How to "rush-build" Great Wonders without Leaders

[Ralf]

A simple but sometimes very effective trick:

If one of your cities is occupied with building a crucially important Great Wonder - dont hesitate to merge 2-3 workers with that city, in order to place out 1-3 new shield-harvesting tiles. Of course, you must find ways to counteract city-grow related happiness-problems, but thats temporarily overcomeable by other means.

[ICMB]

Yeah, I do this as well. I will add population to the max that will not go into civil disorder (using no entertainers), and then maximize the production of all the tiles used by the city until the growth is at 0.

I can often end up nearly doubling a city's production in this way, and end up building a series of super-productive cities to get wonders fast.

- ICMB

[arborman]

Another parallel approach is to use a couple other cities to build cheap units, then send them over and disband them in the Wonder city. You lose some shields, but sometimes the wonder is worth the tradeoff. I especially like disbanding enemy workers that I don't need, since they don't produce much and if you make them join a city they tend to get upset the next time you go to war with their mother country. Of course, you only get two shields, but if you're racing another civ for a wonder, everything helps.

[wunder]

Originally posted by arborman
Another parallel approach is to use a couple other cities to build cheap units, then send them over and disband them in the Wonder city. You lose some shields, but sometimes the wonder is worth the tradeoff. I especially like disbanding enemy workers that I don't need, since they don't produce much and if you make them join a city they tend to get upset the next time you go to war with their mother country. Of course, you only get two shields, but if you're racing another civ for a wonder, everything helps.

As far as I know, units disbanded in the wonder producing city don't add any shields to the production box. Just like logging forests around the city will not add anything. Even if you disbanded the unit before starting the wonder... or even switched from a rush built improvement. This is on Regent+ level of course, I don't know any different!

I found the best tactic that I use is the one discussed in previously in this thread!

[Skanky Burns]

Disbanding, forest harvesting (RIP) dont work to rush wonders. What you can do however is to use these tricks to get a new city ready to start pumping out wonders. I found a nice spot with coal and iron in its radius, but the Germans had built a city 1 square from this spot. After razing it, i moved a settler to the right spot, and had a size 1, improvementless city.

By building arty's in all other cities and disbanding in the new city, it soon had aqueduct, factory and powerplant, market and other happiness stuff, a hospital, and w/ added workers was now big enough to build the ironworks in 5 turns. After that, i couldnt discover wonders fast enough for that city to build

Problem is by the time you can use this tactic, most wonders have already been built

[arborman]

This is where i display my ignorance I guess. For some reson I thought I could disband to create wonders. I like your logic though. On a similar line, though this may be painfully obvious to everyone but me, building workers in population maxed cities and having them join other cities is an excellent way to max out your population and production everywhere else.

[Matthevv]

In the early stages, you could switch to building a palace, then disband/deforest, then switch back to the wonder.

[Padmewan]

The palace, I believe, is treated as a wonder, no?

But, I would disagree with whoever said that rush shields don't translate to wonder building. Start with an expensive building, like university, disband units until it's almost done, then switch to palace.

Better hope your research keeps pace

[Bad Ax]

Actually, Padmewan, wunder is correct. You cannot obtain shields for a wonder from a rush built improvement. If you don't believe us, it's an easy experiment to do. You'll find we're right.

[MarshalN]

Yup, if you add anything that's rushed/disbanded/forested to the currect building you're making, you can't switch to producing a wonder -- just won't let you.