WONDERS (ver1.0): Hosted by EnochF

[EnochF]

Okay, we now begin in the List of Ideas for Firaxis section. Sometime soon I'll post a fairly adequate summary of the big ideas everybody seems to like in the Wonder Department.

[kmj]

meowser: to add a little to your ideas from the other thread.... (the way I see it)

Natural wonders would be discovered through exploration.

A city would see the benefits of this wonder either a) as soon as it's built or b)when it reaches a certain size

Another possible wonder is (if you have underwater cities) the marianas trench.

[EnochF]

Summary begins here. I don't promise to represent everyone's ideas perfectly, but the original thread will stay in the Suggestions category for several months, and anybody can speak up and clarify themselves if they want to.

Ecce Homo: World's Greatest Improvement, a wonder-like game concept in which every city improvement has a corresponding World's Greatest that civs can compete to build
(many agree)

Enoch: Programmable wonders, the effects of which can be changed by players in game files.

Enoch: Visible wonders, which appear on the map in the city radius.
(several agree)

Ufa: Random negative side effects for powerful wonders.
(several agree)

KMJ: A wonders on/off option
(many agree)

Pythagoras: Limited timespan for World's Greatest (i.e., world's greatest marketplace provides no benefit upon discovery of banking)

Enoch: Constant, rather than random, negative effects for wonders.

Sieve Too: Diverse wonders in the early game, to avoid one civ building all wonders.

Sieve Too: Internet wonder, benefits for all civs with Computers advance
(many agree)

Meowser: No two cities can build the same wonder at the same time, no switching production midway

KMJ: Suggests bidding on World's Greatest, limited to one attempt per improvement per civ

Eggman: Evolving wonder effects as ages progress
(several agree)

Eggman: Maintenance costs for aging wonders

Eggman: Variable wonder effects dependent on government, state of war, age, etc.

Diodorus: Land engineering wonders, i.e. Great Canal, Polders, etc.

Enoch: Suggests wonders provide tourism gold upon becoming obsolete
(several agree)

Meowser: Suggests limited re-buildable wonders: only an option in a "race" to build a wonder; the second civ to build receives a happiness bonus rather than the standard wonder effect

Mr. Temba: Suggests seven wonders per age

Zorloc: Suggests wonder effects "phase out" rather than abruptly go obsolete

Trachmyr: Suggests game variable "culture," which is in large part defined by the wonders a civilization builds

Zakalwe: Suggests time delay for receiving benefits of a captured wonder, also a lower Civ score for captured wonders

Cybershy: Lists the original seven wonders; suggests more limited game effects; suggests wonders have unknowable effects (random, I suppose); argues against "races" to build wonders; several points raised, including local wonder effects, such as the Lighthouse

Cybershy: Suggests natural wonders
(several agree)

Stefu: Suggests less Eurocentric wonders
(several agree)

Stefu: Suggests separate wonder types, Economic, Monument, Scientific, Social, etc.
(several agree)

Meowser: Suggests "visible wonders" be vulnerable to attack (pillage)

Meowser: Suggests wonders be tied to specific civilizations (no Egyptians = no Pyramids)

Meowser: Suggests cooperation on wonder building; allied civs receive mutual wonder benefits
(many agree on other threads)

LIST OF NEW SUGGESTED WONDERS:
Abu Simbel
The Almagest (Ptolemy's Almagest)
Angel Falls
Angkor Wat
The Aswan Dam
The Aztec Temple in Tenochtitlan
Banaue Rice Terraces
The Bay of Fundy
Borobudur Temple
The Channel Tunnel
The Clock Tower (Big Ben)
The CN Tower
The Colosseum
Drugs
Empire State Building
Fedreal Bureau of Investigation
The Gateway Arch
The Grand Canyon
The Great Barrier Reef
The Great Canal
Great General Staff (Großer Generalstab)
Iguaçú Falls
The Iliad
Itaipú Dam
Krakatoa Island
The Leaning Tower
Lucasfilm
Machu Pichu
The Marianas Trench
The Mausoleum
The Mayan Temples of Mikal
The Moai Statues
Mont-Saint-Michel
Mt. Everest
Mt. Fuji
Mt. Kilimanjaro
Mt. Rushmore
Niagara Falls
The Olympic Games
Paricutin Volcano
The Parthenon
Petra
The Petronas Towers
The Polders
The Shwedagon Pagoda
Statue of Zeus
Statue of Cristo Redentor
Sydney Opera House
Taj Mahal
Temple of Artemis
Temple of the Inscriptions
The Throne Hall of Persepolis
Tycho Brahe's Observatory (Uranienborg)
Victoria Falls

[anachron]

Regarding the Human Genome Project wonder - I agree this should be part of the game, but I think it should also have potentially negative military ramifications, in much the same way as the Manhattan Project did in
CivII. The fear with the HGP is that it would be possible to construct a virus affecting only members of a certain ethnicity - this would mean the possibility of wiping out an entire civilization. This is also one factor that was missing from the previous civ series' - epidemics.

I also don't think the Internet should be a wonder, because it is international in nature. Rather, it should be part of the technology tree. It would certainly be interesting to give it the "Great Library" effect, however - and historically accurate, imo. Research-sharing between nations, with the exception of military research (this
exception could also be incorporated), has become an accepted fact of international education. Using the Internet as a late-stage technology leveller would be, imo, better than having it as a wonder exclusive to a
particular civilization.

I like the nature wonders idea, but having them turned on and off seems unrealistic - being able to destroy them through war or pollution would be more practical. And if any wonders should have permanent effects, it should be these ones.

Also, the Olympic Games is an excellent idea - I can't believe it was skipped over in prior incarnations. A question though - should it be the early Olympics or the modern Olympics? I think it should be the latter, with strong diplomatic benefits. The stature of the early Olympics was not that of a wonder of the world.

I would also like to add my voice to those pointing out that too many wonders is not a good idea - it ruins the uniqueness of them (hence my point about the Internet).

A

[EnochF]

Anachron: Thanks for reposting in this thread.

Internet: I would be equally willing to allow the Internet as a technological advance or as a wonder which benefits all civilizations with Computers.

One loophole just occurred to me, if the Internet is a wonder. A highly developed nation could impede the technological progress of its enemies by building the Internet in a small, size-1 city, and then disband the city and utterly destroy the Internet. Utterly unrealistic. So, that's one argument in favor of Internet as a tech advance.

Genome Project: That's an idea. I've already posted a fairly consistent system of how to integrate disease into game play as a new game variable. Large cities with too high a disease score would enter into "quarantine," which is kind of like rioting except the population goes down and all trade routes are cut off. Genome could effectively cause cities to go into quarantine. Spies could do it, too, through poisoning the water supply. Maybe an "infector" unit, as per Call to Power, wouldn't be an unbalancing game effect either.

[kmj]

I must say that I dislike the idea of pinning certain wonders down to specific civ's (pyramids = egyptions, as described above)
While I would like each civ to have it's own personality, I feel that this leans toward the "special benefits" ala SMAC factions, something that I would HATE to see in CivIII. This should be a completely open-ended game, with every civ (assuming equal starting position) has an equal chance of winning. Maybe this would be okay as an option. I like options, they maximize consumer satisfaction.

On the internet: Lots of good ideas. I can go with any of a number of different ways to implement this, (wonder, advance, maybe you have to build an ISP in your cities), but it should have a MAJOR affect on all or most civs in the game.

[EdCase]

Pinning Wonders to specific civs is DEFINITELY the wrong way to go.The concept is to REWRITE history not repeat it.
My 2 cents....when a wonder goes obsolete...let it add say 10% income to the building civ (10% of the city it is sited in that is) Because it will still be a wonder and attract tourists

[EnochF]

KMJ & EdCase: I tend to agree. I'm much more intrigued with Trachmyr's idea that Wonders effectively shape Culture, rather than Culture arbitrarily dictating Wonders. A culture that builds Copernicus and Newton but not Sun Tzu will receive military penalties and science bonuses, maybe, and will be well received by peaceful nations. That sort of thing. It would be like all civs begin the game completely undefined, no bonuses, like in Civ II, but gradually evolve into a more "faction"-like culture, like in SMAC, as the game progresses.

[Transcend]

Mount Fuji should never be counted as a wonder, this is just a very normal volcano. The only importance of that mountain is that is located close Tokyo-Yokohama. I would rather pick Tokyo-Yokohama as a wonder because it's the largest city in the world.

FBI is not a wonder. KGB, as both secret police and intelligence agency, was far more effective. Maybe we should take KGB instead.

Imperial Palace in Beijing is today the largest palace complex on earth. I would pick that palace as a wonder instead of Throne Hall in Persepolis.

Three Gorges Dam, if completed, should be counted as a wonder. This dam will several times larger than any existing dam on the world, since the reservoir it creats will displace one million people, raise the water level up to 70 meters, and generate electricty equivalent to dozens of nuclear power plants.

The Internet should replace SETI Program. The benefits of Internet are increases in happiness and research, the negative effect is increased vulnerability to spies.

Lucasfilm is too insignificant as a wonder. How about the Hollywood in general?

Drugs is a very interesting "wonder". I think this wonder will have both positive and negative sides, the positive being damages to all other civs, the negative being that everyone hates you.

Maybe we need to pick one canal out three: Panama, Suez, or Great Canal.

Anyway, those are my thoughts about individual wonders.

[EnochF]

Imperial Palace is already a wonder in Call to Power, indirectly: The Forbidden City.

I didn't make most of these suggestions, so I can't argue either way about drugs or Mt. Fuji...

I'm coming around to the KGB as a wonder instead of FBI, first because there are too many American wonders already, and second because it has more popular association with spies. However, I envisioned the FBI as a mostly internal wonder, one which protects against spies from outside, and I guess I've always conceived the KGB as an aggressive, international entity, secretly sparking revolutions hither and thither and inspiring the Truman Doctrine.

Hey, maybe this could be one of those government-dependent wonders like Eggman suggested. KGB can only be built and function in communism. As soon as the government changes, all KGB effects are lost...

[Ecce Homo]

I think many Wonders should benefit ALL civs in some way.

Examples:
The Wormhole Sensor in CTP - all civs can see the Wormhole after a few turns.

The Olympic Games - all civs can choose to participate. If they do, they get happier, but they cannot make war with the owner.

The Internet - all civs get benefits if they have Computers.

More suggested Wonders:
*The Stonehenge
*King Asoka's Edict (India, 3rd century. He had pillars raised all across the country to spread the message of peace.)
*Alfred Nobel's Foundation
*Mars Colony

[meowser]

Hmm? How about this. Wonders should not be made on a city wide basis but on a civilization wide basis. Your civ can build one wonder at a time (Wonders take a lot of time, resource and planning). When you have the necessary prerequisites, you'll be given an option to devote x% production units towards the wonder.

Since some wonders might be made that benefit only one city (for play balance) there should be some type of screen that ask you where the wonder will be built.

[Trachmyr]

My idea that WONDERS are used to make SOCIAL ENGINEERING CHOICES is discussed more indepth in the Social Engineering Thread.

But basically, Wonders that do not provide real advantages, help define the culture by generatin "Culture Points" similar to reaserch points, which are in turn used to activate SOCIAL ENGINEERING choices. After all, most wonder are testements to that civ, and help define that civ.

[mhistbuff]

What about these wonders:
The Great Bazaar: improves the benefits of trade routes or counts as a market place in every city or something like that.

The Tennesse Vally Authority: counts as a hydroelectric dam in every city or decreases time needed to irrigate or farm a piece of land.

[Mark_Everson]

*My first post in this thread*

My biggest gripe is play-balance of wonders. Wonders that give you an improvement for all your cities and never expire are Waaaaay too good a bargain. At A Minimum, wonders that never expire and give an improvement's benefit should cost 10x the improvement. Mich's C. and Hoover's are Especially imbalanced because not only do they cost only of order 5x the improvement's cost, but there is no maint. cost for the benefits.

------------------
Mark Everson
Project lead for The Clash of Civilizations
(That means I do the things nobody else wants to do )
This Radically different civ game needs your suggestions and/or criticism of our design.
Check our our Forum right here at Apolyton...

[Ecce Homo]

Yes Mark. I oppose Wonders that act as one improvement in each city. These make great civs invincible.

[Fugi the Great]

How about having your engineers/terraformers build the WoW's, that is if they go that route. Like actually building certain WoW's like the Great Wall of China and use it for what it was intended for, keeping out barbarians, now it's just a tourist attraction.

I also agree that alot of WoW's are too strong and cost too little. Make them extremely expensive, and take a long time to build, make it so their effect wears off faster (WoW's from ancient times are useless now except to rake in money), and be able to add your own for scenarios. Make it so you can turn them off in the beginning of the game, maybe a higher score if you can live without there effects.

To be fair to all nations, if we all have the same technology, why can't we all build the same WoW, just call it a different name, maybe building the wonder is disabled if the effect wears off so you can't get it added to your score. Each WoW has positive and negative effects that either helps or harms your nation depending on your nation's strengths/weaknesses and SE. In that way, I may have the technology, manpower, time, and money, but we will not build it because it will not help us or may actually harm us. Or I may not build it NOW because I am constantly at war and can't afford to build it. If your WoW gets captured and/or destroyed, can you rebuild it? If not, why not? You still have the technology to build it. I suppose that you could say we couldn't really build the Pyramids anymore, but it won't help us anyway, it's effect is no longer needed - it's obsolete, and we forgot how to build it (lost technology). If I now recapture the first one and still have the second one, the effect is not doubled - what ever it is, I just wasted my time, money, and manpower building the second one. Do you destroy one of them?

[Ecce Homo]

Fugi, I think that this problem can be solved if a Pyramid is a City Improvement and the World's Largest Pyramid is considered a Wonder.

[Viking]

The wonder moveis should be long,
CTP's were great but way too short.

[willko]

first a few suggestions for new wonders:

how about the moai (sp?) -- the easter island "heads". they are pretty wondrous. god knows what they do, or what they would do in terms of game mechanics (anyone?), but imho, they qualify as a "constructible wonder". (more on that term below).

less seriously: how about crop circles? or tabloids, or rolaids, or coffee-holders for the automobile?

more seriously:

i'm really just rehashing a familiar argument about ctp: a loose definition of what a "wonder" is. i find things like "drugs" or "contraceptives" do not fit the bill as "wonders of the world". other societies and cultures could possibly co-opt some of these achievements almost immediately (whether due to economics, trade, or through the open exchange of ideas, etc.). wonders should mostly be a "localizable" phenomena (--why crop-circles wouldn't work: too easily generalizable). they should be only locatable in one specific city, the one that built it, otherwise, why is it so wonderful and why should a group of people work so hard to discover/build it? i agree that things like drugs, contraception, the internet can be great (even "wonderful") things, but in terms of that specific civ contrivance? no. how would drugs ever be eradicated off the face of the earth by destroying the city they were first created in? or why would that city be any more blessed eventually than all the other cities of the world after mass-production and distribution take place?

this is kind of like why i thought the manhatten project in civ2 should have also had another function, perhaps boosted science (maybe only by a measly 25% -- but by something) in the city it was built (i.e. as a result of the los alamos labs that were founded by the government's collection of scientists in the desert), instead of simply (whoopee!) allowing nukes. play-balance wise, in multiplayer against humans, it is not even worth building the stupid thing if other nations are nuke capable (hmmm, a lesson we could all take to heart).

sorry to wax so ramblingly (!) on this topic, but keep some of this in mind when suggesting wonders and their effects.

p.s. i also agree that is would be a mistake to make the wonders racially or nationally based (i.e. only let the egyptians build the pyramids, or don't allow the pyramids as a constructable wonder without the presence of the egyptians in the game). in the civ series, it has always been fair game for any tribe to claim any given wonder as their own. why change that open endedness now? the point of the game is that human history is our's (the gamer's) to determine!

/willko.

[Narck]

I would like to strongly emphasize Viking's point:

Wonders are something major in the game - they don't happen often and they only happen once, so the reward for building one should be not only lasting effects but also a nice interlude, a 'sit back and enjoy' type of thing.

Wondermovies in Civ2 were really good - however, after civ2 the new games that were similar to it had bad wondermovies -> SMAC is a great game but the wondermovies are not great at all but 'reasonable' instead and then I haven't even mentioned Ctp yet - there are many movies there but they take less than 10 seconds to finish (some are even done in 3 secs) and IMO are of inferior quality. I prefer to have less movies but of good quality.

So for civ3: the movies should be at least the quality and length of civ2!

[kmj]

Maybe you should be able to name your own wonder. That would solve alot of the conflicts here while keeping the main idea intact. For example:

The world's largest damn could be called the hoover damn, or the Aswan dam, or the three Gorge's Damn, or maybe the London Dam.

For forbidden city, you have the Imperial palace, the Thronehall of Persepolis, palace at Versailles, or maybe the Atlanta palace.

For your secret police, there's KGP, CIA, FBI, KLA, IRA, or KMJKS (that's kmj killer squad).

This can be done for damn near all of the wonders. Even natural wonders. This would actually add alot to the game as far as recreating history (as opposed to just replaying the same history).

Another idea I like is require a certain type of terrain for certain wonders. (Dams in city on or near a river, Lighthouse only in coastal cities, Palace only in capital, etc.) Of course for nation-wide wonders, such as the great wall, it wouldn't matter.

Ecce- I really like your ideas on the Olympic Games and the Internet. While I think the civ that invents these should get some sort of bonus, I think that all civs should get benefits, provided they are technologically advanced enough. (Obviously the Olympics wouldn't require too much tech to be able to participate.) I think these too should be renameable by their creator.

meowser- I like your idea of a civ-wide project, it can be done just like allocating public works in CtP, but maybe with a maximum %? And for city-specific wonders, you should definitely have to choose where to put them.

I agree that the wonder movies in CtP were way too short. Especially since 13 gig harddrives will be commonplace by the time CivIII is released.

Ecce- don't you think that it would be weird if every city had pyramids. They only exist in two geogrphic areas in reality, don't they? I don't mind that once a civ builds a certain wonder, noone else can build it.

I agree that the whole "race to build xxx" is silly, but it is mainly used as a warning, so that you don't get 3/4 done with a wonder to find out that someone else just built it. I think it would be better if when you decide to build a certain wonder you get a message like: "Advisor: 'Sir, there are rumors that the Egyptians are working on a similar project, are you sure you want to build this?'"

[Sieve Too]

A few more suggestions for the Industrial age Wonders

The Queen's Dominion: Allows for more rapid expansion and terraforming by granting double movement to Settlers and Engineers (but not double speed work)

Admiral Nelson's Fleet: Allows quick building of the navy by cutting the cost of every naval vessel by 20 shields.

Imperial Naval Shipyard: The city that builds this wonder never pays shield support for naval units.

The Gateway Arch: Allows rapid city development by reducing the cost of each city improvement by 20 shields.

[frankdog]

The Internet: increased Science, increased happiness, BUT... costs a sheild or two in productivity. (Better get back to work before my boss catches me surfing again).

[Trachmyr]

If the Internet had a disadvantage, it would be increased risk of valuable Teck leaking to other countries...


Namable Wonders is a GREAT idea, providing that the game suggests a few for you...

Some people have mentioned drugs as a possible wonder - how about anti-biotics instead? It would increase all civilizations' growth rate and increase the happiness in each city by one.

[Ecce Homo]

willko, you are absolutely right that a Wonder shoud be something unique and possible to place on the map. One of the things I hate the most with Civ 1/2 is Women's Suffrage being a Wonder. It is harly unique or geographically limited. It can neither be regarded as a great project of a Civilization.

[Lancer]

The Alaskan Oil Pipeline
The Trans Siberian Railroad
The North Sea Oil Platforms (wery wery beeeg)

[JaC]

Drugs certainly must play a part in Civ III but DEFINITELY not a wonder but an advance ( Medicine perhaps :-) )
you should have to build a hospital or pharmacy to reap any benefits and maybe the civ that first discovers the advance could get a trade bonus for passing it onto other civs.
Negative side to the drugs advance - crime / unhappyness / kgb capturing citizens smuggling.....

JaC

[willko]

this may or may not be a joke, i can't decide:
the chunnel: "connects" two "nearby" cities on the map together separated via a body of water... hmm, must be built in conjunction with another (hopefully allied) civ? increases trade in both cities as a result of tourism, easier shipping, etc.

two (relatively serious) thoughts on wonders:

1)

should you really be able to "switch" in mid-production? i mean think about it: you're working on the great library (scribes from all across the lands are gathering texts, architects laboring, etc.) when your network of informants from neighboring country x tells you that they have completed the darn thing, so next year (decade, century, etc.) you switch your labors towards the colossus. hmm. those books make a pretty mean foundation for that big guy. i dunno. it's a tough thing to do, but when you decide to put your people's efforts towards constructing such a huge breakthrough in human achievement, i don't think you should be able to pull a 180 and turn all their collective work into something else at the drop of a hat. electing to build a wonder should be a do or die kinda thing in my book. not to be taken lightly.

2)

on another topic, seeing how many architectural "wonders" that have been in civ games (from sid's to ctp), isn't it feasible to name tons of possible "wonders" that more or less only do one thing, namely increase trade (ie. the space needle in seattle, the eiffel tower, the leaning tower of pisa, mount rushmore, the pyramids, stonehenge, the moai of easter island, etc.). i say if we are to have arbitrary effects based on these architectural marvels ("what? our great monument to our ruler, the pyramids, has magically placed a granary in every city in the land? rejoice!") why not just pick a whole new slew of them just to have some different movies on this game.
on the other hand, i think a lot of these "repeatable" wonders don't add that much more to the game other than "flavor" if they were to extend only the "real-life" effects of their real-life counterparts. or maybe they could just be another generic city improvement: tourist trap. i dunno.

my opinion is that if it's going in the game, let's make it a wonder that has some palpable benefits that are somewhat rationally explainable (i.e. isaac newton's college, the great library, marco polo's embassy) as opposed to the ones with outlandish benefits slapped onto one of the great monuments to human constructive ability.

my two cents.

/willko.