World Wonders

Thalassicus

Bytes and Nibblers
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For reference purposes here's the early world wonders side by side. They're all powerful in TBM, for different strategies and circumstances:

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Each also provides an additional +1:c5culture: +1:c5greatperson:.

Anyone have ideas for how to improve these later ones? :)

  • Kremlin
  • Christo Redentor
 

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A few suggestions:

Christo Redentor - Each social policy adopted grants 0.25:c5happy: and 0.25 :c5culture:.

The Kremlin - Forts and citadels no longer cost upkeep.

or

The Kremlin - +1:c5happy: from courthouse in all cities.
 
It depends if you would want to strengthen the Kremlin in his main purpose (helping defense, by making defensive building better or making citadels better (promotion?)). But this would not make the Human players more likely to build the wonder. The other way would be to add a second different effect, putting some hammers (+5 hammers) on it would f.e. give it a special place, and it does somehow tie into Russia = Communist = Production meme. And it's easy to balance it up or down.

The thing with Cristo Redento is that it is either super overpowered and needed for a culture victory or the effect is too weak or the effects are too distant from each other. I'm not totally sure what the current effect is, but a -20% culture cost is something I do not like really much. Maybe make it tie in the same way as the one social policy from the liberty tree, so that it helps wide empires more which makes it still viable for tall empires going for culture victory (every little thing helps and culture victory do seems quite easy atm) but makes it better for wide ones?

The Eiffel Tower seems lackluster to me right now, happiness is not really something cool per se... More generally, are there plans to concentrate on the later ages? Would look necessary to me... And the United Nations as well, but that ties into the whole topic of Diplomatic Victory and Multilateral Diplomacy non-existant in CivV...
 
1. The thing with Cristo Redento is that it is either super overpowered and needed for a culture victory or the effect is too weak or the effects are too distant from each other. I'm not totally sure what the current effect is, but a -20% culture cost is something I do not like really much. Maybe make it tie in the same way as the one social policy from the liberty tree, so that it helps wide empires more which makes it still viable for tall empires going for culture victory (every little thing helps and culture victory do seems quite easy atm) but makes it better for wide ones?

2. The Eiffel Tower seems lackluster to me right now, happiness is not really something cool per se...

1. Cristo is obviously highly desirable for a Cultural Victory, but how is it OP? I happen to go for it in all my games, no matter what style I'm playing, because the % approach to faster culture already seems to help wide conquest games at least as well as tall ones. In those games, I use it as an alternative to building the late-game culture buildings.

2. Do you also find Notre Dame problematic?
 
1. Overpowered in the sense that you mostly need to build it if you want to win culturally. And it does help a lot in all situations. So a must need wonder is overpowered in a sense that you would want to have it in every game. Which takes the fun out of it. It just does not offer much variety in gamestyle which is why I think it is a bad game balancing decision.

2. Not problematic per se, but a bit unfunny. A Wonder should have a unique effect imo. Doesn't Notre Dame also have culture added to it? (The Eiffel Tower giving one gold per specialist in comparison to the one hammer of Lady Liberty would be interesting).
 
1. Overpowered in the sense that you mostly need to build it if you want to win culturally. And it does help a lot in all situations. So a must need wonder is overpowered in a sense that you would want to have it in every game. Which takes the fun out of it. It just does not offer much variety in gamestyle which is why I think it is a bad game balancing decision.

2. Not problematic per se, but a bit unfunny. A Wonder should have a unique effect imo. Doesn't Notre Dame also have culture added to it? (The Eiffel Tower giving one gold per specialist in comparison to the one hammer of Lady Liberty would be interesting).

I see your point. There's no doubt that CR is a major Wonder - that's for sure. I don't mind the inevitable breakdown of Wonders falling into two categories, but not three (No Brainer, Good, Meh).

ND has culture now - Thal just dropped it from 3 to 1 - but it didn't have it until the patch. Otherwise it was an early version of the ET.
 
To clarify a bit: I'm looking for ideas for totally new effects. I don't think tweaking the values will work for these two wonders.

Christo was nerfed to -10% culture cost in the patch. At that level it's not even worth 1 policy before the game ends. If we raise the value... then this happens:

I happen to go for it in all my games, no matter what style I'm playing

If we always do something (either all games or no games) then it's not really a decision. I agree with mitsho in this. I think the policy-cost effect is fundamentally infeasible to balance, and would like to replace it with something else.

All national and world wonders have always had at least 1 culture point.

I've had a general feeling some kind of global promotion might be appropriate for the Kremlin (Himeji Castle gives a global promotion). Two of Sporhund's ideas are also feasible from a technical standpoint:


  • Christo Redentor - Each social policy adopted grants 0.25:c5happy: and 0.25 :c5culture:.
  • The Kremlin - +1:c5happy: from courthouse in all cities.
Some other possibilities:

  • The Kremlin - Faster healing in friendly territory
  • Christo Redentor - Extra culture for specialists
  • Christo Redentor - One free "respec" for social policies (refunded and can re-select new policies with those points)
 
How about:

Christo Redentor- disbanding units converts experience points to culture points.

This would create an interesting dilemma for the final stretch of cultural victories in deciding how little military is needed to get across the line without being invaded. Could give an exploit in producing units with a barracks/etc then farming the culture, though late game culture paths after broadcast towers sometimes have a gap where production has little focus until the utopia project.
Also could the AI make use of it?

For the Kremlin- a combined empire wide effect for defense and culture would be nice. How about +X culture per walls/castle/etc. Something useful for both wide domination and tall cultural paths.
 
Christo Redentor : Monuments & Temples don't cost maintenance & provide +2 :c5culture:. The city in which it is built gets +25% :c5culture:. Would be really powerful if combined with Piety Tree. Not sure if that would be OP. :D
 
If you go for the plus culture on specialists, you would get to a trifecta of great wonders (if you go with my +commerce on Eiffel Tower-idea which I'd like to advocate once more ;-)).

Traditionally, Cristo Redentor is connected to Civics and easier changing between Governments. A Respec would be nice, but as it is now, two effects would be feasible to use it: 1) changing out of piety tree, but piety is culture and it is more important for a culture victory than Freedom, so it would be good if you change victory path away from culture, 2) changing out of the Liberty tree thus losing the now less useless % on workers and settlers production which does seem gamey to me. (the third option of a "misskilling" is not really one because we plan ahead nowadays ;)).

The other option would be happiness per specialist or wonder, but the specialist one could be overpowered (I didn't calculate it) and happiness generally would be a giant middle finger towards the French wonders (Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower) as they would be indirectly nerfed. Another option would be one free social policy + one free culture on Temples and monasteries?

EDIT: From some of the wonders additions (Partheon: +25% Commerce in city, Mausoleum of Mausolos: +25% Culture), a combination would be powerful, no?

Free Buildings could be added to latter wonders as well to make them better (Eiffel Tower = Broadcast Tower, Notre Dame: Opera House, etc. ...) I wouldn't be opposed to more modern wonders as well ;-)
 
Traditionally, Cristo Redentor is connected to Civics and easier changing between Governments. A Respec would be nice, but as it is now, two effects would be feasible to use it: 1) changing out of piety tree, but piety is culture and it is more important for a culture victory than Freedom, so it would be good if you change victory path away from culture, 2) changing out of the Liberty tree thus losing the now less useless % on workers and settlers production which does seem gamey to me. (the third option of a "misskilling" is not really one because we plan ahead nowadays ;)).

The most important option I see is to instantly fill late-game trees like Order and Autocracy. These are very powerful trees, only limited by the fact the policy-saving ban usually makes it impossible to fill them in wide or conquest games.
 
Anyone have an idea for an effect to add to Stonehenge?

A free Temple is obvious... but it'd be interesting to have something different. Any effect you've seen on another building can be used. The wonder itself is rather uninspired - just a monument with higher numbers. Something more exciting would be nice!

Maybe a long-run bonus to compliment the big short term value?
 
The effect of Stonehenge in Civ4 was a reveal of the map, as in related to Astrology, something quite fitting. Another connotation to Stonehenge is thus the seasons and thus "food growing".

I think a map reveal as one of the barbarian huts does would be interesting, but not possible ;-) Instead you could give free units. A scout would be ideal or a horseman? (If you don't have horses this way you can get one, but you cannot win anything with just one horse). Going for what is needed in a start where you want to build stonehenge (culture start), several options come to mind: Free Walls (has synergy with the Social policies, helps against rushes), Free Worker (frees up the first spot to build a warrior or archer to defend as workers take quite long, plus you took it away from the Pyramids), a +2 Food (feasible to build in a low food start too).

If you want to go for longterm rather, it'd be easy to just double the Great Persons Point (sthg which has been done to help other early wonders as well, Great Library f.e.), to give a low +% growth for this city which then adds up with the Tradition Finisher, or a +5-10 % to culture in this city (starts helping with 20-10 base culture). Or something related to maps, like giving scouts (and triremes) a +sight promotion (which then would need to cease by militia and caravels or else it'd be too powerful).

Now I'm officially out of ideas.
 
The ruins-like map reveal idea actually is possible by manually coding the effect (probably ~1 hour's work). While investigating that I found an exciting option that fits its culture theme...

Instant border expansion! It expands to the 2nd ring, which is 5-10 free tiles, without increasing the cost of further expansions. It lets us quickly and cheaply reach everything in the 2nd + 3rd rings. I think this makes it useful for non-culture games if we have fantastic tiles in the outer rings. :)
 
The ruins-like map reveal idea actually is possible by manually coding the effect (probably ~1 hour's work). While investigating that I found an exciting option that fits its culture theme...

Instant border expansion! It expands to the 2nd ring, which is 5-10 free tiles, without increasing the cost of further expansions. It lets us quickly and cheaply reach everything in the 2nd + 3rd rings. I think this makes it useful for non-culture games if we have fantastic tiles in the outer rings. :)

This is a great idea - different, powerful and fitting - as long as it doesn't require nerfing the core function of the Wonder. If forced to choose, I'd rather have the latter over the former.
 
  • 6:c5culture: Stonehenge (reverted to vanilla), and expands borders in the city to a 2-tile radius.
It's basically a buffed version of vanilla. :)

We can probably agree vanilla Stonehenge is built mainly for an early policy boost. It's the same role as the Oracle, which comes just slightly later. It leads to inevitable comparisons between the two. Whichever is perceived as weaker usually ends up being skipped on hard difficulty settings, since it's impractical to get multiple early wonders.

If the two wonders have distinctly different roles we can strategize for the one that better suits our needs. With the possible exception of the Krepost, there's no building or wonder designed to quickly reach tiles in outer rings of a specific city. I think this unique purpose is more exciting than a slightly-better Monument.

Something else to point out is the function of the Hanging Gardens changed significantly. Both HG and Pyramids used to have a role for fast expansion strategies. Now they're very different, which is probably more fun. It's a good precedent for changing roles if it leads to more exciting gameplay.
 
I combined short-term and long-term border expansion bonuses. :)

Stonehenge
:c5culture: Culture: 6 (vanilla setting)
:c5culture: Border Expansion Radius: 2


I think we can agree vanilla Stonehenge is prioritized for an early policy boost. This is the same role as the Oracle, which comes just slightly later. It leads to inevitable comparisons between the two. Whichever is perceived as weaker usually ends up being skipped on hard difficulty settings, since it's impractical to get multiple early wonders.

If the two wonders have distinctly different roles we can strategize for the one that better suits our needs. With the possible exception of the Krepost, there's no building or wonder designed to quickly reach tiles in outer rings of a specific city. I think this unique purpose is more exciting than a slightly-better Monument.

Something else to point out is the function of the Hanging Gardens changed significantly. Both HG and Pyramids used to be a "fast expansion role." Now they're very different, which is probably more fun. It's a good precedent for changing roles if it leads to more exciting gameplay.

I agree that Stonehenge seemed an early policy booster superior to the Oracle. That's because its culture boost lasted for longer than one policy. Importantly, I found the Stonehenge effect fun - policies noticeably sped up - and the Oracle one neutral. I have no problem with changing what Wonders do (I love the new HG), but would like either the "new" Oracle or Stonehenge to deliver at least what the current Stonehenge does, in terms of both measurable benefit and in terms of the fun factor.
 
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