the free Mosque? Definitely leave that in and then make it +3 Faith and add the Great Prophet or go back to the Missionaries from this city spread 3 times instead of 2.
Hagia Sophia - Seriously? Who would ever build this? +1 Faith per specialist? In a tall empire you could create a huge amount of faith with this just before you win the game. Yes, if it is in your capital and you have the guilds here it could give you a lot of faith IF you don't run into trouble where you need production or have happiness issues. I would never build this. The vanilla version? Build it every single time. Free temple, Great Prophet AND +25% great people points in all cities. How about +1 faith for ever 3 points of population? Add to it a Free Temple and Great Prophet slot in the wonder? I would definitely build that.
Notre Dame - You wanted to take this out why? There are fewer and fewer wonders by era so I really don't see why you would take this out. Put it back in with +4 Happy. If you have it and the Hanging Gardens you get the original +10 happy and with the way the happiness system works for late game right now this is a good idea. It comes with +4 faith as well but since we have other free religious buildings why not give it a free pagoda? We have the others don't we?
Red Fort - This is iconic symbol of culture. I would suggest that you add a free museum to the CEP benefits in order to make it fit more closely to the real importance of the Red Fort.
Taj Mahal We should add GA points to this wonder as well as the +4 happy and the GA start.
Big Ben - I am happy with the CEP version of this.
Brandenburg Gate - I am happy with the CEP version of this.

The others in Renaissance and Industrial Ages are fine as they come in Vanilla and are unchanged in CEP. The only issue I see here is that the Industrial age only has 3 wonders. We should fix that.
We could reintroduce the Hoover Dam as a wonder for the industrial age. It would be a precursor for the information age Itaipu Dam. There is a lot of game turns between these two so it would not be a problem to have both in the game. Itaipu would of course have a far more reaching affect. The Hoover Dam could provide extra production or hydroelectric power plants for qualifying cities that are directly next to it or even connected by worked tiles. Itaipu would have no such limitations.
The Panama Canal is already listed for CEP and should extend ocean trade routes. It should give +4 gold and GM points.
The Brooklyn Bridge could increase road speed, have a GE slot and give +2 gold. It could spawn a GE as well.
Bazalgette's London Sewers may not be glamorous but they are exactly the epitome of the industrial age. These sewers saved London which was being wrecked by cholera epidemics and they were copied the entire world over. This could be both a growth and happiness wonder as their is no actual health in the game to modify. At this early stage of the game a +25% bonus to growth and +3 happy would seem suitable. A great engineer slot would definitely be fitting.

The Renaissance Era and the Industrial also skipped over any coastal wonders. The Panama Canal is one if added but that isn't enough for two entire eras IMO.
The Bell Rock Lighthouse is the oldest offshore standing lighthouse in the world today. Between 1807 and 1811 Robert Stevenson built it 11 miles offshore on a reef that was under 16 feet of water most of the day. In 1799 at least 70 ships were lost because of storms near the reef. This could add an ocean trade route, add + 4 gold to all sea trade routes from the city and a great merchant slot.

That would gives us 8 wonders for the industrial age instead of 3. This would stop the grind through the industrial age and make it a lot more exciting. I really believe we need to do this as having the three wonder era sandwiched by the eras with so many more really brings the Industrial Age down in the game.

Ingolenuru on Steam

 

[Funak]

It was mentioned that we needed to continue the discussion here in another thread so I figured I would give us a push.

Angkor Wat - Seriously CEP??? As if buying a diplomatic victory was not easy enough? This is just insane. Yes the original version is weak but another mod adds 4 prod and 4 culture to it. I think if we are sticking with it as part of the Patronage Tree then we should change it but to something that does not outright hand you a diplomatic victory. 50% increase to influence rewards with CSD or 100% reduction in influence loss without it. These give great power to individual CS relationships without just handing Diplomatic Victory to the player outright. I realize that with CSD there would still be some work involved with getting the remaining points to ally and get their votes but if you are leading in culture and faith then you don't even have to do anything. The city state quests will give you the rest you need and you just got a Diplomatic Victory for being impressive and building one wonder. Not good. The only reason people have been saying they don't use the CEP version is because they are not looking for an easy win. The reason for not taking the vanilla version is because it is weak.

I've built this a few times and it is nowhere near as good as you make it out to be. usually you have to rush it like crazy to get it before the AI and if you do you're not likely to have made contact with more than half of the citystates, on a continents or tiny islands map it is even worse. What is worse is that the actual influence provided by the wonder comes so early that you don't have resources to maintain the alliances you get from it.

I would still suggest changing it, but because I don't like the design and I think the wonder is overall weak unless you're greece or lucky.

Hagia Sophia - Seriously? Who would ever build this? +1 Faith per specialist? In a tall empire you could create a huge amount of faith with this just before you win the game. Yes, if it is in your capital and you have the guilds here it could give you a lot of faith IF you don't run into trouble where you need production or have happiness issues. I would never build this. The vanilla version? Build it every single time. Free temple, Great Prophet AND +25% great people points in all cities. How about +1 faith for ever 3 points of population? Add to it a Free Temple and Great Prophet slot in the wonder? I would definitely build that.

I was under the impression that the +1 faith per specialist was global. And if that is the case then I'd say the wonder is fine.

Notre Dame - You wanted to take this out why? There are fewer and fewer wonders by era so I really don't see why you would take this out. Put it back in with +4 Happy. If you have it and the Hanging Gardens you get the original +10 happy and with the way the happiness system works for late game right now this is a good idea. It comes with +4 faith as well but since we have other free religious buildings why not give it a free pagoda? We have the others don't we?

I really don't like the idea of cutting Notre Dame, but I'd rather see it do something more meaningful than just boring old happiness.

Red Fort - This is iconic symbol of culture. I would suggest that you add a free museum to the CEP benefits in order to make it fit more closely to the real importance of the Red Fort.

Fine by me.

Taj Mahal We should add GA points to this wonder as well as the +4 happy and the GA start.

It is already extremely powerful, keep that in mind. besides I think it gives a global reduction to some happiness in CPP.

Big Ben - I am happy with the CEP version of this.

I'l fine with either.

Brandenburg Gate - I am happy with the CEP version of this.

Yeah it makes more sense.

Bazalgette's London Sewers may not be glamorous but they are exactly the epitome of the industrial age. These sewers saved London which was being wrecked by cholera epidemics and they were copied the entire world over. This could be both a growth and happiness wonder as their is no actual health in the game to modify. At this early stage of the game a +25% bonus to growth and +3 happy would seem suitable. A great engineer slot would definitely be fitting.

I like it.

 

[mystikx21]

The Hoover Dam suggestion was what Itaipu was in CEP. Part of the logic of removing Notre Dame was to replace it with Laibela, which is more impressive and a little more diverse. One of the effects in CEP was to get people to think a little less Euro-centrically about the wonders and technical or creative achievements of humanity I suppose. Notre Dame is basically an impressive cathedral. Laibela is representative of the early adoption of Christianity in a part of Africa. One of those seems a little more significant historically was our logic for dumping Notre Dame (Paris alone already had a couple of other wonders, Louvre and Eiffel, to boot).

I'm in agreement with Funak that Angkor is rarely that powerful, particularly with CSD in play.

Hagia Sophia is fine with +1 per specialist as a global effect. The default version does not have 25% GP rate on it either. That's on the Leaning Tower.

 

[NarrativeKnight]

The Hoover Dam suggestion was what Itaipu was in CEP. Part of the logic of removing Notre Dame was to replace it with Laibela, which is more impressive and a little more diverse. One of the effects in CEP was to get people to think a little less Euro-centrically about the wonders and technical or creative achievements of humanity I suppose. Notre Dame is basically an impressive cathedral. Laibela is representative of the early adoption of Christianity in a part of Africa. One of those seems a little more significant historically was our logic for dumping Notre Dame (Paris alone already had a couple of other wonders, Louvre and Eiffel, to boot).

I'm in agreement with Funak that Angkor is rarely that powerful, particularly with CSD in play.

Hagia Sophia is fine with +1 per specialist as a global effect. The default version does not have 25% GP rate on it either. That's on the Leaning Tower.

Thank you both for the replies. I am glad to see we are still moving forward. Please, remember that I have no experience at all with CEP so all I am going on is what I see on the spreadsheet.

I realize that the Hoover Dam is the same as the Itaipu Dam but it is much earlier in the game. The Hoover Dam was completed in 1936 and was part of the Industrial Era. The Itaipu finally had all of its generators brought online in 1991, coincidentally the same year that the world wide web came online. This means the Itaipu should be in fact available at the beginning of the Information Age in the game. I believe that the Hoover Dam can be a scaled down version of the Itaipu without seeming to be redundant because of the huge difference in era availability. The reason to do this is because there are so few wonders for the Industrial Era. We are talking about getting the Hoover Dam with Scientific Theory and being far less effective than the Itaipu Dam which you would get with Robotics.

I am looking at the Angkor Wat in the worst case scenario. Someone picks Polynesia or one of the other super exploration civilizations and gets Angkor Wat when they have met almost every CS in the game. This is a massive boost even with just the friend benefits. Greece of course if they get lucky with their expansion could be a similar candidate. I appreciate the information. I didn't know that you had to build it so early, so at least there is barely a chance at all that it could be as strong as it first seemed. I do agree with Funak though that I just don't like the way it works and prefer both of my suggestions which are free to be tweaked as well or something entirely different.

Once again with the Hagia Sophia my ignorance is from not having played CEP. The +1 being global makes a huge difference and I can see how that would acceptable. Sorry, if I am overreacting to uneducated guess work here.

I think that replacing Notre Dame with Churches of Laibela is a great idea but I do still see adding the free pagoda and or the +4 happiness as a good idea. I really worry about the current late game happiness as things stand.

When I was writing about the Taj Mahal I was thinking about it only needing a change if there were not other modifiers to it already. I can't remember if I saw a suggestion on it or something but it just seemed to give me the feeling it had been adjusted somehow. I am good with it helping in different ways, but it seems that happiness is so hard to get that you need extra help getting GAs in the mid to late game. If other things are balancing this out then of course the standard Taj Mahal is fine.

Thanks for the vote of confidence on the BLS Funak. What do you think of it mysticx21? I hope you both agree that the Industrial Age is in desperate need of help. I have no idea why it was given only three wonders but it really is a huge step away from the rest of the game. Bringing it back in line gives us the opportunity to put in some completely new wonders to balance out the era but also to use some of the new coding for wonders that really change the flavor of the game.

Ingolenuru on Steam

 

[Funak]

I think that replacing Notre Dame with Churches of Laibela is a great idea but I do still see adding the free pagoda and or the +4 happiness as a good idea. I really worry about the current late game happiness as things stand.

If you worry about the current late game happiness overall then adding a earlymid wonder with 4 global happiness isn't going to solve that.

One of the reasons I don't think the oldstyle notre dame would work, I mean 10 global happiness is that it filled a completely different role vanilla, it allowed you to grow your cities an extre 10 pop while in CPP it would provide you with 10 floating happiness that you're not really able to use for anything (10 GAP/turn).

On the discussion on CoL vs ND i'm somewhat split however, the ND is a lot more impressive for many reasons. Sure there is a high eurocentration and sure there are a lot of wonders from France, but that makes a lot of sense since France and Paris are really impressive culturevise. Gameplayvise having it reduce unhappiness poverty and maybe illiteracy in all cities would make sense wouldn't it?

 

[NarrativeKnight]

If you worry about the current late game happiness overall then adding a earlymid wonder with 4 global happiness isn't going to solve that.

One of the reasons I don't think the oldstyle notre dame would work, I mean 10 global happiness is that it filled a completely different role vanilla, it allowed you to grow your cities an extre 10 pop while in CPP it would provide you with 10 floating happiness that you're not really able to use for anything (10 GAP/turn).

On the discussion on CoL vs ND i'm somewhat split however, the ND is a lot more impressive for many reasons. Sure there is a high eurocentration and sure there are a lot of wonders from France, but that makes a lot of sense since France and Paris are really impressive culturevise. Gameplayvise having it reduce unhappiness poverty and maybe illiteracy in all cities would make sense wouldn't it?

The Cathedral of Notre Dame has been considered one of the three most important building in Paris and I can see considering the importance of Paris culturally why it is something you want in the game. The Churches of Lalibela are 11 churches carved out of stone and when you see the pictures of them I would definitely say their construction is definitely on world wonder scale.

The Churches were part of Ethiopia's attempt to create a new Jerusalem after the taking of the old one according to legend. The legacy of these churches is powerful as the city is still considered the second holiest city in Ethiopia and a destination for pilgrimages. They had a far more powerful religious impact than Notre Dame did because it replaced a building not too far off in scope and size whose purpose was exactly the same.

I can see why they could supplant Notre Dame as a religious wonder if not a cultural one. I can see keeping Notre Dame in the game if there was room for it. The reason for leaving it out is because in BNW you have 6 ancient, 7 classical, 8 medieval and 9 renaissance wonders. That is my understanding anyway. What I see though is that you go to only 3 for the industrial, 7 for modern, 3 for atomic and 2 for information age. This obviously is part of the reason for the late game monotony. Less wonder competition and fewer ways to have an impact on late game play.

This is why I want to add in my industrial age wonders. If medieval wonders goes up to 9 like the renaissance I don't see the harm in that myself. Notre Dame took over 100 years to complete so I can see it as being the last available wonder for the medieval era and as the Churches of Lalibela were carved out of stone and started much earlier it could be the earliest wonder available in the medieval era if we keep them both instead of replacing Notre Dame.

As most of the wonders in the Renaissance are in the early part of the era perhaps to compensate one of them could be pushed to the late Renaissance instead. This would also help with the Industrial Era being so severely empty of wonders. The Churches of Lalibela serve only a religious function in the game and Notre Dame could serve as a mixed faith and culture wonder with a happiness effect of some kind. Possibly it could be linked to a policy as well that is late in the tree. This would keep it from being viewed so much as one extra wonder too many.

This is my best suggestion for a compromise between you and mystikx21. I don't really see how Notre Dame is a lot more impressive than 11 truly massive structures carved out of stone and it certainly isn't more culturally impactful considering the histories of the two sites. I am hoping however to get some more feedback on the rest of my suggestions and most especially about doing something with the Industrial Era. It just doesn't make sense to me to leave it so barren when there are such great options available.

Ingolenuru on Steam

 

[Stalker0]

I don't really see how Notre Dame is a lot more impressive than 11 truly massive structures carved out of stone and it certainly isn't more culturally impactful considering the histories of the two sites.

I will reinforce though, that are primary aim is balance. Notre Dame is the wonder that the base game picked...for good or ill.

Now if we feel we need another wonder at a certain point, because there are too few wonders and therefore wonder play is too weak later in the game....then that's a argument to be made (I might not agree, but would be happy to debate it).

Saying we need another wonder because there historically was another wonder that isn't in the game...isn't a great argument to me.