World Wonders

[Thalassicus]

You gave me an idea... I could make the wonders very powerful for different situations, by buffing the radius effect and moving the culture bonus to the Oracle. It's worth a try if yall would like to test it out in a few games.

 

[Txurce]

I could give the two wonders roles distinct enough to make them very powerful for different situations, by buffing the radius effect and moving the culture bonus to the Oracle.

The Oracle sounds like a bruiser - presumably you would balance it with a higher hammer cost? Likewise, I would build Stonehenge only if its hammer cost was pretty low; I rarely have an issue with tile expansion in the capital, or else pay for the tiles. Out of curiosity, do you have a metric for comparing same-era Wonders, or is it the fuzzy process it seems to be?

I'm curious as to what others think, too.

 

[Thalassicus]

Oracle does cost 35% more than Stonehenge, so it makes sense for it to be more powerful. Firaxis buffed it to 3 already anyway... they must have also felt what you said about it being sorta underwhelming.

Stonehenge would still retain the 11 that all wonders have. Consider that 3rd ring tiles take a long time to expand to and are very expensive to purchase, at 200-300 apiece. One example of when this would be useful is when sea resources are in the 3rd ring. Other cities usually can't pick up those resources. Or it could have an additional flavor effect like a map reveal to a 20 tile radius, world map centering, or so on. Centering the world map does have some practical value in that it lets us know for certain how close to the poles we are, which can change our strategies. Alternatively it could have 2 Engineer points so it's a particularly useful early source of great engineers.

The goal with wonders is just to ensure each feels useful for at least one unique, specific situation. The effects are too different to make numeric comparisons.

 

[Txurce]

Oracle does cost 35% more than Stonehenge, so it makes sense for it to be more powerful.

Stonehenge would still retain the 11 that all wonders have. Consider that 3rd ring tiles take a long time to expand to and are very expensive to purchase, at 200-300 apiece. One example of when this would be useful is when sea resources are in the 3rd ring. Other cities usually can't pick up those resources. I could also give it a second unique effect like a map reveal to a 10-20 tile radius, world map centering, or so on.

I basically just want to make sure each wonder feels useful for at least some specific strategy. The effects are too different to make numeric comparisons.

I had no problem with the status quo, but think what you're proposing will make the game more fun and more interesting. Some boost to Stonehenge along the lines of what you're proposing would obviously make it more attractive, but I do see the fun and impact of instantly-exploding borders. All in all, it's one of my favorite recent change proposals.

 

[mitsho]

So Oracle would be high-culture + a Free Social Policy? (or just one). Then it is a powerful one. It does however not provide one function of Stonehenge that of very early culture as it takes time to get to the Oracle Tech.

Stonehenge on the other hand would be cheaper and provide a quick map reveal (3rd ring is much). It also does help secondary cities as they will touch the third ring somewhere and provide more tiles for these cities as well as quicker expansion). It also helps against barbarians, but maybe make other civs more prone to attack (more covet lands you own).

I guess, one needs to try it out. There's no way around it. The only negative I do see is that oracle takes time to get to. However this is made less important as right now, the first 4-5 policies do seem to fly by in my opinion. (the social policy scale could be less extremely changing, I had once where I had to race towards the Middle Ages as I didn't want to take the 4-temples policy nor the Honour, Liberty or Piety Trees...).

Glad I could help with ideas

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm thinking 5 + 1 policy Oracle (2 culture higher than its present value). It'd very clearly be the "policy wonder."

As you pointed out, since score is based largely on borders Stonehenge would definitely piss off AIs.

If that causes many DoWs I can give it side bonuses to compensate.

 

[Txurce]

I like the changes to the PT and HG as well (I like strong Wonders).

The change to the longbows is a good one, and Gandhi should be a lot more fun (and powerful, but not OP).

A 25% cost boost for Knights seems pretty major on paper, but obviously we'll see whether or not it's inhibiting once we play with it for a bit.

 

[Thalassicus]

The main reason I buffed Gandhi's sanitation system was I moved Aqueducts back to Engineering in v8.0, where the vanilla version is. It made sense to therefore increase sanitation power back to normal.

The only reason I initially dropped sanitation food storage was alarming AI Gandhi performance... he'd often get double the population (and therefore tech pace) of everyone else by the start of the Medieval era. When I had Longswords and got rushed by Gandhi's swarms of Riflemen I realized it was a bit too much! Engineering is much later than Trapping so it greatly nerfed that early potential.

 

[Txurce]

When I had Longswords and got rushed by Gandhi's swarms of Riflemen I realized it was a bit too much!

Love it. I recently had a game where an expansive Egypt (with a bottleneck making it easy) maintained a steady one-era-plus military lead on me. It had been such a long time since that happened (given my focus on science) that I kept waiting for the wheels to come off the Egyptian machine. No such luck!

 

[Thalassicus]

==============

​

To summarize Stonehenge:

• In vanilla it's basically just a Temple (3 + 3 from the artist).
• In the mod, it expands the city border to the 3rd ring, without increasing the cost of further expansions.

Do yall like the general concept? Have you had time to play with it yet, or thought of strategies involving it?

The general idea is it's useful when we have valuable tiles or resources in the 2nd and 3rd rings. It even lets us get stuff in the 4th ring quickly. Since many of these plots will overlap with our first few cities, it can help those cities too.

I'm thinking about making some other world wonders more unique in ways like this. Our options with buildings and wonders are very open-ended! I can easily add new effects to them in ways that's not possible for policies or units. A good example of this was Firaxis' change to the Hanging Gardens. It went from a mediocre wonder with a similar expansionist role to the Pyramids... to a wonder ideally suited for cities with tons of hills. The new role is something no other wonder really had.

 

[Txurce]

So! To summarize Stonehenge:

• In vanilla it's a somewhat better Monument.
• In the mod, it expands the city border to the 3rd ring, without increasing the cost of further expansions.

The idea is this is useful when we have valuable tiles or resources in the 2nd and 3rd rings. It even lets us get stuff in the 4th ring quickly. Since many of these plots will overlap with our first few cities, it can help those cities too.

This is a starting point and I'll adjust things to balance it, but what I mainly want to discuss is do yall like the general concept? Have you had time to play with it yet, or thought of other situations where it could be useful?

I'm thinking about making some other world wonders more unique in ways like this. Our options with buildings and wonders are very open-ended! I can easily add new effects to them in ways that's not possible for policies or units. A good example of this was Firaxis' change to the Hanging Gardens. It went from a mediocre wonder with a similar expansionist role to the Pyramids... to a wonder ideally suited for cities with tons of hills. The new role is something no other wonder really had.

While I would never have called the vanilla Stonehenge a "somewhat better monument," the new versions of Stonehenge, HG, Oracle, and Pyramids are all distinct and interesting. It makes Stonehenge specialized enough to be second-tier, in my opinion, but that's not a knock. The others all have strong draws.

 

[Thalassicus]

What I mean is the vanilla effect is just like a regular culture building (stonehenge ≈ temple+artist). The new effect is unique - not shared with another building, policy, or wonder.

 

[Txurce]

What I mean is the vanilla effect's identical to a monument (flat culture), only with a different number on it. The new effect is unique - it's not shared with any other building, policy, or wonder.

Yeah - a much bigger number!

...I know what you meant. I didn't think it needed adjusting out of context, but the overlaps with Wonders like the Oracle were sub-optimal. I can now look at the whole package overhaul and say that it significantly improves the game.

 

[Sneaks]

Honestly, not sure if I really like the new Stonehenge. This is primarily because while it does benefit the AI if it completes it, it doesn't really tactically understand it as a player does. Also, I always thought of it as the 2nd tier Culture Victory wonder and would hate to lose that.

 

[Thalassicus]

Hanging Gardens is good for culture victories now. It has a wide range of versatile uses, one of which is supporting 3 specialists, and specialists are ideal for culture games. Previously there were no wonders, buildings, or policies with the express purpose of reaching outer-ring tiles immediately in a single city (with the possible exception of Kreposts). There's many things that give a fixed amount of culture... Stonehenge is about equivalent to temple+artist after all. I like the unique purpose of the new effect.

Any time we add complexity to the game it'll affect the AI. There's many things the AI doesn't understand, like it's clueless how to properly use siege units. Sometimes the fun of deeper gameplay outweighs the AI factor.

 

[Sneaks]

Out of curiosity, could you make a wonder that slowed every other players plot expansion by 10%?

 

[Txurce]

Out of curiosity, could you make a wonder that slowed every other players plot expansion by 10%?

It could be called the Pillars of Entropy.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Sneaks
I think so. Angkor Wat has a -25% modifier, so if I reversed this to +10% and used lua to manually give it to every other leader... I believe it would work, in theory. Would this be more interesting than the current effect of Angkor Wat? I've been thinking about changing that wonder somehow... it was one of the first to go in the wonder elimination thread.

 

[Sneaks]

The Wat is simply unappealing right now, but I am not sure if the border speed reduction would work better with the Wat or one of the military wonders, such as Kremlin.

What I believe the Wat really needs is some unique umph. One concept I had toyed with was the idea of temples giving +1 during Golden Ages. Not even sure if that is possible.

 

[Txurce]

The Wat is simply unappealing right now, but I am not sure if the border speed reduction would work better with the Wat or one of the military wonders, such as Kremlin.

Border speed reduction makes more sense with the Kremlin, because it comes late enough to not be too devastating to opponents, and feels "cultural/military." On the other hand, I don't know how much I'd care by then, either.