Worst Wonder

[Siptah]

I have the feeling that many wonders could use a buff, so there is more motivation to build them. Some seem good, some ok - but for some of them there is really no reason to build them, giving the high cost of production and a possibly otherwise good tile.

The worst for me is the Mahabodhi Temple. Sure, two Apostles are nice to have. But having your holy site next to forests may mean you have not much mountains/hills available. And another point against it is that you are basically exchanging production (rare) into faith (not so rare) since you are 'building' two apostles. The extra faith is nice, but not enough imho. This one needs a buff.

And I feel the Terracotta Army can be a bit difficult, too. I usually have no encampments in my core cities, so I have to build it at some more satellite-ish cities. I know, that's just my play stile and not the devs fault. But then the bonus of the Terracotta Army seems not good enough. I haven't played around with how good the boost to archeologists is in the late game if you are ahead of the civics tree. It may be huge in that case.

 

[kampori]

I quite like them all except Great Lighthouse. It would be better if like CiV it gave you a free lighthouse. It's pretty naff.

Hanging Gardens is infinitely better. I'd probably say the best wonder in game; and can be built by like turn 30.

The mid-game culture wonders are a bit pointless. Only build them for great work slots but only because I can. Don't need them.

Some wonders are great. Ruhr Valley, Eiffel Tower, Maracana stadium, Colloseum etc.

 

[miaasma]

the great library seems like a poorly designed wonder. it gives a boost to all ancient and classical techs, but comes far too late (on the butt end of the classical civics) for said boost to have any significant impact

no idea what they could do to improve it, but it's never been worth building in any of my games so far

 

[Paramecium]

the great library seems like a poorly designed wonder. it gives a boost to all ancient and classical techs, but comes far too late (on the butt end of the classical civics) for said boost to have any significant impact

no idea what they could do to improve it, but it's never been worth building in any of my games so far

Definitly! It is not quite late, the problem is, that it needs a campus plus libary, which will help both in science, so until you get it, you will have already researched a lot/most of the techs in the ancienct/classical era.

The only use would be, if you heavly invest in culture and then use it to catch up. But yeah, needing the campus and the libary and being that late in the civic tree, it is just meeh ...

 

[kampori]

the great library seems like a poorly designed wonder. it gives a boost to all ancient and classical techs, but comes far too late (on the butt end of the classical civics) for said boost to have any significant impact

no idea what they could do to improve it, but it's never been worth building in any of my games so far

The boost to inspirations for ancient/classical are purely fluff. The real bonus for the Great Library is the Great Work slots for writing. And the science and Great scientist points.

Like in CiV, the great library is still pretty awesome.

 

[skyclad]

Forgot to include mahabodi, you are right it is pretty weak. If it allowed for more beliefs for example instead or in addition it would be great, similar to bonus policy slot wonders.
Otherwise its obviously the great library, comes way too late, im pissed at the AI for building it when i take their city and its a wasted tile. Kinda like stonehenge but at least I know that stonehenge served a purpose once upon a time at least.

 

[Sylmarr]

I voted the great library for the same reason as miaasma said : it just comes too late for its effects to be interesting. But if you go cultural the 2 great writes slot can be usefull.

And then I picked the Huey Teocalli because lakes are way too rare to take advantages of the boni on a regular basis. And even with the bonus lake tiles are just bad.

 

[Sascha77]

I don't quite get Chichen Itza. Unless there are improvements that will leave the rainforest intact (like the trading post in Civ V), its boost to those tiles doesn't seem high enough to warrant leaving lots of tiles around your city unimproved.

I do agree on the GL. The science boost is nice, but nothing special. It should probably be linked to an earlier tech/civic to make its tech-boost-effect more powerful/useful.

And even with the bonus lake tiles are just bad.

It is highly situational, yes. However: I just finished a game where I built that thing, in a city that had a 5-tile lake next to it. One of those tiles had a crab on it and that one turned into a pretty awesome tile after the wonder completed. Plus: The +1 amenity from each lake-tile adjacent to the wonder is pretty significant on larger lakes.

One of the most insane wonders in the game (IMO) can be the Terracotta Army. Not so much because of its properties, but because of the silly AI. Some wonders just don't get built by them and so I managed to grab the TA for next to nothing during the late Renaissance and earned a *crapload* of promotions for my sizeable army, including some on units that already were on level 3 or 4. Talk about OPing an already OPed army even further..


Edit: Almost forgot the Venetian Arsenal. I gave that one a try in the conquest game I just finished as Trajan. I was on a continents-map so I wanted a powerful navy to finish the four civs that were on the other continent.

1. Its description is wrong. You need to build it on coast-tiles (on the water, like a harbor-district), *not* adjacent to the coast as the game claims.
2. I doubt it's worth the hammers/turns you need to invest. Even if you plan well ahead for it and place an industrial zone in the right spot the second you get Apprenticeship.

On Epic, I had to invest around 25 turns for the industrial zone, then another 38 or so for the actual wonder. I rush-bought a factory and a seaport while this was going plus I had nearly all my traders support the town that was building the arsenal, so production was really good there. Result was that I built four battleships in 24 turns (12 turns for each pair).

Which sounds kinda impressive and would get even more impressive if I had built 6 or 8 of them. But who is going to need more than 4 battleships in a game against the AI?

Even if I ignore the cost for the industrial zone: We're talking 62 turns or so here. I needed 12 turns to build a battleship, so that would be 48 turns for the same size of fleet produced without the arsenal.





S.

 

[Disgustipated]

Voted for Stonehenge since it is impossible to ever build it.

 

[skyclad]

Another wrong thing about the venetian arsenal description is that it works for all your cities, not just the one with the wonder...

 

[Disgustipated]

The description never actually says it's for that city only. Considering how expensive it is, it should work for all cities.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

The Venetian Arsenal is bugged (or designed) to give you 2 ships in every city atm, so it's one of the best wonders imo (if you can build it and the map has some use for a navy).

I voted Great Lighthouse and Great Library, but imo the Hanging Gardens is fairly useless as well. Most of the time housing and/or amenities are the true caps on population, so the extra growth only comes into play after you get neighborhoods, and by then the game is mostly decided anyway.

Edit: Ninja'd on the Venice affair, it seems. Imo it's way too powerful with its effect applied to all cities... They should lower its cost (maybe) and only make it apply to the one city that builds it.

 

[Sascha77]

Another wrong thing about the venetian arsenal description is that it works for all your cities, not just the one with the wonder...

Crap.. I didn't produce ships in any other city, so I don't know if it works for all cities or just the one that built it..

If it does work for all of them, it would be much more useful.

Still: Against the AI, who needs more than four or five ships to dominate the seas?

S.

 

[LanguishViking]

The Venice Arsenal turns your civ into boat Skythia. 100% ship building, build two ships per turn, both get sold, since my city builds more than 1 ship per turn my overflow is much greater than my production (think production 60, ship cost 40, modified production 120, so 80 overflow). So massive production boost plus almost 1000 ducats worth of disbanded ships per turn. This one falls into the category of OP as F??k. So, I was ahead in tech farming this while going for a 1 turn big ben build. I had to ask myself, does the game have an upper limit on treasury?

 

[Siptah]

The Great Library could have a nice boost if they add a new category: wonder that function as districts. If the GL stays at it is right now but is a wonder that functions as a campus replacement and is also unlocked with the same tech, it would be a very great wonder.

 

[TruthfulCake]

The Great Library provides obsolete knowledge. And I would much rather use that tile for a Theater District to hold my great works, really, since the district can do much more. If the Great Library is available earlier, or provides bonus for Medieval techs, then maybe.

Hanging Gardens is the new Temple of Artemis, aka Top Tier. Other really good ones IMO are Ruhr Valley, Venetian Arsenal, Great Zimbabwe, Mont St. Michel, and Colosseum (which is worth many, many luxuries). Petra is even more map dependent than ever, now that only desert hills will be acceptable, although when you get that location it is absolutely orgasmic.

 

[LanguishViking]

I once got 6 boosts with the library. But that was me ignoring naval tech and beelining recorded history.

 

[Sagax]

As much as people bash Great Library, it at least provides GW slots, which really helps. Right now if you focus on cultural victory, you keep running into the problem of having more great people than available slots - and writers are probably the second worst offenders after musicians, because most buildings have only 1-2 slots for them, as opposed to 3 for GA and GM.

My vote goes to Great Lighthouse. Now THAT is lacking. The gold is irrelevant when the current meta is about rushing industrial and commercial districts, and if you build a harbor chances are you'll have movement bonus covered by admirals. Oh, and AI is terrible at naval battles, so extra movement is really an overkill.

 

[Yzman]

As much as people bash Great Library, it at least provides GW slots, which really helps. Right now if you focus on cultural victory, you keep running into the problem of having more great people than available slots - and writers are probably the second worst offenders after musicians, because most buildings have only 1-2 slots for them, as opposed to 3 for GA and GM.

My vote goes to Great Lighthouse. Now THAT is lacking. The gold is irrelevant when the current meta is about rushing industrial and commercial districts, and if you build a harbor chances are you'll have movement bonus covered by admirals. Oh, and AI is terrible at naval battles, so extra movement is really an overkill.

My first game I was going cultural and was producing so many great writers I had them hanging around because I literally had no places at all for them.

 

[Haggbart]

I quite like them all except Great Lighthouse. It would be better if like CiV it gave you a free lighthouse. It's pretty naff.

Hanging Gardens is infinitely better. I'd probably say the best wonder in game; and can be built by like turn 30.

The mid-game culture wonders are a bit pointless. Only build them for great work slots but only because I can. Don't need them.

Some wonders are great. Ruhr Valley, Eiffel Tower, Maracana stadium, Colloseum etc.

I agree that some of the late game wonders like Ruhr Valley and Colloseum are very useful. But have to disagree on Hanging Gardens. I never find growth rate a problem, rather cities grow so fast you're getting the -50% growth from housing a lot anyway, at which point the 15% are pointless. Also 15% is not a lot, so you're basically spending a LOT of early game hammers that are VERY useful early on. And you could always grab the +10% growth pantheon for a lower opportunity cost if you want instead. But sure, if you can grab it later in 3-4 turns, it's not bad.

But yeah, the Great Lighthouse is not so great either, I agree they should add "free lighthouse"

I built Huey Teocalli once, and it's VERY situational. But I think it's good to have wonders with more niche functions.