Wonders - New Faves?

[Orion Pax]

Greetings. Curious to hear which wonders people are getting a lot of mileage out of these days? In which conditions do folks find certain wonders are worth it or not?

Partially inspired by the recent Parthenon post over in S&T. Partially inspired by recent in-game experiences:

Lately have been wondering how valuable Oracle is. Cheap + great gambits but so often feels at odds with critical initial expansion. Like I often feel I have to choose between the Oracle or a city site.

One I’ve grown to love is the Mausoleum, as I’ve gotten better at Golden Ages. Love especially how it allows for extending civic switch timing - like starting GA at Communism and being able to tech through to Constitution. Obviously best for longer (i.e. Space) games, and not impactful early (is it a win harder wonder?), but it often seems available since AI seems to tech Calendar later than other techs?

Curious to hear what folks think.

 

[user330977]

Hi Orion Pax

Maybe my choice is controversial but I must say that I am a fan of Stonehenge (for a non-creative leader, anyway.) It's cheap (with Industrious even better, with Stone as well it's practically free) and can easily pay for itself in hammers if you found a few cities and conquer some of your enemy's. It's especially desirable if you are Charismatic as all of your cities will be working two extra tiles than they would normally be.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[migalhone]

I'm 99% sure i don't build wonders 100% of the time, but that may be due to me never ever not wanting to expand if there's land available. I'm also only playing on Monarch Pangea maps to learn this game, so maybe at some point i'll learn the impact of wonders.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

The great wall. Every single time. Not having to worry about barbarians at all drops the game difficulty by at least one level.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

The great wall. Every single time. Not having to worry about barbarians at all drops the game difficulty by at least one level.

Ohhhh yes indeed. I'm building it as soon as I discover Masonry - stone or no stone.

 

[6K Man]

On supersized maps, Great Wall becomes kind of a must. Stonehenge is good too for when you know you'll have 15 cities by 5 AD, but you usually have to choose one or the other.

I've recently gotten better at leveraging circumnavigation, which is almost a wonder on big maps, too. +1 water movement and selling maps after circumnavigation for 2000 is quite handy.

 

[Orion Pax]

Interesting stuff.

Curious: Do folks go for Oracle these days? Or is it a distraction from expanding / better tech paths?

 

[drewisfat]

Rarely on deity. I'll want IND and strong commerce (gem/gold). Without IND early MC isn't as attractive, and without gems or gold I don't tech fast enough to secure it or to justify the detour to priesthood. Marble doesn't actually affect my decision making process because the additional detour to masonry in addition to priesthood is prohibitively risky.

 

[civac]

Mausoleum. Possibly the the strongest wonder in the game in no tech trading games. Endless GAs are very hard to beat.

 

[krikav]

I love Kremlin more and more. Such a lovely wonder.

 

[lymond]

Kremlin great for late game fail gold too..still building it.

Mauso is indeed a good wonder. I try for it whenever I can, but it can be hard to get. I've used a GE on it on occasion.

 

[SittinDown]

You could probably Oracle Fusion on Settler if you tried. but the Orcale will have had no relevance in you winning.

..with Kremlin: do you run slavery with it? does that combo well with state property and nationhood, and a rifles / cannons / infantry / tanks late-game domination push?

 

[krikav]

Most often it's slavery. It's rare to find opportunitie to be rich enough to use universial suffrage. Thats basically when you know you are done teching and have no other use of the commerce.
The most common usage is rapid and efficient industrialisation, whipping out (with organised religion preferably!) factories/coal plants/levees etc.
With Kremlin, more cities can afford to whip out those things.

In other games, you can simply forgo industrialisation alltogether, with kremlin and police-state/state property/forges you are at +60% already can whip out most endgame units you need pretty good anyway.
But I have had some nice games where I have whipped out ICBM too.

 

[krikav]

When you whip without Kremlin, a pop is worth 30 hammers, with Kremlin you get 45 hammers for each pop.
So doing a 2pop whip with Kremlin when you have a forge and running police state (Not a uncommon situation if you manage to build/capture pyramids. Kremlin and pyramids are both stone wonders.) you get....
60 * 1.5 * 1.5 = 135 hammers. So 2 pop finishes a cavalery and then some.

 

[Fippy]

I wonder why it says -33% hurry production cost, 45 for 1 pop is -50% ?

 

[civac]

No, that's -33%.

 

[krikav]

Perhaps a better tooltip phrasing would have been "+50% production from rushing production"?
It's not like it's the only thing in civ4 where the UI info is abit sketchy though.

 

[SnipedSoul]

If am playing a spiritual civ and have gold, then Shwedagon Paya can be surprisingly useful and fun. Cheaper buildings with organized religion, better units with theocracy, mini golden ages with caste + pacifism, and 10% bonus science whenever you max the slider. It also lets you skip monotheism and theology techs.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

In all these years I newer once realized that the Kremlin bonus also applies to whipping. I always thought it was for paying only.

 

[NothingBesideRemains]

The Kremlin does have some late-game rush-buy uses for getting key infrastructure up in sub-par cities, but IMO the true power comes from the fact that when whipping, it multiplies its impact with production bonuses, rather than adds it (this is why lableing as -33% cost vs +50% production is perhaps deceptive but also critical). As shown above, it gives you 45 pop per whip, which is *then* multiplied by, say, police state, forge, factory, coal plant. Ie: in a late game whipping of tanks, you get 90 net hammers per pop, which is good enough to cold-whip an army in just a few turns.