WONDERS, reworked.

[Anofalye]

1 thing I find unrealistic is the "race for wonders". It bring such results as:

City A works on Wonder1 for 1250 years and then receive 450 gold because City B finish it before.


I am not sure I have a counter-solution, I have a few ideas at best. But, honestly, I find it unrealistic to lose such production time. Maybe each civilisation could complete only X wonder per Y time, or per era...

In most games I play, if I play at Monarch level (this is the enjoyable level for me, I should play 1 level harder but I get angry so...), I usually ends up having merely 1 wonder in the first age, then 2 or 3 wonders...and then 75% or more of the late wonders...missing only a few, either in part of the tree that I neglect, or because opponents use great engineers.

Maybe you are unable to start to work on a wonder a rival civilisation is working on unless you meet some criteria, or maybe you can just slow it progress...I dunno, but there is something there that could be changed, for the better.

 

[Capt Buttkick]

This has imhso always been Civ's most prominent logical laps of reason. There are no good ways (well, maybe they'll come up with one for Civ 5, who knows? ) to explain why you can't have two or more identical WWs as long as everyone can start building them.

However, I would argue that in terms of game mechanics Civ4's solution is the best one so far (you can't start the pyramids and switch them to the GLib after hundreds of years). I don't like the idea of civ-specific wonders and a time restriction on building them. Makes for a more linear game and civ is all about choices
And I don't think we'd like Civ without wonders altogether

 

[Anofalye]

Agree.

Maybe the 2nd+ version of a WW could be lesser then the first...and easier to complete?

Maybe each WW is a National Wonder if you didn't complete it first, thereby each wonder has stats for WW and National Wonder? Maybe it can even goes as far as letting you claiming a National Wonder version if you are rushed and don't care that much for the WW and just want to switch and already put enough in it.

Yup, talking with you definitely bring an idea which I think is worth it, have 2 versions of each Wonder, a WW and a National Wonder. Extra production between a National Wonder and a WW could be converted to cash and you can get a National Wonder complete the same turn someone finish the WW if you where advanced enough.

To make this interesting, maybe some WW/National Wonder could be exclusive to each other. You either have a WW/National Wonder for the Statue of Liberty OR the Eiffel Tower, not both...and the exclusion could always be with 2 other Wonders, to make it kinda complicated for a player to determined what he wants, or not. (what happen if you conquer a prohibited wonder is totally up for the devs, or a duplicate of your existing wonder, there are, technically, no reason to automatically destroy it, but is it as efficient or is it watered down then?)

 

[Diamondeye]

While Anotalye goes a little too far in my opinion, I think it could actually be done - if we still use the Pyramids as an example, how about this:
The Pyramids XXX , X , +2 (Great Engineer)
World Wonder
-Enables all Government Civics.
NW version:
The Pyramids XXX (same as WW), X (half of WW), +1 (Great Engineer)
Minor Wonder
-Enables the Heriditary Rule civic.
Obsolete by Monarchy

You should only be able to get the minor Wonder if you were already half on the way to producing the wonder when the original is built.

 

[Khan Quest]

A lesser wonder is a great idea Anofalye.
And Diamondeys's refinement is excellent - Same # of hammers, signicantly lesser but still useful effect.

 

[Josephias]

I have to say I'm often thinking of something in these lines, and I think it is a very good idea.

Just some small comment on the purposed example -or others-:

Make it The Great Pyramid and The Pyramid:
so Great and National wonder are differentiate. Images and other "flavour" rewards should be as well different for each. (i.e. The Great pyramid gets Kefren Pyramid image and the video; while the Pyramid gets i.e. Djoser Pyramid and no video -maybe a "drawing" as for shrines so there is still something).

 

[Trade-peror]

Lesser wonders is an excellent idea - is there any way to mod this with current Civ4 versions?

 

[cassembler]

How about a system where the loser's production is "saved" for the city's next wonder? In older Civs, IIRC, the production just spilled to the next item the city built. It would be cool to have this stockpile where the Civ could assign it only when it started building another wonder...

 

[Antilogic]

How about a system where the loser's production is "saved" for the city's next wonder? In older Civs, IIRC, the production just spilled to the next item the city built. It would be cool to have this stockpile where the Civ could assign it only when it started building another wonder...

This was the idea of Civ3, which would cause the ever-so-annoying "Wonder cascade", where one civ completes a wonder, everybody switches to another wonder, and then that gets completed so the switch occurs again, on and on.

I prefer the current Civ4 system over a re-implementation of the cascade system--it forces you to plan in advance a little earlier, pick and chose the wonders you are going for instead of "pre-building" like you could do before, and the monetary compensation is something you can use instead of wasted hammers. It isn't an efficient use of your hammers, but its better than nothing at all.

 

[dh_epic]

I doubt Firaxis would ever do minor wonders. You'd still get people complaining if it excluded people who hadn't gotten sufficient hammers in on time. And it would essentially double the number of wonders they'd have to balance (they'd have to make 40 new buildings worth the hammer cost, without unbalancing the game). Firaxis seems fundamentally opposed to having much more "stuff" than they already have.

The harder you press for realism in Civilization, the more the whole game starts to unravel.

Okay, so you're realizing now that there's nothing technically stopping someone from building their own Pyramids or Taj Mahal. But then you realize that in real life, very few people decide to build the same huge project at the same time, so real life doesn't have a "race" for wonders in the first place. Beyond that, nobody should really care if the Egyptians build the Pyramids first: it's a huge waste of labor. Who really needs a big tomb for one person? Let them waste their hammers on something that should really only generate a bit of culture -- maybe some happiness if you're optimistic.

But racing for wonders is fun.
Wonders that have actual effects is fun.
Neither of these fun factors are realistic.

Something has to give. So, Sid chose fun.