Magil's Wondrous Wonders

[GS] Wondrous Wonders (Updated for Gathering Storm) 3.1.0

Magil

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Quick Notes: This mod improves World Wonders and brings back National Wonders. If you ever felt like Wonders were not worth the investment or just like the concept of National Wonders from previous Civ titles, this mod may be for you!

Originally, I conceptualized this mod as simply adding National Wonders to the game. But as I kept working on them, I realized I was making them more interesting and powerful than World Wonders! So I scaled them back. But I didn't want my ideas to be lost. So I decided... World Wonders are generally kinda "meh", at least that's the impression I've gotten from various people. The competition for early World Wonders isn't very exciting because they aren't nearly powerful enough to consider interrupting expansion or conquest, and later wonders are often considered prohibitively expensive for their relatively minor effects.

So. I decided to overhaul World Wonders, transferring some of the ideas I originally had for National Wonders over to them. I think National Wonders as they are are still interesting enough to implement, so I've done both. However, this modpack is modular and you can remove the WorldWonders folder to change World Wonders back to how they were in the default game (preserving National Wonders), or remove the NationalWonders folder to only play with the World Wonder overhaul.

How to Install
  • Extract the WondrousWonders folder to Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Mods.
Latest Changes: Changelog 3.1.0
  • Fixed Great Library not applying Great Writer points to Libraries.
  • Fixed Oracle possibly not applying Great Person points in Wondrous Wonders (combined).
  • In the main/combined version of this mod, Cristo Redentor now provides Holy Site districts with an additional 5 Tourism for each building in the district.
  • (Rise and Fall) Hermitage, Hagia Sophia, Oxford University, and Ruhr Valley no longer provide regional %-based boosts.
  • In the World Wonders only version of this mod, these wonders provide the following:
  • Ruhr Valley: +20% Production in the city in which it is built.
  • Hagia Sophia: +20% Faith in the city in which it is built.
  • Oxford University: +20% Science in the city in which it is built.
  • Hermitage: +20% Culture in the city in which it is built.
  • In the main/combined version of this mod, these wonders provide the following:
  • Ruhr Valley: +2 Production in your cities for each specialty district in the city.
  • Hagia Sophia: +2 Faith in your cities for each specialty district in the city.
  • Oxford University: +2 Science in your cities for each specialty district in the city.
  • Hermitage: +2 Culture in your cities for each specialty district in the city.
  • The above changes were made to account for the fact that National Wonders provide local single-city bonuses in the combined version of the mod.
  • Hermitage no longer boosts the Culture output of Great Works of Art. Instead, it allows all of your Art Museums to be automatically themed when filled.
  • Sydney Opera House no longer boosts the Gold output of Great Works of Music. Instead, it grants +10 Tourism in each of your Theater Squares with Broadcast Towers or Film Studios.
  • Grand Temple no longer boosts the Faith output of Great Works of Art. Instead, it provides +30% Faith in the city in which it is built.
  • Apostolic Palace no longer provides +30% Faith in the city in which it is built. Instead, it allows you to purchase buildings with Faith in the city in which it is built.
  • (Gathering Storm) Hagia Sophia no longer provides Science to Holy Sites. Instead, it increases your Great Person points per turn by 25% in each of your cities with a Holy Site district.
  • (Gathering Storm) University of Sankore now grants your Holy Site districts +2 Science for each building in the district.
  • (Gathering Storm) Great Bath's Faith bonus to flood plain tiles that flood now applies to each city in your civilization. Additionally, all flood plain tiles in your civilization get +2 Appeal.
  • (Gathering Storm) Golden Gate Bridge's National Park appeal bonus applies to all cities in your civilization. Additionally, upon completion, you gain 1 free Builder in each of your cities. Finally, its amenities now affect cities within 9 tiles.
  • (Gathering Storm) Országház grants you 1 Science, Faith, Gold, and Culture for each city-state envoy you have earned.
  • (Gathering Storm) Panama Canal now increases your Trade Route capacity by 4. Additionally, your international trade routes provide +5 Gold and +2 Production.
  • (Gathering Storm) Commerce Guild no longer provides extra gold on luxury resources worked by the city. Instead, it provides +2 Amenities for each luxury resource improved by the city.
  • (Gathering Storm) State Armory no longer reduces unit gold maintenance. Instead, it reduces the strategic resource cost of producing units in the city by 80%.
  • (Gathering Storm) The Heroic Epic, State Armory, and National Academy each increase your strategic resource stockpile size by 20.
  • (Gathering Storm) Ironworks no longer provides +1 Production for mines on strategic resources. Instead, it provides 2 additional strategic resources per turn for each unique improved strategic resource in the city's radius.
  • (Gathering Storm) Ironworks' regional production reduced to 4, but increases to 8 when powered. Requires 2 power.
  • (Gathering Storm) National Industrial Complex provides provides +6 Power for its city. It no longer provides Production equal to the adjacency bonus of its district.
  • (Gathering Storm) National Research Institute now boosts the Satellites, Nuclear Fusion, and Smart Materials technologies upon completion. Also, it unlocks the Lagrange and Terrestrial Laser Station projects in the city upon launching the Exoplanet Expedition, even without the prerequisite technologies.
At this stage I have more or less implemented most features I feel I can that I have ideas for, but I will continue to make additions/adjustments based on feedback, and do my best to keep the mod as error/bug/conflict-free as I can. I'm relatively new to Civ modding so I can't promise perfection, but I'll keep at it.

Features as of 3.1.0

World Wonder Overhaul: I've finished reworking all World Wonders. Suggestions/comments/feedback on the changes described here are appreciated. In particular, I originally considered reducing production costs of all wonders by 25%, but then I realized that the Wonders I have implemented may be powerful enough to justify the costs, but what do you all think?

Please see this link for details on World Wonders.​

National Wonders: You can only construct one of a National Wonder in your empire. You can still construct National Wonders even if another civilization has constructed it. National Wonders are also largely mutually exclusive on a city-by-city basis, you cannot build them all in the same city. There are some general exceptions: like buildings, National Wonders are not built on the map. Unfortunately they also have no graphical representation on the map because I'm not an art assets guru. You can construct National Wonders that are constructed in the same district in the same city: for example, the Library of National History and the National College both require the Campus district, and can be in the same city, but are exclusive with the Heroic Epic, which requires the Encampment district.

Some more specific exceptions to the above rule: the International Airport is built in the Aerodrome and is exclusive only with National Wonders that appear in the Campus, Commercial Hub, Industrial Zone, and Encampment districts (not Holy Site, Theater Square, or Entertainment Complex districts). The National Wonders that appear in the Entertainment Complex are exclusive only with each other (as a special exception) and National Wonders that appear in the Campus, Industrial Zone, and Encampment Districts. The Writer's Guild, Artist's Guild, and Musician's Guild are exclusive only with each other. The National Epic is not exclusive with any other National Wonder.

National Wonders are currently all unlocked in the civic tree. Their production cost is around half the base cost of a World Wonder at the same point in the tech tree, though some are improvised. These numbers/civics are very much subject to change.

Please see this link for details on National Wonders.​

Special Notes

  • Altering the base game code is no longer necessary for asset modding, the mod now handles that. No more replacing files in your Steam folder!
  • This mod may speed up the pace of the game. It may be best used in conjunction with a mod that slows down the tech pace. I personally use 8 Ages of Pace. This is a personal taste thing.
Compatibility Notes:
  • Remove ThemingBonus.xml to make it play nice with other mods that alter theming bonuses of buildings and wonders, like thecrazyscot's Omnibus mod. Pretty sure that's the only real conflict there.
  • Any mod that messes with World Wonders has the potential to conflict with this mod, though if they only touch theming bonuses the above should be enough to fix it.
Known Issues:
  • Sometimes modifiers that affect Great Works have been known not to "stick". Currently the only such modifier is for a game without Rise and Fall enabled on the Great Library.
Future Plans
  • Further adjustment based on feedback.
Final Notes: While this mod is much more complete than before, this is hardly a final product in my eyes. I am always looking for feedback as to how to change things and what to adjust.

Enjoy and happy civving. All positive or negative comments are very much appreciated.

Some Screenshots
Spoiler :







 
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I made a few last-minute changes that I didn't double-check, foolishly, and of course some were duplicates of things I already did. That's been fixed (and I was sure to test the file I uploaded this time), so make sure to download 0.81 if you had 0.8. Sorry about that, I tend to jump the gun a bit.
 
I hope I'm not breaching etiquette by making an account just to reply for this but I want to say I think most of these changes are well thought.
Sadly the ones I'm posting to point out are the changes I don't think are necessary, but i hope that isn't discouraging in anyway.

Spoiler :

  • Stonehenge: Removed Faith yield. Your cities all gain a free Monument building (including newly settled or conquered cities). Monuments produce +1 Faith.
Fine but unnecessary change, I feel the reduction of early faith is really painful for anyone who wants no holy district religion. 2 faith per monument would alleviate the issue pretty well.
  • Oracle: Added a base yield of +1 Great Person points to the Wonder itself for Scientists, Merchants, Engineers, Writers, Artists, and Musicians. Faith patronage discount increased to 50%.
Increased faith discount is pretty much necessary, solid addition. Keeping the old buff and adding the base yield is a tad overkill
  • Hanging Gardens: All of your cities have increased housing as if adjacent to a fresh water source.
Great addition, having another source to the Mohenjo-daro suzerain buff adds a nice dynamic.
  • The Pyramids: No changes.
Appropriate
  • Colossus: +2 Gold to all your Trade Routes.
Nice early buff.
  • Great Library: Removed the tech boost for ancient and classical era technologies. Instead, it has the following effects: Receive 1 free Great Writer. Your Campus districts containing Libraries provide +1 Great Writer point. Great Works of Writing provide +2 Science.
I'm not a big fan, sure the old effect was pretty negligible, but imo there's more early writing then necessary, exchanging the new buff for great work slots would be a much better incentive, or at least tagging some slots on would be much more appreciable
  • Terracotta Army: Removed the archaeologist buff (moved to Petra) and removed the free promotion for all active military units (moved to National Academy national wonder). Instead, all of your current cities, in addition to all future settled and conquered cities, receive a free military unit from the anti-cavalry promotion class.
Not a fan but its not a bad change. I think it's an overall nerf to a meh wonder already though. Maybe adding more base general points would be apprecaited



Although some of these interact with national wonders, I feel they should be able to stand alone and national wonders are generally a tad overly powerful.
 
Keep in mind though I removed +2 Faith from Stonehenge, the instant monument with +1 Faith in all your cities actually equals out if you have two cities, and provides more faith with three cities. It only actually provides less faith if you have one city, which is pretty rare (and hopefully short-lived). It does put the Monument in all of your current cities as well as future ones (I tested this to be sure).

I've been a little bit back-and-forth on the Terracotta Army. Free units are very strong IMO, and they upgrade throughout the game, so you can get Pikemen and AT Crews later on. Granted, the anti-cavalry line is somewhat disparaged at the moment. Giving melee units (which require resources) seemed too awkward and powerful though, and free ranged units would be crazy.

But thanks for your feedback. I will certainly be re-examining National Wonders, looking at the ones that seem to stand out a bit and seeing what I can do to bring them in line.
 
The Stonehenge bonus is useless for Rome though...
 
The Stonehenge bonus is useless for Rome though...

I mean, I didn't remove any of the other bonuses from Stonehenge. They still get the bonus Faith from monuments and the Great Prophet. I don't think the new ability stacks with their current one, though I haven't tested it with Rome yet--they're both coded to give the cheapest building in the city (which will always be a Monument for Stonehenge since it's disabled in Medieval+ era starts).

Edit: There is one other thing I'm thinking of trying for Stonehenge, though. I thought it might be neat if you could buy Missionaries from Stonehenge (without a Holy Site). Thoughts anyone?
 
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I tested the above to be sure. If you build Stonehenge with Rome, then each of your cities starts with a Monument and a Granary. So... not quite useless! Also, it's possible to allow Missionaries to be purchasable from Stonehenge, so I think that's a worthy change.

There's a new update coming as soon as I type out all the details (and finish some final testing). I finished adjusting the World Wonders so all that's left is to adjust based on further feedback and keep looking at National Wonders (I'm not completely satisfied with all of them, and I know there was at least one concern about their power level).
 
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Oh rip for some reason stonehenge gave 4 faith in my head. My bad.
 
I wanted to run a thought past you guys as I continue to work to refine and flesh out this mod:

Concept: National Wonders have local modifiers. There are some global modifiers, especially where needed (the Religious National wonders are my attempt at making Holy Sites more attractive investments, gearing towards providing Culture and Tourism as well as tools for aiding in a Religious Victory), but mostly I want to move most (not all, but most) local city modifiers off World Wonders and onto National Wonders.

Conversely, World Wonders should (mostly) have global modifiers. Idea: Oxford University no longer gives its home city +30% Science. Instead, it gives each city in your empire +1 Science for each specialty district it constructs. That's an example. Ruhr Valley could remove its +30% Production modifier and instead have its mine/quarry production yield bonus affect each city in your empire.

Either/or can have regional modifiers, though generally I want World Wonders to have more powerful ones than National Wonders (the Colosseum is a lot stronger than the Great Hippodrome). Thoughts?
 
Speaking for Venetian Arsenal: what about limiting double ship production to host city?
 
Speaking for Venetian Arsenal: what about limiting double ship production to host city?

I've tried that, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it. I'll be open for suggestions from anyone who's done modding in the game though if there was a good way to do it, I tried attaching a RequirementSet/Requirements to the doubling using REQUIREMENT_CITY_HAS_BUILDING set to BUILDING_VENETIAN_ARSENAL but it didn't work.
 
I like most of what I am seeing here; the only quibble is I don't think Great Zimbabwe needed a buff at all. It is extremely powerful in the vanilla game, often adding 10 or 12 gold to every trade route; making it easier to place, plus even more gold on top of it, pretty much makes it bar none the most powerful wonder in the game.

That said, I think I may try this on my next playthrough.
 
I like most of what I am seeing here; the only quibble is I don't think Great Zimbabwe needed a buff at all. It is extremely powerful in the vanilla game, often adding 10 or 12 gold to every trade route; making it easier to place, plus even more gold on top of it, pretty much makes it bar none the most powerful wonder in the game.

That said, I think I may try this on my next playthrough.

I think there's a limit to the usefulness of gold, but your point is taken. I'll probably remove the buffs to the Great Zimbabwe in the next iteration, though I think I'll still remove the Cattle placement requirement (it's a little specific and annoying imo). I might could reuse them for the Grand Market Square.
 
Magil updated Magil's Wondrous Wonders with a new update entry:

1.0 is ready.

Quick overview: reworked most World Wonders to have global bonuses rather than local bonuses. Reworked most National Wonders to have more local bonuses rather than global bonuses. Removed the National Stocks national wonder, and moved the Commercial Hub national wonders ahead in the civic tree, and added the Ironworks and National Industrial Complex wonders. Various tweaks. The full details are now in the opening post.

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
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I like what you've done with this mod for the most part, but I don't think certain wonders needed a buff at all. In fact. Great Zimbabwe is so broken we've outright banned it in our games. I was hoping to see this game would balance the wonder - but it instead boosts it. It's very typical for you to get at 10-20 gold per trade route with this wonder, and with what how easy expanding is in Civ VI, eventually with 20+ trade routes you're boasting likely some sum of 500+ gold per turn. Or more. I've had games where my GPT was nearing almost a thousand gold. It's just dumb. Not only gold lets you buy Great People, you can also quickly buy all buildings in a newly-established city and start immediately production on Districts - once completed, buy buildings of that district, start next district. It's too easy to spin out of control if you have an amazing amount of gold per turn.

I really like your change for Ruhr Valley - spreading the production buff across your empire is much better than making one city just a stupid overpowered production-house. And if the requirement of the Mine/Quarry being next to a river is true - even better! Both Ruhr Valley and Zimbabwe in the vanilla game have been in the "broken" category for us. Your change to Ruhr Valley is very welcomed one .. But Zimbabwe in the other hand .. :(

With that said is there any chance you could make an alternative version of the Zimbabwe, even if you feel like you don't want to include it in your actual release? What we'd like to see for example is: +2 (or +3?) Gold to all Bonus/Luxury Resource tiles in your territory. That's it. No trade route shenanigans or whatever. With rapid expansion, this change will still likely net you anywhere from 100 to 200 gold, but it's not AS broken. There are many mods me and a few friends would love to see but sadly we don't have the experience .. I'd really appreciate if you could make this change if it's not too time-consuming.

Also not sure if this is because of your mod, but after installing the mod (and couple others, that seemingly should have no effect on this), Rome no longer gets a free monument in all of his established cities. His capital does get the monument, but any subsequent cities do not. Makes Rome quite horsehocky to play right now, because the only reason I'd ever play Rome is for that early culture boost. Only reason I'd assume this is because of your mod is because of the changes to Stonehenge.

While we're at it, there seems to be some sort of glitch when it comes to the Apostolic Palace. I've only encountered this once now, but it was quite devastating as I was going for religious victory. After having built the Apostolic Palace, I had the ability to choose promotions on my apostles as expected. I also had suzerainship of Yerevan at the time, who offers the same bonus.as the Apostolic Palace. Later, a player took out Yerevan, so I lost the bonus of Yerevan. Shouldn't affect anything right? After all, I have the Apostolic Palace. Well nope .. My apostles could no longer choose a promotion, regardless of which city they were bought in.

Thanks for your work on this mod by the way. I hope to see the change soon where National Wonders are no longer wonders - At the moment the game is unplayable on Epic speeds or higher because you really don't want to spend 30+ turns building something, then lose it 1 turn before you'd have completed it. If you could make it so that the full production cost was refunded and counts towards next thing you build when you lose the national wonder - then it'd be great .. but I don't think that's doable?
 
I've tried that, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it. I'll be open for suggestions from anyone who's done modding in the game though if there was a good way to do it, I tried attaching a RequirementSet/Requirements to the doubling using REQUIREMENT_CITY_HAS_BUILDING set to BUILDING_VENETIAN_ARSENAL but it didn't work.

Did you change the collection to COLLECTION_OWNER? You might even need to create a new Dynamic Modifier for it thinking about it, could be more than one Effect is using the Modifier in question.

EDIT

Yep, I just looked at the modifier code, it is set to the wrong Collection for what you want to
change.
Code:
       <Row>
           <ModifierType>MODIFIER_PLAYER_CITIES_ADJUST_CITY_YIELD_MODIFIER</ModifierType>
           <CollectionType>COLLECTION_PLAYER_CITIES</CollectionType>
           <EffectType>EFFECT_ADJUST_CITY_YIELD_MODIFIER</EffectType>
       </Row>
It is also a universal modifier so you would have to create a new one.
Code:
       <Row>
           <ModifierType>MODIFIER_PLAYER_CITY_ADJUST_CITY_YIELD_MODIFIER</ModifierType>
           <CollectionType>COLLECTION_OWNER</CollectionType>
           <EffectType>EFFECT_ADJUST_CITY_YIELD_MODIFIER</EffectType>
       </Row>
Code goes in DynamicModifiers table, also need to add it to Types.
Code:
<Row Type="MODIFIER_PLAYER_CITY_ADJUST_CITY_YIELD_MODIFIER" Kind="KIND_MODIFIER"/>

There is probably a modifer that does this, but TBH it easier to make a new one than hunt a universal one down.
 
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I like what you've done with this mod for the most part, but I don't think certain wonders needed a buff at all. In fact. Great Zimbabwe is so broken we've outright banned it in our games. I was hoping to see this game would balance the wonder - but it instead boosts it. It's very typical for you to get at 10-20 gold per trade route with this wonder, and with what how easy expanding is in Civ VI, eventually with 20+ trade routes you're boasting likely some sum of 500+ gold per turn. Or more. I've had games where my GPT was nearing almost a thousand gold. It's just dumb. Not only gold lets you buy Great People, you can also quickly buy all buildings in a newly-established city and start immediately production on Districts - once completed, buy buildings of that district, start next district. It's too easy to spin out of control if you have an amazing amount of gold per turn.

I really like your change for Ruhr Valley - spreading the production buff across your empire is much better than making one city just a stupid overpowered production-house. And if the requirement of the Mine/Quarry being next to a river is true - even better! Both Ruhr Valley and Zimbabwe in the vanilla game have been in the "broken" category for us. Your change to Ruhr Valley is very welcomed one .. But Zimbabwe in the other hand .. :(

With that said is there any chance you could make an alternative version of the Zimbabwe, even if you feel like you don't want to include it in your actual release? What we'd like to see for example is: +2 (or +3?) Gold to all Bonus/Luxury Resource tiles in your territory. That's it. No trade route shenanigans or whatever. With rapid expansion, this change will still likely net you anywhere from 100 to 200 gold, but it's not AS broken. There are many mods me and a few friends would love to see but sadly we don't have the experience .. I'd really appreciate if you could make this change if it's not too time-consuming.

Also not sure if this is because of your mod, but after installing the mod (and couple others, that seemingly should have no effect on this), Rome no longer gets a free monument in all of his established cities. His capital does get the monument, but any subsequent cities do not. Makes Rome quite **** to play right now, because the only reason I'd ever play Rome is for that early culture boost. Only reason I'd assume this is because of your mod is because of the changes to Stonehenge.

While we're at it, there seems to be some sort of glitch when it comes to the Apostolic Palace. I've only encountered this once now, but it was quite devastating as I was going for religious victory. After having built the Apostolic Palace, I had the ability to choose promotions on my apostles as expected. I also had suzerainship of Yerevan at the time, who offers the same bonus.as the Apostolic Palace. Later, a player took out Yerevan, so I lost the bonus of Yerevan. Shouldn't affect anything right? After all, I have the Apostolic Palace. Well nope .. My apostles could no longer choose a promotion, regardless of which city they were bought in.

Thanks for your work on this mod by the way. I hope to see the change soon where National Wonders are no longer wonders - At the moment the game is unplayable on Epic speeds or higher because you really don't want to spend 30+ turns building something, then lose it 1 turn before you'd have completed it. If you could make it so that the full production cost was refunded and counts towards next thing you build when you lose the national wonder - then it'd be great .. but I don't think that's doable?

Thanks for the feedback. This is really the kind of stuff I needed, because I have no idea why something like Rome not getting a free Monument would happen (when I tested with Rome for Stonehenge compatibility, it gave two free buildings in new cities), and the Yerevan thing is also problematic (but I know that Apostles losing the ability to choose promotions is something that happens in the base game as well, and this may be a side-effect of that, so I'm not sure what I'll be able to do about it. I'll be looking into it to see if I can understand the code that makes it happen). As for the Great Zimbabwe, I removed the buffs in the latest version and only removed the Cattle placement... but changing it to have a more global effect would fit more with the scope of the mod anyway, so I may do that. I don't feel it's that overpowered, but I'd prefer a global yield to a local one. I can imagine "losing" a National Wonder is annoying, it was useful for testing purposes so I could confirm the AI was building them, but it doesn't seem to provide much other benefit like I thought it might (can't rush them with Engineers, for example), so I think that's going to go.

@Horem I haven't really tried messing with the DynamicModifiers table yet, but thank you. That suggestion does help a lot and will hopefully lead to me understanding it a bit better.

Edit: @Chiya I can't reproduce the Rome thing. I started a game as Rome with only my mod enabled (all other mods disabled) and all of my cities are getting Monuments. Even after another player built Stonehenge, I continued to receive Monuments. I started another game and built Stonehenge myself, and now all my cities get both a free Monument and a free Granary. Was there some other factor in the game perhaps?
 
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Well we are using quite a bit of mods so it might have been something else than your mod - it's hard to say. Speaking of mods and multiplayer - are these supposed to work online without a hitch? I remember in Civ V many mods didn't work online at all.

.. That's kinda why I'm replying again. We just had a game with two of my friends and some AI, and the game crashed for all of us on like Turn 75. We reloaded a save, it crashed again at the same time. Just before crash, I'd see "Unmet player has finished the National Epic". The weird thing is, almost all of us had built National Epic already so I'm not sure if that's actually because of your mod .. It's near-impossible to test. This isn't the first time this happened either. We had a game with another friend couple days ago, like 150 turns into the game, the game crashed for both of us. Reloaded a save, same thing happened. At this game as well, I saw that "Unmet player has finished .." message. I'm not sure if it was the National Epic or something else though. Seeing as at both times an Unmet player had finished something I thought it might be because of this mod, though obviously I can't be certain.

Is there a crash log saved somewhere when the game crashes that you could check, or would you say that this mod isn't even intended to work online to begin with? We have finished couple games already with this mod on however, which makes this all much stranger.
 
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