CIv 6 wonder balance discussion

[Dp101]

So, in the interest of compiling a decent resource to use while making decisions as to which wonders to go to, I thought I would start a discussion about the various wonders and which are good. I haven't played that far yet, so I will only offer opinions on the ones I have used / am building / tried to build.

Pyramids - Seems really good to me, the free builder is a nice way to catch up in the growth curve after lagging behind to build a wonder, and the one additional build on each builder might be small compared to the bonuses you can get from civics, but because the pyramids are a fire and forget thing rather than taking up a slot, they are much more valuable. The only real issue with them is finding a city that has the land to build them and also the production capacity, since desert is kind of bad.


Petra - I have no experience using this wonder, as it was sniped by Rome in the only game I have gone for it in. However, just by raw stats it seems amazing, +2 food / production, +1 gold is even better than the Civ V version, which was agreed upon to be busted (although everything is more powerful in VI so it might balance out). Build this, spam mines on hills, and get an ubercity that doesn't need any resources or districts to be powerful. This might be the most powerful wonder because desert becomes the most powerful base tile type, even better than grassland, so you can go anywhere with these amazing tiles. And speaking of amazing tiles...


Chichen Itza tries to be the rainforest equivalent of Petra. The only problem with this idea is that while rainforests don't need much improvement, starting as a 2/1 tile, the wonder adding 2 to culture and one to production is far weaker than Petra, because you can improve Petra desert and you can't improve rainforests. Really, the wonder needs a bigger boost if it wants people to not remove rainforests to use it.

Most of the rest of the wonders seem to be mediocre at best, with many of them having too stringent requirements preventing them from being useful (Ruhr, Potala palace, Hagia Sophia) or just not being good enough (Alhambra, Great Library, Great Zimbabwe). I would love if someone could provide a defence of some of these wonders, because I don't want to feel like they are all terrible, but I just don't see the appeal yet. Anyone else want to give their opinions on the wonders? I'm kind of bad at going in depth, so more nuanced opinions would be welcome.

[yuris125]

Mostly agree with your assessment. No experience with Chichen Itza so far as didn't start in rainforests yet, but Pyramids and Petra are spot on. Pyramids + Serfdom give 6 charges to Builders, they feel like actual Workers who build improvements instantly. Or you can forgo Serfdom and still get half of its benefit. Really like the wonder, worth building as long as you have a desert tile in a reasonably productive city

Wonders with strict requirements tend to be good. Oxford University and Bolshoi Theatre are both great if you can build them

For Great Library, I want to think there's a beeline which would make it worthwhile. Didn't play enough to find it yet, but it can bring a lot of beakers and culture if beelined and built early enough. Is it worthwhile committing to it and spending early production on it? Not sure yet. It also may be worthwhile just for Great Writer slots, which aren't easy to come by in the early game, and there are civs which start generating GW points early (e.g. Russia, who get all artistic GPP from Lavra)

[Magil]

Ruhr Valley and Oxford are two wonders that offer %-based bonuses and are therefore valuable for that much at least. The Venetian Arsenal is awesome if you can use naval units.

[Dp101]

Ruhr Valley and Oxford are two wonders that offer %-based bonuses and are therefore valuable for that much at least. The Venetian Arsenal is awesome if you can use naval units.

Right, my issue with those two was more that my cities are set up such that I have nowhere to build them. Forgot to mention the Venetian Arsenal, it seems completely broken to me.

[Magil]

Ruhr Valley and Oxford are two wonders that offer %-based bonuses and are therefore valuable for that much at least. The Venetian Arsenal is awesome if you can use naval units.

Right, my issue with those two was more that my cities are set up such that I have nowhere to build them. Forgot to mention the Venetian Arsenal, it seems completely broken to me.

The requirements for Rhur Valley are adjacent to an Industrial Zone with a factory and on a river, doesn't seem that difficult to accomplish, given you almost always start on a river (not on Island Plates but it seems very common on Pangea and Continents). Oxford needs a grassland or plains tile next to a Campus with a university, those restrictions are also pretty lax. I dunno, on abundant resources maps it seems like luxuries block districts a lot more, but on standard resource allocation I usually don't have a lot of trouble with placements like that.

[Dp101]

Ruhr Valley and Oxford are two wonders that offer %-based bonuses and are therefore valuable for that much at least. The Venetian Arsenal is awesome if you can use naval units.

Right, my issue with those two was more that my cities are set up such that I have nowhere to build them. Forgot to mention the Venetian Arsenal, it seems completely broken to me.

The requirements for Rhur Valley are adjacent to an Industrial Zone with a factory and on a river, doesn't seem that difficult to accomplish, given you almost always start on a river (not on Island Plates but it seems very common on Pangea and Continents). Oxford needs a grassland or plains tile next to a Campus with a university, those restrictions are also pretty lax. I dunno, on abundant resources maps it seems like luxuries block districts a lot more, but on standard resource allocation I usually don't have a lot of trouble with placements like that.

Right, but if you have read my adventure report (which is the only decently long game I have played, also I understand if you don't want to read unfinished reports/games) then you would see that both the science districts I have build have no adjacent flat grassland and my best production city has no river nearby. In general I agree, I'm just speaking from my personal experience so far that they are harder than they look.

[yuris125]

This is actually one of the reasons I think Civ6 is great and will shine when polished. You have to plan far ahead, not just on the lines of "districts are most efficient when placed in a triangle", but which wonders you want to build and where you want to place them as well. You can ignore it and still do well, but if there are key wonders you really want to build, they can have a huge effect on choosing district placement 100 turns before you actually start building them

[Staltran]

Echoing that Venetian arsenal is broken, especially if you're willing to exploit it. There's a +100% production to naval units policy, so you can get quadruple production of naval units. Deleting a unit gives you twice the production cost in gold. So you can turn production into gold with a 1:8 ratio. You buy buildings and units at a 1:4 ratio. Even without the policy you can get 1 prod:4 gold and basically transfer production from the city with the wonder to anywhere (though you can't buy districts or wonders, of course). And that's without merchant republic. 

(Scythians, of course, have the same mechanic except with light cavalry and in every city, making them hilariously broken. I'm currently playing a game with them taking advantage of it before it gets patched out. I'm guessing they'll halve the gold gain when deleting units, so it will only be worth doing if you would have the +100% cav production policy anyway.)

The Eiffel Tower is really good for a tourism victory, since you can spam seaside resorts almost anywhere.

[picklepikkl]

This is actually one of the reasons I think Civ6 is great and will shine when polished. You have to plan far ahead, not just on the lines of "districts are most efficient when placed in a triangle", but which wonders you want to build and where you want to place them as well. You can ignore it and still do well, but if there are key wonders you really want to build, they can have a huge effect on choosing district placement 100 turns before you actually start building them

QFT. This is by far the aspect of the game I think most justifies its existence: the degree to which forethought is rewarded between Eureka boosts, district bonuses, and Wonder requirements. Thinking ten steps ahead seems like it gets you really good results, which is appropriate for a strategy game.

(That said, I think the fact that districts cannot be removed once built is a step too far. I've seen a number of complaints about lategame strategic resource reveals underneath a district, which just seems terrible. Rewarding forethought is well and good, but there should be a way to backtrack if you've erred or the dice rolled poorly.)

[yuris125]

The game doesn't give access to strategic resource if a district is on top of it? If it doesn't, I don't see why it shouldn't, and it would be an easy and effective fix